Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 76609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Once the last lock was undone, I slammed the door open.
It hit the wall with a loud thud, but I barely noticed as I started to run down the middle of my yard, straight for the men that now had Attie by the arm.
“Let her go!” I screamed. “Now! Drew!”
I screamed for Drew so loud that my throat throbbed.
“Fuck me!” One of the men cursed as he started to move toward his car.
Attie, though, fought back, hard.
So hard, in fact, that I was initially surprised.
I froze beside her, unsure of where to grab her to help or to let her continue on her own. She figured it out without me, but she got herself free and lurched for the car, grabbing something that was inside the trunk and pulling.
I chose that time to rear back and hit the other man that was still there, but he caught my fist so effortlessly that I was momentarily shocked.
He hadn’t even been facing me, how the hell had he seen me?
And I wouldn’t get into the fact that he was still holding my hand as well as pulling a gun out from under his front jacket.
I heard Drew’s shout from somewhere behind me, causing me to turn and stare at him running, shirtless and shoeless, directly to us.
He had a gun in his hand as well, but he wasn’t aiming it at anything.
“Freeze, Smith,” the man that was holding me ordered. He had his gaze on the man behind the wheel of the car. “Put your hands on the wheel and I won’t shoot you.”
Everyone froze, except for Drew, who kept coming until he was in reaching distance of not just me, but his daughter as well.
Attie had her arms around something that was bundled in a blanket, her eyes wild and scared as she let her gaze dart around this way and that, looking like her life had just been thrown upside down.
“Fuck you,” Smith said, revving the engine.
The distinct ‘thump’ of the car being put into reverse rocked through the still night air, and before any of us could even react, the man holding the gun on the one in the car pulled the trigger.
The car started to roll backward, but the man inside of it was too dead to stop it.
The one who’d just shot the other man then turned his gun on Drew.
“I’m a cop, if you shoot me, I’ll shoot you, too. Then your kid and your woman will have to bury you,” the man said.
He still had a hold of my arm, but his gun was pointing at Drew’s chest, and I was too scared to do anything that might upset the perilous balance that the two men had going right then.
“Put it down,” Drew ordered. “Let her go.”
The man let me go, but he didn’t drop the gun like he’d been instructed to.
“I’m not stupid here,” the man snarled. “My name is Raphael Luis, and I’m on assignment as a liaison with the FBI. Call whomever you want and confirm it.”
Drew hesitated.
“I have my phone, Daddy,” Attie whispered. “It’s in my back pocket.”
“Aspen,” Drew barked. “Call your brother. Get confirmation.”
I moved around Drew, careful not to obstruct his view of the man or the situation.
I reached Attie’s back, and it was then I saw that what she was holding was a human being.
A live human being.
One with big, bright, blue eyes and long curly blonde hair.
“Mother fucker,” I breathed, my hands freezing on the phone in Attie’s jeans.
Drew’s angry bark of ‘hurry up’ had me yanking the phone out Attie’s pocket and unlocking it without another thought.
My eyes, though, kept glancing back at the girl.
I’d just dialed the phone and put it to my ear when the first cop car came rolling down the street.
And it was then that I could hear my ankle monitor’s beep-beep-beep.
Well, that was helpful!
What wasn’t helpful, though, was having three more guns added to the mix.
“Put them down,” the officer, one of the two that I didn’t want to see right then, barked.
“Hello?” Downy answered, voice alert.
“Umm, you might want to come to my house. I think the Wild West is about to make a reappearance,” I said. “And hey, can you vouch for a man for me? He says he’s with the FBI, and I don’t know who to call besides you to verify he is who he says he is.”
“The one across the street from you?” He asked. “Dark hair, green eyes. Beard?”
I blinked, surprised that Downy knew my neighbor.
“Yeah, that’s him,” I concurred.
“He’s with the FBI. Introduced himself to me and Luke a couple of months ago,” he said. “I told him about the house across from you that was for rent.”
I could hear him shutting doors, as well as his keys jingling.
“That was nice of you to tell me who he was,” I growled in annoyance. “Would it really have been that hard to say, ‘Oh! Hey! You have a cop living across the street from you.’”