Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Supposedly, he was wanted for murder. I couldn’t believe it. His eyes were far too kind and honest to ever warrant such suspicion. I tried to stop them from taking him. I rattled off statistics about men his age with head wounds suffering long-term side effects if not death.
Nothing I said made any difference.
They marched him out like he was already convicted by a group of his peers, and the next day, I walked out right alongside him.
It was that weekend I accepted an offer from Isaac to work with him on building the most advanced hospital in the world. He had the money and the vision, and I had the ability to sniff out the doctors who weren’t about the money.
Cedric was the only one who blindsided me. If I were honest, I’d admit his attention caught me off guard, but it was nowhere near as perverse as the swiftness of JR’s moves. I’m driving us away from an entity sworn to protect and serve only days after he tied me to a bed.
I’d call myself insane if this didn’t feel as right as the first time I drove to Ravenshoe with nothing but a suitcase in my trunk and my old ID card stuffed in my wallet instead of the one that was thrust in my chest when I stumbled onto an accident scene I was never meant to witness.
The young woman who died in the wreckage was a well-known figure in the underworld. Her family doesn’t bury their dead because they don’t leave any bodies.
They have the same beliefs for witnesses, hence my appointment at a hospital forty miles from the area we’re fleeing. The blast almost cost me my hearing, but the consequences that followed it were almost just as career-ending. If I hadn’t met Isaac when I did, who knows where I’d be right now.
Everything in life happens for a reason, and now I’m beginning to wonder if Cecil’s inclusion was for more than encouraging me to take back the life I threw away because I was too scared to fight for what was right. Perhaps if I had fought harder back then, Cecil’s death wouldn’t have been the first autopsy rostered at Saint Francis Hospital the morning after he was taken into custody.
After taking a moment to get the emotions in my voice under control, I ask, “How did you know Cecil?”
JR waits a beat before signing, “He took me in when I had nowhere else to go.” He scrubs a hand down his recently trimmed beard, his brows inching when his trek is far shorter than usual. “He saved my life.”
“After that?” I query, too curious for my own good.
Once he’s yanked down the sleeves of his winter jacket to hide the slash marks on his wrists I just pointed out, he reluctantly shakes his head. “Before that.”
I flex my hands against the steering wheel when he scoots across the bench seat of the truck. Although he’s spent most of the last hour and a half running, he smells delicious. His scent is so manly, I wish I could bottle it up and sell it. Then I’d be able to donate as much money as Isaac does to ensure disadvantaged families receive the same level of medical care as everyone else in the country.
My breaths become heated when JR pushes away the bangs curtaining my face. They’re not the short, chopped style I got when the Bureau changed my identity and instigated my parents’ early retirement to Hawaii. They now hang to my ears, but they still hide the scar I wanted gone even more than the Petrettis wanted to bury me under six feet of dirt.
When JR’s thumb traces the lightning-shaped burn partially hidden by my hairline, pride shoots through me instead of disgust. For almost a decade, I’ve hated that blemish. Only now am I realizing it’s there because I consistently put other people’s lives before my own. I help strangers every single day, but that day, a stranger returned a favor that inevitably saved my life.
I’m so choked up with emotions it takes the B-Double we’re veering toward to sound his horn for me to notice he’s flashing his lights.
With a squeal, I yank on the steering wheel before slamming my foot on the brake.
We skid across the asphalt in slow motion, the truck’s bounce routine as jutted as the word JR screams before he wedges himself between the steering wheel and me. “B-Back!”
Chapter Sixteen
JR’s back, hip, and buttocks endure the full impact of the truck’s collision with a tree siding the freeway. I don’t feel a single thing except the shredding of my heart when a mangled roar escapes his lips. I should be in the process of being crushed to death, or at the very least, pinned to my seat, but his quick thinking saved my life. He put his body on the line for me, and I don’t know whether to relish his devotion or sob about it.