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)
The sun dipped farther, and the last two people who’d been sitting on the beach a little way down the shore stood, packing up their things. “I should get home,” Noelle said. Callie would be back from her bike ride by now, likely stuffed on ice cream. Getting her to bed would be a chore and a half. Despite the thought, her heart warmed, and she felt the pull toward her child. “Come with me,” she said, turning toward the wooden bridge that connected the beach to Chantilly’s property. “I’ll show you to your cottage.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m pretty wiped.”
She imagined he was. She’d just knocked him for a loop. And she was going to need tonight to find her footing once again, too, before hearing why he was here. What had made him decide to seek her out? She almost didn’t want to know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Cedro glanced over as the older man heaved into the metal toilet for the hundredth time. He groaned, wiping his mouth with his arm, and fell in a heap on the floor of his cage.
“You should be almost done,” Cedro remarked casually. He’d watched his father detox before. Messy. Gross. The man in the cage next to him had been puking his guts up for the past three days. Or what Cedro thought were three days, if he could count on the schedule of the lights turning on and off to tell him when it was day and when it was night. Until that morning, the man had been crazed, ranting and sweating and plain out of his mind. Lucky break for him in some ways. In others, not so much. Because now, with a sane mind, he’d have to come to terms with where he was.
“If you’ve been wondering if the cage was part of your sickness, it wasn’t,” Cedro said. “The cage is real. And your stench is definitely real. I can smell you from over here.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the man slurred, rolling over and gripping his head.
“Make me.”
The man pulled himself into a sitting position, gripping his bars and squinting over at Cedro. Cedro wasn’t good at guessing ages. The guy looked old to him, but part of that was probably because he’d spent a week at death’s doorstep. His eyes were sunken in, and though his hands were brown, his face was pale and was sorta green, and he had deep wrinkles that looked carved into his skin and a generous amount of gray in his short beard. Yes, he was at least oldish, and there was something just a little familiar about him.
“Who are you?” the man demanded, his voice scratchy.
“Cedro Leon.”
“I didn’t ask your name. Who are you?”
Cedro thought about that. Maybe the guy was asking because he was trying to figure out why he’d been snatched and locked in a cage with him in particular? Maybe it wasn’t random like he’d thought? And maybe the guy hadn’t barfed up every single one of his brain cells. “I’m nobody,” he said. He didn’t say it because he was sad or sorry about that. It was just true, and Cedro was a realist. He’d survived, so far anyway, in his life because he was honest, at least with himself. “I was crossing to the US. My brother’s seventeen, and he’s in Arizona. I was nabbed about an hour past the border.” He’d been stung by a bee, or so he’d thought for a brief second. He’d quickly brought his hand to his neck to swat the insect, and that was the last thing he remembered. He’d woken in the dark, and at first he’d wondered if he’d been caught by border-patrol agents, but when the lights never came on and he realized that even when his eyes had had time to adjust to the dark, all remained pitch black, he knew something was very wrong. He’d felt around and realized he was caged. That’s when he knew traffickers must have taken him. He’d panicked—yelled and kicked and gone a little crazy—but not for too long. He was where he was. Throwing a fit wasn’t going to change it. At the first opportunity, he’d have to use his wits and his skills to get free.
What he hadn’t at all expected was that they’d toss someone else in the cage next to him while he was sleeping and then turn on the lights.
“How old are you?” the stranger demanded.
“Fourteen,” he said.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” the man muttered, collapsing back down so that he was half-propped against the bars. “You didn’t hire someone to bring you across?”
“You mean a coyote?” he asked, turning his head and making a spitting sound. He would have brought up some actual saliva, but he didn’t think it smart to waste the moisture in his mouth. “Never,” he said. “Animals.” He knew what the coyotes did to those stupid enough to trust them.