Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Going up to the pharmacy’s glass, he cupped his hands and leaned in. “Looks like the investigation is ongoing. No cleanup yet, and that has to be a city ordinance going by how tidy the frickin’ park is.”
Thanks to the peachy glow of the streetlamps, he could measure the mess, all kinds of products on the floor, bottles broken, boxes strewn about, display shelves pushed over. It looked like a bar fight had relocated to the pharmacy’s interior, a couple of three-hundred-pounders with Bud-melted brains throwing sloppy punches as they danced like polar bears.
“You want to tell me why we care about a human pharmacy that looks like it’s been in a blender?” his sister asked.
“Let’s go around back. And it’s because I think whoever broke in here might be tied to the prison camp.”
As he nodded off to the right, Payne led the way down the other side of the building, moving silently over the sidewalk in spite of her steel-toed boots.
“You and Manny doing good?” he asked as he checked across the block. But not a thing was stirring, not even a proverbial mouse.
“We’re great, thanks. He’s a fantastic male. I’m lucky.”
“He’s lucky.”
She glanced over. “We’re both lucky, how’s that.”
When she turned back to refocus on what was ahead, her Lara Croft braid swung back and forth across her tight waist. The fact that she’d mated a human had been as miraculous as the fact that she’d gotten out of their mahmen’s private quarters up in the Sanctuary where she’d been kept in suspended animation, like a Barbie collectible, instead of a living person.
“You’ll let me know if you have any problems with him,” he said.
And mostly kept the growl out of his voice.
His sister stopped and turned around. And she didn’t wait for him to come up to her—she marched to him like the pair of steps he would have taken to get to her were an impermissible delay.
“Back off, V. We don’t have any problems, and if we did, I’d handle it myself. Our mates may work together, but I don’t need my brother in my relationship.”
Meeting pale eyes that were as sharp as his own, he had an uncharacteristic urge to throw out a hug. Instead, he smiled. Honestly smiled.
“Roger that,” he murmured.
With a nod, like he’d made the only reasonable choice in Payne’s mind, she kept going, and so did he. And as they came around to the rear of the pharmacy, there were no cars in the shallow parking lot—and check it out. More neat-as-a-pin: Even the dumpster that was set by the rear door sparkled, its perfect paint job as if the stuff had been slapped on fresh during the day, no bumps or dings in the side panels, either.
The dumpsters down in Caldwell looked they had terminal acne and a case of the punching bags.
“I think I know why humans move up here,” he muttered as they approached the pharmacy’s back door. “Go figure, it’s more civilized in the sticks.”
“Do we care about this seal?” Payne asked as she pointed to the orange eye-level sticker that had been affixed on the juncture at the jamb.
“Not in the slightest. They can have a field day getting thought up about it being broken tomorrow morning. That’s not our problem.”
His sister willed both the dead bolts free, and she palmed up one of her guns as she opened the door. The whiff of laundry detergent, dryer sheets, dish soap, and shampoo was a fake meadow in the spring, and they both sneezed at the same time.
“What are we looking for?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
He walked in behind her and glanced around. Then went over to the coupon flyers that had been Scotch-Taped around the enclosed drug-dispensing area. “Two for one, the vitamins. And a ten percent off diabetic supplies.”
“This was not a professional job.” Payne leaned down over a humidifier that had lost whatever battle it had been in. “Too much displaced, too inefficient. Or they were professionals and just didn’t give a shit.”
“I vote for the latter.”
He stepped up onto the raised floor behind the counter, where the cash register and the expensive things like blood pressure cuffs, thermometers, and insulin testers were mounted on the wall. No cigarettes. Those were at the front of the store at the other register with the candy and the magazines.
The kicked-in door to the segregated drug-dispensing area had been a flimsy barricade at best, separating the rest of the store from the prescription medications by only a panel of particleboard painted with the same logo that was on the glass of the front windows. Routing around its cockeyed recline, he entered the thicket of shelves. The bottles and boxes that had been discarded by the burglars as undesirable were a debris field made up of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and AbbVie products; bending down, he rifled through and recognized some of the generic names, as well as some of the branded ones.