Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
She looked away.
And the name hung between them.
Malorie.
“The town is going to do what towns do,” he told her. “Wendy and her friends are going to do what they do. This makes no difference to me. I know what I need to do, and I’m going to do that no matter what anyone else thinks I should be doing.”
She returned her attention to him. “They’re harmless. Wendy and her friends. They’ve been hurt. Badly. Misery loves company, for some.”
He nodded even though he wasn’t sure he believed her.
Then again, Lucinda said something about how groups of women were intimidating, even if they were just hanging out together.
In the past, groups of women wore white and burned bras for rights, and hashtagged their solidarity by announcing their membership in a club they’d been given no choice but to belong to.
Men who gathered had put on hoods and burned crosses, and cut a swath of terror through entire states. And that shit still hadn’t gone away, with more male collectives pulling up gaiters and putting on khakis and taking to the streets to claim rights they already had in abundance.
Maybe it was Rus, who lived the ideals of a father who wanted to belong to something that gave more meaning to life, who was hanging his damage on people who didn’t deserve it.
Then again, the word “militant” never gave him warm feelings.
“I won’t judge the whole by the one I encountered,” he promised her.
She nodded, lifted her coffee to him in salute, and said, “I hope you find justice for Brittanie soon.”
With that, she got up and strutted away.
But he agreed with her.
He hoped so too.
He finished his coffee leisurely, because so far, it’d been useful sitting out on the sidewalk in Misted Pines.
He had some people walk by who paid attention to him, dipped chins or even said hello.
But Kimmy and Lana were his only new acquaintances.
So when he was done with his coffee, he went in and bought a few things to have in his room should he get peckish and to take to the Bohannan’s.
He then strolled down the street to buy some flowers for his hostess that night, Delphine.
NINETEEN
Born This Way
Early that evening, Bohannan sat Rus down in his office with a beer and the door closed.
Delphine had been thrilled with the cookies and the flowers, and he’d been reminded that she wasn’t just a world-renowned author.
In a former life, she’d also been the star of a sitcom Rus had not been allowed to watch when he was younger.
That was a wild life trajectory, but he knew of wilder ones.
In other words, she was beautiful and outgoing and friendly, and right off-the-bat, very funny.
He met Bohannan’s daughter, Celeste, as well.
She was pretty, sweet, shy and would be the perfect foil for Rus’s ballsy, knows-what-he-wants-and-goes-after-it son.
He stopped coupling off his kids with locals, which would bring them closer if Rus followed through with moving out here, when Bohannan got him a beer and led him to the office.
He’d asked Rus to come early because he wanted work out of the way so they could enjoy dinner without CK hanging over their heads.
Rus was at one with this idea.
That said, first things first.
“Christ, man, what devil did you make a deal with to score this house?”
Bohannan smiled.
He was right on the lake. His view was even better than the one from Rus’s hotel room, which was only about a seven-minute drive away, down the mountain and around what he had a feeling was Bohannan’s property.
And it was a compound. There was a tall, sturdy fence that disappeared into the woods and a gate with a call box you had to use for them to buzz you in, unless you had the code, which Bohannan did not give to him.
Rus wasn’t slighted. If he had this setup, he’d have to be a lot tighter to those he gave access to as well.
“My ancestors founded the town,” Bohannan informed him. “We got this land, probably by taking it.”
Well, that explained that, though Rus was struck by the coincidence that he was dealing closely with two people who had deep roots in an area of the country that was almost as far away from Plymouth Rock as you could get.
Guess if you found what you liked, you didn’t move away.
Bohannan was studying him.
“You getting ideas?” he asked.
“I like it out here,” was all Rus was ready to say, not that he didn’t feel like sharing with Bohannan, just that he wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
“It’d be nice to have a brother here, in that way,” Bohannan replied.
Rus had to admit, that felt good.
He knew from friends who were agents who had been reassigned, if you went somewhere new, especially at his age, it wasn’t easy to develop a social circle. Those had all been established years before, and although you could be invited in, you still always felt like the odd man out.