Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 84871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
“Honey, Aunt Sloane is here. You’re okay.”
He lets out a pained sob and rasps out, “Run!”
Run?
I turn to look for Bishop, ready to yell for him to get back up here now, when a large shadow casts over me. The scent of whiskey and body odor permeates the air. Before I can whirl around to face the person coming up to me, something slams into the back of my head.
The crack echoes in my skull and I black out before my body hits the ground.
Sloane
Ow.
The first thing I notice as I start to regain consciousness is that my head is throbbing inside my skull. Something warm trickles down the back of my neck. Has to be blood. What the hell did I get hit with?
I blink away a wave of dizziness, attempting to make sense of my location. It’s musty and smells of mildewed hay. I must be inside the barn. It’s dark aside from a few slivers of daylight shining in through the cracks of the worn building. When I go to touch the back of my head, I realize I’ve been cuffed to a pipe with my own handcuffs.
Naturally, I’ve been divested of my weapon, keys, phone, and anything else that could’ve been useful in my predicament.
A surge of panic swells up inside me as my fragmented thoughts begin to piece together.
Trevor!
Where is he?
“Trevor?” I croak, scanning my eyes across every viewable surface in my line of vision.
Nothing but dust and hay.
“Trevor,” I say louder, forcing my voice to project beyond my near vicinity. “Are you okay?”
Nothing.
I’m dizzy and slightly nauseous, probably sporting a nasty concussion, too. It’ll be okay, though. Bishop saw what happened. He’ll call for backup. This place’ll be crawling with cops in no time.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I attempt to keep the storm of fury and terror from overwhelming me. Running my palm across the dusty floor, I search for anything I could use for a weapon. A rusty nail would be great. Unfortunately, all I have to use in defense is hay and my free fist.
Voices can be heard just outside, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. Then there’s a squeak of a door that floods daylight into the barn. I squint against the harsh light that exacerbates my headache.
Who hit me?
What do they want?
A shadowed silhouette saunters my way. Is it the Prez guy? One of his goons? The figure stops a few feet in front of me and then squats.
“You should have left well enough alone, Thurman.”
The voice. I know the voice.
My brain short-circuits as I try to make sense of it. I finally am able to focus on the man’s face when he turns slightly. His profile is one I see every day at work.
Andre Bishop.
This doesn’t make any sense.
“I actually liked you,” he says with a cold chuckle. “Feisty as hell. Thought many, many times of what it’d be like to fuck someone like you. I bet you’re an animal in the sheets.”
“Fuck you,” I hiss, swiping the air in front of me and missing him by a mile.
“Too late.” He shrugs and sighs. “The time for those ideations is over. This is all business, I’m afraid.”
Thoughts blink inside my head, little flashes here and there. This stupid concussion is making it impossible for me to think straight. I remember the files on his desk and the texts from the mayor. Then he easily lured me out of the station with the promise of news about my nephew dangling on his hook.
He knew where he was all along.
“You were nothing more than a nuisance until you started picking at the Ghirard case. I had that shit buttoned up so tight,” he complains. “But you just couldn’t let it go even after Tanaka rode your ass about it.”
I knew it.
I knew there wasn’t something right about it all along.
“You work for the mayor, doing dirty deals behind the scenes? Never pegged you for a corrupt cop.”
He chuckles. “You call it corruption. I call it business. Everything was fine until you got into my business.”
How can he be so smug and chill about this? It’s like he’s confident he’ll get away with it. There’s no telling what all he’s been getting away with since he’s been working for the PMPD.
“You made it pretty easy to deal with you, though,” Bishop says, continuing his arrogant speech. “Your family is trash, and when I discovered your nephew and your sister’s boyfriend were involved with some local bikers, I realized there was a way out of all this. A way to get your thorny ass out of my side.”
My heart hurts that my family was brought into this because of me. Trevor’s in real trouble right now, and apparently, I brought all this on myself.
“Me and Prez were able to strike a deal,” he reveals. “Money and sex, Thurman. Those two things make the world go round.”