Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Clarice cracked her first smile. “We’ll see.”
Luna grabbed hold of my hand.
“But—” I started, though said no more because my crazy bestie tugged me out of the chair and toward the door.
“Later,” she called to Clarice, and we were out.
I waited until after Luna got her parking ticket validated by the receptionist, and we were in the elevator before I turned to her and inquired, “Have you lost your mind?”
“We’re gonna go look at those cars. Then we’re gonna go talk to Divinity. Tonight,” was her reply.
“You have. You’ve lost your mind.”
“What will it hurt?”
Honestly?
I didn’t have a response to that.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about those women who were missing, and I hadn’t been able to since I discovered how many there were.
“I’ll get the two hundred from my bank. No, three. Just in case,” she said.
“Luna—” I started as the doors to the elevator opened.
We walked out and she said, “Either the cops don’t have leads, or they don’t have enough motivation to dive into finding those women. It’s not like we’re putting ourselves in danger. We’re gonna go talk to a sex worker. There’s no danger in that.”
“Maybe,” I replied as she beeped the locks to her dark-blue Prius (hand-me-down from Louise, Dream drove the hand-me-down from Scott, Louise and Scott drove newer models of the same thing—there were different electric cars to choose from, but they were a Prius family, for the girls that meant buying used cars cheap from their folks (if Dream paid for hers, but I knew Luna did)).
We got in and she turned to me. “Do you wanna know what’s going on and maybe find those women? Or at least find out what happened to them…” she hesitated, and I knew why when she finished, “so their families know?”
“Yes,” I said quietly.
She turned to the wheel and said, “Then we’re doing this.”
I’d started it a year ago. Why I would stop now, when she was right, there was no danger following this lead, especially now that we had some primo resources to help, I didn’t know.
“Wait,” I said. “Cap’s offices are two blocks from here. He hasn’t texted me yet about our plans tonight. And anyway, if he can visit me at my place of work, I can do the same. And I wanna see if they’ve unwrapped the furniture. Since we’re this close, and we have validated parking, might as well hoof it up there. Maybe you can meet Mace.”
She turned back to me. “You wanna run this by him.”
“Actually, I’m gonna wait until I have him liquored up to do that. But Liam might also be there, and Cap told me that Jacob is as into Alexis as Alexis is into Jacob. And he’s a man, so he’d know. He also told me Jacob would stop messing around the second he saw Alexis with another guy. So I wanna see if Liam might be into some pretend-boyfriend action to light a fire under Jacob.”
Luna knew all about Alexis’s crush on Jacob, and she was right there with me, hoping those two would get together.
“You are oh-so-totally made for this shit,” she said.
I kinda was.
I grinned.
She grinned back.
We got out of the car and hoofed it the two blocks to Cap’s building.
It being September, the heat was still on the Valley. It didn’t really let loose its hold until October (if we were lucky). Though, it got milder as the days got shorter, and we’d had a nice, mild weekend.
The heat was back that day, so Luna and I hadn’t jogged or anything, but we were still more than a little dewy by the time we hit the door to Cap’s offices.
I was considering finding a hall bathroom to get to some paper towels to dab my forehead.
But Luna was pushing in the door so I had no choice but to follow her.
We entered to a hub of activity.
Four men in gray chinos and matching shirts were moving furniture around. There was a massive pile of plastic and thin Styrofoam wrap creating a mini-mountain in the corner. There was a stack of paintings leaning against a wall. And on a plinth in the corner, there was a gorgeous bronze statue of a rising phoenix.
More importantly, there was an extortionately good-looking Native American man sorting through boxes of a bunch of stuff that had lots of wires. Another extortionately good-looking, tall, dark-haired man was going through another box of what looked like surveillance cameras.
And a further extortionately good-looking, tall, dark-haired man was arguing with a very pretty, middle-aged-and-working it Black woman with a kickass, massive Afro. She was wearing Christian Louboutin pumps that were black at the front and bled into red at the back, and a red, wraparound, long-sleeved dress, which was so chic, she made Clarice look like she was playing dress up.