Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 76881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Do the best you can. I will shoot you if you make any move that I find suspicious, do you understand me? I find it useful to have you here, but I do not value that over my own safety.”
I nod. “I understand.”
It takes about twenty minutes to clean the wound up and get it bandaged. He probably should get stitches, but there are some butterfly strips in the kit and I do the best I can. Very briefly, I entertain the notion of jamming something hard into the wound and hoping it’ll hurt so much I can put him out of commission, but I can’t risk it. But I hate that I’m patching him up when I’d rather tear his throat out.
“Alright, you sit over there, while I try to find a way out of this fucking mess.” He points me at the chair across the room with his gun while he takes his phone out. He starts scrolling, and sometimes texting people, leaving me to think.
Not that I have a ton of ideas.
God, this is my home base. I practically grew up here, but it's not like it has secret doors to safe rooms or weapons or… well, anything. If he left me alone long enough I might be able to mix enough chemicals to gas him out, but he doesn’t look like he’s going to trust me out of his sight.
I have no idea how much time passes, it could be ten minutes or ten hours. I don't have a sense of time, but the silent waiting is interrupted by him standing up. “Fuck, I have to piss. Want to come hold it for me?”
My grimace must say it all. What a freaking pig. Apparently when he doesn’t have an audience to perform for, he isn’t as worried about sounding superior.
“Didn't think so.” He looks around in the cabinet I got the first aid kit from, and pulls out a container of zip ties. We use them to bundle hangers sometimes, or just to keep things in place. Except this time, I'm guessing I'm the one being kept in place. He grins. “Perfect. Arms on the armrests.”
This keeps going from bad to worse. It only takes him a couple of moments to attach my wrists to the armrests and my ankles to the chair legs. I try to struggle against them, but they're tight and refusing to budge.
He pats me on the head. “Don't go running off. Where's the head?”
“Down the hall, second on the left.”
“Good girl. Maybe you aren’t as unpleasant as your aunt.” The way he says good girl sends chills slithering around my spine, not like when Crank says it. “Don't go anywhere.” He laughs as he walks off.
Forgetting that he's left his phone on the desk. And it's still unlocked from him using it, so if I'm quick…
I'm not going to get another opportunity like this. I can't get out of the chair, but the chair isn't heavy. It's going to be noisy, but can I do it? Obviously, I can't run away like this, but I can kind of hop it, or shuffle it forwards.
I have to try.
34
CRANK
When we gather outside the Fabbri office, our losses are surprisingly light. None of the Sons killed, which I'll always appreciate. Shiv took a bullet in the thigh though, which needs to get taken out and fixed. And hardly anyone got away from this without a scrape. At least mine's light. More blood than substance. And honestly, right now, I don't fucking care. Not until we find out where Paige is.
Not a lot of Fabbris left. Is it wrong to be a little happy the snooty receptionist is one of the guys that bit it? Apparently he'd pulled a fucking machine gun out from behind the counter, so what could the boys do, right? Most of them ran off when things turned our way, and for better or worse, we let them go. We're after Stefano, not looking for a fucking massacre. Several surrendered and were arrested by the oink squad, but knowing the mob they won’t be in for long.
“Any luck?” I ask Poe. He's scrolling through shit on his phone so quickly I can barely follow his fingers. Some kind of software that he can log into remotely, but that's about the limit of my understanding. I know it gives him access to things that let him trace people if they leave the right kind of tracks behind. Or get caught on the right security cameras.
Poe shakes his head, his face a mask of frustration. “Nothing. I got the make and look of the car when I found a camera that caught them pulling onto the highway, but the ramp splits farther down, so I have no fucking idea which direction they went. But Heather betrayed us for sure. She was fucking driving and I didn’t see a gun to her head. I’m still working on it. Means they could still be on the highway, or that they're any number of places out there, and the more time, the more places. It's already pretty much like winning the lottery for me to catch them randomly.”