Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
“If I’m not with them, can my friends still use the house?” She did her best to keep the challenge from her voice.
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Harvey. I don’t know why you’d help us, but I appreciate it.” She didn’t trust him any more than she trusted Gideon, but she took the key and card with the single phone number on it. Everything was so uncertain, she had no idea what might happen.
“I was the one who chose those apartments. It didn’t occur to me that any of this would happen, but it did. It’s my mess and I need to clean it up.”
He was right. It was his mess, but at the same time, someone was framing him if he was telling the truth. She wasn’t so sure her lie detector wasn’t faulty after her encounters with Gideon, but Harvey appeared sincere. People weren’t all bad or all good.
She pressed her fingers to her temple where the headache had fully formed from all the crying. At no time did she reveal the knife she held. She had learned not to trust years earlier, and Gideon had only reinforced that lesson.
“Harvey, were you ever married? In a relationship?” She should keep her mouth shut, let him go. He was a stranger, and she had no one to ask questions of. She wanted answers.
“I’ve never married. Too many women made it easy for me to find another one.”
She frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”
He gave her a half smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes, very reminiscent of Gideon. “You wouldn’t know what that means, Rory, because you aren’t the kind of woman to go after a man for his money. If you decide on a man, you’re going to be loyal to him, and you’ll be with him for all the right reasons.”
“What if I don’t know what the right reasons are?”
“Rory, you aren’t the one at fault.”
“You don’t know that. I don’t know the first thing about relationships. I’ve never been in one. I’ve never seen one that worked. I never even wanted to be in one until I was with Gideon. I fell so hard and fast for him, it was crazy. I didn’t even think. I didn’t have time to think. It was the dumbest thing I ever did.”
“Not that you ever did. That he ever did,” Harvey corrected. “When a man is in his twenties, and he acts the fool, he can be forgiven because he doesn’t know better. But by the time he’s that man’s age, he should know a good thing when he has it. He should have been treating you with love and concern. Watching over you. Putting you first. That’s a relationship. And that’s his failing, not yours.”
“I don’t even know why I’m asking you these questions, Harvey.”
“I’m not a good man, and I’m lonely for a reason. You’re a good woman, and you don’t deserve to be lonely. That doesn’t mean you aren’t. We just happen to be in the same place at a bad time for both of us.”
Rory knew he was right, and she couldn’t tempt fate any longer. Someone was bound to come along the trail soon. In any case, Harvey had said his men had run interference to keep Gideon’s people from following her car, but she wouldn’t put it past Javier to have her vehicle bugged. For all she knew, Gideon might even have put a tracking device on her phone. She was going to look the second Harvey was gone. She should have considered that right away. She’d been too upset to reason everything out.
“You’d better go before someone comes along and sees us together,” she told him. “But thank you for talking to me.”
“Keep that card with the number on it for emergencies. If you call it, someone will answer and help you.” Harvey lifted a hand, turned away from her and walked up the trail leading toward the lake.
Rory watched him go until he disappeared around a bend. She turned back toward the parking lot, sliding the knife back into the small sheath inside her jacket. She had a long walk and a lot to think about.
Taking out her phone, she permanently deleted the screenshot of the message Gideon had taken that Tinsdale had sent to Harvey. Maybe she should have told Harvey about unsealing the message and how Gideon had taken a screenshot. She didn’t know if he had duplicated the message before he had deleted it or sent it to someone else. He could have. She didn’t trust him anymore. But she wasn’t taking any chances with Harvey going from being nice to pulling out a gun and shooting her.
She took her time walking back, turning over the things Gideon had told her about GhostWalkers. She realized her nightmares fit with everything he’d said. Or maybe he’d taken her nightmares into account so she would have reason to recognize pieces of what he told her. As much as she wanted that to be the truth, in her gut, she knew it wasn’t.