Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
I felt for the child, though.
I didn’t want my child to suffer because I kicked his or her mother out of the house.
And I was being a coward.
I didn’t know how to tell Annie I was going to let Jennifer stay as long as she needed to.
Annie, I knew, would be fine with me letting her stay.
What she wouldn’t be fine with was letting me fuck her while my ex still lived in my home.
So I had a dilemma.
Griffin made a wide-eyed look when he saw I was on the phone before turning back around to his desk to finish a report.
I rolled my eyes and went back to the conversation I was having with my boss.
“One of the men we brought in yesterday swears that the drugs came from your way. So I want you to be aware that you may have a new supplier in town now that you took out the kid’s source,” my boss, Drew Logan, explained.
A couple of months ago, Griffin and I had lucked out and seized a huge drug shipment all because we’d needed a ride back up the river when the fuel pump in our boat had gone out.
It’d all been very innocent. We had approached a man getting his boat ready to go out on the river but the man had fled, and we did what we did best, we gave chase.
The man had started throwing out things from his pockets, which Griffin had collected as we ran, and we assumed were drugs.
Since he was trying to disappear into the thick of the woods, I’d continued the chase while Griffin had called in a K-9.
Ridley had arrived while I’d apprehended the subject, and Ridley had discovered nearly a thousand pounds of marijuana in his boat.
“Did you get the report on the Coach Purse Kid?” I asked.
“Mmm-hmm. Good work. I’d be interested to know if anything else comes out of that,” Logan said.
I agreed.
Although we hadn’t had any more instances where we found anyone else trying to buy and sell drugs that way.
That, or maybe they were changing the code words or something.
There was no fuckin’ telling.
“Alright,” I said, standing up. “I need to go with Griffin to meet with an informant. I’ll ask him if he thinks a new supplier is in town.”
“Good. Check in tomorrow with what you find out,” Logan said, then hung up.
“What was that about?” Griffin asked once I looked up at him.
I went to the water cooler in between his desk and mine and filled up a glass of water before I answered.
“Long thinks a new supplier is in town because one of the busts the boys in the office did last night said they got ‘em from the river,” I answered.
Griffin looked at me in disgust.
“What the fuck ever happened to transporting actual goods down the rivers instead of fuckin’ drugs and guns? This is a fuckin’ never-ending nightmare,” Griffin grimaced.
I agreed.
And I would’ve commented, but Ridley burst through the doors like his ass was on fire.
“What the fuck?” I asked him.
Ridley’s eyes turned to me.
“Annie was found unconscious about twenty minutes ago outside of her salon. She was taken to the hospital with a suspected brain injury caused by a blow to the head,” Ridley said without preamble.
My stomach clenched, and I lurched out of my seat.
“Which hospital?” I asked, jerking my phone and keys off the desk and shoving them into my pocket.
Ridley gestured to his cruiser.
“I’ll take you.”
I didn’t bother to argue. I just got in and rode, all the while trying not to freak out over my fuck up.
***
“She suffered some major trauma to her right temporal lobe from where the piece of wood struck her across the side of the head,” Dr. Mack gestured to his face. “I can’t tell you now what kind of effect that’s had on her since there’s so much swelling. Only time will tell.”
I watched as the doctor explained all that was wrong with Annie to the people who I guessed were her parents and sister.
I was further back, listening in because that was the only way I’d hear exactly what was wrong with her.
Since I wasn’t family, I technically wasn’t allowed to be in her room at this point, but I was beyond caring.
Slipping away just as silently as I came, I made my way to her room, then slipped inside without anyone the wiser.
My heart sank as I saw Annie lying on that bed.
Her head was wrapped in white gauze, and what little I could see of her face and eyes were also bruised.
Every last bit of it.
There wasn’t any unbruised skin on her entire face.
My hands rose, and I grabbed onto my head, trying to breathe through the pain that was ripping through my chest.
I closed my eyes, opening them once I thought I had enough control to get closer to her.