Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 108563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
There are two separate bandages wrapped around her left arm, and I can only imagine how much that must hurt. I haven’t had to deal with burns before, but I know women like Eagle, and they only succumb to first aid when the pain is almost too much to bear. This will make things interesting, but I pride myself on being fair. If I need to subdue her, it’ll be done without targeting her injuries.
From the way she leads me through the streets, she’s more than clocked me behind her and is attempting to lead me to a location she’s already checked out. It doesn’t matter though. She can lead me wherever the hell she wants. I’ve done my research on this town, and I know it better than the back of my hand. There’s nowhere she can lead me where I won’t have the upper hand.
Eagle takes a left, and her plan becomes clear. The local butcher.
Fucking disgusting.
A meat locker isn’t exactly somewhere I wish to spend any of my time, but I applaud her creativity. I just hope this isn’t where she’s been crashing at night. However, I’m grateful that this is purely the butcher store and not actually the local abattoir. I can handle a lot of things, but a slaughterhouse is not one of them.
Just as I suspected, Eagle slips in through the back of the butcher store, and my stomach begins to cramp at just the thought of walking in there after her, but I do what I have to do and take the plunge.
As I follow her inside, I look left and right before walking through the door, expecting her to jump out at me at any chance. Instead, I find her standing dead center of the butcher’s large human-sized refrigerator.
“You’re following me,” she states, her sharp stare locked on me as the smell of fresh meat assaults my senses and makes my cramping stomach begin to turn.
“Yes.”
“You’re not very good,” she says. “I clocked you over thirty minutes ago.”
I smile. “You were supposed to. You think I was following that closely out of sheer stupidity? I wanted a fair fight, and that wasn’t going to happen if I got the drop on you. Besides, I was curious. I wanted to know where you’d bring me, and to be honest, I’m surprised. This isn’t exactly a location I’d pick.”
Eagle shrugs her shoulders. “Butchers have a way of making some people feel . . . queasy, and judging by the way your face has drained of color, I’d say you’re one of those people.”
I shake my head, swallowing over the bile rising in my throat. “Nope. Not me.”
“Right,” she says, casually striding toward me. “You know, my daddy was a butcher for thirty years before—”
“You killed him?”
“What?” she gasps in horror. “No. I loved my father. He was a great man. He died after an incident with the cartel.”
“Well, shit,” I say with an awkward cringe. “Sorry, it’s just that most of us killers turned out the way we did because we have daddy issues.”
She watches me through a narrowed stare. “What’s your trauma?”
“Oh, you know. The usual.”
“What’s the usual? He raped you all through your childhood and the second you could, you gutted him like a fish.”
Horror blasts through my chest. She couldn’t be further from the truth, but I understand why she went there. Reality is, it happens a lot more than anyone thinks it should. “Shit. I don’t know you nearly well enough to trauma dump on you, but what I will say is that for me, my life wouldn’t be the way it is now if it weren’t for my piece of shit father, and if I were so lucky to get the chance to take his life, I’d make a fucking holiday out of it.”
Eagle nods. “So, you said you wanted a fair fight?”
I nod in return. “That’s right.”
“How fair?”
I arch a brow and slowly reach for the gun holstered around my thigh. I hold it up and release the magazine, letting it fall to the ground before tossing the gun aside. I kick the magazine, letting it slide toward the empty gun that just happens to be positioned right under a big piece of meat that’s hanging by a giant hook in the ceiling.
“Okay,” Eagle says, taking her own gun and doing the same. “Knives?”
Reaching for the knives hidden all over my body, I start tossing them aside, while being extra careful with the two blades of Reaper’s. “You don’t strike me as the type who requires weapons to get the job done.”
“I’m not,” she agrees before disarming herself.
I feel naked without my weapons, and I can only assume that she feels the same. The only difference is that on top of feeling naked, I also feel like I’m going to hurl at any point. While Eagle here looks as fresh as a daisy, probably reminiscing about all the good times she had with her father.