Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
-Coffee Cup
KOBE
The moment that I offered her the job, I wished I could take it back.
Not because I didn’t think I could use her help but because the thought of seeing her every day literally made me sick to my stomach.
“What’s with that face?” Bain asked.
I looked over at my fellow club member, then shrugged.
Telling him that I was nauseous at the thought of seeing someone every day, someone that the entire club liked, made me sound like a pussy.
And regardless of what my sister said, I wasn’t one.
“I offered Folsom a job,” I muttered distractedly.
Thinking about my sister was a slippery slope. One I tried not to think about too often.
When I thought about her, I was inevitably led down a rabbit hole of childhood trauma that I tried really hard not to think about.
Such as the emails I kept getting from my father. They were getting more frequent. More urgent, too.
“Whoa,” Bain said. “You offered her a job? Did she accept?”
We all knew of Folsom’s proclivity for change. She stayed at a job long enough to learn the trade, then she moved on, ready for her next adventure. Last month, she’d worked at the popular fast-food chain Raising Cane’s just long enough to learn their secret sauce recipe and quit.
The month before that, she’d taken pity on Diana—Bain’s wife—and Matilda—Etienne’s wife—and helped them out at their vet clinic for a month. Funny thing was, when I’d first started coming around the crew, Matilda, Diana and Folsom had all graduated from veterinary school at the same time. When I’d asked Diana and Matilda why Folsom wasn’t practicing with them like I’d been under the impression that she was, they’d said that she didn’t like staying at one job for long.
She was a “professional student,” according to Matilda.
I hadn’t really understood that until I found out about her genius IQ. Then it’d started making sense. People with brains like her, brains like my sister, they couldn’t stand being idle. Fun to them was learning new things.
And, apparently for Folsom, fun was learning new trades and tricks by getting jobs and moving on once she’d absorbed all she could absorb.
“She did,” I nodded. “I guess I need to get with her on when, though. I kind of expected to see her at something over the last few days to be able to talk to her about that. Have you seen her?”
Bain was already shaking his head. “Nope.”
I sighed.
I’d have to go to where she lived.
Everyone knew where that was.
That impossible-to-get-into subdivision was right off the main road, and everyone talked about it like it was Fort Knox.
Quietly from afar, I’d admired it. I liked how secure it was and really liked how well it was monitored. As a professional security consultant and owner of my own security business, I knew the ins and outs of what was best. And let me tell you, the way all of these houses were monitored…it was as if I’d done the security myself.
Needless to say, I knew that I’d be heading that way to inspect the property firsthand.
It was time to talk to her.
It’d been four days, and she hadn’t come in yet. I wasn’t sure why I’d gotten so lucky, but it was something that I was going to stop.
“I gotta go,” I grumbled, dropping down a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet and picking up my beer. After downing it—my first of the day, thank you very much—I gave Bain a “see you later” nod and headed toward Folsom’s place.
My luck was on my side because as I was coming in, the sheriff was going out.
I pulled over to the side and rolled my window down.
He rolled his down and grinned at me. “Heard you rescued a little boy. Thought you didn’t do that anymore?”
I rolled my eyes.
I did do that, but mostly I worked cold cases. Ones that had been so cold that there wasn’t a single ember left burning in the case.
Those were my jam and butter. Those were the ones that made my soul sing.
Finding missing people from four years ago…reuniting a mom with her daughter that’d been missing for seven years. Those were the types of ones that I worked.
Because, for the most part, new missing children cases were solved very fast. Either they were found alive because they went wandering too far, or they were taken like Sam’s grandchild was, safe and sound hours later. Or they were found dead, most likely killed by someone they knew.
But it was the odd cases, the one that had a child disappear in the middle of the night from the most loving family, without a single trace as to where they had gone. The case where they’d been missing so long that any and all evidence was either accounted for or completely missed but swept away with time…those were the ones that made me want to dig and dig until I found something.