Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“Is that even a question? Bacon,” I said, holding a hand out, and he slapped a sandwich into my palm. “Why are you here?”
“You’re pleasant this morning,” he said, voice as calm as ever, unfazed by my attitude. “I am here because I figured you got enough sleep now, and we can hit the streets.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, pausing before biting into the bacon, egg, and cheese on a bagel.
“Find out who Chet worked for.”
“Um, no,” I said over a mouthful. “Absolutely not. This is my problem.”
“And, yet, here I am. You can tell me no all you want, love, but I’ll just follow you around then.”
“You’re a pain in the ass,” I grumbled, even if some part of me was pleased at the prospect of not having to do this by myself, of there being someone to have my back if things went sideways again.
“I can tell everyone that you’re my bodyguard, if that makes you feel better,” he invited, looking pleased at the prospect.
If there was one thing you truly had to respect about Dav, it was his unshakable comfort in his own masculinity. He never felt less than when he let a woman take the lead.
“You can come with me, but only if you let me do the talking. Some of these people I am going to talk to are skittish.”
“You take the lead, boss,” he agreed, polishing off the rest of his sandwich. “Is that coffee going to melt my stomach lining?” he asked, nodding toward it.
“Joel said it was good.”
“What? Did he put a pound of sugar in it?” he asked, shaking his head as he brought down two mugs, pouring me a new cup, then himself one. “I owe you a new mug,” he decided.
“If it is anything pink and girly, I will break it on purpose this time.”
“Not pink or girly. So covered in dicks would be fine?”
Damn him.
Why did he have to be so utterly… tolerable? Even likable? He was making it really hard to keep him at a distance. Especially when his stubborn ass was insisting on being at my side through this.
“Okay,” Dav said, clapping his hands when he was done with his coffee. “So, where to?”
“The electronics store,” I said, getting scrunched brows from him. “I want to get a tablet. And then we can go from there. It’s gonna be a long day. If I don’t do the store first, I won’t get to it.”
“This tablet… would it happen to do with a certain teenager?”
“So what if it is?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“Retract the claws, love. I was just asking a question. He seems like he needs someone to give a fuck about him,” he said, walking over to grab my jacket, holding it open for me. And I tried not to notice how his hands lingered on my shoulders for just a second after I slid into it.
“Let’s go,” I said, putting as much space between us as possible as we left.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dav
Cinna couldn’t help herself at the electronics store. Just picking up a tablet became researching the best tablet in the store before getting it, a case, a foldable keyboard, a new set of expensive headphones, a burner phone—because Joel’s was cracked, and he needed a phone to contact her with—, and a gamer backpack to keep it all in.
It was the poor guy who worked there who actually talked her out of a laptop as well, insisting that the tablet was pretty much the same thing.
I said nothing as she made another stop, cloning her many keys to her door, and slipping them into the bag as well before stopping off at the local high school, and asking them to call down Joel Davis to give him his backpack.
But she’d walked out as the secretary was making the call to his classroom.
Like she didn’t want him to feel weird about having to thank her for the gifts. Or put herself in the position to try to brush away his thanks.
“Okay. I feel like I should give you an out now, before you get any deeper in this,” she said, looking past me down the street. “Because I don’t want any of this getting back to Renzo. Not until it’s done.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I was already neck-deep in this. “What is the end-game here, though?”
“Those three bastards dead. Along with whoever sent them after me.”
“You have no idea?” I asked.
“Not a fucking clue. I mean, I’m not the most pleasant person, and I imagine I piss people off. To shit-talk me. Or sabotage a job. Yeah. But to this extent? No, I have no idea.”
“What jobs have you been working the past year?” I asked, falling into step beside her. “What?” I asked at her scrunched glance.
“Too many to name. Not all of us are complete slackers, you know,” she said, but there was no bite in her words.