Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Smart thinking,” I said, reaching out to give her hip a squeeze, sensing how this was starting to weigh on her.
“Now I’m ready.”
With that, we headed out.
Cali plastered herself to me on the bike, and with each passing mile, I could feel the tension leaving her body. Only to have it return as we walked into the bank.
I had to say it was a new side of Cali, standing there at her side as she talked to the bank employee, giving them documents, explaining the situation.
As much as some part of me had wanted, when I’d seen her again, to still think of her as Clay’s baby sister, she was clearly all grown up.
I stood at her side as we were led into the vault where the employee pulled the box out of a wall of them, placing it on the table, and then politely excusing himself to let us explore the contents in privacy.
“You okay?” I asked, rubbing her lower back as she stared at it.
“I’m kind of afraid of what we might find in here.”
“I’m right here,” I reminded her. “We will handle whatever it is together.”
To that, she nodded, sticking the key in the lock, and pulling open the lid.
“What, and I can’t stress this enough, the fuck?” she asked.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cali
I guess I’d been expecting other, I don’t know, important documents. Or maybe even more of the flash drives like Brooks had found.
I didn’t expect what we found instead.
Stacks and stacks of money.
And a gun.
“Fuck,” Brooks said, closing the lid.
“What are—“
“Cameras,” he whispered under his breath, barely moving his lips in the process.
“Oh,” I said, casually glancing around.
“Here,” Brooks said, grabbing my purse, and swinging it up and off of me, placing it on the table, then unzipping it as he positioned the box so that when the lid was raised, it seemed to block the camera’s view.
He was deathly silent as he unzipped my purse, then held it open, giving me a prompting look.
With numb hands, I carefully shoved the money in, but his hand dropped on top of mine when I reached for the gun.
“Prints,” he said.
I didn’t really understand why that mattered if we were taking it.
Brooks slipped a bill out of the stack in the purse, using it to grab the gun, and shove it into the purse without touching it.
“Let’s get out of here,” Brooks said, handing me back my purse, then closing the box. “Act normal,” he demanded in my ear as he pressed a kiss there.
He wrapped an arm around me and led me out of the bank.
My heart was punching against my ribcage, sure the security officer was going to follow us out, that cop cars might come flying into the lot, grabbing us, and hauling us off to jail.
None of that happened, though, as we silently climbed on Brooks’s bike.
I wasn’t surprised when we pulled into the clubhouse lot instead of toward my apartment.
I could practically read Brooks’s thoughts.
That whatever Clay was involved in was clearly illegal, and he didn’t want that shit in my home.
But, I guess, most things about Brooks’s life were, you know, illegal. So it made sense for him to bring it into his home instead.
His hand reached for mine, fingers slipping between mine, and pulling me in through the bustling common area.
“I might need to talk to you later,” he said, nodding his chin at a tall, good-looking man who had that kind of swaggering confidence that came with leadership.
The man’s gaze moved over me, then back to Brooks, nodding. Like he almost understood the whole situation immediately.
Once inside his bedroom, I flung off the purse, then dropped down on his bed, exhaling hard.
“You know, criminal stuff isn’t quite as exciting in real life as it looks in the movies,” I told him, getting a surprised huff of a laugh out of Brooks as he grabbed the purse from off of the floor, and placed it on his nightstand.
“You get used to it,” he admitted as he went into his bathroom, then came back with disposable gloves in his hand, slipping them on, then going into my purse.
“Why did he have a gun?” I asked, the question plaguing me since the moment I’d seen it.
“That’s a good question,” Brooks said as he pulled it out, turning it in his hand.
“You know about guns?” I asked.
“Since this club is in the business of running guns, yes,” he said, giving me a small smile.
“Oh, right. So, what does the gun tell you?”
“Guns don’t really do much talking, baby,” he said, but he did something that made the clip or magazine or… I didn’t even know what to call it… pop out. “Except it’s been fired.”
“He shot someone?”
“We don’t know that,” Brooks said, shaking his head. “We don’t even know if it’s his. But we do know that it’s likely not a legal one if he was hiding it in a safety deposit box.”