Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“Damn straight.”
“Though, I do think there are guys who aren’t like that.” Another grin. “Or I hope so, since I intend to find one.”
“I hope so too,” I muttered.
For her and for me.
“We should have brought the wine. I’ll go get it,” she offered.
“We should go back in and hang with Mom and Andy.”
Upon me saying this, Mom shouted from the house, “Your phone is ringing, Hellen!”
I pushed up, Liane came with me, and we slid out of the door in a way Mom couldn’t see inside the shed if she was watching.
She wasn’t.
We went inside, I nabbed my phone, and it said I had a missed call from Marcy.
As I was reading that, I got a text.
I saw some of what it said on the notification and swiftly opened it.
Mayday! Mayday! Bree’s gone from wrecked to pissed and she’s decided payback. There’s no talking her out of it. I’ve tried.
YOU ARE NEEDED ASAP!
Well, it seemed I wasn’t going to enjoy one last glass of wine with my family, drive home and crawl into bed early to catch up on some sleep.
Shit.
8
GONE
Core
The call came when he was seasoning his steak to slap it on the grill.
It was Eight, who was supposed to be in Littleton staking out the house or picking one of the grifters to follow to get a further sense of what they were dealing with.
Core had spent the day following one himself.
They could go in hard on these guys, teach them a lesson, run them out of town, but if they were part of a larger operation, that could buy the club heat that was always annoying to have to expend the effort to cool down.
First, they needed to track the players, note MOs, discover the extent of the operation, and instead of tearing the leaves off the weed, yank it out by its root.
At this juncture and that hour, there was no good reason for Eight to phone, so Core abandoned his steak and took the call.
“Yo,” he greeted.
“I think you need to be here, considering a carload of bitches just showed. One got out and stabbed one of her own tires with a knife. The other one walked up to the house where the Greeks are staying. And the one who walked up to the house is yours.”
Core fought the buzzing in his head because he knew “yours” meant Hellen.
“Fuck,” Eight bit out. “I think I saw another one jump the fence at the back. Gotta go.”
Eight disconnected.
Core looked down at Nanook, his malamute.
He was salivating and staring at the counter.
“Let’s go,” Core said.
Nanook barked and Core left the steak on the counter as he prowled out to his truck.
He opened the driver’s side door, Nanook jumped in, then sat on Core’s passenger seat panting as Core swung in, started up the truck and took off.
He opened Nanook’s window.
Nanook stuck his head out and smiled.
Core was not smiling.
Halfway to the house, he got a text.
He glanced at it.
It was an address from Eight.
Stopped at a light, Core loaded it into his satnav.
When he arrived at the Walgreens parking lot, Eight was standing outside his truck with three women, one was Marcy, another one was one of the women he saw at Fortnum’s.
The last one was Hellen in a pleated pink skirt, a white blouse, and shiny beige pumps with very high stiletto heels.
Red encroached at the sides of his vision.
He parked, grunted, “Stay,” and Nanook woofed. He threw open his door, got out and stalked to the huddle.
“Core—” Hellen tried.
She was safe.
All was good.
Even so.
He got in her face and roared, “What did I say?”
She shut her mouth and began to look pissed.
“These guys are not good guys, Hellen,” he reminded her.
“Let me—”
“We have no idea how big this is. We have no idea the men we’re dealing with. We have no idea the lengths they’ll go to protect their scam. What the fuck were you doing?”
“Taking a friend’s back,” she returned, cool as a cucumber.
“In four-inch heels?” he demanded.
She now appeared uncomfortable. “I will admit, my shoes could have been a hindrance. But I didn’t have time to change them. Things were underway.”
“What fucking things?” he ground out.
“It was my fault,” the new girl said.
He turned to her.
She quailed.
“Speak,” he grunted.
“Well, uh…”
That was all she could get out.
“So,” Marcy took over, “in The Tinder Swindler, one of the chicks he swindled took a load of his stuff and sold it on eBay in order to pay back some of the debt she got into because of him. It pissed him off. Like, deep-end ticked. But there was nothing he could do. The swindler got swindled. Christos decks out in labels. Bree decided she wanted to look for her necklace, and while she was in their house, grab some of his stuff she could sell to get back her money. Obviously, for her to go in, we had to get the other guys out.”