Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
JJ and I clung to the shadows as he followed me to my rental car. He didn’t question me about where my Mustang was. Instead, he quietly slipped into the passenger seat and scanned our surroundings as I got the car moving.
Neither of us spoke during the two-hour ride to Ventura Harbor. I’d already learned the schedule of the nighttime security guard who monitored the gate that kept strangers away from the dock that led to several houseboats. Like clockwork, the guard took his break five minutes after JJ and I reached the marina.
The cover of darkness made it easy to get to my grandparents’ houseboat. Once we’d boarded the vessel, I led JJ to the innermost part of the house, which happened to be the living room, and turned on a single light that had a dimmer attached. Even at the lowest setting, I had no trouble seeing JJ’s face as he settled into the single oversized chair in the room.
“I’ll get us something to drink,” I said clumsily. “I’ve got beer or water.”
“Water’s fine,” JJ called because I was already heading out of the room. Although the houseboat was larger than most in the harbor, it suddenly felt like the smallest. I fiddled with the bottle of JJ’s water and my own bottle of beer. My hands were still shaking, just like they’d been in the bathroom as well as the car ride. My befuddled brain somehow remembered to grab one of the many burner phones from a drawer before returning to the living room.
“Here,” I said with as much disinterest as I could muster as I handed JJ the water and the phone. “It’s a burner,” I explained. He nodded in understanding. Even if he hadn’t been a cop, Sully would have made damn sure that his little brother knew what a throwaway phone was and what it was used for.
“Call your brother,” I said. “He’s got to be going out of his mind by now.”
I used the moment to return to the kitchen so I could swallow several slugs of the beer before I began rummaging around for some snacks. The cupboards were bare and there was only a half-eaten carton of Chinese food in the fridge.
There was plenty of beer, though.
I grabbed a second longneck bottle as I finished off the first one. I nearly choked when I heard a voice behind me.
“Where do you want this?” JJ asked as he held out the burner phone. His eyes were on my beer instead of me.
Well, they were on both beers. I grabbed the phone from him and then turned my back so I wouldn’t have to see the disappointment in his eyes. I tossed the phone into a large bucket filled with water that already held at least a dozen other now dead burner phones. Since I’d missed the evolution of technology, I wasn’t sure what kind of resources JJ’s brother and his men had access to when it came to tracing the phones, so I’d been paying for them in cash and destroying them after a single use.
“I left my phone at my house,” JJ said as he settled onto one of the barstools that took up one side of the kitchen counter.
I nodded and took a long swallow of beer.
“When did you start drinking?” JJ asked. The question held no judgment, but I could tell he was surprised. He’d known from the time I’d been a teenager that I didn’t drink. I’d left that to my father, grandfather, and endless assortment of stepmothers, uncles, aunts, and cousins. I’d had the occasional beer here and there, but I’d always steered clear of the hard stuff. Even when I did have a beer, I rarely finished the bottle because I’d never wanted to lose control of myself to something that had the power to do so much damage.
“Does it matter?” I asked crisply. I wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. A single touch from the man sitting before me had more power over me than every last beer in the entire world.
Despite the space between JJ and me being considerably greater than it had been in that dingy public bathroom, he might as well have had his body pressed right up against mine. The knowledge that I finally had him alone, truly alone, was making all the blood rush south. Thankfully, the darkened interior of the boat made it easy to hide my predicament.
I was surprised when JJ suddenly jumped up so he could open a sliding door that let in the ocean breeze and the sound of waves that I’d come to love in the short time I’d been staying on the houseboat.
Just like the public bathroom, I hadn’t given the closed door any thought because I’d been too focused on JJ. It was the same now, but fortunately he didn’t know that.