Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 90685 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90685 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
“What has that got to do with anything?” I ask.
“It could be our way to trap them. If Walker thinks we have something on whoever hired us to follow Rowling, we could set it up for their bug to hear us plotting to take down Rowling and draw them to a meeting place we choose. We’ll say there’s going to be a payment drop or we have new information on them to hand off.”
I rub my chin. “The name they gave me was Gary Price, and he introduced himself as a campaign manager but didn’t want us to know who he represented. He was probably using a fake name, because a quick search showed no political affiliations to any Gary Price.”
“That we could find, anyway,” Ghost adds. “Do you know how many Gary Prices there are in California alone?”
I continue. “He said he wanted us to tail Rowling because of some shady dealings and that there’s suspicion of him being some big drug kingpin. I didn’t ask too many questions because the money was right, and even when I went back to Price with absolutely nothing, he told me to keep following.”
Saint writes Gary Price on the board and circles it. “I say this guy is our ticket to get their attention.”
“It was over a year ago that he hired us,” I point out.
“Walker and Rowling wouldn’t know that. And even if they did, it’s not as if this Price guy has told us to stop. We were set to follow Rowling to Vegas before everything with Rodriguez went down.” Saint has a point.
“I think this can work,” I say.
“What can work?” Dylan’s voice, laced with sleep, comes from the direction of the hallway. He appears in his underwear, rubbing his eyes, which then widen when he sees a room full of people. “Uh …”
“Babe? Might want to put some clothes on.”
“Umm, right. Okay.” He backs away back down the hall.
I’m attacked from every direction with echoes of “babe” and “ooh.”
“You’re all children,” I complain. “Let’s please get some details ironed out before Dyl—Rodriguez gets back.”
Iris walks over to Saint and takes the marker off him and then kisses his cheek.
“And no kissing on the job,” I say.
Iris turns to me, smirking. “Do those same rules apply to you and Dylan, boss?”
“He’s not my coworker.”
“But he is your assignment.”
“You’ll be my assignment in a minute if you don’t focus on what’s important here. Only, I won’t be protecting you.”
“This is important,” Iris says. “The bossman … in … a relationship? Does not compute.”
Annnd of course Dylan walks back in at that very moment. Way to make things awkward, Iris.
My gaze locks on Dylan’s, who’s staring at me expectantly. My mouth opens to refute Iris, but nothing comes out. I avert my stare back to the whiteboard. “We should nail down the particulars.”
My diversion must work because Dylan takes a seat on the armrest of my single chair.
“What do we have so far?” he asks.
“The guys have come up with a way to get Walker to come to us.”
“We … want that?” The scrunch in the middle of Dylan’s brow is adorable.
“Yep. We can’t keep running from them. It’s time to go on the offensive.” If it weren’t for trying to keep Dylan out of it, I would’ve gone the offensive route long before now, but Dylan is my priority over going in guns blazing and thinking about the consequences later.
That’s what this life is like, and the fact I’ve become so desensitized to it that it hasn’t affected me until someone I care about is involved makes me realize that way of thinking is rather outdated.
Me and my crew, we’ve taken lives. We’ve acted in the name of something bigger than us. And when we did so in the military, we were honored and revered. Now, as a private firm, we live in the shadows, and there’s a sense of darkness and evil that looms over that. The guilt it comes with could cripple the strongest of men, and I can’t deny that it gets to me more than I’d like. None of us at Mike Bravo are emotionless robots, no matter how much the military tried to drill that into us, and sometimes it gets to be a little too much.
But we all have to have our moments, let it pass, and then push through it. Because if any of us sitting in this room really stopped to think about the actions of our pasts too hard or too long, we’d crumble into a million pieces.
Sometimes it’s good to have the reminder that we’re human.
And with Dylan next to me, I’ve never felt more of an average man than I do right now. Because I’m doing something every single other person on the planet would do for the man they lo—