Dalton, Tymber - Stoneface (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Tymber Dalton Read Free Book Online Page A

crazy there. Not to mention Mom and Dad will go even more batshit over Amy being missing. Please, sweetie, I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think you could do it. Bob’s still gone on his trip anyway. That way you won’t be alone either. Please?”
    Ruthie nervously looked around at the safety of her home. It’d been three months since she’d last left her house, and that was when Gwen took her to a doctor’s appointment. “I don’t want to hurt him, Gee.”
    “He’s not a baby you’ve got to worry about dropping on his head. He’s an adult. Sometimes he needs help with stuff in the kitchen. Sometimes he has trouble getting up off the couch by himself. Then all you do is hold his walker and help steady him. No lifting, no bathroom stuff, nothing like that. You two get along just fine.”
    “You need me now? Right now?”
    She nodded. “I have to leave tonight. It’s an emergency. I can take a flight out, but it leaves in three hours. If you can’t do this, I can’t go tonight and Liam has to go back to my parents. We’re trying to do this without them knowing. You know how they are. This is the lesser of the two evils of admitting we think there might be a problem without ratting her out. The sooner I get out there and get answers, the better. Please ?”
    “You hate to fly.” But Ruthie was already off the couch and walking to her bedroom. “It terrifies you.”
    “Yes, I know it does. If I drive it’ll take me nearly two days, nonstop, and that’s brutal. If I don’t leave tonight, I might chicken out and not go at all. Please?”
    She nodded. “Okay, okay. Let me get my stuff.”
    “Thank you!” Gwen closed her eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks to the Universe. She did trust Ruthie with Liam. Might not trust her with a baby or small child with all the drugs she took for her condition, or even a large dog or a goldfish, but Liam could hold his own with her.
    Her mother would have a flipping cow if she found out. Gwen would rather face down her fears of flying than the crushing disappointment in Liam’s face at having to take him back less than twenty-four hours after he got there, and she wasn’t above guilt-tripping Ruthie to Liam-sit. Hopefully she could fly out, find her sister, find out what the fuck, and be home before her mother knew she’d left.
    “Hopefully” being the key word in that plan. Cops were useless, because they wouldn’t take a report over the phone when she called. To them, Amy wasn’t “missing,” even though this was totally abnormal behavior for her.
    Ruthie packed quickly then frowned as she surveyed her meds on the kitchen counter. “Jesus, I take a lot of crap.”
    Gwen laughed. “You’re just now realizing that?”
    She shook her head. “Yeah, but packing it up, it really seems like a lot versus holding one bottle at a time. I never thought about it before.” She found a plastic grocery bag and swept the dozen or so bottles into it, clearing the counter. Gwen helped her pack her laptop and mp3 player, and found her cell charger. A few minutes later, after triple-checking the house to make sure the locks were secure and everything turned off in the kitchen, they were on the road back to Gwen’s house.
    Before rushing off to Ruthie’s, Gwen had grabbed handfuls of clothes and her toiletries and a suitcase and dumped them on her sofa. Liam volunteered to pack it for her while she convinced Ruthie to stay with him. By the time they returned, she had ninety minutes to make it to the airport and a taxi pulled into the drive behind her.
    Liam opened the front door. Bless his heart, he’d even packed her laptop for her. “Cell charger?” she asked.
    He nodded. “It’s in there. Hi, Ruthie. Ready to make s’mores and tell ghost stories? Maybe we can TP the neighbors later, or egg their mailboxes.”
    She smiled. “Brat.” Ruthie, two years older than Liam, had been a good friend of his, too, when they were kids.
    Maybe the two of them will be good