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)
“Hang on,” he said.
I turned and watched him take a call.
“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you. Pains were taken, Leland. Now, Delphine has some asshole wandering around her place. You’d have to have forensic skills and about three months to uncover she owns this property. What the fuck?”
Pause and…
“Why am I asking you? Because you and your deputies are the only people in town who know where she lives.”
Another pause and…
“Do not go there. It wasn’t one of my kids and it wasn’t David.”
Pause and, beginning to get irate (or more irate)…
“How do I know? Are you fucking with me?”
Another pause and…
“Yeah, my full weight, asshole. And you dick with him until that time, you’ll regret it.”
He then rang off.
“You think Sheriff Dern told someone where I live?” I asked.
His answer was wry.
“How’d you guess?”
There were situations where wry was a good call.
I didn’t feel this was one of them.
I shot him a look that communicated that.
“You know I kind of like you,” he bit off.
I thought so.
However, the absence of a kiss was another story.
I didn’t share that in his current mood.
“And I kinda want you to be happy, and settled, and enjoying the great northwest, getting to know my daughter, shoveling shit at my sons when I have certain things off my mind and the time I need to dedicate myself to all the things I’m gonna do to you.”
Oh.
Well then.
I silently lauded the invention of padded bras as I carefully watched him.
“So, fans crawling all over your place, flipping your shit, taking me and my boys off target is not conducive to any of that,” he concluded.
“I see.”
“And it’s pissing me off.”
“I understand that now.”
“I shouldn’t take that out on you, I know. But Dern’s behind this and that pisses me off even more.”
“I understand that too.”
He jerked up his chin.
“What are you throwing your full weight behind?” I asked.
“Harry Moran is running for sheriff against Dern next year. He’s already filed and got more than enough signatures. His campaign officially kicked off about two weeks before you moved here.”
I felt my eyes grow big. “Um…”
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“Were you public with your support for him?”
“Everyone’s public with their support for him. But yeah, I don’t have a sign out by the gate, but if asked, I don’t hold back.”
“Prior to Alice.”
Not even a beat passed before he confirmed, “Prior to Alice.”
I was horrified.
And furious.
“Dern wanted to bag that,” I whispered, the words trembling with negative emotion.
“He had Harry checking parking meters. We have five parking meters in this entire county. And Harry’s the best investigator they got.”
“Oh my God!”
Yes, I shouted it.
“He didn’t want Harry, or me, shining even a little when it came to Alice.”
“She was a little girl,” I hissed, my torso spiking toward him like a snake striking.
“And now you get why I was an ass to you, because Leland is pissing me off.”
“Is he interfering with your investigation now?”
“He isn’t helping it, but he also isn’t outright hindering it. He’s too busy with damage control.”
“But, say, I sit with you and your kids at the Double D. I’m grocery shopping with Celeste. Maybe he lets slip where I live, which lets slip your focus on Alice’s killer, because he knows where we are with each other.”
“You’re taking things further, baby,” he said low, with hints of pride.
I definitely felt the pride, my shoulders going back with it, and I decided to focus on that, rather than Dern, because there was nothing I could do about Dern.
But Bohannan could, and I knew he would.
“Maybe you can hire me,” I suggested.
“Not gonna happen.”
My eyes squinted.
“We need to discuss societal stamps and how pigeon-holing genders, races and cultures has likely led to us not having a cure for cancer yet,” I informed him.
“I’m not pigeon-holing you. If you worked for me, when would you have time to write Priscilla Lange romance novels and Jack Mullally thrillers?”
I stood very, very still.
“I’m a big Mullally fan, Larue.”
My lips didn’t move even as the words came out.
“How did you know?”
“It’d be cool I could tell you I noticed patterns and cadence between your pen name work and We Pluck the Cord. But that isn’t my expertise. It’s because you have every single one of their books on your bookshelves in your living room, Lange then Mullally, chronological, before you get into the other books you keep, which are kept alphabetically by author. And those are mostly literary, with a good deal of mystery and very little romance or thrillers, because, I figure, you keep those in your office. And, the obvious clue, they’re both very successful and very famous for the fact the true name of their author remains entirely anonymous.”
He was right.
I kept those genres of books in my office.
And he was right.
No one knew who Priscilla and Jack were.