Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 68576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
I focused on her, seeing her cheeks go even pinker by the second. “Heard ’em a time or two, eh?”
Pepper did a full body shiver, causing me to laugh.
“Hey,” Everest shrugged. “We tried to make it happen when she wasn’t around, but when you have a wife as sexy as I do…”
“Everest!” Wendy snapped, slapping him on the chest.
He chuckled and pulled away, rubbing his chest where she’d slapped him. “Sorry, sorry.”
“The walls really are thin,” she said, embarrassed.
“It’s okay,” Pepper teased. “Y’all can borrow the noise canceling headphones I had to purchase for those times.”
Tarrant choked. “All right. On that note, it’s been a great day. I can only think of one thing that’ll make this better.”
He picked Ida up and started walking off.
“Tarrant, put me down!” Ida cried.
Tarrant ignored her and walked her all the way to a beat-up white truck in the corner of the lot.
The rest of them dispersed, and I walked Pepper and Forest to her Jeep before hustling back to my own. She waited for me to join her at the exit, then led the way to her brother’s home.
The house was cute. A single-story farmhouse-esque white number that was in the middle of town.
Wendy and Everest were just going up the stairs to their place when I saw the person on their front porch.
I parked haphazardly in the yard, half in the drive and half in the yard—I’d feel bad about denting their grass later—and rushed around the truck.
“Stop,” I ordered.
All of them froze.
Even the woman on the porch in the shadows.
Everest and Wendy came back down the stairs just as Sage appeared from the shadows.
“Well, well, well,” Sage said sweetly. “Just one big, happy family. First the baby. Now the in-laws. You’re busy, aren’t you, officer?”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“What are you doing here, Sage?” I asked carefully.
She flipped her hair, a smile on her face—one that didn’t meet her eyes—and gestured to herself. “My family lives here.”
“Your family doesn’t want you anywhere near them,” Everest snapped. “Your family wants you to disappear into a black hole and never come back again.”
Harsh.
But Sage had done a lot to their family.
I couldn’t feel bad about his words to my one-time friend anymore.
If we were ever friends.
“Harsh, brother.” Sage fluttered her eyes at him. “I need my family. I’m a broken woman, don’t you know?”
“Broken woman?” Wendy put in. “That’s quite hilarious.”
“I am!” she snapped. “And why the fuck are you even talking to me? I thought that we were friends.”
“We were ‘friends’ that weren’t really friends,” Wendy said. “You know why I don’t like you. But if you need reminding, I don’t like how you treat your family. I don’t like how you get pleasure out of hurting your family. I don’t like that you play this weird game with people, making them think you’re this helpless doll that needs saving. If they only knew you were a psychopath, they might not fall for your crap.”
“Still not cursing, I see. Same ol’ Wendy.” She came merrily down the steps of Wendy and Everest’s house.
She walked right up to Everest, patted him on the chest, and said, “You know, I needed you in the hospital and you never came.”
“You were in the hospital because you are a psycho who likes pain,” Everest said. “And you played this poor guy, making him feel sorry for you, so he’d stay. I do have a question, though. That day that Mom had her heart attack, and you were ‘attacked,’ what actually happened?”
Since she wasn’t paying attention to me, I pulled my phone out, hit record, and tucked it into the front of my pants.
I moved closer so that whatever she said would hopefully be picked up well by the camera’s microphone.
My movement didn’t garner her attention, though.
I kept moving toward Pepper, nearly at her side, when Sage finally began.
“Oh, why not?” she said. “I mean, I guess you might as well know.”
We all waited, and she gave a great, theatrical pause before starting. “I was with my newest boyfriend, Teddy. Teddy and I were going back and forth on whose job it was to pay for some… expenses that might or might not have been accrued by me.”
“Oh, tell us about these charges.” Wendy snorted.
“Well,” she smiled then. “I found out that he was thinking about buying a new car, and he wouldn’t let me buy the old one from him. So I might or might not have destroyed his credit.”
“Let me guess,” Pepper snorted. “You took out credit cards in his name? How’d you find his social security number?”
It sounded like she was experienced in such matters.
My hand fisted at my side.
“Oh, it was a couple of online loans.” She waved her hand through the air as if it was no big deal that she’d committed identity theft.