Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 66859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
A life for a life.
I can’t think.
I can’t even begin to process this.
I give them Mateo’s life and keep my own.
Or, I spare him and lose mine.
Either way, I’m fucked.
I die, or I live with the guilt.
There has to be another way.
“Surely there is something else they want? Anything else?” I say, my voice a little more frantic than I’d like.
Riggs shakes his head. “They are adamant, that’s their offer.”
“Why are you so against puttin’ this man down?” Beckett asks. “He’s done nothin’ for you, as far as we can see.”
“He saved my life, Beckett. Sure, it wasn’t a good run with him, but if it weren’t for him I’d be dead. You can’t honestly expect me to just hand him over like that meant nothing.”
“It’s him or you, which one is more important to you?”
I glare at him. “You expect me to live with the guilt of handing someone over to die?”
“Maybe he won’t die,” Remy, who has been quiet until this point, says. “You hand him over, he makes a deal, gets his men on it, does somethin’ to save his ass. Sounds like he’s a powerful man, sure he can handle himself.”
“Yeah, until he finds out it was me that handed him over and I trade one target on my back for another,” I say, rolling my eyes. “This is the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard. No, I won’t tell them where Mateo is.”
“You’re makin’ a big fuckin’ mistake, Poppy,” Riggs growls. “You don’t tell them, they’ll find you, and you’ll die. Is that what you want?”
I shrug. “It is what it is.”
“You in love with him or somethin’?” Beckett asks, his voice rough and low.
“No,” I say, “but I’m not willing to live with myself if I hand him over. There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t,” Riggs snaps.
But, I think there could be.
Maybe, just maybe, there is.
Hot cop.
6
“Wondered how long it would take you to contact me,” Hot cop says, his voice rugged and incredibly sexy on the other end of the phone.
It wasn’t hard to track him down—after all, he’s been after me for weeks and has made it known where I could find him. I made a few calls and boom, found him. Didn’t help that I didn’t know his name. Hot cop didn’t seem to cut it with the receptionist. I don’t know where her sense of humor went.
“Care to finally tell me your name before we continue this little speech?” I ask, considering it best if I actually know who he is.
“Dane.”
Damn, Dane.
That’s hot.
“Okay, Dane, I need to speak to you. Something has ... come up that I could possibly use some help with. I’m not going to give you what you want, though, but I can give you something better.”
“I’m listening,” he urges.
“A cartel for the biker club.”
He pauses. “Go on.”
“You leave the club alone, and I’ll give you the big guy in the cartel that runs these areas. The choice is yours. Bring them down or bring a measly ass biker club down.”
The biker club is far from measly ass, but they’re smart and clever, they keep themselves and their business clean. If they didn’t, Dane would have something on them by now. The fact that he’s after me for information, tells me he doesn’t have enough. Surely, he can put that aside for now, especially if it means something bigger, something more dangerous, something that’ll really give him a boost.
“This cartel you speak of, it’s the ones currently being led by Rocco Draven?”
Ugh.
I hate that name.
He is the man who is after me, the man I very accidentally stole from.
“That’s the one.”
“They’re a drug cartel,” Dane goes on. “Been after them for years.”
“Well, I can give you what you want. If you agree to leave the biker club out of it.”
“What’s in it for you, Poppy?”
“My safety,” I murmur. “They want me, and nothing I can currently do is going to save me from that.”
“Big operation, taking down something that size. No guarantee that if I bring them down, they won’t figure out it’s you and put a hit on your head, even in prison. They’re powerful, you gotta know that?”
“I know that, which is why I don’t want them to know it was me. I want this done in a way that keeps me clear of it all.”
“Don’t know how you’re going to do that.”
“I can provide you with dirty money.”
Dane goes quiet. “You’re making dirty money?”
“I never said that, I said I can provide you with dirty money, money that you can link back to them. It’ll be enough to make an arrest, will it not?”
“It would have to be found with them.”
“We can make that happen, if you tell me just how much it would take to lock him away for a very, very long time.”