Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 110671 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110671 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
“Too bad you didn’t put a tracker on him,” Gray said casually.
Darius snorted quietly. “He’s not a runner.”
Whatever. “By the way, how did you find us at the park?” It was something Gray had thought about briefly the other day, but he’d forgotten to bring it up. “I was watching the bench where I left the tracker. You didn’t go near it—I would’ve seen you. Instead, you showed up at the truck.”
“If the advance is easy, it’s an ambush.” It sounded like a quote. “You check the perimeters before you go to the target location.” He paused and frowned to himself. “If I’d applied that to my dating history, I could’ve saved myself a lot of hassle.”
Gray’s forehead creased in confusion. “Like, what, you should’ve interrogated a woman’s family before you went out with her?”
Darius nodded and tapped his temple.
Gray resisted rolling his eyes; he had a more pressing question. “Don’t you think I would’ve seen you if you’d been lurking around the perimeters a bunch first?”
“First of all, no—it’s called stealth. Second of all, no, because I didn’t have to lurk. I knew exactly where you were.”
Frustration bled through Gray’s response. “How—”
“Because I planted a second tracker on you, knucklehead.”
Gray blanched.
“The bottle cap,” Darius said. “You found the letter, right?”
What the fuck. Gray tensed his jaw and pulled out his wallet, where he’d saved the bottle cap in the coin pocket. He picked it up and brought it close, inspecting the cap. The underside, rather. Using his fingernail, he scraped off the plastic pressure seal and cursed. He was such an idiot. So was Darius, but for other reasons.
“You’re un-fucking-believable,” he muttered. “So much for the bottle cap meaning a lot to you.”
“You won’t find a single lie in that letter,” Darius told him. “It does mean a lot, because you mean a lot, and the cap ensured I could find you.”
Gray was too irritated to absorb the compliment—or whatever it could be called. “You gave me some bullshit story about your dad giving you and your brothers bottle caps.”
“He did.” Darius slowed down as they approached a lone tractor on the highway, and he tested switching to the lane for oncoming traffic to see if it was safe to pass. “When I went off the deep end after an assignment seven years ago, he tapped into my sentimentality and gave me a bottle cap to remind me of home—that my family was always there. Which was true, but he gave it to me so he could know where I was when I headed up to their cabin in Whistler to drink myself into oblivion.” He paused. “When Lias was dumped by his girlfriend, he was heartbroken and took off.” He spoke of his youngest brother. “But Pop predicted the escape and sent him off with a bottle cap to remind Lias of our grandfather’s alcoholism. To let him know that drinking his ass off wouldn’t make shit better.”
“He didn’t use that approach on you.”
Darius shook his head and smirked faintly. “He knew it wouldn’t have worked.” He quieted down as he drove past the tractor, and Gray rolled up his window a bit. “For one reason or another, we’ve all fucked off at least once in our lives.”
Gray had nothing to say. His mind was a jumbled mess of conflicting thoughts and emotions. He could recognize the concern, the thoughtfulness, and, well, kudos on the creativity, but it bugged him. And part of him wondered if it bugged him so much because he mattered a lot to Darius for the wrong reasons. Gray didn’t want to be the pitiful victim that required a babysitter.
Ignoring how petulant he felt, he extended the bottle cap. “Well, you tracked me down. You can have this back.”
Darius turned his head slightly toward the bottle cap. “You can throw out the tracker. Battery’s almost dead anyway. But keep the cap.”
“There’s a battery in here?” Gray asked incredulously. Then he brought the cap close again and traced the thin wires leading to that little metal plate with three tiny bumps.
“Not a very good one,” Darius answered. “It’s supposed to be attached to a device like a phone so it can harness power from it. On its own, it lasts about a week.”
Of course. Naturally. Obviously. Made total sense.
Gray shook his head and pocketed the cap and his wallet again. “So, should I feel special, or is there a Bottle Cap Club for everyone who’s received one?”
Darius let out a laugh and planted a hand on Gray’s leg, giving it a quick squeeze. “If only you knew how special you are, knucklehead.”
Fuck you.
He hated when Darius said things like that. It crammed more questions and doubts into his head—when all Gray should focus on was getting over the fucker next to him.
He slumped back and rubbed his forehead.