Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
“Some guy I graduated with wrote all this.” She looks up and down her right arm. “He was pretty quiet back then, but I guess I was nice to him and he remembered.”
I look at her face, taking her chin in my hand and rubbing my thumb over the spill marks at the corner of her mouth. “Did Milo draw that?”
I have to fight not to rub her too hard as I try to wipe it off. “Why? What does it say?” she asks.
Why didn’t she check what he drew?
I lean in, the pink marker slowly coming off, but it’s smearing.
She looks up at me, I look down at her, and an urge hits me. I don’t think. I dive in and lightly suck the corner of her mouth.
She plants her hands on my stomach, her breath hitching, but she doesn’t push me away.
I’m gentle, licking her skin, and my mouth just barely touching hers.
God. I haven’t touched a Saint in a long time.
Rising back up, I hold her eyes as I wipe her mouth clean with my thumb and pluck a fresh highlighter out of the bowl on my right. I draw a thick line down the middle of her forehead, five daisy petals under her left eye, and a string of triangles from her nose to her upper lip, down her chin and neck. I stand back and recap the marker.
“What did you draw?” she asks.
“No idea.”
Some kind of war paint, maybe? She looks good.
Taking the marker out of my hand, she pulls a chair in front of me and hops up on it. Uncapping a marker, she rolls it on like lipstick, holds me in her stare, and I almost raise my hands to glide them up the backs of her thighs.
But I don’t. I just watch.
Tossing the marker off somewhere, she wraps her arms around my neck, and I catch her as she circles my waist with her legs and hangs on to me.
She kisses my shoulder, leaving a print of her lips as my sole evidence that I was here and only she touched me.
Tightening her arms around me, she leans into my ear. “Milo is locked in a storage room in the pantry,” she tells me.
She’s not whispering, but no one else can hear over the music.
“All of these people were heading to the Bay tonight. Into the cemetery.” Then she pulls back and looks me in the eye, giving me a chance to respond.
The cemetery. Our cemetery.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I ask her.
“Because you would’ve protected your property,” she says into my ear again. “And who knows what would’ve happened.”
“So you lured them here with a party?”
“Just about.” She nods, looking kind of proud of herself. “I also promised the Jaegers would be here, and that ensured the females would come and stay out of the Bay, too.”
So, she did need us here after all.
“That’s why you posted,” I say, more to myself. “You knew Trace would see it.”
“And he’d come and bring at least Dallas, and the two biggest reactionaries aside from Iron would be here, and not in the Bay, in case Milo and his friends went anyway.”
So when she said “You didn’t have to come,” she wasn’t worried about me. She knows I don’t come out swinging if Saints invade the Bay.
But she wouldn’t want Trace and Dallas here if Milo were here, would she? There would definitely be a fight.
And then it clicks. The pantry.
“But you had to get rid of Milo before Trace actually showed up,” I think out loud.
She smiles like a parent proud that her kid finally got the point. “Milo doesn’t care where it happens. He’ll strike wherever will get a Jaeger arrested. So now, Milo is pounding away in the pantry, you’re here like I promised everyone, and the Bay is safe. Seriously, it was like rocket science, putting all this together.”
I shake with a laugh, pulling her in tighter. “I’m glad someone else thinks like I do. We’d make a good team.”
I could use the help babysitting Iron, Dallas, and Trace.
“But …” I point out, “if someone is coming to dig up graves, I need to know in the future.”
I know exactly what they would’ve been after in the cemetery.
She fires back, “No, you don’t. You know how it’ll go bad if you try to stop them. Saints don’t always win, but they never pay. You bide your time.”
I hold her, never liking it when a Saint thinks it’s their place to handle me or my family.
But she can handle me anytime. She cares about us.
“Besides …” She starts swaying to the music as I hold her.
“Saints? Digging? Six feet of anything? In the rain? Yeah, no.”
I laugh.
“They would’ve just resorted to destroying headstones,” she says, but rushes on when I try to interject. “Which I understand are old and sacred, but the bodies would never have been disturbed.”