Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 178343 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 892(@200wpm)___ 713(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 178343 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 892(@200wpm)___ 713(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
“I can’t figure out how he got the pain pills. I gave him one last time, then left them in the cabinet above the fridge like always.”
“I was fuckin’ here yesterday, numbskull!” I growl. “I gave him the pill bottle, hoping he’d take ‘em all and then I wouldn’t have to worry about paying through the nose to send him out of my hair to a place that would let me sleep at night and let my wife get on with her life.”
“Your wife?”
“Forget about my wife,” I growl. “Jessa is a girl I used to fuck. You know this. You’ve known Jag even longer than you’ve worked for me so you’ve gotta know what his sister is about. You also know she was a pain in my ass which meant I ended it. You saw her handiwork firsthand when you escorted her out of my apartment that last time when she trashed it. What the fuck, man? She comes to town to hassle me, finds out I’m married and therefore not interested and even with the track record you’ve got some clue she has, you decide to not only fall for her games, but also to leave her unattended with your fuckin’ cell phone and then bring her here.”
“I know.”
“Here where I’ve got someone imprisoned in the basement.”
He hangs his head and sits down. “You said a few days back that you were hoping you’d be transporting the prisoner out of here soon, so the location, I told myself it wasn’t such a big deal since in a coupla days, he’d be shipped out and I wouldn’t likely hafta come back. And I didn’t bring her in so she’d have no clue what the errand was about.”
“You look in the mirror your throat, man? You see that? He took your gun and half-strangled you. He could’ve shot you. This was a guy with a bum knee and broken ribs cuffed with a three-foot chain and he got the better of you, a guy twice his size with a gun. He almost fuckin’ killed you because your head was hung up on someone who was usin’ you.”
“I gotta find her,” he says.
“Have you heard a goddamn word I’ve said? Get your fuckin’ mind off your cock and listen to me.”
He looks at me with a grimace. “She’s Jag’s sister. I wanna find her for him, too.”
“She’s on her way to Jag. She’s in a rental car. She’s fine.”
He breathes out relief.
“You aren’t in love with her, Tony. You’ve spent a few days with a fuckin’ siren. You’re just drunk on her cunt. That’s how she wanted it. Think about it. She read my text and answered it, then deleted it. Let me guess, she was pushy about comin’ with you last night. Probably used her pussy as payment. Right?”
He sighs.
I continue, “I’m right. And if you’d made it back to your car, she’d have pushed to find a way inside to scope the place out. Or come back after ditching you to investigate it herself. She knew I was sending you on a task and she was being nosy about it because that was her goal, to get more information about me thinking she can get her hooks into me again.”
He says nothing for a minute and then nods. “Yeah. You’re right. I know, Kill. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
My phone rings. Tino. I grab it.
36
Violet
I’m stuffing a warm, delicious, soft gingerbread cookie in my mouth, marveling at the miraculous ability it has to soothe my nausea temporarily when the lobby phone rings. I frown and wash down the cookie, my second one so far today, with some milk and answer.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Coulter?”
“Yes?”
“Company for you. Gates. Party of four.”
Huh?
“Mrs. Coulter?”
“Uh…Oh. Um…” Shit. My family? What are they doing here? “Can you describe them, please?”
Is it really my family or is this a trick?
“Yes, ma’am. Dark haired woman. Mom-type. Man in his fifties, I think. Salt and pepper mustache and beard. Tall teenage boy. Older gentleman with grey hair.”
“Okay, send them up. No wait. They seem okay? They’re acting normal? No one else is there with them, right?”
“No ma’am. Everything… uh… seems okay.” He sounds perplexed.
I breathe out relief. It’s not out of the question to imagine Ray using them to get here, to get to me. I wouldn’t have thought it before, but the things I’ve learned about him recently – that he brought a gun to Killian’s club, that he scammed Mrs. Shear out of her life savings, then watching what he did with the guard last night – I would no longer put anything past him.
I hurry to the master bedroom. Killian’s brother is using Killian’s laptop at the desk, phone to his ear.
“Will. My family’s here,” I say.
“Call you back,” he says into the phone and hangs up. He frowns. “You sure they’re alone?” He closes the laptop.