Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 142939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 715(@200wpm)___ 572(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 715(@200wpm)___ 572(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
“That was nice of you,” Magic says.
“Whatever. I just needed to get rid of stolen property.”
“Right.”
“Why didn’t one of you marry a billionaire? Then we’d have a plane.” I huff. Then I wouldn’t have to call Agent Buffy to get Wave onto a flight.
“Vane Bartow is a billionaire,” Magic points out. She just couldn’t wait to slide that in there. I bet she’s so proud of herself over there.
“Okay, I’ll go marry him, and then he has to give me half his shit. Then I’ll have what we came for.”
“Do you want to change your plan of action?”
“That was sarcasm. Vane Bartow isn’t going to marry me.”
“You can just make him.”
I laugh, unable to help myself. That is how she perseveres. She wanted her husband Owen and went full stalker mode. Little did we know he had already been stalking her. I thought he was a serial killer. Wait, he might still qualify. So I was right.
“I’m not his type.” I cringe the second the words pass my lips. Not only because I know Magic is about to try and find out if that is true, but I don’t care to hear about his past lovers. I bet they’re tall and blond with perfect everything. The total opposite of me.
“Hmm.”
“Don’t.” I try to stop her from digging into any of his past lovers or hookups. I don’t want to know. All I want from him is his technology. Nothing else. Not one thing. I swear it.
“I’m not. I just realized that in everything I pulled up on him, there hadn’t been any romantic connections. I’d thought maybe he had a secret one that he had his assistant Cass buy things for, but those items were for her own wife.”
“You really leave no stone unturned.”
“When it comes to the Bartow family, you can’t.” She’s not wrong there. I haven’t heard anything dirty on the family, but they have money, and have been in the tech and engineering world for generations.
Vane was barely a teen when he and his father helped create STAR. It was short for Systematic Tracking Array Radar. That isn’t public knowledge. STAR can do a lot of things, but what it does best is save lives. There are a few versions of it, but its powerful radar catches missiles while in the air and it intercepts them before they can strike their target.
God, I wonder what his lab and work area looks like. I couldn't imagine the possibility of things I could create if I had the resources he did at my fingertips. The possibilities would be endless if I owned my own setup like his.
Oh, I’ve been offered the opportunity from many companies. I’ve never accepted any of them, because then I’d been under them and would always worry that whatever I was working on could do more harm than good. In my eyes, at least. Not in others’. I’m also not really a punching in at 8 a.m. and out at 5 p.m. kind of person. I work on what I want when I want.
With Magic, Rebel, and I, we all have a set of skills. I can do some hacking. Nowhere near the level that Rebel and Magic can. I’m not great at sitting and staring at a screen.
“Ocean?” Magic shouts in my ear.
“What?” She and the driver both tell me I’m at my destination. “Thanks. I got my bags,” I tell him. I slap down a few bills. I’m sure Magic already handled it, but it’s not my money. I’d give him this whole wallet I’d gotten with the man’s Rolex, but it might not go down well.
I grab my shit and stand on the sidewalk watching the man pull away. When he turns the corner, I head in the other direction.
“Two streets up, take a left, and it’s the fourth door on the right,” Magic tells me.
I walk toward my destination. “You know I don’t need six bedrooms.” I head up the stairs to the front door.
“It’s close to Vane’s place.”
“Close?” I joke. I saw the layout of his estate. It’s massive.
“The closest house we could get. The code for the door is 74-”
“I’m in.” I cut her off.
“Of course you are. I turned off the alarms. Owen said everything you need was dropped off. There should be a box.” I spot it on a table.
“The motorcycle?”
“It’s in the garage.”
“All right.” I drop my shit. Well, everything except Wave–I gently place her on the sofa. “I’ll reach out when I’m almost there.” I check the time. I’ve got a few hours to kill, which I need.
I open the box filled with goodies and smile. A nervous excitement hums through my body. This is going to be so much fun.
4
VANE
She’s here.
I can’t sit down, can’t stand still, can’t do anything except pace back and forth, my gaze on my monitors as she moves closer and closer.