Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“Because I don’t believe those witnesses were the real target. I saw the police reports and took a look at the crime scene myself. I knew a guy who could hack into the police radio logs. The district attorney who’d stashed that lady and her kid at that apartment had an FBI agent on them twenty-four seven, but he’d also asked the police chief for a plainclothes officer to provide additional support. JJ never would have left his post until his replacement had arrived. According to the logs, his replacement got there two minutes before JJ left the scene. JJ’s replacement never radioed in after that. Turns out the officer who was supposed to relieve him never even made it to the scene. He was killed in a car crash four miles away and ten minutes before the call came in from the so called ‘replacement’ who relieved JJ.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The shooting had started after JJ had been relieved of duty. His replacement should have seen or heard something. He sure as hell would have called in the “officer down” code once he’d seen that JJ or the federal agent had been gunned down.
“The apartment was clean. Execution-style bullets to the two victims inside. Same for the agent. He never even made it out of his car. Gunman used a silencer. Only part that didn’t make sense was JJ. He’d already left his post. His car was found around the corner, far enough away that he wouldn’t have heard the shots. There was no radio call about shots fired at the scene.”
“I didn’t hear them either,” I murmured. “JJ and I were supposed to meet up so we could go to a diner that was just up the block and talk about how to tell you we were seeing each other.”
“What did you see?” Sully asked.
I didn’t want to relive the moment because it was the worst one in my life. I’d had nightmares about it every night afterwards. I still did.
“Um, I had parked a few cars down. I was leaning against my car while I waited for him. I didn’t see his car or anything but a few minutes after we’d agreed to meet up, I saw him walking toward me. He was walking in the street, not on the sidewalk. I started to walk toward him and then I heard the pop,” I explained. I could feel the tears stinging the backs of my eyes.
“I saw JJ go down. I just… I froze. It seemed like everything was happening in slow motion. When I did finally start running, I couldn’t get to him fast enough. It was dark so I couldn’t really see much but I… when I pulled him onto my lap, I could feel the blood running down my arm. I kept telling him to wake the fuck up.” I shook my head because my throat was closing off, making it nearly impossible to speak.
A warm hand covered mine where I had it clenched on my thigh. I hadn’t even noticed Sully move while I’d been telling him what I remembered.
“I can’t prove it, but I don’t think that mother and her child were the ultimate target. I think they were just a cover to throw off the cops. My theory is that either you or JJ were the target,” Sully explained.
I shook my head. My brain couldn’t comprehend anything but what it had believed for two long years. “No, that doesn’t make sense.”
“The kid and her mom, along with that agent, were shot after JJ was. Why bother to go after JJ at all? He was already around the block. Even if he’d somehow managed to hear the shots, he would have called out to you and run back toward the scene. By then the killer would have been long gone.”
“Jesus,” I said in disbelief. “You think JJ was targeted either because he knew something he shouldn’t or because someone was setting me up?” The truth hit me like a ton of bricks. “Either way, he wasn’t supposed to live,” I realized. The sensation of his hot blood running down my arm put me right back in the middle of that street. JJ had literally been dying in my arms and I’d done nothing.
“No, he wasn’t,” Sully confirmed. “While he was in surgery that night, I asked some friends to join me at the hospital to help keep an eye on JJ. There was no way I could keep the fact that he’d survived the shooting out of the news, so I didn’t try. I played the role of the protective older brother caught up in the mystery of why my best friend would try to kill my kid brother. When JJ finally woke up from the coma, he couldn’t talk, walk, feed himself… nothing. He had to learn how to do all those things over again. When he finally started to get better, he asked—”