Read Online Resurrected (Resurrected Series Book 1) by S. M. Schmitz - Free Book Online

“Fine, but if some Independence Day style invasion happens, I’m holding you personally responsible for not letting me warn anyone in time to stop it,” Eric pointed his empty coffee cup at me.
    I had never seen that movie either.
    “Deal. I mean, I’ll probably be dead, so I won’t care but you can blame me posthumously all you want.”
    Eric shook his head. “You’ll live. I’ll make damn sure of it so I can rub your face in the fact that I was right and you were finally wrong about something.”
    I really needed to start watching more movies.
    “Ok, then, I’m ready; let’s start with a twelve hour driving distance. I’ll take the western half, you take the east,” Eric said, standing up and tossing his empty iced coffee cup into the trash.
    It seemed so anti-climactic after so much wrestling with whether or not to search for her even, that his breezy decision to divide up an 1,800 mile semi-circle around Houston seemed too easy, too simple. My portion of the semi-circle meant searching through 900 miles, roughly to Jacksonville, Florida and northward to Omaha, Nebraska. There was no way she was living in Omaha. Nothing good could ever survive in Omaha.
    “If she’s in Nebraska, I’m calling this off,” I said.
    Eric smiled and shook his head. “Fucking Nebraska. I’m not going.”
    I was bluffing. Some people were worth going to Nebraska for.

Chapter 4
     
    Baton Rouge. It had taken three days to find her. I had been so sure that she would have avoided Baton Rouge, knowing it was Lottie’s home, and yet, she was there, living as Charlotte Martin. It had taken another two days of Eric arguing with me about leaving now versus waiting … I don’t know, a few weeks maybe? I wasn’t ready to face her. What the hell would I even say to her? But I did want to see her again, so Eric had won and we made the five-hour drive eastward on I-10 on that second day after turning up her name and address, her employer, and yes, even a fake social security number.
    She and Lydia shared an apartment on Essen Lane, a busy area of the city with a major hospital right down the road and both of the major interstates intersecting the crowded, tangled street. I couldn’t imagine why she had chosen an apartment here. She knew this city, didn’t she? We hated this part of Baton Rouge because of the traffic that never seemed to let up, the construction that never seemed to end.
    As I pulled onto Essen from the interstate to head toward our hotel, I couldn’t help wanting to drive in the opposite direction, to go directly to her apartment complex even though I still had no clue what I would say to her. We had talked about it on the drive and Eric was still convinced this was like talking to someone who wasn’t Lottie, that it would be so easy to just demand – and get – more answers from her.
    After checking in to our rooms, Eric agreed he would wait for me rather than overwhelm her with us both showing up at the same time. It was getting close to supper time and he was hungry anyway. The thought of food made my stomach twist. I drove him down to a sushi restaurant where he picked up his order and he made half-hearted efforts to share with me. I didn’t like sushi and he knew that.  Even the smell of it in my car was making my stomach heave even more and I had to roll down my window. And then to distract myself from sushi and Lottie I stupidly wondered how long we would continue using the phrase “roll down the window” when no one actually rolled down anything anymore, and what a better expression would be, only coming up with “put down the window” and how I could get it to catch on. Eric was quick to inform me some people already used that phrase. Fucking English.
    Perhaps one of the few good things about living along the Gulf Coast in the summer time was how long the daylight lasted; it was past 7:30 by the time I had dropped Eric off and driven to her apartment complex, finding her new car in its parking