Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I scratched my chin and started to back up toward the back door, but stopped when he suddenly turned the computer to me.
“What is that?” I gasped, rushing forward.
“That is Drake.”
I knew that. I could see that. Drake was standing outside the house that I’d let him use.
“What is he doing?” I whispered.
He pointed to the truck and ignored my question. “Look at this one.”
Then he switched to the next picture.
Drake was hauling open the door, and inside the truck, there were floor-to-ceiling crates. The only thing I’d ever seen in crates were guns, so I was hoping that my mind was just filling in the blanks, rather than knowing for a certainty.
Surely there could be something else inside those boxes.
“What?”
“I think he’s allowing his house to be used as a base of some sort.”
“Base?”
“Or a storage facility.” He paused. “I don’t fuckin’ know. I do know that whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it at night so no one can see him. I also know that when he sees these people that make these deliveries at a restaurant in town, they don’t acknowledge that they know each other. Seems legitimately shady to me.”
I agreed.
“I know that one,” I pointed to the man with the Asian features. “He’s a trainer at the gym where I used to work out.”
My captor grunted.
“None of this makes sense,” I muttered to myself. “None of it.”
“What sense do you need to make of this to know he’s doing something bad?” he practically spat. “The man is a fuckin’ douche.”
“Whatever he has going on here can be verified rather quickly.” I walked away from him and to the set of keys on the counter but paused in turning for a few seconds when a wave of dizziness washed over me.
“Cobie?”
I shook it off and raised the keys in the air.
“I own that house.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “That was at least easy to find. But, even if tax records for property weren’t public knowledge, Marianne told me before she passed.”
“Marianne…”
And then it all clicked, where I’d seen him.
I’d seen him for the first time in the hospital as I’d left Marianne’s room. The second time I’d seen him had been at her funeral.
“You.”
He winced.
“Took me three freakin’ months to find you,” he said. “And then three months of looking into you and Drake to decide that maybe you weren’t in on it.”
“Why do you care if I’m in on it or not?”
He looked down at his hands. “Marianne asked me to take care of you.”
“What?”
“She told me to take care of you,” he repeated.
“Why?” I blurted.
Not that he’d have to deal with that promise for much longer.
Stage two breast cancer meant that I would possibly die by the end of next year, according to my doctor, if I didn’t try to treat it.
And honestly, I was just so damn tired.
I was tired of fighting.
Tired of losing.
I wanted some peace.
Even if that peace came in the form of death.
At least in death, I knew that I wouldn’t suffer anymore. I knew that I wouldn’t wake up and realize that I was alive to live another day in pain.
Since I’d battled cancer before, I knew what would happen.
I knew that my life would suck for however long the doctor deemed necessary for me to do the chemo and radiation treatments.
Plus, I would still need to have a double mastectomy if the chemo and radiation did its job and killed all the cancerous cells in my body. And I say that ‘if’ cautiously since there was still a chance that it wouldn’t work, and I would go through all these treatments—all the fighting—only to succumb to the cancer. I just didn’t know if I had it in me or if I even wanted to do it anymore.
There was nobody left to make me want to fight—to convince me that the pain was worth it.
Not even knowing that there was something going on with Drake, and this man was trying to let me in on said information, was going to make me change my mind.
Suddenly, I was just freakin’ tired.
“What’s your name?” I blurted, suddenly needing to know who this man was.
“Dante Hail.”
Dante Hail.
“What put all those shadows in your eyes, Dante Hail?”
His entire being stilled.
His eyes on me. The breath in his chest. The absent tapping of his fingers against the countertop next to the computer.
Everything.
“Some time I’ll tell you of my own personal hell,” he said. “But now’s not that time.”
“I could be dead by next year,” I told him bluntly. “Let’s make sure you tell me before that time comes.”
He blinked.
“What do you mean, dead?”
I fought through the exhaustion. Through the wave of knowledge that stuck with me as I moved toward Dante, and shrugged.
“I have breast cancer,” I admitted. “It’s fairly advanced, and without treatment, the doctor doesn’t think I’ll make it through the year.”