Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
He liked Bex.
He didn’t want to have to explain to her why he’d shot her husband—for the second time.
Lauren
“Holy shit, Lauren!” Niles, my editor, gaped at me when I took off my dark glasses.
I didn’t exactly want to take them off, but there was no obvious reason for me to be wearing them inside. Unlike Lucy, who had routinely worn huge shades until at least noon on a Monday to “hide the evil daylight,” I wasn’t known for hangovers.
Or drinking at all.
Hence me not being able to pull off the indoor sunglasses look.
I winced at the lights smarting against my eyes. Or more accurately stabbing razorblades into my eyeballs.
The doctors had been reasonably certain that I didn’t have a concussion, though they’d kept me in for monitoring for the rest of the night, just in case.
I was thankful that my job included health insurance for that little stay. I had a sensibly sized nest egg for unforeseen emergencies, but hospital bills added up quickly, and a features editor for a small-town paper didn’t exactly earn a lot.
In this economy, I was lucky to still have a job in journalism. It was a dying industry, and small-town independent publications were set to become extinct in the not-so-distant future.
The only reason why the Amber Star was hanging on was because Amber was different, and one of the many ‘real’ small towns left in America. Despite being in California and on the beach, we were far enough away from LA not to get sucked into that void. Almost all the businesses were owner-operated—we didn’t even have a Starbucks. Every time a big conglomerate came sniffing around, offering too much money to yank away the personality of the town, we closed ranks.
I was sure the money would become too tempting in the future. It always did. Then big business would bastardize our town so it looked like the rest of the world.
And all the rest of the small-town newspapers in America were getting killed off in the name of progress. In the monopolizing of the media industry, the monopolizing of the freaking country.
So my job wasn’t exactly secure; it was only a matter of time. And I didn’t want to leave Amber. I loved my hometown, even if my parents had moved away… after.
There were too many memories for them there, they said. For me, it was the memories that kept me going, made that weight on my chest light enough to at least breathe around.
So I wasn’t about to let go of my town, my memories. I was going to clutch onto them with vigor for as long I was gainfully employed and could afford to live in Amber.
Hence me walking into the office the morning they discharged me from the hospital with instructions to ‘take it easy’ and gave me a handful of pill bottles—all of which I’d thrown out. I wasn’t about to miss a day of work when things were already precarious for every single person in the office. Niles had to lay off two people in as many months. We were down to a skeleton crew.
I had enough time to get a taxi home, having already called the sheriff from the hospital about my wrecked car sitting six miles out of town. It was only proper to let them know before someone happened upon it, abandoned, they looked up my plates, suspected the worst and then called my parents.
They may have recovered from the wounds of the past, but I didn’t think they would’ve been able to handle a call from a police officer letting them know they’d found their daughter’s crashed car with no sign of said daughter.
And it was also a hazard. I’d swerved enough to get myself fully off the road and fully into this situation in the first place, but still, it was a distraction. Even if that road wasn’t exactly well traveled, especially in the early hours of the morning.
I’d been doing the last of my long-haul drive from Phoenix, determined to get home before work Monday so I didn’t have to take a vacation day. I hadn’t been overly tired, as I’d planned my stops well—I was overly alert if anything. Which caused me to notice the dog that had scampered onto the road to nibble on some roadkill and for me to swerve to avoid hitting it.
The number one rule my father taught me was to “never swerve for animals. They’re not as precious as you are.” But instinct had prevailed. This was not a raccoon or a squirrel. It was a dog.
One that was nowhere to be found after I’d wrenched myself out of my car and discovered that my phone had been smashed beyond repair in the crash.
Hence me walking.
Because the other option was to wait for someone to come by, and at that hour of the night, on that particular road, my odds were slim. I hadn’t been severely injured, and the walk was roughly six miles. I was fit, and I could’ve made it.