Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“Call me if you need me,” Rafe ordered.
Then he was gone.
I rolled my eyes at the mysterious man’s ways, and walked inside, closing the door and locking it behind me.
I immediately walked to the alarm panel, a feeling of unease sweeping over me, and reset it.
I took a cautious look around the house, my eyes landing on a pile of food wrappers on the kitchen table, and a grin split my face.
That man of mine was always leaving trash out.
I wondered if he’d ever get to the point where he threw away his breakfast PopTart wrapper.
“Probably not,” I muttered to myself, picking it up and throwing it away.
My eyes lit on more trash in the trash can, and my brows rose.
There was a lot of food wrappers in there.
Did he clean out a stash of trash that I hadn’t known about before he’d left this morning?
Brows furrowed, I threw the wrapper in the trash can and started toward my bedroom.
I had to change clothes.
I was still in the bloody ones that I’d worn all day, and though I loved Baylor, I didn’t love wearing his blood on my clothes.
Making it to our room, I shed my t-shirt and went to unsnap my bra when I heard the words.
“You thought you could get away with it, didn’t you?”
I froze at the sound of Harold’s voice coming from inside my house. From inside my bedroom. Where I was standing.
With my shirt off.
“What are you doing in my house?” I screeched.
My hands automatically went to the bed to reach for the closest thing—which happened to be one of Baylor’s shirts—but he stopped me from reaching it by putting a gun in my face.
“You’ve ruined my life.”
I bit my lip.
“I didn’t ruin your life,” I told him bluntly, feeling so very uncomfortable that I wanted to cry. “You did that yourself.”
I swallowed.
“You’re a pretty little thing.”
I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of knowing that he’d gotten to me.
I stiffened my jaw and glared.
Wrong move, apparently.
He didn’t like the defiance.
Harold pulled the trigger.
It clicked loudly in the room.
The reverberation of the sound seemed to bounce off the walls, and my heart was racing.
I didn’t think. Didn’t even realize I was moving until I hit the floor.
And it was a good thing I did because a brown and black missile sailed past me in that moment, all fangs, bark and bite.
Where Pongo had come from, I didn’t know.
He hadn’t been there when I’d come in, and now that I thought about it, I knew that it was weird.
Normally he met us at the door.
Pongo hit Harold hard. So hard that I heard the impact from where I was on the floor.
Harold fell backward, bounced off the side of the bed, and crashed into the side table.
The alarm went off when a bowl shattered, and I gasped as I rolled to my knees to help.
Before I could so much as get to my feet, Harold was being hauled up by a very pissed off Rafe, and Pongo was growling, pissed off that his toy had been removed from his clutches.
“You. Stupid. Fuck.”
I bit my lip, shaking uncontrollably, and shivered at the pure hate that was rolling off of Rafe.
He really, really didn’t like this guy.
“We trusted you,” Rafe continued, shaking Harold lightly when he didn’t reply. “Do you know what happens when you break Free’s trust?”
Harold looked panicked as he started to claw at the hand holding him up.
“We break you.”
With that, he started dragging the man out of our house by the collar of his shirt.
I followed closely behind, racing to the alarm panel and turning it off.
“Is everything okay?”
I startled when the voice came out of the alarm panel.
“Yes,” I cleared my throat. “It was a false alarm. A bowl fell off the nightstand.”
“What’s your security phrase?”
I racked my brain, trying to remember the one that Baylor had said he used, and then I smiled. “Pongo.”
Speaking of Pongo.
I looked down at my amazing dog and grinned.
“Treats for life!” I declared.
Pongo’s ears went on alert.
Thank God he was there.
“Excellent. I’ll note it as false. Have a good night, Mrs. Hail.”
Mrs. Hail.
If that wasn’t enough to make me feel great, I didn’t know what would.
“Thank you,” I replied, then raced out of the house and into the driveway where Rafe’s car had suddenly reappeared.
“How did you get here so fast?”
Rafe slammed the trunk closed on his car and then turned to me.
“I never left.”
I closed my eyes.
“You need to call Baylor.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Rafe looked at me.
“You need to call Baylor.”
I went to argue, and he held up his hand. “It needs to be done. He needs to know. I would want to know.”
I had nothing to say to that.
He was right.
“I’ll call him,” I promised.
“The gun…”
Rafe held out his hand, and it was then I saw the gun that’d been in Harold’s hand, now in Rafe’s.