Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58108 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 291(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58108 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 291(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
I didn’t want him to know about my past. I didn’t want it to cloud his opinion of me. I especially didn’t want him to get sullied by me if things blew up.
He deserved someone better than me, someone without my baggage. Because I had a lot of it, and it was getting heavier. With a stupid Viking dagger.
After I kicked him out, I reloaded my pistol and opened the envelope Burn had left me.
It was all the details about the theft. The target acquisition was a Viking weapon, circa 970 A.D. named the Alfson seax, after its original seller, a mid-nineteenth century Dutch collector. Pictures of it on the Internet showed a bone grip with etched Norse knotwork studded with rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. It was believed to have originally been owned by a nobleman of some kind.
The piece was stolen by Nazi looters during World War II, only to resurface from an anonymous seller at a famous auction house last month.
The buyer, Hollywood movie star Lucas Straight, was the highest bidder for the Alfson Seax which completed his collection of Viking artifacts, normally kept on display at his Montana property. A second home to escape the insanity of LA. Since this was the pièce de résistance, his entire collection would be lent to the Smithsonian for the month of September, and armed transport had been arranged in just over a week.
Hence, the window of opportunity.
My dad had the building plans for the guy’s house from the county planning office, as well as a hand-sketched layout of the glass display case. Yeah, it was weird for a place in Bumfuck, Montana to have art displayed so grandly. It even featured wired security, and the room had laser crisscrossing the floors. No windows, only one door, but there was a small skylight. All of that for one rich man’s obsession with the Vikings.
Which was where I came in. To snag the dagger from the tricky location. The skylight would’ve been too difficult for a man my dad’s size to navigate. Even the roof was too steep and dangerous at his age. Yeah, I could see why he’d wanted my help for this job.
No, it wasn’t help. He’d wanted me to do it for him. The only way he could assist out in the middle of nowhere was be a getaway driver, and that wasn’t really necessary because being so far out of any town, there wasn’t anyone to get away from.
Ugh. So annoying. I could do it. The job was hard but not impossible.
I sat at my computer and researched it all. While my dad was good at stealing, I didn’t trust him. A job had been fucked up before, and I’d paid the price because I’d let him blindly guide me.
It just went against everything I now stood for. Like abiding by the law. And not contributing to the delinquency of my father. I’d spent all that time in juvie vowing to myself I wouldn’t go back. That I’d find a better life that stayed on the right side of right and wrong.
But his life–and mine–were on the line. Hard to see how I had any choice here. I could go to jail. Lose my job. Be shunned by the town that embraced me. My life would be over–again–because of my dad.
Of choices I hadn’t made back in the day, but I was making now.
Hayes would think horrible things about me, exactly as I expected. He’d know I’d been right to give him nothing more than my body.
I hadn’t committed a crime beyond breaking the speed limit since I walked out of juvie. I swore I’d never go back or get sucked into the life.
Until now.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
HAYES
“Here’s what I know.”
Kennedy spun in his desk chair as I came in the command room. I’d been up his ass from the moment he stirred at sunrise to research Megan’s intruders.
Now it was only eight, but the scent of garlic and meatballs from the kitchen made my stomach rumble. Mrs. L said she was making Italian for dinner, and it seemed to be an all-day process.
I’d already done five miles with Taft then showered. Kennedy had kicked me out after I’d shared all the details I could about the men at Megan’s house.
Now, I dropped into Mrs. L’s old chair. It had lace doilies on the armrests and a basket of yarn sat beside it. I felt out of place in the thing but had to admit it was comfortable.
“Her security system’s good. Too good for a small-town deputy,” he said.
“I noticed.” After almost a week of shutting it down, I knew it thoroughly. “Close to what we installed for Indi.”
He nodded.
“I was able to tap into her feeds and got images of the men,” he said.
“The guy in the suit. He’s the one I want to know about,” I told him.