Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70695 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70695 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
I kissed her then, unable to help myself.
“I love you,” I told her.
She was saved by the bell—or the ringing of my phone.
I sighed and pulled it out of my pocket, glancing at the readout.
“Yao,” I found myself saying as I answered.
“She was right,” Yao said. “Twelve graves have been dug over the last week, and only five of them have actual bodies in them.”
Well, that explained that.
“How is he getting them?” I asked, squeezing Royal’s hip.
“He’s digging them up.” Yao paused. “Or, at least, his minions are. We’ve got four of them in our interrogation rooms now. Two that work at the cemetery, and two that work for a local moving van company.”
Joy surged through me.
“They’re not talking, though.” Yao sighed. “We’re going to charge them with everything that we can, however. They’re not going to be going back to Eleventh Street for him to use whenever he wants for a while.”
Thank God for small favors.
“He’ll just find someone else,” I found myself saying.
Yao grunted in affirmation. “Everyone’s so fuckin’ scared of him that I don’t doubt it for a second.”
I hated that he agreed with me and that I was right.
It was time to pull out the big guns.
This couldn’t go on.
Marcus needed to get gone, and the people of Eleventh Street, as well as Royal and I, needed to return back to normal life. Life when we weren’t fucking scared to go out our door because the threat of Marcus Gomez was always there.
“Do you need me to come in?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said, understanding what I meant.
Royal hadn’t, though.
When we hung up, she was once again dressed and presentable.
She was also looking worried.
“You have to go help with their interrogations tomorrow?” she asked.
No. I was going to put myself out there as bait tomorrow.
Not that she needed to know that.
The less she knew, the better, in my opinion.
At least when it came to Marcus.
“Yeah,” I lied.
I felt like shit immediately after the word came out of my mouth.
“That sucks,” she said. “We were going to get to sleep in.”
The thought of waking up with her in my arms was like a soothing balm to my burning soul.
“Yeah,” I said. “But this will help.”
And it would.
It would help, and hopefully by tomorrow night, it would all be over.
Chapter 21
I planned to work out and eat right so I’d have a nice body for the summer, but then I remembered that I like food more than people.
-Royal’s secret thoughts
Royal
I knew that something was wrong the moment that I woke up. Other than the aches and pains that were wracking my body, I was missing something essential to me.
Justice.
Justice was gone, and he hadn’t kissed me goodbye or even woken me.
Granted, it was rolling onward toward ten in the morning, but he usually woke me up when he was going for a run. Let alone when he was leaving me for a long time.
Brows furrowing, I threw the covers off and crawled out of Justice’s bed, heading straight for the bathroom.
I groaned when I got there and realized that I’d started my period—hence feeling run over by a goddamn Mack Truck.
No wonder I was in such a shitty mood. My period arriving was the worst of intruders.
And I’d be feeling it for days.
Dayyyyys.
Long, awful, no good, very bad days.
Frowning hard at the box of tampons, I contemplated what I wanted to do.
I knew what I should do—get up and move.
But I wasn’t working today, and Justice wasn’t here to tell me that we couldn’t lay in bed all day.
For that reason, I did what any sane woman would do—crawled back under the covers and prayed for death.
It didn’t take me.
In fact, when I woke up next at twelve, it was with the sinking feeling that Justice really should’ve called or come home.
But the house was as quiet as a tomb.
A chill washed over me as I pulled my phone from the charger.
When I did, a piece of paper floated down onto the floor, and I leaned over and grabbed it without falling to the floor.
Squinting my blurry eyes, I read the note.
Then read it again.
Gone to get groceries. Then to run a few errands. Also, your place burned to the ground. Love you.
That was all it said.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Also, your place burned to the ground.
Thinking I needed to talk to him—and now—I dialed his number.
But it went straight to voicemail.
It did this twice more before I decided he was likely purposefully ignoring me because he didn’t want to have to explain about my place.
But I found that I wasn’t nearly as upset about it as I might have been at one time.
In fact, besides the piece of shit feeling that I had going on at the moment, I was actually a pretty happy—and giddy—piece of shit.
The next thing on the agenda was to call my brother.