Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
My lips twitched as I saw it.
“You got anything you want to tell me, bro?” Gable asked curiously.
I looked up to find him with a cookie in his hand, staring at me curiously.
I frowned. “Like what?”
“Like when you decided to ask your girl to marry you.” He took a bite of his cookie.
My mouth opened, and then closed. “Um, what?”
“She was buying a wedding cake sampler when I saw her at this bakery that just opened up down the road from our apartments,” he said.
I shook my head. “I regret to inform you that we’re not getting married.”
He grinned. “Then why was she buying a wedding cake sampler?”
I had no idea, but I intended to find out.
Right after I finished looking through my notes for the case I caught this morning.
“I might have pissed her off, though,” Gable said. “So maybe she’s not thinking about marrying you anymore.”
My brows rose. “How did you do that?”
“Well, first, I told her you flew to Kentucky. And she was surprised because you didn’t tell her, or leave a note, or text or anything. When I said you were probably busy, she smiled sadly. Then I commented on how you had a lot of your shit out of your apartment already, and how your house was coming along, and she looked at me so hurt. I’m guessing you didn’t tell her you were building a house, either?”
“No,” I admitted. “But to be completely honest, we’re still really new, and there really hasn’t been time. There’s a lot of stuff that’s been going on.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with her that you’re leaving,” Quaid pointed out.
He was right.
I should have at least done that.
But I hadn’t.
I sent out a text telling her I was home from Kentucky, but still had a few things I needed to do at the station, then looked into the bakery box to find nothing but crumbs. “Y’all didn’t save me a single thing?”
My phone pinged.
Hollis:
**Thumbs up emoji**
“That looks like a bad sign,” Quinn said as he stared over my shoulder. “And there’s nothing left because we were hungry, and we bought the damn things over six hours ago.”
When he put it like that…
“Son,” Dad called as he walked up to me. “What did you get?”
“Taite DeRosa’s teary-eyed confession.” I paused. “After I read him his Miranda Rights, he sang like a canary.”
Dad blinked. “He what?”
“Like. A. Canary,” I said more slowly. “I arrived at his hotel room to find him holed up there. He looked like he’d been there for days. Apparently, he couldn’t leave because he, and I quote, ‘couldn’t believe what Alana made him do.’”
Dad shook his head, his eyes going to the interrogation room where Taite was now sitting, refusing a lawyer.
“So do you think he’s gonna keep suing Hollis?” Atlas asked as he came up, a bag of Skittles in one hand, and a stick of beef jerky in the other.
“How do you know about that?” I asked.
Atlas gave me a look. “You called my best friend.”
I mentally slapped myself on the forehead.
“Oh, yeah.” I chuckled. “I guess I assumed y’all were still fighting.”
Atlas and Zoey Metz had tried the ‘dating’ thing before. It hadn’t worked out, and for a short time they’d lost their way. That didn’t mean the family didn’t still love Zoey, though.
So, despite them ‘not talking’ we’d still treated her like one of our own.
And since I saw her in the station every other week with a client—she was a fantastic criminal defense attorney—I’d just assumed they were still avoiding each other.
Apparently not.
“I want to listen in,” Auden said as he stood up and headed toward the interrogation viewing room.
They all went, and I gathered my notes before heading that way, too.
I wouldn’t be the one to do the questioning. Another detective by the name of Willis Graves would, and he was damn good at his job.
Plus, I had a bit of a biased opinion of the man. It wouldn’t do to compromise this case in any way.
Holding my hand out for some Skittles from Atlas, we all took a lean against the far wall and listened in while Willis started the questioning.
“Mr. DeRosa, are you sure you want to waive the right for a lawyer?” Willis asked to start.
Taite nodded. “I am.”
Willis glanced at the one-way mirror and gave us a pointed look before beginning.
“What happened on the night of May first?” Willis asked.
Taite looked up, his eyes bloodshot.
“Alana and I broke up,” he said. “We fought. She accused me of fucking someone else. We left pissed as hell at each other. Then I found some girl in the bar as I left for the night, brought her to my hotel room, and fucked her.”
The crude words didn’t cause any of us to flinch. But I did curl up my nose at his apparent uncaring attitude toward the life that was lost.