Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
“He’s asked me to escort you to another location.”
“The park,” I say.
He glances over at me. “Yes. The park.”
That Reese wants to meet out in the open seems like good news and I quicken my pace, hoping that I’m about to arrive at the park and find out that our problems with Debbie are over. We take the walk briskly and the minute I see Reese standing at the food trucks, I rush toward him and into his arms. He grabs me and drags me out of the walkway, behind the truck. “What’s happened?” I ask.
He answers by tangling fingers in my hair and kissing me, leaving me just as desperate for more of the kiss as I am the answer to my question.
Chapter sixty-six
Cat
Reese thoroughly kisses me, a passionate, deep kiss, behind a food truck in the park, where we first started to get to know each other. “I cannot stand the idea that she was following you,” he says, tearing his mouth from mine, “that she came to your doctor’s office. It scares the shit out of me and you know I don’t get rattled.”
“You can’t be rattled. You have court.”
“I’m just fine in the courtroom with you there, but Debbie clearly has someone working with her. She didn’t follow you, Cat. She knew where you were and went to you.” His hands settle on my shoulders. “That’s a problem.”
“A private investigator maybe?”
“Or an accomplice as crazy or crazier than her. Royce is working on it. We have a team around us working on this. Savage is staying with you everywhere you go.”
“Under the circumstances, I’m not going to complain.”
He cups my face. “But even with all of this going on, I came here for a reason. This place is part of our good luck ritual, it’s a part of us. We’re not giving that up. No one takes anything that is us from us.”
Our ritual. Our good luck. It’s his trial, but since we met he treats everything like it’s ours. And so do I. My hand presses to his chest. “No. No, we’re not. Let’s get your hot dog.”
He cups my face. “You really haven’t doubted me once, have you?”
“No, I haven’t. I’d know if you were cheating. We wouldn’t be us anymore.”
“You would and so would I, not many couples can say that.”
“Debbie picked the wrong couple,” I say.
“Yes,” he agrees, lacing his hand with mine. “She did.” His blue eyes are warm and the bond between us rich with history and the friendship that has made our relationship everything and more.
We round the truck and Reese orders his hot dog and my ritual bag of nuts. I don’t spy Savage anywhere, but I know he’s here, watching us, protecting us. “I’m going to try to call Reid,” I say.
“I talked to him on the way over here,” Reese says, handing me my nuts and a bottle of water.
“And?”
“Not much to tell,” he says, accepting his hot dog and facing me, he motions me forward. “Let’s go sit.”
I nod and we move to our favorite bench behind the truck, far away from the courthouse and press craziness. “Debbie told Reid I visited her apartment regularly. He told her he wanted the security footage. She refused. Reid called Royce to see if his team can retrieve it.”
“Can they?” I ask.
“Royce said he’d already pulled the footage to look for an accomplice. As far as proving I was never there,” he looks at me, “and I wasn’t, never, not even the two times I was with her, he’s working on it, but he needs to narrow the timeline. He’s guessing based on her pregnancy timeline. And even that’s a guess. Reid said he’d work on pinning her down.”
“She’s still at his office?”
“Yes. He basically left her in the conference room simmering. He also said she continues to ask for a million dollars but he hasn’t gotten her to say what she’ll do if she doesn’t get it, yet.”
I know what there is to know now and I decide it’s time to refocus my husband. “How’d you feel about this morning?”
“I’d feel unchallenged if not for the audio release. This case is a joke. There’s no evidence, but that audio hitting right before court, when the jury could hear it, lingers in my mind, as it will in theirs. They’ll want to convict her.”
“When you look at it like that, then maybe the DA did release the tape. He’d have gambled that you wouldn’t postpone the trial. And why wouldn’t he gamble with such a weak case?”
Reese finishes off a bite of his hot dog. “Regardless, and as it always is, the only way to one hundred percent get a client set free is to force a confession from someone else or at least prove guilt. We won’t prove guilt so we need to force the confession.”