Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Something cracked behind me, and I winced when I saw the door that had been closed was now open. A bullet had hit the door handle, and I highly doubted that it would be an easy repair thanks to half the door missing.
“Takes some balls to do it while we’re here,” Ghost, who’d come out of the woods like a wraith, said.
I handed over Cody, and Ghost took him with very little effort.
Conleigh crawled out moments later and then backed away.
The moment my foot hit the windowsill, something cracked behind me, and a sudden blaze of fire licked my right side.
And everything went black.
***
“Don’t let her out of your sight.” I heard my son’s voice saying. “Take her out of state. Don’t let her come back until this is taken care of.”
I’d heard Winnie’s voice at some point in this conversation, but the pain had sucked me back under before I could do or say anything.
***
Three days later
“I need y’all to do something for me,” I said to the club that had gathered around my hospital bed.
“Anything.” That came from Aaron.
“I need y’all to find this guy. I don’t care how or if it’s done legally. I just want to know that he’s not out there, waiting around the corner to do this to them again. The law may not be on our side, but it’s pretty damn obvious to me and everyone in this goddamn town that he did what he did because he wanted us dead.” I drew a breath, and it burned. “I want you to find him. I want you to fucking rile him up. Then I want you to bring him here.”
“What are you going to do once he’s here?”
“Leave that to me.”
Nobody argued, and I was thankful for that.
***
It took them less than eight hours to bring him to me.
He was roughed up, but he wasn’t broken. Not yet, anyway.
“Anybody see you?”
Sean, my son, shook his head. “No, they didn’t. We had a friend shut down the camera feed for about twenty minutes.” His eyes missed nothing. “The staff on this floor is in the middle of a shift change. They won’t be paying attention for at least another fifteen minutes or so…Dad, what are you going to do?”
I closed my eyes, then reopened them. “Don’t worry about it.”
Sean opened his mouth.
“Did you bring it?”
Sean nodded reluctantly. “Yeah.”
“Let me have it.” I patted the bed.
Sean walked around where Fender was holding Anderson steady and placed a bag holding my personal weapon on the bed.
Anderson’s eyes went to it—the medium-sized black bag looked rather innocent.
I was sure there were also other things in there, but I was only interested in the one thing.
Sean, of course, didn’t know what was in it. He only knew that it had a few things that I usually took with me when I stayed over at Winnie’s place. Lucky for me it’d been in my truck for a little over a week now.
Otherwise it would have burned up in the fire right along with the rest of my shit.
I reached forward and tugged the bag up to me, ignoring the fact that my legs protested the action.
Then again, my whole body seemed to protest any action.
I had burns down the length of my chest along my right side that extended over the top of my right thigh and all the way down to my foot. I guess I should be thankful that it was somewhat localized to just one side instead of my entire body.
But the goddamn things still hurt.
“Let him go,” I ordered.
Fender set him free.
“Y’all can go.”
Sean hesitated. “Winnie…”
My gaze sharpened. “What about her?”
“She’s leaving.”
My jaw clenched.
She said she would.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
I’d heard from Sean earlier in the day that Winnie was refusing to stay with them. She wanted to be with me.
But I’d told them to hold her against her will if they had to. At least until we had Anderson in custody.
“I’ll call her later,” I said.
Sean just shook his head.
“This is not a good idea.”
Then he turned and left, leaving me all alone with Anderson.
“Now’s your one and only chance,” I said. “Then I’m going to kill you.”
“You can’t kill me,” he countered. “But this’ll be fun.”
It was.
For me.
Not so much for him.
Chapter 21
Dating older men doesn’t make me sick. It does make me sore sometimes, though.
-Winnie to her ex-husband
Winnie
“Mom, are you sure it’s safe?” Conleigh asked.
I nodded. “Sean told me that Anderson is dead.”
I didn’t go into details about how Anderson had snuck into Steel’s room at the hospital—or I’d been told. Or how he’d almost killed Steel. Instead, I stuck with only a partial truth.
Today, I’d realized two things.
One, I needed to leave Steel.
And two, I was almost responsible for not just my babies losing their lives, but Steel as well.