Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80660 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80660 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Thank god. He’d worried that Sully had lost his damn mind. “So you don’t particularly want to film douchebag rich kids who think they’re DJs and their model girlfriends, who shop and prove the American education system has completely failed?”
Sully chuckled. “Not particularly, but then I suspect you’ve taken on some jobs that weren’t agreeable for the sake of money.”
Oh, he’d saved a few people who he would rather have strangled. “True.”
“So from what I understand you have to run every job by the rest of the team before you take a case?” Sully asked. “Alex explained it to me earlier. I didn’t know that or I wouldn’t have brought Hoover in today.”
Normally, he would present the case to the team and they would decide to take or reject the assignment. The team would figure out who was the best operative to work the case, if they agreed to it. “You didn’t just bring Lord Douche. You brought all his douche minions, too.”
“The good news is apparently none of them eat because Charlotte offered them cookies and they looked at her like she was crazy,” Alex said. “That’s in your favor, Sully. If any one of them had touched Ian’s cookies, he would have thrown them down an elevator shaft.”
They were his freaking cookies. Sean had recently brought in an assistant pastry chef at his restaurant, Top. Ian was a principal investor so he tended to treat Macon Miles like his own personal bakery. Adam’s baby bro didn’t seem to mind. He’d kept Ian supplied with sweets. Ian needed them because he was caught in a never-ending cycle of pain. He got nervous about Charlie giving birth and he ate. He got worried that he was going to end up as big as Charlie and with no actual babies coming out of him, so he worked out. He then worried he was working out too much and neglecting Charlie and he reached for the cookies again.
He was going to be so freaking happy when the demons were all born and life could get back to…
Yeah, he wasn’t sure what normal was anymore.
He really wanted one of those cookies followed by a couple of rounds of punching the shit out of someone in the ring he’d set up at the new Sanctum facility. Or he could punch Hoover Kendalmire. That would be fun, too.
“We’re taking the case,” Alex assured Sully.
They were. Because he owed Sully for all those precious ten dollar bills he would slip to Sean for school lunches and for showing up with pizza right about the time Ian’s paycheck would run out. “How many times has he been assaulted?”
“Yesterday makes three. It was a really close call. Someone took a shot at him. We have it on camera,” Sully explained.
Ian had already looked over the footage. Hoover and his model girlfriend, Brie, had been filming their high-end picnic when someone had taken a shot at Hoover with a high-powered rifle. Unfortunately, they’d only managed to hit the bottle of Cristal that had then splattered all over Brie’s overpriced shirt and she’d thrown a fit. She hadn’t been pissed someone had nearly taken off her boyfriend’s head, but damn she wanted to hurt whoever had ruined her designer wear.
Ian wished whoever had tried to kill the fucker had been better at their job. He sighed and leaned forward. “Why don’t you go and join your crazies in the conference room. Alex and I will be right out. I want to take one more look at that footage before we talk to…god, I hate even saying his name…Hoover.”
Sully stood. “Yeah, his parents had more money than sense. I often think they named him after the vacuum cleaner, which is oddly appropriate since he sucks the intelligence out of any room he enters. But damn that kid’s got a million-watt smile. And if you can solve this case without Hoover dying, I can use all of this as a storyline for next season. If the kid dies, so does the show. But you aren’t going to let that happen. I know you, Ian. You’re going to solve this in no time.”
Sully was smiling as he left the office. At least someone was happy.
“I say we put Si and Jesse on this case.” Alex got straight to the point. “Phoebe and Chelsea won’t mind a couple of months in LA. I’ll estimate the project at roughly six to eight weeks. We’ll need to interview everyone involved and get a feel for what the victim’s life is like. I’ve already been on the phone with LAPD. Derek has a friend in the Threat Management Unit. They’re overtasked and apparently Brie and Hoover are difficult to deal with. What a surprise.”
Ian touched a button on his computer and looked over the footage again. The shooter had been roughly five hundred feet away, in a cluster of trees. The shot would have taken off Hoover’s head if he hadn’t caught sight of his reflection in the bottle of champagne. The dumbass actually picked up the bottle and started to admire himself. His narcissism saved his life.