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)
When he arrived, she wrapped her fingers around his blazer at his biceps, noting, “You’ve had quite the night.”
He was unsurprised the news beat him up her mountain.
“Word gets around,” he replied.
Her head was tilted back, and since he’d already made the decision this was happening, and she was giving the invitation, he dropped his face down and touched his mouth to hers.
He could swear he heard the room quiet, then he felt the low buzz that went through as he lifted his head.
And now that was going to head down the mountain.
They moved away from each other, and he stood as she sat and didn’t take his own seat until she was settled under the table.
Her gaze rested on something beyond him, and he knew it was a hovering server when she asked, “Bourbon, whisky, vodka tonic or a beer?”
It was nice to know she paid such close attention.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I staying at yours or are you and Madden moving to Pinetop?”
Her mouth got tight.
He turned, and yes, a server was hovering.
“You got Macallan?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Neat.”
She strode to the bar.
“Porter’s been at you,” Lucinda stated when he looked back to her.
She was peeved.
“Do you live in an out-of-the-way Victorian house by the river?”
“It isn’t out of the way.”
He turned to the windows. “Can I see it from here?”
“Okay, it isn’t far away.”
He leveled his eyes on her.
“I have a sophisticated alarm.”
“I bet the security at Pinetop is more sophisticated.”
“Rus,” she said warningly.
“For between twenty-four and forty-eight hours, the Crystal Killer rapes his victims, vaginally and anally, as they’re tied to plastic tarping on a bed, their mouths duct taped. When he’s done, he bludgeons them in the back of the head with a hammer until they’re dead. He leaves a crystal in their palms and a note for me. And he’s probably in town. I just kissed you. Everyone in this room watched. And the news of what happened at the council meeting beat me up the mountain. Now, am I moving up here? Or are you moving to Pinetop?”
Her eyes were wide, and her face was pale. “Did Ezra…?”
She didn’t finish.
He answered anyway.
“Yes. They used his MO, probably thinking it would send us in the wrong direction. And straight up, if they hadn’t gotten a single detail wrong, they would have. That’s why I’m here. It’s also why CK is now here. So?” he pushed.
“I…need to think.”
She was flustered.
He hated that.
He hated that he’d just told her exactly how Brittanie died too.
But if it got her and Madden staying somewhere else, somewhere safe, he was okay with it.
“Pinetop would be better,” he said gently.
“Because Porter or Mom would be in danger too?”
Yes.
Or maybe.
He didn’t answer with either.
He said, “It’s more populated. He’s careful. He’d stay well away from Pinetop. Especially since he knows I know he’s here. And I know what he looks like now.”
His whisky was served as she said, “Okay. I…it’s closer to Madden’s school too. It’d be nice to have a break from taking her up and down the mountain five days a week.”
He looked pointedly at her phone, which was lying face down on the table.
“Now?” she asked.
“You don’t want the suites all booked up, do you?”
“You’re as annoying as Porter,” she complained.
He nabbed his whisky and took a sip, totally okay with the fact she thought that.
Mostly because she said it while reaching for her phone.
Rus stood on her balcony.
He saw a swirl of buttermilk in his peripheral vision, turned and looked in through the windows.
The Presidential Suite at the Pinetop took up the whole corner of his floor.
It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a powder room, a much more elaborate bar than his, two seating areas—a smaller, more intimate one for talking, a larger, more comfortable one for watching TV—a pool table, a dining table that sat six, two fireplaces, and a wraparound balcony that had three different doors to get to it.
He wasn’t sure, but he sensed it was bigger than the condo where he lived in Virginia.
Harking not too far back, the brown sugar-glazed pork chop at Bon Amie was inspired, they both had it, along with an appetizer of crab-stuffed mushrooms.
But they didn’t linger over it, and she’d ordered it before he got there, so the mushrooms were put in front of him by the time he took his second sip of whisky.
After their dinner, where conversation, when it was had, was stilted, it was all kinds of hilarious that, to get to her house, on a paved road that hugged the mountain, she drove a golf cart wearing an uber feminine dress and bronze stilettos.
She was being prickly while acquiescing to something that meant something to Rus, so he didn’t give her shit about the golf cart.
Her house, he could see even in the dark, was something.