Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
My eyes fluttered closed, and a strong, warm hand landed in the middle of my back to hold me steady. “Get me some snips,” Agent Falcon barked at someone across the room.
He knelt on the floor next to me and pulled out an honest-to-god cotton handkerchief. I wanted to ask if he was a thousand years old, but the man was maybe in his late thirties, early forties tops. He put a finger under my chin and pressed the handkerchief to the cut on my cheekbone.
“Did you see who did this?” he murmured while working the cloth gently over the blood on my face.
I sniffled and blinked some more tears out, trying to appeal to his do-gooder protective side. The “doer of right and righter of wrongs” side. “They were wearing masks. Black ones and… they had on camo like… lots of pockets pants? What are those called?”
He glanced at me. “Cargo pants?”
“That’s it. Sorry, I’m just…” I flapped a hand and winced when the zip tie bit at my battered skin. “So fucking scared,” I admitted in a whisper. It wasn’t a lie.
I’d given up everything for the man who’d been able to walk away as easy as going out for groceries. I wondered what he would say when I got back to our apartment. If I got home.
Not only had he been the one to manipulate me into this life of crime, he’d also been the reason I’d pulled away from my family. The Wildes of Hobie, Texas, weren’t the kind of people who became global criminals. They didn’t take from people. They gave.
And now my long string of bad decisions was going to land me in prison.
Someone raced over with a multi-tool and handed it to Falcon. He nipped off the tie while telling the person to send in medical help. “We’ll get you fixed up, okay? And then I’ll need to ask you some questions.”
I sniffed again, rubbing my wrists. “Like what? I didn’t do anything.” I looked up at him in shock, trying like hell to project all my real-life terror into the innocent-victim act. “You don’t think I did this, do you? Oh god. My parents are going to kill me. They don’t even know I took this job.”
“What job?” Falcon asked, looking between me and the doorway in anticipation of an EMT maybe. He wasn’t fully listening.
“Building’s clear, sir,” someone said to him after announcing it in French to the rest of the first responders.
“Thanks,” Falcon murmured. His eyes returned to mine. “You were saying?”
I wiped at my eyes with the heel of a hand, deliberately mashing my injury and yelping in pain. “Oh god. Ow. Um… the catering. I worked with the… appetizers. You know… serving them on trays for the party? Someone at the art school said it was easy money and would get you around some really cool pieces you couldn’t see otherwise. But… if I’d known it was going to be… dangerous.” I looked down at my hands and sniffed again lightly, rubbing at my raw wrists. “My parents made me swear not to take a job outside of my work-study program,” I said under my breath. “When they find out…”
Falcon’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “Just take a deep breath, and we’ll get this sorted out. Here comes someone to take a look at your injuries. Hang tight.”
A medical first responder came bustling in with a kit and checked the knot on my head before cleaning the laceration on my cheek. Throughout her ministrations she asked me questions in French about what had happened. Knowing Agent Falcon was listening, I told her about the man who’d knocked me on the head, leaving me dazed and half-conscious and unable to resist when he’d forced me into the storage closet behind the kitchen toward the end of the party. I described him speaking a foreign language I didn’t understand and told her it sounded like maybe Russian. I explained how several hours had passed before he pulled me out of the room toward the study where I’d tried to get away. “That’s when he smacked me and I fell against the radiator. He tied me in place and just left me here.” It all happened so fast, I didn’t really see what was happening…
The woman tutted over me while she cleaned me up and used some kind of skin glue to close the wound on my face. When she was done with the bandages, she went to work on my wrists, cleaning and applying ointment to them before bandaging them too.
When she was done, I pulled my knees up again and buried my face in them to wait. I’m just a passive little wallflower victim here… so very scared, Officer Handsome.
“You need to come with me,” the now-familiar voice said. I lifted my head up to meet Falcon’s gaze, trying to make mine look as tired, scared, and innocent as possible. The agent’s eyes flared wide for a split second before his face returned to its formidable neutral position. “Let’s go.”