Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
She doesn’t think it’s dangerous.
Eric Turner disagrees.
Eric is a member of the Nightingale Investigations and Security team. Therefore, Eric knows what he’s talking about.
Eric isn’t only badass, he’s also a seriously gorgeous guy, and Jessie has a huge crush on him. She doesn’t think he knows she exists…until now.
Eric steps in, and so do Jessie’s besties, the Avenging Angels. Soon, the Angels and the Hottie Squad are on the case to find Jessie’s missing sibling.
There’s more happening when it comes to Eric, though. Jessie’s so worried about her brother, she’s not paying attention. Eric sets about changing that, and just like all the Hot Bunch before him, when he finds his one, he doesn’t mess around.
However, something is afoot in Phoenix. And as the Angels uncover the sinister workings behind people going missing, and Eric and Jessie unpack their emotional baggage, the Angels dive deeper into the dark underbelly of the city…
Finding heroes, more hot guys, lots of hijinks…and heart.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
It was dark as pitch in the area around the makeshift encampment that sat in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse, in what had become a kind of no-man’s-land just south of the heart of the city.
This darkness might have had to do with the fact it was nearing one in the morning.
It wasn’t a great time to do my search, but in the last six months, I’d been hitting up the encampment at random times, day and evening, and always came up empty-handed. But due to safety issues, I’d never gone so late (or early, depending on how you looked at it).
This time, I was giving it a shot precisely because it was so late (also because I was getting desperate).
He had to sleep somewhere, and I was hoping it was here. At the same time, I died a little death thinking it might be.
It was the night before Thanksgiving.
I’d hoped he’d be somewhere with someone on Thanksgiving, even if that someone wasn’t me, and, well, that somewhere was here.
I’d learned, and I had the requisite materials with me.
Four bags full of bottles of water (sorry environment) and a backpack stuffed with packs of beef jerky, boxes of protein bars and hydration packets.
Oh yeah, and an empty used sharps container.
Homer shuffled out first, as Homer always did. I wasn’t sure Homer slept. I was sure Homer was King of the Homeless Encampment.
I was sure of this because I’d learned something else. I had to make Homer trust me before anyone else did.
This took time.
And lots of bottles of water and packs of beef jerky.
He said nothing as he took two of the bags and the sharps container from me.
Then he mumbled, “Late night.”
“Is he here?”
My vision had adjusted to the dark. I’d hit the encampment, and in the dim light that came from the city and various camp lanterns dotting the space, I saw his eyes in his dangerously tanned, leathery, be-whiskered face catch mine.
And I saw my answer.
No.
My brother wasn’t there.
“Seen him?” I asked as we began to move through the oddly organized labyrinth of tents, the tarps that created crude shelters, loaded grocery carts and scattering of debris.
“Did you bring clean syringes?”
This wasn’t an answer to my question, and sadly my answer to his was, “Not this time.”
He nodded, reached into a bag, made a noise, and a hand came out of a tent.
He put a bottle of water in it as I shrugged off the backpack to pull out a bag of jerky.
Homer took that, tossed it into the tent, and we moved on.
We did this at two more tents before I said, “Homer.”
That was all I said, but he got me, so he stopped and turned to me.
And he stated it plainly. “You find him, you quit coming.”
Oh my God.
On the one hand, it felt good that he trusted me, and him saying that meant he and his brethren appreciated me. I didn’t have the resources to give much, and I knew I didn’t help their situation at all, but it was nice to understand the little I did meant something.
On the other hand, I needed to find my brother.
“Are you…keeping him from me?” I asked.
He shook his head.
But he said, “Others might.”
That meant, since Homer knew everyone and everything, others were.
Damn.
I pointed out the obvious. “I’ve gotta know if he’s all right.”
Homer gazed around the dismal space that looked bad and smelled worse.
I took his point.
If Jeff was here, he wasn’t all right.
Then again, I already knew he wasn’t all right.
Just as I knew, the minute Mom kicked him out seven months ago and he didn’t do his usual—bunk with one of his buds, then figure his shit out and get back on his meds—I would be doing what I was doing right then.
And there I was, doing what I was doing right then.
We moved through the space, silently handing out waters and protein delivery systems, with me looking closely at faces and trying to peer into tents.
I came up empty.
As usual.
When we were back at Homer’s tent, he took the spent plastic bags from me (something else I’d learned: Homer had a thing for plastic bags) but handed me the clattering sharps container.
“It’d be good you bring syringes next time,” he said.
With that, he ducked into his tent and disappeared.
I stared at it, the feelings I was feeling balling up inside me, the weight so heavy, the urge was almost overwhelming to open my mouth and shriek my fear and frustration to the skies above Phoenix.
I didn’t do that.
I carried that weight with the container and my empty backpack to my car.
Though, I didn’t make it to my car.
I stopped dead twenty feet away when I saw Eric Turner, investigator at Nightingale Investigations & Security. The place of business of Eric, Cap (my friend Raye’s boyfriend) and a number of other badasses who were all ridiculously attractive.