Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“Where the hell is my son—”
“Dad, what are you doing?”
His father pushed past Paula the way Evan had, yet with more force, and Paula jolted backward, giving his dad a death glare as he passed her.
“Let’s go,” he said to Evan, standing at the bottom of the steps.
“Let’s go? How did you even know I was here?” Oh. He took his phone from his pocket, holding it up. “You put tracking on my phone?”
“Do you blame me?” his father practically yelled, face reddening. “Jesus! You were abducted. You don’t get to just run off without telling me where you’re going.”
“I’m not a child, Dad,” he said between clenched teeth.
“As long as you’re under my roof, you’re my responsibility. And you may. Not. Come. Here. Again.” His father’s jaw clenched like his own, and the older man was studiously refusing to even glance at Noelle standing behind his son. Evan felt her heat at his back. He felt her anxiety.
“She didn’t do this!” Evan yelled, his frustration boiling over. His father wanted to blame someone, and she was the only option. He’d noticed how his father had quietly seethed over the past few days as he spoke with the police and the FBI and his own personal security, whenever Noelle’s name was brought up. “She was there with me. She’s a victim too! For the love of Christ—”
“Evan.” Noelle put a hand on his shoulder, and he sucked back the words he wanted to spew at his dad. This wasn’t fair. None of it was. When he looked back at Noelle, he saw the hostility in her face too. “If my father knew this man was in his home,” she said, glaring at his father, her words cutting off as she pulled in a breath. “Please leave.”
“Noelle would like you to leave her home.” He heard Paula’s voice from behind him and turned to see her looking at his father. Her eyes moved to Evan. “And your father is right. You two probably need some time apart.” She gave Noelle a look, and he saw the sympathy there, but it pissed him off too. “You went through something terrible together,” she went on. “Give yourselves time to process it.”
“No one asked you,” he spit out. “You don’t know a goddamn thing.”
Her nostrils flared, and Noelle let out a quiet cry. He hated that stupid girl, but she was protecting Noelle too. A part of him was glad to know she had someone else on her side. He turned back to Noelle, and the sorrow on her face broke him. “Evan,” she said. “I’m planning my dad’s memorial service. Maybe Paula’s right. Maybe your dad is too. Let’s take some time. At least a few months.”
“A few months? You don’t mean that!”
“I do. I do mean it. I need that. And so do you.”
“The girl has some sense. Let’s go, Evan,” his dad said. The girl. The way his father said it enraged him. She had been destroyed by the animals that had taken them too. She was the biggest part of why he was alive. Was his father so filled with hate that he couldn’t see that?
He turned back to Noelle again, and she’d already taken a step backward, away from him. His chest felt like it was caving in, and he was having trouble catching his breath. “Evan,” she said gently. “Both of us . . . our thoughts, our emotions, they’re tangled. Conflicted. We both have to remember what it’s like to live in the world again. To find new footing.”
He stared at her. What she was saying made some sense. Yet it also made him want to scream and claw the same way he did when he woke from those night terrors. Alone. It made him feel alone.
“Noelle—”
“Please, Evan,” she said. “I have to plan a service for my dad. I have to say goodbye. He deserves that.” She looked behind him at his father. “The police, they’ll find answers. I feel good knowing you’re working with them and focusing on that so I can . . . so I can grieve. Please, let me grieve.”
He felt like she was falling away from him, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, watching her disappear, not because he’d let her go, but because she wasn’t reaching back. “I—”
“Goodbye, Evan.” And with that, she turned and jogged back up the stairs, turning the corner out of sight.
Evan waited only a moment, his heart in his throat, before he turned in the opposite direction, joining his thin-lipped father and walking past Paula without looking at her.
Outside, the sun was a mere slip on the horizon. Night was coming, the place where nightmares waited.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Collector sipped his cup of tea and then placed it down on the saucer, enjoying the small clatter of porcelain against porcelain. The liquid was piping hot, dosed liberally with sugar and a slice of lemon. A man he’d once known long ago had drunk this exact tea prepared in just this way, and now he did too.