Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 85925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
I swallowed before I answered. “She has a daughter. She’s either an informant, or I’ll arrest her on the spot.”
His eyebrows shot up. “That’s ruthless. I like it.”
I forced a smile. “What do you think?”
“I think it doesn’t benefit our force at all to arrest a Fox, no matter who they are.” Bitterness tinged his tone. “Convince her to help you, Detective Potter. If you don’t, you’re off the assignment.”
My nod was short and sharp. “Understood. I’ll go and visit her tonight.”
He waved his hand to dismiss us. We both left quickly, closing the door behind us on the way out.
“You know,” Sam said when we got halfway down the hallway, “If he ever gets proof you just lied to him, you’re in so much shit.”
“I know.” I rolled my shoulders and opened the door to my office. “But he already knows. As long as I don’t fuck her on the backseat of a cop car, I don’t think he’s too bothered. She’s too useful for my lies to matter.”
I grabbed my keys and phone from my desk. The sheet of paper with her address was still in my car, so I locked my office door once again and with a raised hand in goodbye to Sam, headed out of the station to my car.
Would Perrie even talk to me? Maybe she’d take one look at me and decide that she wasn’t going to open the door. I was going in the unmarked car because I didn’t think she’d react too well to me showing up in a normal one.
Hell, she wasn’t gonna react well to me showing up at all. I was probably making a stupid mistake, but desperate times and all that shit.
I plugged her address into the built-in GPS and took the turn out of the parking lot it told me to take.
What was I doing? Aside from the obvious, which was something stupid. The last time she’d seen me she’d been in pieces and completely distraught. Now, I was going to show up at her house and ask her to help me.
There was something fucked up about that. What the hell was I even going to say to her?
“Hey, I know I just arrested you last night, but now I need you to help me arrest some of the other people just like you. Good news is, if you do, you won’t be arrested anymore!”
Fucking hell. I hadn’t thought this through—which was ironic, given that I’d done nothing but think about her since I’d watched her walk away from my car.
The neighborhood she lived in was familiar to me by name only. I knew the drugs squad were called here on a regular basis, and the homicide team had been out here once or twice. It begged more questions about this woman and why she was living a different life to the one she’d been given.
She was a goddamn Fox. Worth a shit ton of money. Why was she slumming it one level above homeless in a drug-infested, gang-infiltrated neighborhood?
A few minutes later, I turned onto her street. Trash fluttered down alongside the kerb, and I had to swerve slightly to avoid a beer can in the middle of the street. The houses I passed were run down and shoddy, in need of more than a deadbolt for protection.
Front lawns were either used as miniature dumping grounds or had nothing but old, tatted footballs and empty alcohol bottles in. It was hard to pick out the family houses from the ones used by addicts and gang members.
Hell, maybe they were all one and the same. Except for Perrie’s house.
Just like my shiny, new unmarked car stood out like a sore thumb against the older wrecks and rusted bikes parked on the street and up driveways, her house looked as though it’d been picked up and planted on this street from somewhere better.
It wasn’t perfect, but there were potted plants just outside the door, a stark brightness to the dull white the house was painted. An old slide lay on its side in the corner of the yard, next to a bright pink ball.
I pulled up behind the car in the driveway and killed the engine. Uncertainty tugged inside me—I needed a deep breath before I could drag myself out of the car.
A little face surrounded by wild, blonde curls peered out at me from a downstairs window. No sooner had I made eye contact with her than she disappeared from my view.
Well. There went any chance I had of backing out of this decision.
Straightening my spine, I approached the house and knocked on the light-blue door.
It swung open. Perrie Fox stood in front of me in a loose white tank and tiny red shorts, her hair pulled up into a scruffy ponytail, and her expression could only be described as one thing: thunderous.