Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 138981 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138981 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
“I wonder if there’s someone out there feeling Emma that way,” she whispers after a heavy moment. “Missing her, needing to know where she is.”
“If there is,” I promise, “I’ll make sure they get the closure they deserve.”
I hate like hell that I can’t keep that promise yet.
Because I feel like Emma Santos’ death has more dirt behind it.
I don’t want to call the people who love her until I can tell them the whole truth about what happened to her.
They deserve that, too.
Just as much as Delilah deserved to be loved by a family who understood her, even if it took her the first eighteen years of her life to find it.
We settle back into a cozy silence, drinking our coffee in the hot morning sun.
When our mugs are empty, I go back to work on the porch.
We’re still quiet, and it’s good.
It’s easy.
Hell, I like it.
I like how comfortable it feels while I do the teardown, while Delilah slips back into the house to wash the mugs. She comes back later with a cold glass of lemonade for me, and it’s always refilled just when the sawdust coating the back of my mouth gets to be too much.
She leaves the front door open while she works at unpacking, asking if I need anything every now and then.
I’m definitely not expecting her to feed me later, after I’m done with the steps. They’re a little out of place with the fresh yellow pine against the grey-weathered planks of the porch, but it’s sturdy enough.
I’m halfway through wiring in the new alarm system. It’s this state-of-the-art thing from Home Shepherd, this big security company out west.
But I won’t turn down a thick, hearty sandwich, either. She laughs and swipes a little dot of mayonnaise off my nose.
Damn, I could stay like this.
It’s warm and easy in a way I’ve never had before.
I never thought I’d feel this prickly around a woman I usually piss off purely by breathing.
Still don’t know what made her decide to let me in today. But it feels like I’ve been given something precious and completely unique.
That something can’t last forever, though.
And just as I’m testing the sensor wired to her bedroom window, I catch the telltale sound of my radio crackling from the dash of my patrol car.
It’s parked all the way past her fence on the opposite side of the yard, but I’m hard-wired to hear that sound from a hundred feet away. I give the window one last check to make sure it won’t stick before I jog out to my car, lifting my sweat-drenched t-shirt to swipe at my dripping face before ducking inside.
The leather seats almost burn me alive after baking in the sun all day.
Every time.
Every damn time, I forget the seats turn into griddles in the summer.
Swearing, I grab the CB radio handset and roll back out of the car, stretching the cord behind me. “Graves in, what’s going on?”
“Oh, there you are,” Mallory says. “We’ve got a pink problem again, Lucas.”
“Pink problem?” I groan, dropping my face into my hand. “Aw, hell. Can’t Henri take it today? Or Micah?”
“They’re already on the scene with Captain Faircross. It’s not a three-man job,” she replies tartly.
In the background, I hear the little ping that means Mallory just unlocked something new in her flirty game. “Do be a dear and go help them, would you?”
Snarling, I pull my phone back and check the little app that lets us track each other on GPS. Sure enough, my crew is all piled up in one location.
Damnation.
Sighing, I bring the phone to my mouth again.
“I’ll be there in twenty. Ten-four, Graves out.”
I don’t want to deal with this.
As I drop the radio back into the car, Delilah slips out of the house. Even though she’s been in the shade most of the day, she’s just as much a sweaty mess as I am, her hair clinging to her face, her shirt so soaked I can make out the stitching on that black sports bra right down to the finest detail.
Goddamn, I’m a dead man walking, and I don’t mean the humidity.
Propping herself against a porch post, she flaps the front of her shirt, fanning her belly. “Everything okay?”
“Yep, just the damn Jacobins’ pigs again. Orneriest little monsters on the planet. Those things got out on old Maurice Norton’s property again, and now Maurice is threatening to shoot them and the Jacobins too for his trouble.” I snort. “Shit happens so often we call it the pink problem.”
She laughs. “Sounds like they need better fences. Who are the Jacobins again?”
“Remember me telling you about the hillfolk?”
“I remember you being a huge sarcastic prick about the hillfolk.” Delilah grins.
“Just my default setting, darlin’.” Still, a smile escapes as I trudge back up the walk to pack up my toolbox and start picking up the debris I’ve left behind. “That’s the Jacobins. They don’t live in town proper. They’ve got this big sprawling farm that’s practically a small village on its own, way up in the hills past the woods. They’ve been there before there was a Redhaven, but they don’t truck around much with townsfolk and never have. Think they’re happier out there with their pigs and their moonshine and their endless bullshit.”