The Unsent Appeal novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Voice

Elliott's POV

I didn't sleep after she left.

I sat on the floor of her old bedroom with the green sleeping bag still unzipped beside me.

I went over the four letters in my head, line by line.

They didn't sound like a woman who had driven drunk and run from it.

They sounded like a woman who had stayed.

Around four in the morning I decided what I was going to do.

Her family kept telling her she owed them. They kept pointing at me and saying that she owed me.

I was the only person alive who could say she didn't.

So on Monday I put on the one jacket I owned and drove into the city.

Dean Dunphy's brokerage took up three floors of a glass building on State Street.

The lobby had a marble desk and a woman who asked if I had an appointment.

"No," I said. "Tell him it's about his sister."

She made a call.

Four minutes later Dean came down the hall in a navy suit, walking fast.

He had his phone to his ear.

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the screen in his other hand.

"Pick up," he said into the phone. "Pick up. Come on. Come on!"

I had my mouth open to say his name.

Then I didn't say anything.

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