Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
He glanced around as if expecting someone else to appear. “You swear you can keep this secret?”
“Unless you’re about to tell me you’re going to hurt someone or that you have—”
“No, I’m trying to keep people safe. The good people.”
Did Evan really know who was good and who wasn’t? I felt slimy as hell deceiving him. He probably really thought he was doing the right thing, but the good people were the ones he was about to hurt. “Who does that include? I don’t know what to think of everyone here.”
“Me, you, some of the ranch hands who seem not to be involved, but the rest, they’re working with the mob. Did you know that?”
“I… I knew something wasn’t right, but aren’t they protecting people who are in danger?”
“How much danger do you think a man like TJ is going to get in that he can’t solve himself?”
“I don’t know. I thought… Isn’t Grant former military? Isn’t this a safehouse?”
“Of a sort.”
“I thought that’s why you were here. Because you need protection.”
He sighed. “I was born into an organized crime family. I did everything I could to get out. Finally, I realized I had to cooperate with the authorities, or I was going to be stuck working with criminals forever. My contacts weren’t moving quickly enough, though. Damn bureaucracy, you know.”
I nodded. “So you were working with the police?”
He shook his head. “This went way above anything local. I worked with the FBI.”
This was it. I had to keep him talking. “Wow. But what happened? How’d you end up here?”
“When one of my cousins realized I’d snitched, I was sure I was going to die, so I went to their enemies, a family who was trying to push them out of their territory. I offered to work with them.”
“So you turned on the FBI?”
“I sped up their timetable. We accomplished the same thing in the end. After they took out the main players in my family’s organization—”
“Took them out? Like killed them?”
He nodded.
“Is that what the FBI wanted?”
“They wanted them neutralized, but the court system wasn’t ever going to make that happen. My contact knew that, but he couldn’t get anyone to accept his plan for pitting the groups against each other. The only problem was that the other family remained as strong as ever. They took almost no losses.”
“They must be really strong.”
“Too strong, but that’s not my problem. I just want to be free. And those men won’t come after me.”
“Are they the ones who sent you here?”
He nodded.
“So what’s wrong? Is the FBI after you now because you turned on them?”
“I didn’t turn on them.” The look in his eyes was wild now. He’d become more and more zealous as he talked.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything bad. They obviously weren’t giving you the help you’d been promised.”
“Exactly, so I had to do something. My family had to be eliminated. There weren’t any other options. You have to see that.”
“Yeah, it sounds like you did the right thing.” I was starting to question his sanity. I decided the best thing I could do was just go along with him.
“I did, and once I was settled here, I made contact with my FBI handler again.”
“He wasn’t angry with you?”
“He was a lot angrier with his superiors who hadn’t let him do what needed to be done.”
“So is he helping you now?”
Evan shook his head. “He’s dead.”
“Oh my God.” I did my best to act surprised, but I felt sick to my stomach. Evan really was the one. He’d betrayed Grant and everyone else at the ranch. I gripped my coffee so tightly it’s a wonder I didn’t break the mug.
Evan wasn’t even looking at me, though. He was staring down at his hands, twisting them in his lap. “They killed him. These monsters here killed him.”
I wanted to grab him and shake him until he accepted that his handler was a fucking monster for shooting at innocent men and that Grant was trying to protect him when he was busy leading the authorities here. “So you told him where you were, and he came to get you?”
Evan frowned. “He came to take this place down. When his agency rejected him, he started working undercover with my family’s successors.”
“Who are they?”
Before he could answer, the door burst open, and Grant and TJ stepped in.
“What the hell?” Evan jumped up. His mug hit the floor and shattered. He turned to me, his face going from confused to enraged. “You… you’re working with them? You’re part of this evil.”
I took a step back. “They aren’t evil. You betrayed them after they took you in.”
He lunged at me. Before I could react, Grant was in front of me. He grabbed Evan by the front of his shirt and yanked him in. “I could kill you right now you lying little bastard.”