Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70695 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70695 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
The only reason I knew who they were was because I’d seen them around my dad a time or two. We’d met, and my father had played the doting, caring father. The father who pretended that I was a part of his life when I really wasn’t.
The silence in the conference room was deafening as Justice pulled us inside.
The moment the door closed, Justice didn’t mince words.
“I was told to kill her and bring her body to his doorstep in one hour,” he said. “I’m not going to do that, so you’re going to have to do without me. It’s likely that I’m next when I don’t show up.”
Tellings, the assistant chief, exploded.
“Jesus Christ, Justice!” Tellings boomed. “It was just a simple fuckin’ buy. How fuckin’ hard can that be for you?” Papers went flying as Tellings stood, and I watched as he pointed at him with anger in his eyes. “Simple. Get in, make the buy, get out. That’s all we asked you to do.”
Justice didn’t stiffen. Didn’t even look like he was uncomfortable having the man yell at him.
Instead, he calmly looked at Tellings and said, “I told you it wasn’t that fuckin’ simple.”
“It is, though,” Tellings said. “Really fuckin’ simple. You go up to him wired and buy the shit. We come in, arrest him, and shit on Eleventh Street returns to normal.”
I couldn’t help it then. I laughed.
All eyes turned to me.
“Do you have something to add?” Luke Roberts, the Chief of Police, asked.
I waved at Tellings. “It’s funny that you think that Marcus Gomez would do any dirty work. He rules the roost. He doesn’t do stuff like sell when he has minions to do it for him.”
Tellings’ jaw tightened.
Justice nodded his head. “Which is what I’ve been trying to tell you. Why I’ve been earning his trust on my days off. It’s not something I can do, just go up to him with a wire and get him to talk. He didn’t talk to me for three fuckin’ weeks. Not until I fixed his buddy’s car. I’ve talked to the man all of eight times in month. And one of those times, today, was him telling me to have her body on his doorstep.”
Luke sighed.
“He’s not going to let it go,” Luke said. “Even if we get her off of Eleventh Street, he’s still going to come after you.”
Justice shrugged as if he didn’t give a shit what Marcus did to him.
And my suspicions were confirmed later when he said, “As long as he stays away from her, I’m fine with that. I can handle myself, and maybe I can still be of use to you.”
My head whipped around, and my eyes narrowed, but before I could tell him how awful of an idea that was, Tellings interrupted.
“You’re gonna need to keep your ass out of trouble, too, seeing as she’s going to be staying with you,” Tellings said. “There’s no fuckin’ way in this world that we’re letting her stay at her own place. Not after a threat like that.”
Justice began to argue, but a coughing fit began again, lasting much longer than the previous one had.
I spotted a coffee maker in the corner of the room and busied myself getting him something hot to drink.
When I heard the ‘puff-inhale’ of his inhaler go, and the sudden quiet, I turned to look at him over my shoulder.
The chief and assistant chief were looking at him like he was about to keel over right there in front of them.
I turned with a half-filled cup of coffee and waited until he’d taken his second puff before holding out the coffee. He didn’t take it until long moments later.
His pain-filled grimace had me thinking that he needed to lie down.
Possibly get some rest and recover from almost dying.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
I turned to Tellings.
“I’m not staying with him,” I told him bluntly. “I have my own place. My dad and brother don’t live with me.”
Tellings nearly rolled his eyes.
“Why do you think I said you needed to stay with him?” Tellings wondered. “Your father would be devastated if anything happened to you.”
I couldn’t hold the burst of laughter that jolted free of me, shaking my small frame with the intensity.
In fact, I laughed so hard and long that tears of hilarity started to glisten in the corner of my eyes. By the time I was done and had myself under control, I was wheezing right along with Justice.
“I’m sorry,” I said once I got control of myself. “It’s just that the idea of you thinking my father would give one half of a shit about me is just rich. Ahhhh, I think he’s told me on more than one occasion that he wished it was me that was paralyzed in our accident and not my brother.”
That was when the two other men in the room, a silent black man that was gorgeous and older with sexy salt and pepper hair, and an unsmiling Asian man who looked to be in his mid-to-late-forties entered the conversation.