Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
I ducked while flinching, my heart in my throat.
“Oh my god.”
“Hurry,” he said as he picked up his pace. “It’s better than nothing.”
The house looked like it’d taken a hit from the tornado, yet it was still standing.
The house itself was two stories, but the roof had been ripped off of the top floor.
Luckily, that meant there was still some structure.
“Do you think anyone lives here?” I asked.
“Likely not,” he grumbled. “There’s nothing personal about it. I’d bet it’s a rental or something. Summer house possibly.”
Great.
“Awesome,” I muttered. “Maybe they’ll at least have internet. We can try to hack into that iPad and connect to something.”
Just as I said that, the bottom dropped out of the sky and rain so heavy and cold fell from the sky like a bucket of ice water had been poured directly onto us.
The baby started to scream, as he should.
I was right there with him as we ran into the yard, ignoring the shingles in the yard as we moved toward the front door.
Finnian was nice and knocked.
I was ready to kick in the front door.
But he stilled me before saying, “If there does happen to be someone here, I don’t want to break in. I’ll at least ask nicely first.”
He had a point.
There was no doubt that we were in the south.
People down here had guns for their guns.
You didn’t just go barging into a random house and expect to be let inside all nice-like.
No one answered when we knocked, and I let out a relieved breath.
I didn’t want there to be anyone here.
Because if anyone had been upstairs when that tornado had come through, there was a likelihood that they were hurt.
Or gone.
“Now we can break and enter?” I teased.
Because it was either make light of this situation, or cry.
Plus, the baby’s cry was really getting to me.
“Yeah.” He tried the knob.
Locked.
He moved to the window next to the door and tried to lift it.
It stayed shut.
“Gonna have to break the window,” I admitted.
“Yeah.” He picked up the metal patio table that’d managed to stay put and threw it through the window.
The glass shattered, and the baby started to cry even harder.
“Shit,” he muttered.
I picked up the gnome that was next to the front door, knocked over and missing his hat, and used the remains of the garden statue to clear out the remaining glass.
Once it was all gone, I stepped over the windowsill and entered the home.
The walls were erect, but I could already see water starting to slide down the length of the walls.
“Great,” I muttered as I unlocked the door.
An alarm sounded.
“Shit,” I groaned.
“Good thing,” he said. “Means that they have power.”
The man had a point.
He walked to the alarm panel, ripped off the front faceplate, and did something internally to the alarm.
The alarm stopped, and we stood standing there for a long second as we tried to get our bearings.
“How do they still have power?” I asked as I reached out and flipped on a light switch.
“Might be power, but there’s probably a lot of exposed wires up top. We need to be careful about what we use,” he said. “We don’t want to inadvertently burn the house to the ground.”
“Good idea,” I said. “What do we do?”
He took the baby out of the wrap and handed him to me. “See if you can find any dry clothes. I’m going to work on getting into this iPad. Then see if there happens to be any internet here.”
I took the baby to the couch—a massive sectional that I fell in love with almost instantly—and laid him down.
I stripped him of his clothes, then used a blanket off the couch and wrapped him in it.
When he still didn’t stop screaming, I popped the bottle into his mouth, and he instantly quieted.
“That’ll work for a couple of hours,” he said. “But eventually, we’re going to need more than that.”
I knew that.
It was fucking scary to think about, too.
“Do you think they have a hard-wired phone line?” I asked as I walked around downstairs, checking everything.
“Check the kitchen,” he murmured as he did something on the iPad. “I’m in. Gonna search for a Wi-Fi signal.”
I didn’t bother to ask him how he’d gotten into a locked iPad so fast. I was just happy as fuck that he did.
I went into the kitchen and turned on the light, gasping when I saw water pouring in through a shattered window. “Whoa.”
“What is it?” he called.
“Lots of water in their kitchen,” I said. “No phone, though.”
“They have a Wi-Fi signal,” he said. “I’m contacting some people now.”
“Can you call 911 from an iPad?” I wondered.
“No,” he said. “But I’ll message someone who can.”
I got to the next room, what looked like an office of some kind, and gasped. “A phone!”
He showed up, heading straight for it. “Good. This’ll be faster.”