Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 63579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“He’s married, Bonnie. I know you’re not that kind of girl, so I’m goin’ to go ahead and tell you I’m fuckin’ shocked that you’re telling me this.”
Leo is right, of course.
Western is married, but it isn’t how the public sees it.
I don’t know if I should go ahead and share that information, so I keep it to myself. Instead, explaining, “He is married, but from what I have gathered, it isn’t a good marriage. She left the other night, which is why I was there to begin with.”
“Still, that doesn’t mean you go ahead and make out with a murderer.”
That word is beginning to bug me.
“I wish you would stop calling him that.”
Stopping the treadmill, Leo gets off. I follow suit, and, panting slightly, I stand in front of him, waiting for the lecture that’s about to come.
“That’s what he is. I know you refuse to believe it, Bon, but that’s what he fucking is. He killed people, more than one, and he went to prison. People don’t just go to prison for no reason.”
“They do, actually. It happens all the time.”
“He was seen with the bodies. You can’t just explain that away.”
I wish I could tell him more, but right now, I’m keeping anything I do know under wraps until I can get more information.
“I know how it looks, but I need you to believe that I’m doing the right thing here. I don’t think he did it, and I don’t think he’ll hurt me.”
Leo’s expression grows tight with anger. “You’re an idiot if you keep going with this.”
His words hurt, and while I understand them, they make me equally as angry.
“Don’t call me names, Leo. Last time I checked, I was a grown ass woman who is fully capable of making her own decisions.”
“You’re right,” he snaps, “you are. But don’t go ahead and fucking tell me about them and expect me to agree.”
“I won’t tell you about them, then,” I snap back.
“Fuckin’ marvelous.”
With that, he turns on his heel and walks away, leaving me standing with more than one set of eyes on me after our little spat.
I love Leo, but he can’t possibly understand.
Maybe he’s right, maybe I shouldn’t be telling him this stuff. It only makes him mad, and I shouldn’t expect any other reaction out of him. I hate fighting with him, mostly because he’s the only person in this world I truly tell everything to, and I do respect his opinions.
Exhaling, I pick up my towel and finish up my session before leaving the gym. I go and get myself a coffee before returning home to do some more research on the case. I have to present to Pete later today, and I need to show him I am onto something good so he’ll let me continue.
I want to blow this story right open; I want to clear Western’s name, and I want the people involved to go down for whatever the fuck it is they’re doing in this town.
Sitting down, I pull out my laptop and do some research on the missing teens around the time when Braithe was shot. Nathan mentioned it, and I haven’t had the chance to spend time researching, but I very much plan on doing that today. Typing a few different things into my search, I manage to stumble across a few reports and articles. As I dig deeper, I’m quite surprised to see over twenty teenagers that have gone missing in the last twenty years, all of which were indeed written off as runaways because of the fact that they’re foster kids.
All of them boys.
This is alarming.
It’s truly gut wrenching.
Because of how messed up the system is, these boys have been overlooked. They have been dismissed and forgotten about. There is no way that so many teenage boys have run away, within a certain area, in that amount of time. Surely someone has looked at this and thought, gee, this doesn’t make sense? How can the police honestly believe that all these boys would just run off, never to be seen again? I get it, it happens, but this should be raising some red flags.
The fact that it’s not is concerning.
I write down all the names of the boys and make a note to try and locate their foster families, to see if I can get some more information. I’m starting to believe this theory that foster kids in town have been taken and sold to human trafficking rings. Is that how all this fits together? Did Daniel know about it and was killed because of that? Is Bill Whart the person behind it all? Is he paying police officers to make things go his way?
Was Western just in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and made for a perfect way of discarding that situation so Bill didn’t get into trouble for what he was doing?