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)
“Your dad has shitty timing,” Luna remarked. “He’s slowing our roll.”
Man.
She could say that again.
I sat on my couch, staring at my phone sitting on the coffee table.
Patches lounged on the back of said couch, flicking his tail.
It was just past eight, and I was trying to convince myself I could wait another hour to call Cap.
I’d lugged the new additions to my library up and attempted to get into the book about Jules and Vance.
After reading some of the first chapter, and being surprised at what a supreme badass Jules seemed to be, when it got to the part about how they all lost Cap’s friend Park, I got overwhelmed by his loss, more overwhelmed at how I’d bungled things that morning, and I couldn’t concentrate.
So I changed the sheets on my bed, threw in a load of laundry, ran the vacuum, started the dishwasher and wiped down all the counters.
Now I was thinking, maybe he was home.
Maybe he’d been at home, sitting on his couch, staring at his phone for the last two hours, waiting for me to call or psyching himself up to call me.
Though, he was Cap. He didn’t have to psych himself up for anything. He was the single most confident person I’d ever met (barring Mace, Vance, Lee, Eric and Liam, also Shirleen and Clarice).
Okay, so he was the single most confident person I’d met who was my age (barring Liam and Clarice).
If he could call, he’d call.
Which meant he wasn’t home.
Or he was still mad and didn’t want to call.
Or he was so mad, he didn’t want me to call ever again.
I was thinking on this so hard, I nearly fell off my couch when a loud knock sounded on my door before I heard a key in the lock.
Of course, he wouldn’t call.
He’d just come over.
Because it didn’t occur to me until just then, he may have taken his bag, but he didn’t leave my key.
Hope bloomed in my chest as I took my feet.
The door opened, and Luna, hand still on the knob, swung only her torso in.
“Come on, bitch. Jinx called. She needs us.”
This was such a surprise, all I could do was ask, “What?”
“Chop chop. Let’s go. Jinx is in a fix, and it sounds serious.”
I’d worn my black Vans with the multi-colored daisies on the stackform sole that day (and they totally clashed with my dress—I was so off my game).
I shoved them on. I snatched up my crossbody.
And we motored.
On the way to the Accord (which was out of the way of where Jinx was, that being in a room in the very motel we’d been kicked out of last night, so we really needed a more central location for ease with switch out), after Luna told me where we were going, I asked, “Could this be a setup?”
“A setup of what?”
“A setup of someone who isn’t happy we’re nosing around the missing women.”
“Well, she could be the kind of woman who warns us to be careful one night, and then the next, swings our asses out there. But I didn’t read that on her.”
“Tasers locked and loaded anyway.”
“I hear that.”
We did the car switch out. Luna drove like a bat out of hell to the Sun Valley Motor Lodge. We parked. We both refrained from flipping the bird at the night attendant, the same guy from yesterday who was now sitting behind the counter in reception and scowling at us through the plate glass windows. And we took the steps two at a time to the upper level to hit room number twenty-three.
It was an old key lock door, no update to keycards for this joint, and Luna and I had seen enough TV and movies to know what to do.
I just hoped it wasn’t locked. But the door was flimsy, so maybe I could do the Van in the door trick, like Cap did with his boot to get to Elsie Fay.
I didn’t hold high hopes for that, but we’d figure that out if it became an issue.
Luna flattened herself on one side of the door, Taser up and ready, I flattened myself on the other.
But it was me who shouted, “Jinx! You in there?”
“Bitches, come get me loose!” she shouted back.
Luna turned the knob and pushed open the door, but it was me who curled in on a squat, Taser out, scanning the place.
All that was there was a naked Jinx with both wrists handcuffed to the bed, her phone on the pillow beside her.
I straightened.
“Motherfucker cuffed me to the bed, did me, took my night’s earnings and jetted outta here. I think I sprained my back getting my phone from my toes to my hand ’cause that’s the only thing he left me, but he threw it at my feet. Motherfucker!” she screamed.
Luna came in behind me and closed the door.