Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
He answered.
Put it right out there.
Honestly.
And fully.
“I did another death notice today. Ex-wife, two kids. The wife hated her ex. The kids had distanced themselves from their dad. But he was still their dad. They were confused, upset, and facing a life of never knowing if they could have fixed what was broken between them and their father.”
“Oh God, Harry,” I whispered.
“And this was after I walked to a man in full decomposition because his dead body had been sitting out in his car for over a week. I worked next to this guy for years. I didn’t respect him. I didn’t even like him. But I never wanted to see him like that.”
I closed my eyes as the heaviness of this overwhelmed me.
I opened them when he continued.
“I’ve also got a man who lost the use of his legs because his neighbor is a felonious asshole, and what, with probably the slightest fucking hint of decent police work, would have been an open and shut case, wasn’t. That man will live out his entire life in that wheelchair, doing it in a house next to the neighbor who it is very likely fucking shot him.”
Oh my God.
That was horrible.
Harry kept going.
“Further, I learned the FBI is after your ex-husband because he’s been laying to waste women in two different countries in the Pacific Northwest, marrying them, living off them and cleaning them out. If I ever find that asshole, I’ll have to wait to put him in one of our prisons for assaulting a man, because first, he’ll be spending time in a federal one.”
I was stunned. “Willie is doing all that?”
Harry nodded curtly. “Willie is doing all that.”
Good Lord.
How had I not seen what a mess he was?
I felt for those women, but thank God he’d never stolen from me.
Then again, back then, I didn’t have anything to steal.
Wretchedly, Harry wasn’t finished.
“This morning, I had a station full of women charging ex-officers with stalking, harassment, attempted coercive sexual assault and actual sexual assault. Seven women were stopped for alleged traffic violations and a deputy wearing this exact goddamned uniform tried to barter a blowjob for forgiving a ticket. Five of those women took the ticket, which they swear was falsified, so their fines were excessive, but they told him to go fuck himself. However, two women, the younger ones, the easier ones to manipulate and scare, got on their knees for this monster. None of these women came forward to report, because they knew it would go nowhere, and they had to live for years with the fear it might happen again and the injustice it happened at all.”
My heart sank, and I swallowed.
Harry kept letting it out.
“That might be the tip of the iceberg. Since that seal has been broken, we’re preparing for there to be more.”
“Oh, honey,” I said softly.
Harry kept going, “The same man who did that to those women is on the run for more than those heinous crimes, and obviously, that isn’t spray-painting my house. It tracks that he assisted a local couple in an insurance fraud and subsequent frame job, he crossed state lines to take the lives of your parents, he continued an extortion scheme for a decade and a half, he murdered a man who found out what he’d done, he used department resources to cover it up, and now the man who helped him do it is very dead. And there are three people who have gone into hiding for very good reason. If this guy keeps it up, they’re all next.”
I pressed my lips together and waited for him to get it all out.
“Which means I have to find him not only so they don’t get dead, but so he can pay for all he’s done and just simply end the liberty of a man who is an out-and-out menace. And not least of that, to get the woman I have deep feelings for, the woman I sleep beside and wake up next to, answers and justice.”
I stayed silent, sensing he wasn’t done.
“Now, I learn when you were nineteen fucking years old…”
Oh Lord.
He was losing it.
“…he sat on this house and followed you for the purposes of scaring you, warning you, if you knew what he thought your parents knew, or just dicking with you, because that’s who this motherfucker is. He knew your folks were gone because he took them from you. He wasn’t waiting for their return. Then, after he committed that act, he came back to my fucking town and fucked with you, my fucking woman.”
Totally losing it.
“Baby,” I whispered.
“So that, Lillian, all of that is what’s troubling me,” he concluded.
I didn’t know what to do.
He was more than prickly. He wasn’t inviting approach.
But he was Harry.
My Harry.
So what if we were new?
He’d had an incredibly shitty day after weeks of shitty days and freaking years of working with hugely shitty people.