Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Those were always some incredible nights spent together.
“I am,” I said. The phone on the desk started to ring, the cockatoo mimicking the sound before Darien answered. “I got assigned by my CO a few days ago. Apparently, the police department here is in way over their heads. My CO is good friends with Zane Holden—I guess he’s the owner of this place? Said that you all needed backup, so I came.”
“Well,” Jason said, “we’re doing just fine here… but some help would be useful.” He shook his head, his eyes glittering. “I can’t believe it. What are the chances you’d get assigned to the same small town I’m at?”
“Slim to none.” I smirked. “Can’t say I’ve ever worked above a pet store before, but I’m gla—”
“Shit, sorry, guys.” It was Darien, who held a hand over the phone’s receiver. “I really don’t want to interrupt, but it’s the sheriff.”
“What happened?” Jason and I both asked in unison. Guess time didn’t affect the ability to mind-meld either.
“They found another body. And it’s at the fall festival.”
I clapped my hands together. “Guess I can get settled in later. Let’s go solve some shit, partner.” I shot a wink to Jason, enjoying how much I caught him off guard. He scrunched his mouth and shook his head, and I could tell he was trying not to smile.
“Let’s get to work,” he said.
Maybe this is going to end up being way more fun than I thought.
3
JASON QUILL
Fuck me sideways and call me Sally.
I’m not even entirely sure what that saying meant—something my dad would say for everything—but it fit the situation quite well.
The situation being me sitting in extremely close proximity to a man who had managed to simultaneously capture my heart and destroy it all in one fell swoop. My brother’s best friend and one of the biggest heartbreakers to have ever existed, I always knew Matthew was off-limits for me.
Even when nothing else between us had been off-limits.
I tried to drive my own car to Pebble Park, but Matthew insisted I go with him. His rental was apparently equipped with a self-drive feature that he was dying to show off.
“Isn’t that wild?” he asked as the wheel turned itself, the car smoothly fitting itself into a tight parking spot.
“Wild,” I said, tone dry. Sure, I was impressed, but I was also a mixture of shell-shocked, angry, happy, and—last but certainly not least—horny. So yes, I might have been impressed, but it was down at the bottom of my list of current emotions I had to deal with.
We got out of the car and were immediately met with the bone-deep buzz that surrounded any crime scene I’d ever been to. The tail end of urgent conversations was carried in the wind as police and investigators walked past us. Matthew followed me as I spotted the sheriff, Cynthia Mosley, who was speaking with a panicked-looking Mayor Emma Rosewell underneath a bright orange and deep red banner with the words “Blue Creek Fall Festival” hand-painted across it. Everyone in attendance must have scattered the second the body was found, only a few curiously morbid stragglers sticking around and being questioned by the police.
“Sheriff Mosley, Mayor.” I gave a somber expression that carried my apologies for the situation.
Matthew stepped next to me, a hand outstretched, a silver watch with a bright green face catching the afternoon light.
He always had such big hands.
I quickly tamped down that train of thought. One second I was thinking about Matt’s huge hands, and the next I was thinking about his equally big co—
“Matthew Hale. FBI, behavioral analyst.”
“Isn’t today your first day here?” Sheriff Mosley asked.
“Sure is, which is great because I hate wasting time.”
Could have fooled me.
I glanced at Matthew, his honey-brown eyes shielded by an impenetrable shade of black from his sunglasses. He had thick, bushy brows and a flawless tan complexion. He got the sharp cheekbones from his Syrian mother and his movie-star jawline from his Greek father, a combination that proved to create one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen in my entire life.
I still couldn’t believe Matthew was here. After the way it all ended, after the way it all started…
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except finding the Pegasus killer and locking the sick and sadistic monster behind bars for the rest of their miserable life.
“Where’s the body?” Matthew asked. The sheriff pointed toward a row of food trucks, the entrance taped off by bright yellow crime tape gently swaying in the breeze. Before we could head over, Mayor Rosewell let out a hissing sigh of relief as her son was brought over to her by a pair of stone-faced police officers. He had a thin blue towel wrapped around his shoulders and a shirt that seemed way too large for his thin figure. His hands gripped tight onto the towel, his knuckles red as if from scrubbing off paint. Or blood.