Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
She sniffled, the first sign of emotion she’d displayed since she’d kicked him in the balls. “I’m okay. He was going to kill Kyle. I thought about letting him, but I figured Kyle would be heavier to carry. He’s got at least a hundred pounds on that guy.”
“Well, Kyle’s gotten tubby because he’s been working at a bar that serves nothing but burgers and fries,” Ian replied.
“I have not gotten tubby. And Sandra serves salads.” Not often, since she ran a bar in the middle of rural Wyoming, but he felt the need to defend himself.
Ian snorted and stepped back, putting his hands on Mae’s shoulders. “You go upstairs and settle in for the night. I know you wanted to be out of this place, but it’s the best I can do for tonight. We’ll talk to these guys in the morning and get things sorted out.”
“I have a safe house and a plan.” Sure his plans up to now had gone to hell, but that didn’t mean he was changing the rest of them. He needed his uncle’s help with the body, but if he let things go, Ian would take over. Ian would call his stepdad and then his mom would be involved and his brothers and sister would show up, and he wasn’t ready for that.
MaeBe simply walked into the club, West following behind her.
“Hey, she doesn’t need you anymore,” Kyle called out. “You can go home.”
West didn’t look back, but his arm came up and so did his middle finger.
“He’s fitting in well. I was worried about that idiot for a while, but he’s coming along nicely,” his uncle said with a nod, and then those blue eyes were arctic. “You are another story altogether. What the hell are you doing here, Kyle? Besides dropping dead bodies off. Should I bother trying to ID this one? He doesn’t look like John Smith, but dead bodies are weird things. Yours didn’t look like you at all.”
And his uncle was right back to being an asshole. It had probably been his idea to throw the fake funeral that Kyle had been promised included a blow-up doll and all of his hard-earned gaming systems. He’d loved that Xbox. “It’s not John Smith. Although we’re sure that’s not his real name.”
They didn’t know much about the man who’d taken the identity of John Smith from Colorado. He wasn’t even sure he’d taken an identity the way Julia had or if his ID was simply fake.
“The intel we have placed the man known as John Smith in Europe last week. MI6 had picked him up for questioning. He was brought to DC,” Drake explained. “And somewhere along the way, a prisoner switch was made. The man in custody in DC was not the same John Smith who worked with Julia. He looked similar, but the facial recognition doesn’t match. After some talk the man admitted he wasn’t Smith, but he wouldn’t give us more than that. And then he was found dead in his cell. Poison.”
“So he’s in the wind, or more than likely, he’s back with Julia,” his uncle mused. “Unless he’s the one pulling the strings tonight.”
“I assure you, no one is pulling the strings except Julia.” Of that he was certain. A car began to pull into the lot and Kyle recognized Alex McKay’s big SUV. “I asked you to keep this quiet. Have you already called my parents?”
“Alex is the soul of discretion,” Ian assured them all. “And no, I didn’t call your parents. You’re going to do that before we have our debrief tomorrow.”
He intended to be out of Texas tomorrow. He certainly wasn’t planning a family reunion. They’d had one of those in Wyoming when his mother had shown up completely uninvited. Not because he didn’t want to see her. He missed the hell out of his family, but it was dangerous to be around him right now.
If Mae was in the same situation, would you accept her doing what you did?
Angie’s question had been asked while they’d been making apple hand pies. He’d barely realized it was therapy because the sneaky lady had built their “talks” around work. And she hadn’t required an answer from him. Merely smiled and said it was “something to consider.”
If his mother was a bomb waiting to go off, would Sean be satisfied with staying at a safe distance?
If someone was coming after MaeBe and she couldn’t stand the thought of him being hurt, would he accept being left behind?
At first he’d told himself it was a dumb question. He was trained and she wasn’t. Now he had to consider the fact that she might have loved him enough to take the risk, and if he didn’t let her make the decision he was…what was the word Angie used…marginalizing her.