Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
We skipped the security checkpoint, hopping over the metal blockade that was meant to keep people from doing what I’d just done.
When I got into the main area of the tent, I headed toward where I could hear people talking.
Tonight, the only ones eating were supposedly family.
That was why, as I rounded the corner, I started calling out for Keene the moment I’d reached the food truck area.
“Keene!” I called out.
Where was he…there!
He looked up from a plate of nachos he’d been eating, a frown on his face, and said, “Yeah?”
“That man you let go,” I said. “Did you make sure he left the property?”
“I did,” Hannibal called out, looking alert and ready.
Keene, now nacho free, started walking toward me. “What is it?”
I looked around but didn’t spot her.
“We got a name from Idabell today,” I said as I continued to scan the faces, only to not find her. “Dario Espada. Jessup Smith, the one that you escorted out, answers to him.”
A scream.
A short, sharp, quickly cut off sound that had us all turning in the direction it’d just come from.
Shadows.
I was moving toward the shadows of the tent as soon as the sound had escaped.
I found her there, the only thing illuminating the area a small security light that looked like it’d been turned toward the building instead of facing out, with a man pointing a gun at her head.
She was slowly straightening to her full height, and she was staring at the man with the gun like he had just ruined her world.
And maybe he had.
“Sir,” I said as I stared at the gun, my heart in my throat, and the thought of ‘please not her’ in my head. “Please put the gun down. Nobody has to get hurt here.”
The man looked at me like I was stupid.
Maybe I was for thinking he’d follow an order. But I didn’t know what else to do.
He was pointing a gun at her, for Christ’s sake. I only took lives, I didn’t try to prevent them from leaving Earth.
This was all new for me. And the panic I was feeling at the thought of her getting hurt in any way was a stifling, almost debilitating sensation inside me that was making it extremely hard to think logically.
“You can go fuck yourself,” he said. “I’m busy.”
“Sir,” I said again, aware that more and more people were joining us in the shadows.
That’s when I nearly lost it.
Crimson, who was now fully on her feet and holding the back of her head like she’d hit it, turned only her eyes to me.
And the fear that I saw in them. The confidence that she knew I’d save her. It was nothing less than horrifying.
She trusted me so much that she knew I’d keep her safe.
“Listen,” I tried again. “We can work this out any other way than this. If you want to hurt someone, we’ll happily allow that to happen. Just not to her. I’m here. I had a hand in getting you taken out of the complex.”
Never would it be acceptable for her to hurt.
He turned and stared at me with vacant eyes.
“You?” he asked. “I didn’t even see you.”
I watched out of the corner of my eye as Crimson tried to move toward the male, intent on surprising him while his attention was elsewhere, but I saw what she didn’t.
The man knew she was about to move because he was watching her out of the corner of his eye like I was watching her.
Just as I said, “Sunny, don’t!” he lifted the gun and aimed it directly at her face.
“No!” I bellowed, trying to move toward him. But it was useless. I was too far away, and there was no way I was stopping a bullet. I wasn’t that fast.
He shot her.
Before I could so much as react, he’d shot her.
She fell into the tent pole in slow motion, and I watched helplessly as the tent collapsed above the two of them.
The big, metal beam fell and collapsed on top of her, way too much steel to ever fall on top of a person and them not sustain any injuries from it.
I moved, almost on autopilot, and started to pull back the red and white tent material, trying to unearth the woman who had stolen my heart without me even realizing it.
All her annoyingly persistent texts and unauthorized visits had paid off.
I was hers.
And Jessup Smith had shot her.
The fabric kept falling, the other tent poles no match for the thousands of pounds of fabric it’d been holding up.
In a matter of seconds, the entire tent area that had been covering the food trucks and the side of the building was down.
On top of the woman who was bleeding from a gunshot wound.
Nobody struggled underneath it, either, giving me a very nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach.