Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
I flip the quarter into the center of the alleyway, and it lands on the pavement and then clanks as it wobbles. It’s an invitation. Come get me. I wait and wait some more, but there is no impatience in me. I don’t need to move to feel relief. The numbers in my head are running and running for me, calculating risk, assessing my next move. I don’t even flinch when the other man must decide he doesn’t like his odds, and darts out from behind the trashcan and starts running. Smart man. The odds were against him, but that hasn’t changed. I might still be wearing a portion of a suit, but I’m fast and I run behind him, yanking him back and shoving him against the fence in thirty seconds.
“What were your orders?”
“Fuck you,” the man growls.
I smirk. “My mother was good and kind, unwilling to hurt anyone. In many ways, I’m not my mother’s son.” I knee him and he groans. “I’m my father’s son,” I add, “and I suspect she knew that when she asked me not to go after the Kingston family. She knew if I did, I’d destroy them. That’s who you’re working for, right?”
“Fuck you again!” he shouts.
“Again it is,” I say, giving him a repeat knee, this time with such force that when I let him go, he crumbles to the ground. He groans and moans, and when a homeless man wanders into the alleyway, I point at him, telling him he’s next if he doesn’t back off, and he runs away.
My would-be attacker rolls to his back and I press my foot to his crotch. “What were your orders?”
“To scare you.”
“We both know that’s a lie.” I pull up his shirt and eye the gun there, complete with a silencer. “Who sent you to kill me?”
“Your father,” he bites out and then tries to spit at me, like a fool. Obviously, my father doesn’t know how to hire a good killer, which works for me right about now.
I reach for my phone and snap a photo of him and then grind my foot into his crotch. He screeches and rolls to his side. I grab his wallet. “You’re lucky I don’t want a mess to clean up tonight. I know who you are. I know how to find you. We’ll talk soon. That’s a promise.” I stand up and start walking.
When I step out of the alleyway, Savage joins me. “I didn’t ask for your help,” I say, cutting left toward my apartment.
“You didn’t need it either,” he says. “Which was kind of disappointing. I haven’t had a good brawl in like three days.” He doesn’t wait for a reply. “One of our guys followed you. I caught up. I’m your front-line guy until Adam gets here. And there’s no interesting movement back in Denver. I just talked to him.”
I open the wallet, glance at the name on the ID that reads Joe Melton, and then hand it to Savage. “He was sent to kill me tonight. I took a photo to confirm the identity matches the driver’s license. I’ll shoot it to Blake since I have his number.” We cut across the street.
“Who sent him?”
“My father,” I say, “who I’m going to leave squirming in his room, hoping I’m dead for the time being.” I pull my phone out to listen to the messages, and the minute I hear Harper’s voice, her soft pleas undo me yet again tonight. I go warm the only way her voice can make me warm, and then instantly cold with the certainty that this attack on me confirms that the warehouse attack on her was, in fact, an assassination attempt. We reach my building and I stop to face Savage.
“Find out what you can on the guy who attacked me. Make sure your team knows that I believe we’re dealing with hired killers. And I need an hour alone with Harper.”
“Understood,” he says, giving me a mock salute.
I enter the building, and suddenly, I can’t get to Harper soon enough. I will not feel as if she’s safe until she’s with me. I head for the elevator and dial Grayson to make sure there’s nothing I need to know when I get there. The phone rings. And rings. And rings again. I try Mia’s phone in hopes that she’s with Grayson or at least talked to him. She doesn’t answer. My heart starts to race. What if that amateur back there was a distraction and I fell for it? Fuck. Everyone I care about is in my apartment. I start running for the stairs.
Chapter sixty-four
Eric
Icall Blake on my race up the apartment building stairs. “Get in touch with your man. I need to know my apartment’s secure and everyone inside with it.”
“Hold on,” he says, without asking why.