So this book has surpassed every expectation I had for it lol. 1,260 reads !!! I'm squealing!
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She wanted to tell them that she was fine. That they were overreacting, that hauling her across town to Weil Cornell and getting her hooked up to IV machines was taking it a tad too far. What was worse, she was pretty sure in her moments of unconsciousness detective Harrington would have gotten an eye full of her scarcely clothed lean build.
What would he think of her? What would Grace think? Would they all notice her weight-loss?
Sitting up, Christina ran a hand through her mushroom hair ruffling it. It came off with her hand, strands clinging to her trembling fingers. She was falling apart, crumbling in the wake of a battle she knew she couldn't win. But that had to stop. She wasn't helping herself by hoping that it'll go away on its own. She wasn't being the strong woman she promised her twin brother that she would be. She was weak, a wuss and that made her sick.
She didn't want to think about how much concern she'd put her cousin through, how much concern she'd put Jacob through by letting her situation accelerate. It hurt more than any symptom of cancer.
A soft knock was all it took. A knock at the door of her hospital room was all it took to snatch her back to her frigid reality. It wasn't a long knock, a head peeked through. Barron. She figured.
Pushing the large oak door further, he slipped into the petite room, shutting it behind him. His generous height made her all the more claustrophobic. "Grace and Jacob took off for some shut eye. Guess that means I've got the night shift." He muttered by the door. There were a thousand and one things he had to say. He'd handled more conversations than he could count, and with this woman, he was flustered.
"I don't need a babysitter." He heard her say.
"I get that." Was all he could say. He was in college once more, tripping over his words, his thoughts a jumbled mess, tangles he wasn't quite ready to sort through.
"Then why are you still here?" She was glaring, not because she was mad at him, but because she was frustrated, hands dampened as a slow chill rode her spine. She shifted, not particularly sure if she was making room for him or scooting away from him.
"I actually came to talk about Terrence." DejaVu. Like that hadn't been their only topic of conversation. Couldn't he read the room? The last thing she needed was to hear more bad news about her father. She wanted him out of police custody. She wanted to scream and shout at the NYPD to release Terrence. He didn't kill Lawrence.
But then who did?
The letter. She needed to find who'd sent the letter. She needed to find who'd killed Lawrence Harrington. And she didn't think telling Barron was going to get her any closer to the answers she was desperately clutching for.
"What about him?"
"There was an autopsy. On Lawrence." He inched further into the room, the soles of his Armani loafers clicking softly against the wooden floorboards. But she wasn't looking at him, not anymore, rather through the window. Manhattan was a perfect painting from Weil Cornell's east wing, further enhanced by the magic of the night. Christina felt she was looking at a Vincent Van Gogh painting, the one with the bright stars over their heads and lights dulled in its wake.
"You don't have to do this, Barron." She heard herself say, but her throat was hoarse, it was a whisper.
"I want to." He gulped a breath and continued. "I just... never thought it would be this hard." Barron found himself saying. All at once he was trusting her, he was confiding in a woman he'd known less than a week. He couldn't continue to drown in a river of lies. He had no one. No one he felt would understand. Christina nodded. "I don't let myself feel, but... I guess you could say it slips through the cracks and all I can do is feel. I feel every bit of emptiness, like something's missing, like someone's missing." Christina hugged her knees tight to her chest. She knew the feeling. And it hurt, it hurt so much she was almost reliving it.
"Why are you telling me this?" She whispered almost afraid to hear the crack in her own voice. She glimpsed at the man by the foot of her bed, chestnut hair ruffled, the two buttons of his white button down shirt undone. He was a man whose strength surpassed him. A man who saw her in her weakest state and burdened her with his weakness. In a sense, he was opening up, clinging to a woman he'd known only for a matter of days, and she wanted to know why? Why her?
"Because I know you understand." She shook her head. A therapist could understand.
"I don't..." She paused, head thrown back and hickory eyes glimmering underneath the glare of the hospital lights. "I don't want to understand you, I don't want to help you until you release my father." She bit down on her bottom lip. This wasn't the time for tears, it was never the time for tears. "He's not responsible for Lawrence's murder."
"Then who is?" Barron snapped. "The gunshot was a coverup. Lawrence sustained a cervical fracture."
"He died instantly, didn't he?" Christina guessed, Barron nodded, He was looking at her, his vision blurred and ears ringing with the wails of a dying man. He could imagine it, too clearly for his personal comfort. He could feel the struggle, see the fear in Lawrence's storm grey eyes. But Barron was in a state of disbelief. There was more to Lawrence Harrington's death than the NYPD could uncover on their own. With the complexity of his cause of death, Christina was sure Barron would be paired up with an FBI officer.
"Whose DNA?" He blinked, one twice. He was staring at her, the way her brown eyes almost seemed chocolate. "Whose DNA was on Lawrence Harrington's body?" He knew her question wasn't the result of a friends curiosity. "If they'd conducted a thorough autopsy, they would find fingerprints on the body, lose hairs, anything that could point you in the direction of the perpetrator. So whose DNA was on Lawrence Harrington's body?" He paused. It was a long pause, and she was getting sick of his hesitance.
"Terrence." Christina's stomach churned. She was going to be sick; hugging the toilet bowl all night kind of sick.
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To New York's Attorney | Completed
Mystery / Thriller"Was his DNA on the weapon?" Silence. "It's his gun right? He'd pulled the trigger right? Was Terrence Gresham's DNA on the weapon?" He ran a hand through his chestnut hair. "Maybe you're right, maybe we shouldn't think about Monday, but remember o...
