Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 82282 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82282 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
I blinked at her, surprised that she knew that much stuff about them. The men of Free were pretty tight lipped about what they did. They had to be, or the women they helped would be in danger.
“How’d you know all that?” I asked suspiciously.
“People tend to talk around me. For some reason they see the blind girl and assume I’m too stupid to realize what’s going on. That and I tend to blend into the background in most situations.” She shrugged.
“So what else have you learned?” I asked worriedly.
She smiled cryptically. “Oh, not much. Well, a little bit. You’ll have to take me out to see a movie before I tell you, though. I haven’t been able to do that in years.”
With that cryptic comment, she left, walking back inside, not even sparing us another glance.
Taking half of my heart with her.
“Oh, she’s dangerous.” Miller laughed.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, now you know why I have to keep some distance between us until I know if she can handle my job or not.”
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Miller said as he tossed the rest of his beer back. “Now, let’s go eat some of that fried chicken she cooked. It smells fucking amazing.
Chapter 6
Boys will be boys, and men will be…whiney boys when they don’t get what they want.
-Life Lesson
Trance
“What the fuck is that?” Foster asked as he pointed to the piece of equipment that Max had in his hands.
Max was a big fucker.
Tall with shoulders like a linebacker. He was my height with close-cropped hair and one fuck of a scar on his face.
Him and Loki were two peas in a pod in the scar department.
“This,” Max said as he held up the newest gadget he was installing in Viddy’s place. “This is my newest acquisition from my old CO. It’s a prototype that we’ve been begging to use. It only took the right circumstances. See, his baby sister is blind, too. He knows all the hardships that they go through. He sent extra.”
His grin was positively devilish.
Gabe was busy giving Viddy a run down on how to work her new system. What to do and not to do. What features she had in case she ever needed them. Right then he was busy putting a remote key chain into her hand.
Except he lifted her wrist, used his fingers to open her hand, and then curled his hand around hers to make her clasp the gadget, which made my blood boil.
It was irrational.
I knew Gabe was very happily married with three kids, one of which turned nine months old last week. I’d even seen him showing off pictures of his baby when he arrived.
However, my mind didn’t care that he was married. All that kept screaming through my head was that some man had his hands on her.
“What the fuck?” Max exclaimed.
All of us turned to where Max was standing near the closet, and what I saw made my stomach flip.
No, it wasn’t the arsenal of guns that Viddy had in her bedroom closet. Nor the N’Sync poster she had hanging up on her closet door.
It was the tiny little camera about the size of my pinky finger that Max pulled out that elicited that reaction.
Gabe, who saw the little camera from all the way across the room, pulled Viddy out by her elbow before she could see anything, leaving my brothers, Max, and me behind. All staring at the camera.
“Is it live?” I rasped.
The words felt raw in my throat.
Using a red bandana he had in his back pocket, Max took the camera down carefully, being doubly sure not to smudge any lasting prints.
“Got a light?” Max asked with a raised eyebrow.
Miller was the first to hand him one out of his own pocket. It was a little Mag-Lite the size of a pen.
Shining it up into her closet, he found wires leading to a small battery powered box.
“Whatever it is, he has to come back in here to check it.” Max said as he showed us the box he ripped down from the ceiling.
We all gathered around, staring at the innocent little piece of equipment that probably captured many of Viddy’s private moments.
“That asshole boyfriend of hers is going to die.” Foster declared from beside me.
I glanced over at him. “Dying is too good for him. I vote sending the fucker to jail and setting him up for some services in the system for a while.” I said as I pulled my phone out of my pocket and made a few calls.
After talking to Loki and getting his confirmation that he’d send a team out to dust for more prints and bring the evidence in, I declared, “Viddy’s going to go with us. Do you guys mind staying here till my boys get here? We leave her here much longer and she’s going to figure out what happened. I want to be sure it was actually him before I tell her what’s going on.”
“Absolutely.” Max agreed instantly.
The same couldn’t be said for the woman in the other room. She was like a rabid beast when it came to her independence.
After I assured her that I would tell her later, she agreed. Reluctantly
***
Viddy
I’d never been fishing before in a boat. Nor hung out with a bunch of men that’d been drinking.
However, that said, it was the most fun I’d ever had in my life.
When we’d first arrived, Trance backed the trailer expertly into the water with Foster and Miller already on the boat.
They’d even gotten it off the trailer completely before anybody realized that they’d forgotten to put the plug in.
The plug, Trance explained, was a little device that you have to screw in at the back of the boat to keep the water out. Once you’re finished, you pull the plug out, and any water that collected in the boat would drain out.
With all the goofing around and name-calling, each of the men had forgotten in their playing that none had done the usual check to make sure they had everything they needed.