Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
That was when Riggs started laughing again.
Nadia and Maribeth did it with him, but Nadia did it better, because she was squeezing him with her arms.
“Yo! MB! Got a fresh one!” Murphy called.
“Laterzzzzzzz,” Maribeth said to them and took off toward Murphy.
Yeah.
Family.
THIRTY-FIVE
Our Land
Riggs
The next night, Riggs woke in the middle of it, knowing something wasn’t right.
His body got solid when he opened his eyes and saw the flashing police lights coming through the windows of his room.
Yeah.
Something wasn’t right.
Fuck.
He threw the covers back and bolted off the bed, grabbing a pair of jeans from his chair and tugged them up on the move.
He also buttoned them on the way, his heart in his throat, his feet moving fast.
He got to the front door, yanked it open, and saw Wade Dickerson out on his deck, in uniform, his head bent to his phone, probably to call Riggs so he didn’t ring the doorbell and wake, therefore alarm, Ledger.
Wade’s head jerked up when he opened the door, and he said, “Hey, man. Everything’s okay. She’s all right.”
She.
His gut dropped.
Riggs unlocked the screen door and pushed it open.
Wade came inside, and when he stopped with Riggs on the landing, Riggs demanded, “Talk to me.”
“Someone’s fucking with Nadia again, and they’re escalating that shit.”
Goddammit.
“Why didn’t she call me?” Riggs muttered a question he assumed Wade didn’t have an answer to, about to make a move back to his stairs to finish getting dressed.
But Wade did have an answer.
“She told Harry she didn’t want you disturbed. Said she’d tell you tomorrow. Murphy left today, and she knew you were here with Ledger, and you couldn’t leave him, you couldn’t bring him with you. But Harry knows you’d lose your shit if he didn’t tell you, so he sent me here to stay with Ledge so you could head over there.”
That was when Riggs moved, and he did it saying, “You know how to make coffee, bud. Make some if you want, anything else you want is yours.”
His stairs weren’t designed to take two at a time, but by damn, he took them that way.
He hit his room, pulled on a tee, tugged on his running shoes, then he jogged back out.
Wade was sitting on a stool at his kitchen bar, doing something on his phone, and Riggs bid, “Owe you one. Later,” and raced out the door.
By the time he got in his truck, started it up and made his way to the cabin, he could run there, so that was what he did.
Riggs sprinted down the trail, only memory and moonlight to lead his way, until her cabin came into view.
And it was all lit up, shining like a beacon. Every light inside and out seemed to have been turned on.
When he got close, he saw the back door was open, so he made his way there.
The loose hold he had on his shit got weaker when he saw the state of Nadia’s back porch.
There were two rocks on the porch, big, around the size of a couple of softballs, one in the seat of one of the wicker chairs, and two of Brenda’s pots had been smashed by two more rocks, dirt and flowers all over the place.
Two women inside, middle of the night, those big stones hitting the porch, they had to be terrified.
His head hazy with anger, he hit the back security door, went through and knew how edgy the vibe was because of three things.
One, Gia growled at him before she realized who he was. Only then did she whimper and make her approach.
Two, Maribeth looked freaked right the fuck out.
And three, Harry looked pissed, but Riggs knew him well enough to know this was hiding concern.
Riggs took a moment to get a hold on it, because the two women were still in their pajamas—Nadia had pulled on her robe, and Maribeth had tugged on a sweater, but they were alive and unharmed.
So he bent to give Gia a rubdown, thinking, Maribeth didn’t leave until tomorrow. They’d had a long enough spell of good times, good friends and other really good shit, that Riggs thought he’d wake up tomorrow morning knowing Nadia and Maribeth were going to head to Aromacobana at around nine to grab coffees before they hit the road to get Maribeth to the airport in Seattle for her flight.
Which meant Riggs’s afternoon plans were meeting Nadia around two at the cabin, which would be plenty of time for a quickie. Not to mention, time for him to inform her that he was going to give it another week before he sat Ledger down and asked him if he was cool with Nadia spending the night a few times a week (Riggs was going to go for five, maybe six), doing this in his dad’s bed.
Murphy had walked Maribeth back to the cabin last night, while Nadia stayed with Riggs, since Ledge was at his gramme’s.