Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“Man, if I could afford to give a million dollars as a donation just to kick someone’s ass, well…I don’t know what I’d do.”
“I’m telling you,” he says as he follows me to the front door. “Let me help—”
“With my investments. Yeah, yeah, I know. You can’t do much with my measly police pension.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised.” He tugs me in for a manly hug, pats my back, and then I head down to my truck. “Thank you for today.”
“It’s what I do, as a cop and as a brother.” I wave and start the truck, then pull out of the driveway and onto the highway into town. Ryan isn’t as far out as our family ranch, so it doesn’t take quite as long to get back into Bitterroot Valley.
I’m still ten minutes out when I get a call.
“Wild,” I say.
“Chase, you need to get downtown,” Bridger Blackwell, the fire chief, says. “Now, man.”
“What’s up?”
“Summer’s shop is on fire. She’s—”
I hang up and press my foot on the gas as my heart hammers with adrenaline. I just heard from her, and she was fine. But she took the flowers back to the shop. Jesus, is she inside? Is she hurt?
The last few miles feel like they take forever, and when I reach downtown, I can’t get near the shop because of the emergency vehicles, so I pull to a stop two blocks away and jump out of my truck, running as fast as I can. The smoke is intense, and there are still flames coming out of the roof of the flower shop as well as the office next door. I scan the area, looking for Summer, and then spot her across the street.
And motherfucking Evan Spencer has his arms around her.
Seeing red, I yell out, “Summer!”
Her head whips up, looking for me, and when she sees me, her eyes fill with tears.
“Chase!”
Evan’s arms tighten around her, and Summer scowls as she shrugs him off. When I reach her, I frame her face in my hands and take her in.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “No, not at all. Evan—”
I turn on the man and punch him square in the jaw. “You’re going to learn to keep your fucking hands to yourself.”
“Hey!”
I get closer to him, intending to get right in the asshole’s face, when I smell the gasoline on him, and the fury that rolls through me is all-encompassing.
“You son of a bitch.” I swing again, this time knocking him to the ground. Fisting my hand in his shirt, I pull him to his feet and hit him again. And again.
“Chase!” Summer yells behind me, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. “You need to stop this, Chase.”
I shake my head and hit him again, satisfied when blood spurts out of his broken nose.
“Wild!” Someone grabs my arms from behind, and I’m pulled off of Evan. “Stop it, man.”
It’s Bridger and Brooks, and I shake my head, trying to shake the two brothers off.
“Let me fucking go.”
“No,” Brooks says. “You can’t kill him, man.”
“He smells of gasoline,” I inform them, and Bridger scowls down at Evan. I hear Summer gasp.
“I didn’t smell it,” she says.
“You were in the building,” Bridger reminds her. “You probably just smell smoke. You son of a bitch.”
“Hey!” Evan cries out, dabbing at his nose with his sleeve. “You can’t prove that.”
“You idiot,” I growl. “You fucking reek of gas. You set this fire.”
“Evan set the fire,” Summer says as I turn to her. She’s staring at the man in shock. “Evan, you set the fire?”
“You’re a fucking whore,” Evan erupts as rage takes over the pain he’s in. “You’re a goddamn worthless piece of shit. I did everything right. You were supposed to come running to me for help, not this asshole.” He gestures to me, and as more police join us, I let the man hang himself.
“You tried to break into my house,” Summer says as realization dawns. “You spray-painted it, broke my window. Why?”
“I’m the one you’re supposed to be with.” He’s breathing hard, and blood continues to spill onto the sidewalk from his nose. “We were going to live an amazing life in Helena. I’ll be a senator. It’s what I’ve always wanted, and if I just did a couple of small things to scare you a little, you’d come to me for help. It never would have escalated to this, but you just wouldn’t follow the goddamn plan, so your mom and I came up with this. If there’s no shop, you have nothing to stay here for. And now look what you’ve done!”
His phone rings, and he answers it before I can wrestle it away from him, but then I hear a woman’s voice say, “Is it done?”
Summer takes the phone and puts it on speaker. “Who is this?”