Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 161899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 809(@200wpm)___ 648(@250wpm)___ 540(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 809(@200wpm)___ 648(@250wpm)___ 540(@300wpm)
“Did you hit her?” I pushed.
“Fuck no. Jesus,” he grunted, glowered at me, then went on to explain, “But when a woman is beating the shit out of you, you can’t ask nice for her to stop. You gotta push her off you.”
“That’s all?” I kept at him.
“Do you even know me?” he demanded.
Okay.
I did know him (or I used to) and that part of what Auggie told me about him was the hardest to hear and the hardest to believe.
“I’m dealing with some shit and I’m dealing with how I handled other shit and that’s mine,” he continued. “But whatever your man told you, probably all of it is true. Just not that.”
And his just not that seemed most important to him.
So again.
Yeah.
When it came to his physicality with his ex-wife, it started and stopped there, and not only had he been punished for it, he himself wasn’t okay with it.
“Okay, Birch,” I said softly.
He seemed to relax a little when I spoke those words.
“So now, years of what Jon has been working on,” Saffron picked up the torch, “and I’ve been working on with him, is about to happen. And we can’t have you fucking it up. Hence…” She pointed to us on the floor.
“What have you been working on?” I asked.
“Saff,” Hottie Jon grunted his warning for her not to spill.
“I wasn’t a fan of it when you came up with nabbing them, and I’m still not,” Birch said Saffron and Jon’s way. “We can let them go. Pepper would never say anything.”
“You haven’t been around her in years,” Hottie Jon returned. “Saff’s been around her all the time.”
I wouldn’t describe it as all the time.
I didn’t get into that. There were more important things to get into.
“You can let us go. I won’t say anything,” I promised, even though I still wasn’t sure what I wasn’t going to be saying anything about because one thing was clear in all this, they weren’t involved in Reverend Clyde’s con.
“We’re not letting you go,” Saffron sniffed.
“Great,” Lottie mumbled.
I stared at Saffron’s determined face.
Right.
Moving on…
“Okay, as you know, I’m catching up with all of this, but I heard you were going to be married to Clyde,” I noted.
Her face twisted and my fingers spasmed in Lottie’s.
“That was the grooming Birch mentioned. You were gone, I was up,” she shared. “But I would have had my turn anyway.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“But you hooked up with…” My gaze went to Hottie Jon.
“Fell in love with,” she corrected.
My eyes shot back to her. “Really? Wow, Saff. That’s awesome.”
“Don’t try to be my sister now,” she bit.
Try to be?
That hurt.
And it ticked me off.
“I’ve always been your sister,” I shot back.
“Ah, hell,” Lottie muttered.
“By leaving me in that nightmare?” she demanded.
“I didn’t know!” I snapped.
“Keep it down,” Hottie Jon clipped.
“I didn’t know,” I repeated less loudly.
“It doesn’t matter now, it’s almost over,” Saffron replied.
“What’s almost over?” I asked.
“It isn’t your business,” she retorted. “You’ll be fine. We’ll give you bathroom breaks. Find you some blankets to sleep on. Get you some foo—”
Saffron finished that word on a scream.
This was because three things happened at once.
Mo busted through the door to the house.
Mag dove through window one on the sidewall.
And Auggie dove through window two.
And when I said “dove,” I meant he dove.
Glass flying, coming in headfirst, he curled in mid-air, landed on a shoulder, rolled and was up on his feet before I could blink.
Then, in a blur of motion, Hottie Jon was facedown on the concrete. So was Birch. And Mag recovered from his tuck-and-roll and had a Taser pointed at Saffron.
Ho…
Lee.
Hell.
How cool!
“Oh my God! What are you doing?” Saffron shrieked, her hands up by her head, staring down at her man, who had Aug’s knee in his back.
What Aug and Mo weren’t doing, but what they’d already done, was hog-tie Birch and Jon.
I mean, seriously.
They achieved that in three seconds.
Okay, we hadn’t had the discussion about his job.
But if he could jump through a window then pin and restrain a guy in five seconds flat, I was thinking he was good to go.
“Please, do not move,” Mag said in a rather gentlemanly way (I thought) when it looked like Saffron was going to bend to Jon.
She eyed Mag and then stopped moving.
Aug came to Lottie and me, pulling out a hefty penknife that probably had so many unfoldable gadgets, it could get us from one end of the Amazon to the other, no sweat.
Mo went to the button that opened the garage door.
It started cranking up and I was free, Lottie was free, and Auggie pulled me to my feet.
Pins and needles a-freaking-go-go.
I ignored them and threw myself at him.
He held me close.
I heard Lottie ask Mo, “What took you so long?”
I also heard Mo’s low chuckle and then a sound like they’d given each other a kiss.