Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
“Lottie, querida, you didn’t know?” Eddie repeated.
I tipped my eyes up to him. “Plastic sheets?”
Eddie’s face got hard and he looked to Lee.
Tex’s big mitt fell on my shoulder and squeezed.
“He was…he was getting ready to follow through, wasn’t he?” I asked.
Eddie looked back to me.
“Yeah, Lottie,” he said gently.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
Tex pulled out the chair beside me and settled his bulk into it.
His hand covered mine on the table.
“Safe now, girl. All good,” he low boomed.
I stared at his hand covering mine.
“Lottie, look at me,” Tex urged.
But something was wrong with me.
“Lottie, my girl, look at me,” Tex repeated.
“I love you, Tex, you know that, don’t you?” I said to our hands.
“I do, darlin’, and I love you too,” Tex replied.
The astonishing and magnificent event of Tex actually saying the words and not getting tongue tied and feeling awkward at open emotion didn’t even register with me.
“I love you, Eddie, you know that,” I told Tex and my hands. “I love you for my sister and my nephews and I love you for me too.”
“Love you too, sweetheart,” I heard Eddie murmur as I felt my hair gently pulled off my shoulder and a hand land reassuringly on my neck.
I wasn’t reassured.
“I love all you guys,” I said.
No one replied but I felt the goodness all around me.
It just didn’t work.
“I need Mo,” I whispered in a voice even I barely heard.
“Sorry, darlin’?” Tex asked.
Abruptly, I turned my gaze to his, totally lost the hold I’d been keeping now for a week, and shrieked, “I need Mo!”
The back door opened even before Vance and Ren took off toward it.
I heard heavy, fast steps then I was in strong arms and after that I was sitting in a wide lap, burrowing into a big body, trembling from head to toe.
“Victim’s Assistance?” I heard Hank ask quietly.
“Give her a minute,” Mo replied in the same tone, holding me close but pulling me closer. Then in my ear, “What do you feel?”
Terrified.
Plastic sheets.
His arms tightened further. “What do you feel, sweetheart?”
“Y-you.”
“Me,” he agreed. “Where am I?”
“R-right here.”
“Right here. With you. Are you safe?”
I forced myself to nod, but the movement felt foreign, like I’d never done it before.
And I couldn’t stop shaking.
Man, it was so cold.
“Get her sister here,” Mo ordered.
“On it,” Eddie said.
“And her mom,” Mo went on.
“Got that,” Tex replied.
“I’m okay. I’ll b-be okay. Don’t worry them,” I said to Mo’s chest.
“Lottie?”
“Y-yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“’Kay.”
Still trembling (okay, more like shaking), I pushed closer to Mo.
And he held on.
Chapter Eleven
I Hit the Mother Lode
Mo
“Fuck, Mo. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
Lawson hit him with that the second his foot hit the ground floor after he left Lottie in bed with her mother and sister.
Mo looked to the man.
He looked wrecked.
Mitch Lawson was about doing what he could to make things right, not the other way around.
Freaking Lottie like that wasn’t in his DNA and knowing he did gutted him.
But that was on Mo.
She’d shown her level of fear that first night.
He should have known something like this would happen and the second Mitch and Slim showed, he should have been on that.
“I know you didn’t,” Mo replied. “She knows you didn’t. She’s a together woman. Puts on a tough front. Even I didn’t know she wasn’t hangin’ in there, Mitch. And you couldn’t know, Lottie bein’ how she is, that we hadn’t kept her up to date. That’s on me. I should have warned you. But like I told you outside, she doesn’t know anything. The first letter, that’s it.”
Lawson nodded.
“Right. Let’s just get this done,” Mo said, moving into the living room.
He was shocked as shit when they settled in, the Nightingale brothers (Lee and Hank), the Chavez brothers (Eddie and Hector), Tex, Vance, Luke and Ren all stood at his back.
Guess his approval rating went up.
In that moment, he couldn’t care less. He needed to focus on getting this done so he could get back to his girl.
He leveled his eyes to Lawson and Lucas who sat next to each other at the dining room table after Mo sat in the chair at the head, where Lottie had been.
Lawson had dealt with it (for now) and had his game face on.
And Lawson started it, taking point as bad cop, though Mo suspected Lucas might not take the role of good.
“Axl reports he locked this guy down because you called him in the crowd.”
Axl would not report that.
Fuck, this wasn’t going to go easy.
But it couldn’t.
If they appeared to be sweeping shit under the rug, this whackjob could walk.
“I didn’t get a good vibe from him, but he wasn’t notable, which is why I didn’t clock him at King Soopers where I saw him first,” Mo somewhat confirmed. “But I made the call and Axl said he was on him. I don’t know anything about locking him down and that wasn’t our remit, so I can’t confirm if he locked him down. But I’d be surprised Axl would do that unless the man gave Axl a reason to lock him down.”