Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
I started laughing, at the same time thinking I was really going to like these people.
“You need to clean up?” he asked.
I nodded.
He touched his lips to my mouth, my nose, my forehead, then he rolled off me.
I scooted off the bed, went to the bathroom, took care of business, then grabbed my nightie from the hook on the back of the door and pulled it over my head.
When I got back to the bedroom, Cap had his pants up, was bootless, still shirtless (his shirt was in the living room), walking toward the door and asking me, “Got a pen and paper?”
“What?”
He stopped, cupped my jaw and repeated, “Pen and paper?”
I was confused about this question, but I answered, “TV cabinet, top middle drawer.”
He nodded and took off.
I located my panties and tugged them on.
He came back, sat on the side of the bed and ordered, “Lap.”
I felt my mouth quirk at his bossy, but I didn’t hesitate to climb in his lap.
He pulled my legs to the side, swinging them over his thigh so I was stable and all kinds of comfy. He wrapped an arm around me and still managed to hold the notepad so he could write on it.
I had no idea what he was doing, but whatever it was, he had my full attention.
“You got no pens that aren’t pink and don’t have little crowns on top of them,” he remarked.
I pulled my shoulders forward and gave him big eyes.
“What can I say? I’m a girl.”
He shook his head then turned his attention to the paper.
He wrote:
Who? – victim
When? – opportunity?
Where? – opportunity?
How? – opportunity?
Why? – motive
He formed a bracket on all that and swooped an arrow down to the last thing he wrote.
Who? – suspect/perpetrator
Then he pointed the little crown at the top of the pen toward my wall, then down, tapping it on the pad, and he said, “That’s the basic outline of an investigation.”
Oh.
My.
God.
“Cap,” I breathed, not able to process what he was doing and saying, how enormous it was and how much it meant to me.
“You start with the victim. Who they are. What they do. Where they live and work. Who they know. Do they owe someone money? Do they have something someone wants? Have they pissed someone off? And that doesn’t mean they’re the asshole. Someone can get pissed off and it isn’t the victim’s fault. All your leads are not gonna stem from them. So don’t lean too hard into that. They could have done nothing. It could be a crime of opportunity. Which is when you start digging into the when, where and how, which might also lead to answers to other questions. But always start with the first ‘who’ on your road to get to the second one.”
I put a hand to his cheek.
He looked into my eyes.
“How did I score an awesome dude like you?” I asked him.
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself for the last week, though, without the word ‘dude’ in the question.”
God, he rocked.
I kissed him.
He dropped the pad and pen to the floor and twisted us so my back was to the bed, and he was on me.
It was getting hot and heavy, I was happily riding that, when an angry knock sounded on my door.
Cap lifted his head and stilled.
I turned mine to look at my Alexa.
It was nearly midnight.
I turned back to Cap. “Who could that be?”
“Stay here,” he growled and knifed off me.
My bargain-basement stun gun was in my closet, so I got off my bed and dashed there.
I stopped moving when I heard Martha demand, “Where is she?”
I then heard Cap’s low murmur, but couldn’t make out any words.
I walked to the door to the hall and saw her standing in my living room with Cap (he’d put on his shirt, alas), a robe wrapped tightly around her body and flip flops on her feet.
She spied me and immediately jabbed a finger my way.
“There you are! I have a bone to pick with you!”
“Martha, it’s nearly midnight,” I informed her as I walked down my hall.
She ignored that and shared, “Five minutes ago, I knocked on Alexis’s door to tell that girl to keep down the racket. And who answered?”
Cap rounded me as I made it to the living room and stopped, so he stopped close behind me.
Okay, yeah.
Now that I knew I had to open that door, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be hard to let him inside so he could have my back, because he felt perfect standing right there.
Martha also stopped speaking, and it was clear she wanted me to answer.
“Alexis?” I guessed.
“No!” she shouted, “Jacob!”
My mouth dropped open very wide in a happy “O.”
One could say Jacob didn’t let a single blade of grass grow under that.
Cap’s hand came to rest on the small of my back.