Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Did he pale at that? I thought he did. Amusement filtered through me. “If you marry Tessa, you’ll become a brother to Donna and me.” I was the youngest.
He gulped. “I can handle Donna, but you get shot at a lot.”
I frowned. “Not anymore.”
He looked toward the door, his gaze intense.
I secured my purse farther up on my shoulder. “Do you have to go back to the office before you meet Tessa for dinner? I recognized the expression you just wore.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I have a desk full of cases, and Friday night is usually pretty quiet at the office. I have a couple of phone calls to make before I meet your sister.”
I had worked for Nick for a while until he fired me, which, frankly, I’d probably deserved. I’d never really been one to hold a grudge, and since I’d opened my own practice with my partner, Clark, everything had turned out fine. “Is everything good?” Nick and I didn’t have any cases against each other right now, so he had no reason to hide anything.
Nick shook his head. “Did you read the newspaper article about the two bodies found last weekend?”
Definitely. Two deaths were big news in our neck of the woods. The paper had reported limited facts about the entire situation, and it was extremely rare for the rumor mill not to have filled in the details yet. The police department was never this locked down. “Yes,” I said. “Have the bodies been identified?”
Nick’s frown darkened. “I don’t know. I’m getting the runaround from the police, which is rare and surprising—considering I’ll prosecute whoever murdered them.”
“It was murder for sure?” I asked, curious.
“That’s as much as I know,” he said.
“Wow, it’s kind of bizarre.” The bodies had been found in the basement of the old Marsh place on the far east side of Lilac Lake. It had been a functioning mansion years ago and then fell into disrepair. In fact, I remembered partying out there quite a bit in high school. We used to have large keggers in what we considered a haunted house.
Of course, now that all the property around the lake was in such high demand, some folks from California had purchased it to tear it down and build something more modern. When they excavated, they’d found two bodies in a blocked-off cement room in the basement. Rumors flew around town regarding who it could be, but so far, the police had been inexplicably quiet.
“Maybe they can’t identify the victims,” I said.
“Probably not.” Nick reached for the ring box. “I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. It’s not like my docket isn’t full.”
No kidding. It’d already been a busy beginning to the year. I took a deep breath. The smell of lemon oil and cookie-scented candle filled the air and just made me happy. Okay, maybe all the gorgeous jewelry around me did. I was a girl who loved her sparkles.
A jingle of the bell above the door trilled, and Nick and I both ignored it as Duke handed over a credit card receipt for Nick to sign. I angled closer to him, trying to see how much the bands had cost, but the print was too small to read. Darn it. It was none of my business, but curiosity had always been my downfall.
Well, I had several downfalls, but that was one of them. I moved even closer just as something flew by my head to hit the wall. I jumped back, my gaze catching on an arrow stuck into an older picture of the lake next to Duke’s ear. An actual freaking golden arrow.
Nick swiveled around as I did, and then my mind went blank. Three men stood in front of us, all dressed like...various Cupids.
“What the fuck?” Nick snapped, smoothly sliding the ring box into his pocket.
My jaw dropped open. Three men were dressed as close to Cupid as possible in such a cold climate. The first guy, the one with the now empty bow, was extremely tall and appeared muscular in a tight black shirt, black jeans, and black boots with thin, gold-colored laces. He wore a golden mask covering his angular face and had even dyed his curly hair gold. Maybe it was a wig. A gold and black quiver hung over his shoulder, the strap also a bronzy gold. Even his hands were covered in black gloves with burnished gold cuffs.
The other two men were much shorter, and one held an arrow already nocked in his bow. They were dressed similarly, except both wore white shirts and had the cuffs of their pants rolled up slightly over their boots. They were also both very wide with big bellies and couldn’t be much taller than me.
“Now,” the fit guy muttered to the other two. He reached for another arrow and nocked it in his bow. “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he growled, his voice low and sounding a little tinny, like he was wearing some sort of voice synthesizer behind the golden mask.