Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 114647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Whoever this person was, had already signed his own death warrant. He was already standing with one foot in the grave. He just didn’t know it yet.
I watched Jack’s fingers as they typed away at the computer, never looking back at us while he spoke of what he’d found. I watched for the reaction I knew was coming as soon as the words fell from my mouth. I knew he wouldn’t want to do it, and hell, under any other circumstance, I would’ve never even thought to ask this of him. I knew how much they’d suffered, yet I couldn’t not do it. This was my baby. My Janie, and I would use ever resource I had at my exposal.
“Jack,” I started. “Can you ask Winter to help?”
Jack’s body froze, and the door behind me opened. I didn’t turn. I watched Jack as the muscles in his shoulders, forearms, and back flexed and then relaxed, as if he was fighting an inner demon.
“Oh, Jamie.” Winter’s voice said from behind me. “The man loves you. Of course, he would ask his beautiful, intelligent wife to help. He loves Janie, as do we all.”
Winter’s tone was light and breezy, but I could tell that she’d meant every word by the sincerity that was very much evident in her voice.
Turning, I found Winter standing just inside the office door, Cat cocooned in a soft-looking blanket in the crook of her arm. She smiled warmly as she walked up to me, went up to her tippy toes, and kissed my chin.
“Now, you take Cat,” she said gently placing the sleeping little girl into my arms. “While Jack shows me what he’s got.”
I looked down at the bundle in my arms and smiled. A little pang of sadness went through me as I stared at her sleeping face. Hair jet-black like her father, with the same porcelain skin as her mother, she looked like a sleeping doll. I’d never even contemplated having another child. Until recently.
I loved Janie with everything I had. When a man had a child, there was nothing to explain it. The entire focus of your life shifts. You live your life, but you live it for a different reason.
Where before, you worked a job so you could have nice things, after a child, you work a job so your child can have nice shoes. Or toys. Or My Little fucking Ponies.
The entire earth shifted the first time I laid eyes on my girl. No longer was I confident in the world around me. Which helped make the decision for me to pursue a career as an Army Ranger. To protect my child the best way I knew how. By making sure the country she lived in was safe and protected.
The only bad thing about that decision was not being able to see her. To smell her. To hear her whisper in my ear about pink spiders crawling over me as she tickled me with her little hand, and the invisible bug I needed to kill before she could go to sleep.
I was here now, though. Janie had me now. And what had caused me to be absent with Janie wouldn’t be an issue with any future children.
Anna and Shiloh couldn’t have been any more different from each other.
Where Shiloh was warm and caring, Anna was hard and indifferent. Where Anna didn’t have direction, Shiloh had become a social worker in three years instead of the usual four. Becoming a licensed professional at the young age of twenty-one.
Shiloh would be an exceptional mother. Hell, for all intents and purposes, she already was. To Janie.
“Deep thoughts?” Sam’s voice pulled me out of my Hallmark Moment.
My eyes raised to his. “Yeah, just thinking about having another kid.”
“You can borrow the girls. They’ll clear that up right quick.” Sam quipped.
I laughed, as he’d intended.
“Anagram.” Jack mumbled.
Sam and I turned to him to see Winter hunched over her keyboard, typing faster than a cyclone. Her curly red hair was in a curly mass falling over her shoulders, and obstructing her face from view. Jack was leaning over the back of her chair, watching over her shoulder as she typed.
“Goddammit. Why didn’t I think to do that?” Jack asked standing and running his rough hands through his hair, making it stick up on end.
“Because you’re hot shit wife is just that good.” Winter teased as she kept typing.
The phone in my pocket rang, so I walked towards Jack and handed the baby off. He took her gratefully, pulling the baby close to his chest before turning back to watch the computer monitor. Shoving my hand into my pocket, I finally got it loose just as the phone stopped ringing. It started ringing immediately after, making my heart start beating triple time when I saw it was Shiloh.
“Hello?” I answered urgently.
“Uhhh,” Shiloh hesitated. “You’ve gotten two calls from the dish company. Normally I wouldn’t pry, but they left a message. Twice. Anyway, they say you’ve been ordering, ugh, a lot of porn in the last hour, and they want to make sure the charges aren’t happening by accident. I’ve been here all morning, and Janie’s playing with Kayla outside on the trampoline. No one’s in the house to order porn.”
When you think of things people are calling to tell you, not even once had the thought of someone illegally ordering porn through my account registered. Hell, it hadn’t even been on the fucking radar.
“Uhhh,” I said, perplexed. “I haven’t been ordering porn either.”
Winter’s head snapped in my direction, and she stood quickly, walking over to me with her hand extended.
“Hey June Bug, Winter wants to talk to you. Hold on a minute, okay?” I asked.
When she affirmed, I handed the phone over to Winter, who’d immediately hit speaker phone and sat back down. “Alright, chicka. Tell me the details.”
Shiloh went over what she’d heard on the messages, and then waited while Winter went to work.
In the meantime, I pulled up my mobile banking and, sure enough, I’d had over nineteen charges for pay-per-view charged to my account. What the heck?