Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
A needle, I realize with a jolt of terror, and my consciousness fades away.
* * *
A face swims in front of my eyes. It’s a handsome face, beautiful even, despite the scar that bisects the left eyebrow. High, slanted cheekbones, steel-gray eyes framed by black lashes, a strong jaw darkened by five-o’clock shadow—a man’s face, my mind supplies fuzzily. His hair is thick and dark, longer on the top than the sides. Not an old man, then, but not a teenager either. A man in his prime.
The face is wearing a frown, its features set in harsh, grim lines. “George Cobakis,” the hard, sculpted mouth says. It’s a sexy mouth, well shaped, but I hear the words as though from a megaphone in the distance. “Do you know where he is?”
I nod, or at least I attempt to. My head feels heavy, my neck strangely sore. “Yes, I know where he is. I thought I knew him too, but I didn’t, not really. Do you ever really know someone? I don’t think so, or at least I didn’t know him. I thought I knew, but I didn’t. All those years together, and everyone thought we were so perfect. The perfect couple, they called us. Can you believe it? The perfect couple. We were the cream of the crop, the young doctor and the rising star journalist. They said he’d win a Pulitzer prize one day.” I’m vaguely aware I’m babbling, but I can’t stop. The words pour out of me, all the pent-up bitterness and pain. “My parents were so proud, so happy on our wedding day. They had no idea, no idea at all about what was come, what would happen—”
“Sara. Focus on me,” the megaphone voice says, and I catch a hint of a foreign accent. It pleases me, that accent, makes me want to reach over and press my hand to those sculpted lips, then run my fingers over that hard jaw to see if it’s bristly. I like bristly. George would often come home from his trips abroad, and he’d be all bristly and I liked it. I liked it, though I’d tell him to shave. He looked better clean-shaven, but I liked feeling the bristle sometimes, liked feeling that roughness on my thighs when he’d—
“Sara, stop,” the voice cuts in, and the frown on the exotically handsome face deepens.
I was speaking out loud, I realize, but I don’t feel embarrassed, not at all. The words don’t belong to me; they just come of their own accord. My hands act of their own accord too, attempting to reach over to that face, but something stops them, and when I lower my heavy head to look down, I see a plastic zip tie around my wrists, with a man’s big hand over my palms. It’s warm, that hand, and it’s holding my hands pinned down on my lap. Why is it doing that? Where did the hand come from? When I look up in confusion, the face is closer, its gray eyes peering into mine.
“I need you to tell me where your husband is,” the mouth says, and the megaphone moves closer. It sounds like it’s right next to my ear. I cringe, but at the same time, that mouth intrigues me. Those lips make me want to touch them, lick them, feel them on my—wait. They’re asking something.
“Where my husband is?” My voice sounds like it’s bouncing off the walls.
“Yes, George Cobakis, your husband.” The lips look tempting as they form the words, and the accent caresses my insides despite the persistent megaphone effect. “Tell me where he is.”
“He’s safe. He’s in a safe house,” I say. “They could come for him. They didn’t want him to run that story, but he did. He was brave like that, or stupid—probably stupid, right?—and then the accident happened, but they could still come for him, because they do that. The mafia doesn’t care that he’s a vegetable now, a cucumber, a tomato, a zucchini. Well, tomato is a fruit, but he’s a vegetable. A broccoli, maybe? I don’t know. It’s not important, anyway. It’s just that they want to make an example of him, threaten other journalists who’d stand up to them. That’s what they do; that’s how they operate. It’s all about greasing palms and bribing, and when you shed light on that—”
“Where is the safe house?” There is a dark light in those steely eyes. “Tell me the address of the safe house.”
“I don’t know the address, but it’s on the corner near Ricky’s Laundromat in Evanston,” I say to those eyes. “They always bring me there in a car, so I don’t know the exact address, but I saw that building from a window. There are at least two men in that car, and they drive around forever, switch cars sometimes too. It’s because of the mafia, because they might be watching. They always send a car for me, and they couldn’t this weekend. Scheduling conflict, they said. It happens sometimes; the guards’ shifts don’t align and—”