Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 129001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
I looked to Celeste.
“Mr. Ashbrook,” she whispered.
David’s shitty dad.
We crept into the great room, and standing at the side, stacked on top of each other, like two of the Scooby Doo gang, we peered out the front window.
A man my age was stomach to the pine needles, kicking and fighting, Dickerson’s knee to his back. The deputy had one of the man’s arms in his grip. He and another officer were struggling to get his second hand behind his back to cuff him. Will was crouched, holding down his thighs.
“Yeah. Mr. Ashbrook,” Celeste confirmed.
“Get off me! Get the fuck OFF ME!” he shouted.
They got him cuffed and then did that cop move where they jerked him to his feet using his arms.
No sooner was he upright than Kimmy moved in and smacked him across the face.
I gasped.
Celeste snorted.
He shook his head in surprise.
She smacked him again.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
She started wagging a finger in his face, saying something we couldn’t hear.
She ended this smacking him again.
I choked back a laugh.
On a giggle, Celeste asked, “Why don’t the police stop her smacking him?”
They got down to doing that, hauling him toward the cruiser in the front drive.
“And maybe you might wanna love your son when he’s NOT in intensive care, asshole!” Kimmy shouted after them.
“Take it to Castro!” Ashbrook shouted back.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten and DON’T YOU THINK CADE BOHANNAN CAN’T BRING JOHN KENNEDY’S KILLER TO JUSTICE. If anyone can do it, HE CAN!”
“Oh my God, is that really a thing with her?” I whispered.
“Dad thinks she’s just happy she’s got an ex-FBI guy around whose ear she can bend. And I guess my grandma was really nice to her when she was growing up. Dad says she didn’t have it too good, and Grandma was some good in all that bad. He says she might just want a connection with a part of Grandma. They don’t have anything in common, so she’s making up a connection.”
This further explained Bohannan’s patience with her.
And Jess’s care.
“Well, he’d be able to figure that out,” I replied.
Ashbrook was being folded into the cruiser and Kimmy was stomping back to the house.
We pulled away from the window and watched her walk in.
“What’re you fools doin’ at the window?” she demanded.
“Watching the Kimmy Show,” I told her. “The crowd was surprised when a woman wearing a Rudolf face sweater complete with stitched-on red poof for a nose smacked the bad guy three times.”
“He’s a jackass,” she said, shuffled aside for Will to get in, then looked him up and down. “Done good, kid.”
“Thanks, Ms. Milford,” he replied.
Next in came Deputy Dickerson, though he only swung his torso around the door.
“Sorry, folks. He jumped the gate,” he explained.
“Shoulda shot him in the back, Wade,” Kimmy decreed.
“I prefer handcuffs and conversations with judges,” I put in my vote.
Celeste laughed softly.
Dickerson dipped his chin and disappeared behind the door.
Will locked it.
“Right then, anyone want fudge?” I asked.
And Celeste laughed softly again.
I was sitting on the floor wrapping Christmas presents when Bohannan walked into the bedroom that night.
My gaze slid to the clock.
It was nearly midnight.
By the way, I’d woken up just after six.
He stopped dead and stared down at me.
“What the fuck’s going on?” he asked.
I glanced around, then up at him, stating the obvious, “I’m wrapping Christmas presents.”
“For the entire town of Misted Pines?”
I smiled at him.
“I’m sensing we should have talked budgets,” he said to the mess, as well as the stack of wrapped boxes scattered just beyond the mess.
Which, I had to admit, was large.
(Okay, it was possibly embarrassingly massive.)
“I’ve never had boys to buy for,” I explained.
His attention came to me.
“And it’s been a few years since I’ve had a teenage girl to spoil.”
He said nothing.
“How committed are you to the lumberjack biker look?” I queried, because I’d rolled with that on some of his presents, and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t feeling a switch up.
“The lumberjack biker look?”
I flipped a hand, indicating his long body, which was full-on lumberjack biker with sturdy boots, faded jeans and a gray thermal under a thick black flannel shirt.
“I hate to shave, and I don’t have time for regular haircuts, but mostly, unless I’m fucking her, I don’t like anyone touching my hair. I picked two careers where I had to be on top of both. When I was done with those, that was done.”
“Are you certain about the ‘unless I’m fucking her’ part?”
“You pull my hair, baby, anytime you want.”
He was sure, I knew, because my nipples were tingling.
“Grace hated the beard,” he shared. Pause, “And the hair.”
“Further evidence she’s insane.”
His beard twitched.
“The medallion?” I asked after the irregular disk of something, I didn’t know, maybe iron, which had zero designs on it but did have a hole stamped into it and a piece of leather string threaded through that Bohannan nearly unfailingly took off every night and put on every morning.