Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
I shoved into Sharpe’s bare, filthy room, and my grin melted away. Sitting on the chair in the middle of the room, was a pile of cut rope and a gag.
He was gone.
“What? How!” I stormed in, craning my neck around as if the fat, drunk slob was hiding in a corner. “This isn’t possible. Where is he?”
“Davidson must’ve cracked.”
“He wouldn’t crack,” I barked. “Especially not that quickly. Fuck!”
Heaving the chair, I threw it at the wall—busting through the falling-down wood into the other room.
My roar echoed through the forest.
JACQUES
I walked aways down the forest path until Davidson’s grunts and maniacal laughs were as loud as the owl hooting overhead. Cairo was motivated to get that man talking. Unfortunately, Davidson was just as motivated to see Cairo desperate and suffering. He wasn’t giving anything up.
He was enjoying this too much.
Ivy must have something.
I typed her number in Davidson’s phone. We had to get out of the station fast since Mars was due back at any second. That left no chance to retrieve the phones, wallets, belts, and everything else they took from us during processing.
Davidson’s cell was the only way to reach her once we beat it out of town and took him to the one wooded spot we knew well, Buller’s Den. Though, also unfortunately for us, Davidson wouldn’t give up the code to get into his phone either. I wasted time we didn’t have breaking into it to finally—
“Hello? Who’s this?”
“Ivy, it’s me.”
“Whose phone are you calling me from? Are you at the police station?”
“No. We left and took Davidson with us. We’ve been questioning him for a while, but I can read the time. It’s long past seven o’clock. Tell me if there’s any point in continuing,” I said. “Did you find Quinn? Did she tell you what you needed to know?”
“Of course she did, baby.” Ivy dropped this like someone says they made meatloaf for dinner. “You told me to find her and I did.”
“And... she told you where the sheriff was,” I said slowly.
“She didn’t want to at first, but it turned out repeated blows to her broken ribs was pain even she couldn’t bluff her way through. I’ve got her and the sheriff. Whenever you feel like joining us, love.”
I didn’t speak as she told us where she was, blew a kiss over the phone, and hung up.
All that effort, time, money, and the favor it cost us to get out, and Ivy had the situation in hand.
Cairo kept saying she was colder, smarter, and more manipulative than us. Make that the last day I underestimated her.
Chapter Seven
Cairo
I slammed into my father’s house, leaving the rest of them to haul an unconscious piece of uniformed trash.
“De Souza? Dad?”
Thud.
My head snapped up. Taking off, I bounded up the steps two at a time. My father’s door banged into the opposite wall with a splintering crack that assured I broke something.
Ivy leaned over my father, holding a pair of scissors to his throat.
“Get the fuck off him!” I raced across the room and heaved her up, smothering her soft cry in my chest. Quickly I pulled her back and away from him.
“Son?” The thin rasp came from the broken wreck on the bed who I assumed was my father.
He looked terrible. His face was a mottle of bruises in various stages of healing. His left arm was in a sling while the right wrist was encased in the bandage, and that was just the parts of him that was visible. Dad was covered in blankets, but they weren’t covering the hefty, sturdy lump they should be. My father was starved. Beaten. Broken.
“Let... her go...”
“Let her go? She was trying to slit your fucking throat.”
“I had plenty of time to do that before you got here,” said a dry voice. Ivy tried to untangle from me. “I’m the one doing the fixing.”
“She’s... telling the truth,” he rasped. “She’s helping me, Cairo. Let her go.”
What he said made no sense, but then, neither did another, closer look at him. My father was bandaged and in bed with a glass of water and painkillers next to him. Dante sure as hell didn’t do all of that, so—
Ivy’s caring for the man she wants dead as badly as anyone in the Black Letter Crew.
As if to drive that thought home, Ivy got free of me and rescued the scissors from where she dropped it. She bent over my father and I bent over her, watching her closely.
Dad had a nasty, shallow cut on his neck. Looked like Ivy sewed it closed and was now snipping off the extra thread. She was gentle applying clean gauze and wound tape.
“Where did you learn to do this?” I asked as footsteps sounded on the landing.
“Once again, I must credit my farm education. When the animals get hurt, you can either keep shelling out for an expensive vet bill, or pay attention when they fix them up the first time.”