Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Too tired to deal with that shit.
A fucking personal ad?
What was I?
Chopped liver?
She’d just sent me a text, for crying out loud.
My stomach tried to eat itself again, and I was reminded for the fourth time in less than five minutes why my day had sucked.
Fires were becoming more and more frequent lately, and the strange thing was that after each fire, a reporter had recounted the facts in the events that’d taken place in the newspaper before we’d even told the next of kin.
It was getting out of hand, and the brass was taking it out on us since it was obvious one of us had been talking…but the scary thing was that none of us would.
And now I had to think about that singles ad that my brother had just sent me.
How he’d gotten it, I didn’t know. But I was damn sure going to find out.
I just had to get a few z’s, first.
I woke up less than fifty minutes later with another call.
I trudged down the stairs, skipping the fire pole in fear of falling flat on my face from two stories above seeing as I couldn’t feel my fuckin’ arms and walked over to my bunker gear.
I was glad I wasn’t on the medic truck and required to actively think right then.
I didn’t think that I could think.
“Yo,” Drew said. “I need you to drive. Something’s going on with my hand, and I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” he said, opening and closing his fist.
“It’s broken, you dumb shit,” PD said as he walked up behind me as I looked at Drew blankly.
“It’s not broken, fucker. It’s probably just sprained, is all,” Drew shot back.
“Sprained from too much jacking off,” PD countered. “Since it’s obvious your wife hasn’t been giving it to you lately.”
I scrubbed my eyes and stepped into my bunker gear, totally disregarding the two idiots still fighting.
Mainly because I was busy trying not to think about the state of my own wrist.
I’d been doing a lot of one-on-one action with myself since I’d met Mia, and I wasn’t very proud of the fact. So to have the two idiots at my back reminding me of that fact wasn’t sitting well with me.
Then, to make matters worse, I pulled out of the station and immediately ran over the curb as I was turning.
“One gallon on Tai!” The cruel motherfuckers at my back and sides crowed loudly.
I winced.
My head was killing me.
“I’m not buying a fucking thing unless it’s Blue Bell,” I said. “I’ve totally and completely boycotted all other ice cream.”
The boys grunted in acknowledgement. They all know that there has been a shortage of our favorite ice cream since it was so popular.
“That’s why we have a tally board hanging up next to the fridge,” Bowe said.
I shrugged.
I’d buy the ice cream.
It was a good morale booster.
When someone was driving the engine, if they hit the curb, they bought a gallon of ice cream. It was as simple as that.
They ribbed back and forth, talking about the merits of having ice cream over having good ice cream.
The conversation carried us all the way to the patient’s address.
“Shit,” Bowe said from the seat beside me. “This is going to suck.”
My brows furrowed as I pulled the big engine up to the curb and got out.
“Why?” I asked once he joined me.
The neighborhood we were in wasn’t the best. In fact, I would qualify it as one of the lower income housing areas in the city. It wasn’t the worst, but it definitely wasn’t The Point on the golf course, either.
“They said it’s a water rescue, and I don’t see any water at all,” he said. “And there’re no pools in this subdivision. It’s against city code.”
We walked forward, stopping when the frantic woman that opened the door started screaming.
“Ma’am,” I said in my most authoritative voice I could scrounge up. It came out sounding more croakish due to my tiredness, however. “Ma’am, please settle down and tell us what’s going on.”
The woman was in her early forties with graying brown hair, and a cigarette hanging out one side of her mouth.
“You’re never going to believe it if I tell you. Just come in and look,” she urged, pulling my hand and forcing me to walk behind her.
Her hand felt leathery, and I wanted to pull my hand back.
However, she had what seemed like a death grip on me, and her nails were about the size of a small pocket knife. I feared for my life if I pulled my hand away from her.
So I endured the touch, following behind the woman.
But I did pull my hand away once we reached the living room.
It was one of those ones that was sunken. Each way into the living room you had to go down three stairs to get to it. And the entire ‘sunken’ part of the living room was filled with water.