Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“That’s not your problem,” she insisted, reaching into her pocket.
For a phone?
For a knife?
One of those eye-gouger things made to look like kittens?
I had no idea.
But I wasn’t going to fucking press it, either.
I couldn’t force someone to listen to sense and take a ride with me.
“Alright,” I said, not understanding the weird pit growing in my belly. “Suit yourself,” I said, giving her a nod, then turning forward, firing over my bike, and heading off.
It nagged at me.
All through the drive that was meant to clear my head, as I turned the bike in the direction of the clubhouse, taking the fucking highway, since there was no reason to seek solitude if even that wasn’t helping the whole head-clearing situation.
I was halfway up the driveway when I got this strong as fuck clenching feeling in my gut.
I knew it.
I’d relied on it many times in my life.
That sensation that said something had just gone horribly wrong.
I didn’t understand it, wouldn’t pretend to know if it was from some higher power, or our own powers of observation and deduction or what.
But I did always trust it.
Before I even fully registered what I was doing, I was running back to my bike, hopping on, turning it over, and speeding back in the direction of that desolate road.
Where I’d driven away from that woman.
I knew.
As I drove down, eyes scanning the road, then the dirt shoulders when I didn’t see her figure.
I knew.
She was still there.
Somewhere.
Just when I was about to call myself a fucking moron about it, though, after seeing nothing, my headlight landed on something on the side of the road.
It could have been anything.
An old garbage bag.
A pile of brush.
Anything.
There was no reason to assume it was the body of a woman.
Still, that twisting sensation in my gut told me otherwise as I pulled up, parked my bike, and hopped off before running forward toward it.
“Fuck,” I hissed, dropping to my knees beside her as my arm moved out, grabbing her shoulder, and rolling her onto her back. “Fuck,” I growled again as my gaze landed on her bruised and bloodied face.
My finger moved to her neck, feeling a pulse, before I was going for my phone, and doing something I’d never done in my fucking life.
Calling the police.
CHAPTER TWO
Sylvie
“Sly, I think Pete is trashed,” a voice called from the doorway of the office.
I didn’t need to turn to know who it was.
Only one person called me Sly.
Not as a pet name or anything.
Just an honest mistake when he’d seen my name tag that read Syl, and thanks to his dyslexia, mixed up the letters.
The name had just kind of stuck since then.
Marshall was a semi-permanent resident of the halfway house where I worked.
I mean, technically, he wasn’t there all the time. But he’d been in and out since before my time.
Just can’t seem to stay on the wagon, Sly. Dunno why.
I mean, I had my theories.
His PTSD was well-documented. Add in his chronic pain. And his distrust of “head shrinkers,” and you sort of had a recipe for addiction issues.
There was usually a bit of a waiting list for our very underfunded and badly needed halfway house, but when Marsh passed out on the front porch, we always found room to stick him somewhere.
It helped that because he’d been around so long, he sort of saw himself as a member of the staff. So he was willing to tell us when he had suspicions of someone using or doing something shady that we didn’t allow. He acted as extra eyes and ears since we were chronically short-staffed and couldn’t do it all.
“Think?” I asked, shuffling the mail into the bin to be shredded. Just another couple dozen rejection letters, refusing charitable donations that we were really praying for.
It was hard enough for any charity to make enough money to cover their expenses. It was harder when you ran a charity that a lot of people turned their noses down at.
Most people agreed with helping children and animals and battered women.
But there were a lot of folks who thought addicts brought their bad luck on themselves, and didn’t deserve ‘handouts.’
“Well, I was being delicate. You being a lady and all,” Marshall said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, looking bashful, despite the fact that I’d once walked up to work to find him bare-ass naked, passed out.
“I’m no more ladylike than you are, Marsh,” I told him, as I often did.
Sure, I liked girly shit.
Makeup and hair dye and getting my nails done. All that shit. But I was about as delicate as a bomb. The real nasty kind. Full of nails and random pieces of metal.
I mean, that was why I worked at a halfway house.
This wasn’t the kind of job sweet-natured, soft-spoken, people-pleasing, shy women worked.