Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“Goddammit!” Trace stepped back, picking up a knife and flinging it at the far wall. It embedded from the blow, and I watched below as they heard that happen. They paused, glancing up. I reached over and flashed a light, signaling them to keep going.
This hadn’t been the first time an incident like that happened.
Prior to my own interrogation of Jess, I’d been a lot less quiet on this matter, but that time was gone. I was in a precarious position, and I needed to curtail what I would say to my best friend, who was slowly becoming my best friend again. My brother.
Still, I knew I had to say something. “You need to let me take over.”
“I have been!”
I turned, slowly, locked down.
Trace was anything but. His eyes were wild. He was on the verge of losing it.
I gave him a look, saying quietly, “I need to take over, Trace.”
“God—” He stopped, swinging back to me, and his eyes narrowed. “What the fuck have you been doing if you haven’t been leading this?”
“I’ve been following Jess’s intel, but this isn’t the first time her intel was wrong. This is the third guy this week. You have to rein her in.”
He let loose a myriad of curses. “You rein her in. She—”
“She’s in love with you.”
“They killed her best friend because of me.” Agony flared in his expression.
I couldn’t let myself feel anything, not right now, not when I needed to steer him to the sidelines. He and his woman. They were too emotionally involved. It was blinding them. “Trace.”
“Stop it, Ashton. I know what you’re going to say.”
I almost grinned. “Probably. You’re the analyst, after all.” I took a step toward him, softening my tone again. “But you know I’m right. It’s been three months. Jess isn’t helping anymore.”
He turned away, his shoulders tightening. “Be careful where you step next, Ashton.”
I had been, for three months.
I took another step closer. “She’s hurting and she’s making it worse. You know this. Pull her back. She’s on the edge.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” He winced as he said it, his head moving back.
I’d lost family, but it hadn’t been my family that had helped to kill my own people. That’s what his father did. And Trace had to carry that, knowing his father was part of the reason everyone was hurting now. But while we could trace back the killings of my family and his uncle to the Worthing family, we couldn’t with Justin and Kelly.
The Worthing family blamed us, saying that we’d killed one of their own, even though Justin had been an innocent. He wasn’t in their family business, and he’d been in our employ for a while before he realized how both sides escalated. He took himself out of the equation, himself and Kelly, but now no one knew what was happening. Jess’s involvement had gotten back to the Worthing family, so while they thought we might be behind it, they also weren’t totally sure anymore. I knew this because I’d been on the end of a phone call from Nicolai Worthing, the new head of their family, and he said as much to me.
It’d been a fishing call, trying to find out what he knew, but also a tentative truce had been offered until we found the murderer. I’d not accepted, but I hadn’t fully rejected the offer either. Because of that, there’d been a ceasefire of deaths in the last two and a half months.
We were both looking for who killed them.
“I don’t know, Trace. She’s your woman. She’s suffering. You have to be the one to pull her back.” I waited until he looked my way. This time, I couldn’t be soft anymore. “And you know that.”
Enough time had passed, at least between him and me.
He was struggling. That much was obvious, but he closed his eyes before swinging back to the guy strapped to a chair below us. “They turned her mentor against her. They tried to kill her mother. That was my father who did that, because he was working with that family, but whoever killed Kelly—that destroyed Jess. Kelly was the good part of her. That’s how Jess sees it. She’s slipping, and I have no idea how to pull her back.”
I stepped to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Just one. For comfort. “You have to, because if you can’t, she’ll never come back. I will find Kelly’s killer. I will do this, for Jess. For you.”
“Ashton.”
I heard it. He was giving in, in that one word, one name.
Knock, knock!
My hand fell from Trace’s shoulder as my main security guy, Elijah, stepped inside. His eyes went straight to me. “There’s been an incident—” He looked at Trace and faltered.
I frowned but went to him. “What is it?”
“At Easter Lanes.”