Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 141281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
We swap agonized looks before Chris shoves a stiff finger against his lips and jumps up, grabbing his clothes.
I stand gently, racking my brain for words while Dad knocks again, this time louder.
Jesus!
There’s something almost weirdly urgent in his knock, like he’s worried or in trouble, but holding back so he doesn’t scare me.
“That’s my cue to scram. Find out what he wants,” Chris whispers, launching himself outside onto the balcony before I can say anything.
My heart leaps into my throat as I watch him jump into a huge tree with a panther’s grace, sliding into the sprawling garden below.
“Honey?” Dad calls again. Whoa, is his voice cracking? “Please.”
Oof. I’m not even dressed.
“Just a second!” I call back, pretending to sound groggy as I scramble for my clothes.
The more I move, the deeper my worries.
Whatever he wants, it can’t be good if he’s showing up in the middle of the night.
I’m straightening my pj’s when I hear footsteps, like he’s anxiously pacing the hall.
Enough. I have to know.
I run over and tear the door open. Dad reaches through the frame and pulls me into the hall, throwing his arms around me.
“Dad! What’s wrong? What happened?”
He looks like hell, even in the dim orange night-lights that switch on after midnight.
He’s clammy, panicked, way too pale.
Dark circles surround his eyes like sickly halos.
I’ve never seen my father like this, and it’s scary as hell.
“It’s Evie, Delia. Thompson, he found her downstairs on the floor a few minutes ago,” he gasps out, his voice ringing with confusion.
My brows knit together. Thompson is our main security guy who patrols the house on graveyard shift.
“Dad?” I reach for his hand and try to squeeze it reassuringly. “What do you mean 'found her?' Did you call 9-1-1?”
“They’re on their way and she’s—she’s not breathing!” He spins angrily, slamming his fist on the wall.
Holy shit!
I grab his shoulder, trying to calm him down. My brain skips back to all the emergency training you get in high school, but never pay much attention to because you don’t expect you’ll ever need it.
“Let’s go back downstairs! And start at the beginning,” I urge, trying to pull him by the hand.
“If they don’t get here in time... If...if anything happens to her, I swear to God...” A sob chokes him as he lurches along, barely keeping up with me.
This time we’re moving, marching to the end of the hall and piling into the elevator in a blinding storm of fury and terror.
“Jesus, Delia, it’s bad. I don’t know, I don’t know what happened. She was passed out before I ran down for the alert. They just found her, passed out, barely breathing. I nodded off in the library earlier... I thought she was upstairs in our room, doing her yoga routine or taking a bath. I came upstairs a little while ago and I heard these odd noises, but...” He sighs so sadly it makes my heart hurt. “Her lungs aren’t working. Something’s very wrong.”
My belly tightens, wanting to crawl up my throat when he talks about the noises in the night. He’s probably too shocked by what’s happening to realize it was coming from my room.
Stop it, I tell myself. This is no time to be selfish.
We need to make sure this woman doesn’t die.
Yeah.
The thought of having Evie as a ghost, haunting us forever, makes me want to move into the crappiest high-rent apartment in the city.
But I can’t worry about stupid things like that right now.
Dad tears out of the elevator the instant the doors open, skittering over to the small, slim shape on the floor. Two security guys are bent over her, elevating her legs, checking her vitals.
She’s not her usual high-class put together self.
Evie looks like a rumpled mess—more like a fragile doll than a human being—half dressed in her open, wrinkled robe.
“Come on, dammit. Come the fuck on!” Dad snaps, pushing through the guards.
He drops to the floor, banging his knees so loudly they click. He goes to work, trying his best at CPR.
I’m frozen, hurting, unsure what to do.
There’s nothing in the good daughter’s playbook for what happens when your wicked stepmother blacks out cold.
Dad rarely swears, and he never lets such harsh, bright tears brim in his eyes, overflowing down his red, panicked cheeks.
He’s covering her mouth with his now, pouring every molecule of oxygen in his lungs into her, pumping his hands on her chest so hard I worry he’ll accidentally break ribs.
It won’t take much.
Jesus, I think she’s lost more weight during the time I’ve been away. She looks like a mummy with one too many plastic surgeries.
“Dad, get her down flat!” I suggest, walking up but keeping a comfortable distance from the nightmare scene.
He stands and waves at me angrily.
I grab her feet and we lift her—and she’s just as light as I feared.