Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 135382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
“Avery didn’t roofie the coffee,” Liam said with a long sigh. “And I assure you Big Tag doesn’t have any more tolerance for that shit than you did. He makes crap like that up all the time to scare the newbies. Ninety-nine percent of what comes out of his mouth is pure bull.”
“But the one percent that’s real is deadly, boys. And good luck figuring it out.” Taggart thanked Avery for his cup of coffee. “Avery, do you think there’s any possibility that Stephanie ran off herself? Is there a possibility that she might have found that thumb drive and she’s trying to make a deal for herself?”
Brody knew the answer to that one. “She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t do it for herself.”
“He’s right,” Avery replied. She’d come in with her husband, unable to stay at home for fear that her friend was in trouble. “There’s no way Stephanie does this for money or to save herself. She’s the single most selfless person I’ve ever known.”
“She’s always looking for a way to save someone else.” Brody stared down at his boy. Nate was looking up at him, his hand around Brody’s thumb. “I think she’s got a death wish, but she can’t go out in some random way. She’s gotta give her life to save someone else’s.”
“You have to understand,” Avery began.
He looked up, feeling his eyes narrow. “I understand. I understand it all. I understand that she promised me she would let me handle this and then turned around a few hours later and drugged the bodyguards hired to protect her. She lied to me and she left our son behind.”
Now he understood why she’d climbed into bed with him and offered herself up like the sweetest treat he’d ever had. She’d been oddly aggressive. It hadn’t put him off at all. At the time he’d thought he was seeing a different side of her, an interesting, hungry side. He’d lain back and allowed her to kiss and lick and lavish affection on his body. It had been a delicious test of wills since Nate had been sleeping only feet away and he’d been forced to stay as quiet as possible.
He’d felt loved. Wanted. He’d gone to sleep thinking about their future.
She’d been saying good-bye, getting one last round out of him before she went off to find her fate.
“That’s not how she sees it, Brody.” Avery’s eyes were red rimmed and Brody wondered how long she’d cried when she’d discovered what Steph had done. “She’s never moved on. It’s hard. You can’t understand it until you’ve been through something like it.”
“I’ve been through plenty of firefights.” He hadn’t lived a safe life where his only worry was what to eat for supper. “I watched several of my closest friends take bullets and a few of them die.”
“Not everyone processes survivor’s guilt the same way,” Avery argued. “Some people can handle it. Steph struggles. She was young when it happened. Her vision of how the world was supposed to work was still being formed. I think she struggles with a couple of things she’s not willing to admit to. I know before she came to me, she spent a few years doing self-destructive things. A lot of people who go through what she’s been through end up escaping their pain that way. They keep going until they find the wrong drug to take or finally meet the person who’ll give them the fight they need. She stopped that when she realized helping other people filled the void in her life.”
“She can’t live that way.” Li ran a hand through his hair and it was obvious this wasn’t the first argument they’d had about Steph. “She needs to find a way to forgive herself and allow herself to live a normal life. If you let her, she’ll either drag Nate around the globe or she’ll decide she’s needed in some place with a bloody Ebola outbreak and she’ll have to leave him behind and she won’t know her son the way she should.”
“I won’t let her take him somewhere dangerous.” He was the one with the crazy job, but he would sit behind a desk for the rest of his life if it meant his son having a stable home. “I’m not going to be separated from my son. He’s coming back to London with me.”
“You can’t take Nate away from her.” Avery sounded horrified at the thought.
“She left him with me. She left both of us.” As far as he was concerned, she’d made her choice. The idea of never seeing her again kicked him in the gut, but he had to stay strong for his son. Nate needed him now.
He needed Nate, too.
“I saw her talking to one of the Ukrainians as we were breaking up last night.” Declan sighed and sat back. “It was when you went to get your son. She was waiting by the front window in the lobby and he walked up. I think that’s when he got to her.”