Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“It’s loaded. Don’t fuck around with it. But you should have something to protect yourselves with. Living alone in general,” he added when I started to gnaw at my lower lip.
“We gotta go catch up with them,” McCoy said, giving Alaric a look that I didn’t know him well enough to interpret. “Don’t hesitate to call,” he added, giving us a nod before the two of them turned and started away.
“We will have someone by to deal with the mess when we get some time,” he called, waving toward the bike in the road.
With that, they were gone.
“The bike can’t just stay in the road until someone else shows up,” I said, speaking my thoughts out loud. “It’s so dark here. Someone might miss it. One accident is enough for one night.”
“And, well, if the bad guys come back, we don’t want an arrow pointing directly at our house,” Triss reasoned as I moved toward the motorcycle.
He was going to need a brand new one.
It was all mangled.
But, luckily enough, it rolled with me when I got it up on its wheels again.
“What are you doing?” I asked, looking over to find Triss with her arms full of my garden gnomes.
“I mean… all the houses on this street look alike,” she reasoned. “And it’s dark. If they come back, and the bike is gone, and the attempted murder weapons are also missing, there’s a chance they won’t remember exactly what house it was.”
My stomach knotted at the idea of them coming back, but I kept my mouth shut as I stored the bike in the garage, then started to arrange the gnomes on my Gramps’s old work bench as Triss brought them in.
“For the glass,” she said when she came back out of the house with a dustpan and broom.
I was usually more of the take-charge person, but I wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders right then. My brain felt thick and slow. I was having a hard time thinking about anything but what I was doing.
Meanwhile, Triss was on speed. Sweeping the street, collecting little pieces of the bike that had broken off, and bringing the pitcher and glass back inside.
“Okay. Inconspicuous,” she decided, looking out of the garage door before turning off the outside lights, then hitting the button to close the garage door. “Come on. Get inside,” she demanded. “I have to set the alarm,” she added.
I followed numbly, incapable of doing anything but what she instructed me to.
Closing and locking the windows. Turning off any of the lights in the front of the house.
“We want the house to look as dark as all the others,” she told me.
Somewhere at the back of my mind, there was a little niggling thought about our cars in the driveway that could identify us. And, well, the house number itself.
But maybe the guys who’d hit and run on Donovan had been just as adrenaline-filled in the moment as I had been, missing out on the little details.
“Okay. I texted the hot biker guy to let him know we hid the bike for now,” she said. “Hey, you okay?” Triss asked, finally done running around, and coming to meet me in the kitchen where I was sitting at the table, just staring down at my clasped hands.
“Why are you so okay?” I asked, looking over at her as she sat down.
“I think I am just a little jazzed up. Adrenaline has always fueled me, but zapped you,” she said, shrugging.
That was fair enough.
Triss was someone who was willing to bungee jump and skydive and go on especially twisty rollercoasters. While I held the bags and felt queasy just watching her. Then needed to sleep for ten hours after to recover from the worry about her as she did said crazy things.
“That’s true,” I agreed.
“I’ll make some tea. And we can talk about how surreal that just was,” she said, jumping up to flick on the electric kettle and grab the mugs and teabags. “I mean, we’ve talked so much about them. But we got to save one of their lives! You heard Mr. President. He is indebted to us.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I just hope he’s okay,” I said, actually feeling a little weepy now that I wasn’t in, like, survival mode.
“Huck said he would be fine,” she reminded me. “And I’m sure they know more about those kinds of things than we do, right?” she reasoned.
“Right,” I agreed. “Do you think we really have anything to worry about?” I asked, listening to our quiet house.
We both kind of preferred to have some sort of noise at all times—a TV playing old reruns while we slept, music moving through the house all day. But we’d both decided that silence was smart. We could hear if anyone was in the house. But now I heard every creak of it settling, the buzzing sound the air conditioner made as it kicked on, the whirring of the fans. I swear I could even hear the damn blood running through my veins.