Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
I hesitated. “We thought it best for him to stay out of it. He knows, he just doesn’t come around and do anything because we don’t want him keeping secrets from you.”
There was a long pause and then, “When you decide to kill him, let me know. Until then, I’ll stay out of it. Just… just don’t get in trouble for him. He’s not worth it.”
I didn’t hesitate in saying, “He may not be. But you are.”
There was a soft sigh on the other end of the line and then, “You have Sabrina to think about now. With her granddad dying, and her father sick, too, I don’t think that you need to be leaving her. I’m not sure she’d survive it if she lost all three of you.”
I hated thinking that she was right.
Yet, I had no intention of getting caught or losing myself.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told her. “Was she okay when you dropped her off?”
Cannel made a sound in her throat. “No. She was… in shock. I think that I dropped her off so she could go yell at the two of them for keeping her in the dark. She looked ready for battle by the time she got out of the car.”
That was my girl.
And God, she was my girl.
Over the last couple of days, I’d realized that she was mine. She would be mine forever. Or until I died. Because as far as I was concerned, she would live forever, happy, safe, and healthy.
I grinned and swung my leg over my bike. “I’ll head over and sort her out. Thank you, Cannel. It means the world to me that you’re giving her a friendship when you have every right to stay away.”
She snickered. “I know that you think that I’m this porcelain doll that y’all want to keep on the shelf where no one can break me again. But I’m not. I’m a strong GI Joe doll that can take anything. Now, go get your girl. Love you, big brother.”
After hanging up, I sped toward Sabrina’s dad’s place, the last thing on my mind was what I found when I arrived.
Had I expected to have to deal with Cole again?
Sure.
I hadn’t expected to find him strangling her on the ground with his body straddling hers.
I laid my bike down in my haste to get to her faster, ignoring the crunch and scrape as the bike kept speeding past me and sailed into the mailbox across the street from Sabrina’s dad’s place. I rushed forward, only to have a gun pointed at Sabrina’s head for my troubles as the commotion finally registered to Cole.
Sabrina continued to struggle, but Cole easily overpowered her as he stared at me, a look of extreme distaste on his face.
The knowledge that he would pull the trigger if I moved any closer was clear in his eyes.
“I don’t know what you’re struggling for.” Cole grinned at me, but his words were directed at Sabrina. “But you know it’s useless.”
She made a gagging, hoarse sound that let me know that she was trying to speak, but couldn’t.
She struggled harder, the bare skin of her arms becoming scraped and bruised with each struggling slide on the asphalt.
I swallowed bile back down my throat and said, “If you don’t get off of her right now, I’ll make you.”
The gun that was pointed right back at him in the next second seemed to startle him, yet he never let up.
“You can’t make me do…” Cole’s eyes went from occupied to vacant in half a second.
Then the sound of a gun going off echoed around me.
I tensed, surprised to look up and find DS standing there with a .22 rifle in his hand.
He watched with barely any acknowledgment of what he’d just done.
Cole’s lifeless body fell over sideways, with a little help from DS’s cane to keep him from falling on Sabrina.
Sabrina looked up at her grandfather, then a lifeless Cole with a hole through his temples, then back at her grandfather.
Her grandfather put the gun back inside the cane, and that’s when I realized that all this time, he’d had a gun on him every time I’d seen him.
How had he gotten that on the plane…
Sabrina scrambled up to her feet, her eyes wide, as she stared at Cole’s gun, then Cole.
“Baby, come here,” I ordered.
Sabrina backed up, and when she was within reach, I picked her up and walked her over to the truck that was in the driveway.
Daniel’s.
“What in the absolute fuck, Dad?” Daniel yelled as he stared at his father with barely concealed fury. “You didn’t have to kill him! You could’ve just brained him with the cane like you do everyone else!”
I was torn. On one hand, I agreed with Daniel. DS hadn’t had to kill him. He could’ve just smacked Cole over the head. Could’ve not taken his life. Cole hadn’t even been paying attention to him.