Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Hey, I need a place to crash for a few days. You don’t mind, right?
Then: Where the hell are you? I’ve been here two days already and haven’t seen you yet…
“Right,” I said, shrugging as I went across the apartment to tuck away the gun, and plug in my phone.
The texts could wait until the morning. If there was something serious up, Violet would know about it.
“How long are you crashing?” I asked, looking over at her.
“Probably just another couple of days. Work has been surprisingly light lately. If you want privacy, I could go crash with…” she paused then, going through the list of cousins, mentally checking off the ones who’d recently gotten shacked up and were spouting out babies.
“I know. The list is getting shorter,” I said, nodding. “You’ll always have me. I don’t plan on shacking up with anyone,” I told her as I went to grab the bags.
“I know, right? Who the hell has the time?” Vi agreed, following her nose into the kitchen with me because, if there was one thing you could count on in life, it was that Vi was hungry. Always. Even if she had just eaten.
“You hungry?” I asked. “I ordered way too much.”
“I’m always hungry. Is that tacos?” she asked, eyes bright.
“Yes. Go put on some clothes. I don’t want to be getting flashed while we’re eating,” I told her. “I have enough scars that involve the nudity of my cousins.”
“Billie is never going to live down dragging you to that naked yoga retreat, huh?”
“Or the full moon ceremony on the beach. That was also fully nude,” I agreed, pulling containers out of the bag.
“Wasn’t there also a naked—“
“Don’t,” I cut her off. “Don’t remind me,” I begged.
Her laugh as she moved down the hallway back to the bathroom to get dressed made a small smile tug at my lips.
I’d been so busy that I’d been canceling on my family a lot lately. Sometimes it was easy to forget how much better life was when they were around.
And Vi and I were a lot alike, so she was an easy, unfussy houseguest to have. For however long she was around.
“So, dare I ask how things are at work? You know… with the bloody hole in your pants,” she added, glancing down at it.
“Oh, right. That’s from scaffolding,” I admitted.
“Been there,” Vi agreed as she started to stack a plate with food.
It wasn’t just tacos.
I must have blacked out a little when I’d ordered, because I was pretty sure I had the entire damn menu in my bags.
“Oh, this isn’t food. This is…” Vi started, making me realize she was rummaging around in my bag from the store.
Sure, there was some peroxide and gauze and some triple antibiotic, but there were also the books.
“Books?” she asked, brows furrowed as she looked at me. “Since when do you read for fun?”
“What? I can’t pick up a new hobby?” I bristled. “My job requires a lot of waiting around. It gets boring.”
“I’m going to have to tell Luna about this,” she said, waving one of the books. Luna, another cousin of ours, was a librarian. To say she loved books would be a gross understatement. She proactively lived inside of them.
“Please don’t. I don’t even know if I am going to read them,” I said.
“So… how’s work?” Vi asked in that sort of guarded tone all of my cousins used when asking me that question. Because they all knew that work sucked. But that I refused to quit regardless.
They didn’t understand.
I didn’t expect them to.
“It’s work. Some days are better than others. The guys are going to be working a big case for a while, though, so it will probably be really quiet around the office for a bit. Which is always a win.”
And it meant that I, by default, got pretty much any new case that walked through the door for a while.
So while it wasn’t exactly sitting right with me to be lying to Andres about his case, at least something good was coming of the whole situation for me.
“So, what’s the big case?” Vi asked with a mouth mostly full of food.
“I can’t talk about cases.”
“Since when?” she shot back. “We always talk about your cases. You just don’t give names.”
That was true enough.
“A drug dealer is looking for a snake in his organization,” I said, because I knew she would keep digging until I gave her something.
I could feel her gaze on the side of my face for a long couple of beats before she blurted out, “Holy shit. It’s A, isn’t it?”
I tried not to jolt.
But she’d caught me too off-guard.
“Oh, my God. It is,” she said, eyes bright.
“You can’t say anything,” I demanded. “To anyone,” I clarified.
“You know you can trust me,” Vi said, rolling her eyes. “I told you about how that skip accidentally broke his own arm while in my custody.”