Before I Go: A dark and tense psychological crime thriller. by Marie Reyes (reading strategies book txt) 📕

“I wanted everyone here for the surprise,” Antonio said casually, as if he was referring to a birthday cake.

“What surprise? Enough with the fucking games already.” He couldn’t believe he was saying this, to this man of all people. Michael had never been able to stand up for himself, and now it was the worst time to do so, but he couldn’t control the words from tumbling out of his mouth.

“The surprise isn’t here yet. Take a seat.” He pulled out a chair from a table on the other side of the room, and the chair legs scraped along the floor as he dragged it along and placed it next to Josie. Before he could sit down, Samuel patted him down, running his hands up and down his legs and sides.

“When will you learn?” He took the retractable knife from Michael’s pocket and thrust him down onto the hard chair, sending a twinge up his spine.

Michael turned to Josie. “I’m so glad you’re alive. What did they do to you?” The look in her eyes made the sting of tears well up behind his. “Sorry we took so long.”

“Don’t you dare be sorry.” Her tears picked up, trickling down like raindrops down a window. “I thought you were dead. The gun. The cenote. I know I’ve been awful. I’m so sorry.”

“Well, now you know the truth, there’s no need to feel guilty because of me. You did me a favor, Josie. At least my death will mean something now.”

“But it won’t. It will be for nothing. All of us. You. Me. Miguel. Aleksander. You warned me. You warned me, but I didn’t listen. I just couldn’t let it go. It’s all I thought about for over a year. It’s one of the things Tanya always had a go at me for. She’d always tell me to chill out. Just let whatever shall be… be. Maybe I should have listened to her, been more like her.”

Vibrations went off in Antonio’s pocket and he pulled his phone out, eagerly pushing the answer button as he lifted the phone to his ear and spoke in Spanish to the person at the other end of the phone. Once his conversation was finished, he gave Samuel a knowing nod. “It’s time. Don’t you go anywhere.” He flashed them his teeth before rushing to the front of the house, skipping over the corpse that lay in front of the door, being careful not to stand in the pool of blood that had accumulated beneath, and slipped out of the door.

“Any last words?” Josie asked, not taking her eyes away from the front door.

“I don’t know if there’s anything left to say,” he lied. The problem was there were too many things to say, yet no matter how bad things got, how vulnerable he was, he could never bring himself to say them.

The two men tied Miguel up, wrapping copious amounts of rope around his arms and feet. His belly was pressed against the floor, and despite one of them having a gun to his head, he resisted with every fiber of his being, his face contorted with the effort as he shuffled across the ground. They left him to squirm as they went to attend to the body. Each of them took a side and started shuffling the body across the room into a dark corner. They hadn’t bothered lifting the body fully, and the arched back dragged in the darkening blood, a crimson smear soaking into the concrete. After chucking a burlap covering over the body, they walked over to front of the sparse room and stood on each side of the front door, waiting, facing each other with their guns ready, down at a slight angle. The covering did little to conceal the body when there was such a prominent blood trail towards it.

The door opened slowly, like the curtain unveiling a play that was about to start. The sliver of light grew bigger with dust particles dancing in its ray. He could only see their outlines at first as the sun shone from behind them, but once they stepped into the room, and Samuel’s head blocked out the bulk of the sun, he could make out the three figures stood there a little better. Samuel and Antonio on each side, but following slightly behind, the figure in the middle, in mid conversation, stopped just after their feet went over the threshold, and as they turned, they noticed the armed man waiting for them on the other side of the door. “What’s going on, Antonio? This doesn’t look like it would make a good hotel. I mean, there are no amenities nearby for a start. If it’s another lab you want to start, you should have said—” The voice stopped, and the person stepped away from the light, scanning the room as they blinked repeatedly. The men at the door closed in on her. The face. That angular chin. Those wide eyes. Black shiny hair falling poker straight at her shoulders. If it wasn’t for the blunt fringe, revealing outfit and tell-tale lines around her eyes, he would have sworn it was Josie.

Chapter Thirty Seven

Her hand fell away from her hip and hung limply at her side. With a look of shock as if she had been slapped, the color drained from her face, going from red to white in a heartbeat. “Antonio?” She turned to him as if looking for some sort of explanation and grabbed his hands, holding them in hers. “What’s going on?” Her head turned as the two men positioned themselves in front of the door, then turned back to him. “Antonio?”

Michael tore his eyes away from the doppelganger in front of him and looked at Josie, still as a statue, and pale as one too. It looked as if every last drop of blood had been drained from her body.

The woman walked across the room towards where he