Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 73311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Then things had gone to hell and shots had been fired.
The kicker, though, was that the man who had witnessed the crime had seen a kind of blue car go north—and that was it. No facial descriptions. Not how many were there. Nothing.
Which was how we ended up cruising the road just a few blocks away from my apartment.
“Do you know this area well?” I asked Stephanie as she did yet another U-turn.
She looked over at me from her position in the driver’s seat and sneered.
“Of course I know this area well. I’ve been working the streets of Mooresville a lot longer than you. I moved here five years ago.” She gave me a pointed look. “From what I understand, you just got here a little over eight months ago.”
Wrong. I’d been a patched member of the Dixie Wardens for a little over eleven months. I’d prospected for over six months before that, though I’d been staying at my mom’s.
That wasn’t even counting the years I’d spent here every summer since my parents had divorced.
I didn’t say that, though.
Instead, I let her turn yet another U-turn in her search for a street that wasn’t one way.
Something that she really would’ve known had she been in this section more than once.
It took everything I had not to tell her where to go—something I instinctively knew she wouldn’t appreciate—and sat in my seat, waiting for her to either happen upon the car she was searching for, or call dispatch and tell them she couldn’t locate the car.
“Here we go,” she murmured, heading in the right direction finally. “You see the blue car?”
I saw a lot of blue cars.
One was at a house that looked to be in desperate need of repair. Another was driving toward us—a mom, most likely, since I could see the tops of three baby seats in the backseat. Then there was a blue sedan that looked to be more white than blue due to the fading the Alabama sun had wrought upon it.
“Yep,” I pointed down the street at what little I could see of the faded blue car. “Headed that way.”
“That’s not blue, it’s white.”
I clenched my teeth.
“The witness said the car was either white or blue. He was fairly sure it was closer to blue than white. That car is blue, but the sun has faded the paint in certain spots, making it appear almost white. That’s the car.”
She pursed her lips.
Luckily, she chose to follow instead of arguing and drove at a fair enough distance back that the car wasn’t likely to see us.
Meaning she was so far away that if the car decided to turn down a street, we likely wouldn’t find it again since she didn’t know what the hell she was doing.
It took everything in me not to demand she drive faster.
Then the car turned, and I sat forward, knowing for a fact that the car had just turned into the parking lot of my apartment complex.
“Stop,” I ordered.
She sniffed and kept driving.
I grabbed a hold of the wheel and yanked it, pulling us hard to the curb while Stephanie instinctively braked.
The moment we were stopped, I was out my side of the car and Tank was following me without prompting.
“Don’t you fucking dare drive any further than right here,” I growled into the car before I set out on foot to the parking lot.
I thought for sure she’d listen.
I should’ve known she wouldn’t.
Should’ve realized that she thought she knew better than me.
I’d just gotten to the corner of my apartment complex, and I could see the blue car idling at the curb, when my eyes lit on my woman.
She was with Davis.
Davis was walking tightly at her side as she hurried with her head down to her car.
She was dressed in her dirt and grease coveralls that she worked in, and Davis’ face was a mask of pain, as blood welled from a cut on his head. He had a white towel covering half of his face, and still blood was leaking down his neck.
I’d just taken the first step toward them when fucking Stephanie pulled into the lot in the cruiser.
Her lights went on, and the siren whir-whirped.
And everything went fucking crazy.
Guns were pulled.
Men who’d started to loiter outside of our apartment complex dove for cover. The men I could only assume owned the car dove inside said car, and throughout all of this, Imogen stood motionless.
In front of the car.
By the time the first gunshot sounded, she was moving, but not fast enough.
I saw the instant the bullet hit her.
The man behind her had been aiming at the cop car. Imogen had been in between the cop car and him.
Before the bullet could hit her, though, she’d thrown Davis. Picked him up like a fuckin’ caber and tossed him bodily into the bushes at her side.