Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Evidence of tampering, I guess.
Anything that might be stuck to the car.
I’ve read enough thrillers to freak out about stalkers and GPS trackers. Unless they’re making them smaller than bugs now, I don’t see anything like that.
I don’t feel it either when I run my hands around the wheel wells for good measure.
There’s a dramatic moment when I unlock the driver’s side door and imagine the car blowing up the instant I pull the latch, just like in the movies.
I almost laugh. Now I’m being ridiculous.
A stalker, that’s my worst case. Not winding up on a mafia hit list.
Of course, nothing happens.
Not until the Door Open alarm starts pinging as I stand there with my breath thick, just waiting for something to go boom.
Yep.
Still being ridiculous.
There are better things to focus on.
Like the fact that right now, I have a quasi-date.
Grant is waiting for me tonight and I’m ready to let him take my mind off all the worries streaking through my brain.
11
ONE BAD SEED (GRANT)
I’m just leaving A Touch of Grey, our main local furniture store, after a late call came in from Talia Grey. Easy business after wrangling pigs for over an hour.
The poor girl was flustered, panicked about somebody lifting money from their cash register. Turns out, it was her own grandfather.
Gerald Grey is still one hell of a master artisan with everything wood, only he’s going a touch senile in his seventies.
When the old man told his granddaughter he’d make the bank run to drop off the cash, he wound up losing it under an old box of chair legs stuffed in his truck. Damn good thing I thought to look when I saw how upset he was, swearing up and down that nobody ever stole from the store in its fifty plus years—and of course, there was no way they’d start on his watch.
I walk out with two happy, relieved faces behind me, trying not to dwell on the ravages of time.
Sometimes, it comes in like a berserker, daggers drawn and ready to shred the heart.
Other times, it’s just a slow, insufferable march to heartbreak.
We all have an invisible hourglass counting down our minutes like grains of sand.
That makes me all the more eager to get the hell home.
Knowing I’ll see Nell and Ophelia again is the only thing that keeps me from slipping into a fully shit-mad melancholy mood—until I walk past December Fifth just off Main Street.
There’s a familiar, ugly damn mug staring at me through the green-tinted window.
The place is one of our most popular local bars, styled like an old-timey speakeasy and named for the day Prohibition ended.
It’s the first time I’ve seen Aleksander Arrendell there, tucked into the small wooden booth and gesturing to me through the window.
What now? What could human slime possibly want?
I’ve got half a mind to storm past and keep going, pretending I never saw him.
Too bad I’ve made eye contact.
Worse, he’s not alone.
I find that out the second I step into the dimly lit bar with its tall black leather booths and shelves of glossy bottles soaring to the ceiling.
“Captain!” he calls to me, snapping off a half-mocking salute which jostles the sleeping lump of Ros on his shoulder.
What does this asshole need?
Nothing good.
I can already guess that much as I stalk forward, trying my damnedest not to show my teeth like the angry wolf he turns me into.
“Something I can help you with?” I growl.
“Relax. I wouldn’t dream of putting any trouble on your very broad shoulders while you’re presumably off duty,” he says smoothly. “I just wanted to thank you for coming by the house and dealing with our nasty situation. Mummy was so upset, finding that poor gal swinging there.”
My eyes narrow.
The polite response would be a curt you’re welcome and a cold, quick escape.
Only, he’s already dragged me in here and I ain’t feeling the least bit polite.
“Something you’re holding back, Aleksander? You got something we missed on our sweep?”
“Please, call me Sandy,” he slurs, his eyes glazed with too much of that godawful cocktail in front of him that smells like smoked rocket fuel.
I will not.
He shakes his head slowly, huffing out an exaggerated sigh. “Gods, do I wish I did, Captain. I always adored poor Cora. If I only knew how she was suffering—if any of us did, really—we’d have gotten her the help she needed and spared no expense.”
My eyebrows go up and freeze in place.
Right. And I’m the fucking tooth fairy.
I just wish I could decide if he’s so drunk or high he’s speaking with a guilty conscience right about now.
If only one of these miserable, cold-blooded fucks would slip up.
“That it then, Sandy?” I snarl the nickname. “Look, if this is you hinting you’re feeling a need to talk to somebody to set your mind straight, there are plenty of folks around who are better qualified than me. I can’t take away any crosses for you or your folks to bear. That’s above my pay grade.”