Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Then I could sleep.
For a fucking week.
With Millie right next to me.
An hour or two later, I was setting up the cameras, careful to try to keep them hidden from the road, for when they came looking for her, but close enough that I could see a car or men making their way onto the property.
I didn’t imagine they were going to come and try to ambush the cabin from all sides.
Not just for Millie.
Not even for the two of us.
Unless he called in more manpower than he’d had in the city. That was possible. Especially once he’d learned that she was staying with me. If he’d done enough research to even know who we were.
This wasn’t the Golden Days of the mafia. Back when the Five Families names were known to every man, woman, and child in the county.
Neeley might not have any fucking clue that Costa was a name in this part of the country. That we were the most well-connected crime syndicate on the East coast.
But if he did, that could be a problem. If he had more men than I anticipated.
Still, I wasn’t planning on being a sitting duck.
Not when the men in Millie’s family had so conveniently set up several deer stands high up in the trees, where I could sit and lie in wait.
I went ahead and connected sturdy ropes to each railing, not wanting to rely on a shaky ladder in a life-or-death situation. Because, once you took out one or two guys, the rest of ‘em would have a direction to shoot in. I needed to be able to get down quick.
Finished with that, I checked and double-checked my guns, keeping two on my person—thanks to Neo’s spare I found in the trunk—and stashing the two I’d bought at the local gun shop in carefully hidden locations in case I needed them.
Then I traced and retraced my steps through the woods, trying to make sure I knew the layout, so I had the home turf advantage.
Only after all of that was done, did I go into the cabin, taking a second to sit down, to get a drink, to mentally prepare.
I could put it off another day.
Go back to the hotel, spend the night in bed with Millie. Get some rest. Come at this from the right side of sleep.
But if there was a chance that these guys might think that she would circle back to the cabin now that she was on the run, I didn’t want them to have the element of surprise.
“Alright,” I said, sighing as I stood, muscles aching from too much work and not enough rest.
Then I grabbed Millie’s keys—the ones with a keychain featuring a picture of a bunch of cartoon dogs with the words around the side I wouldn’t tell anyone if I won the lottery, but there would be signs.
Then I drove around. For over an hour. If someone was still keeping an eye on her GPS, I wanted to make sure they got a chance to find it. I filled it up with fuel, then left it running in the driveway for an hour too. Just to really make sure.
With all that done, the sun having long set, I grabbed a drink, a snack, my phone to watch the cameras, and my guns, and made my way into the tree stand to wait them out.
I didn’t have to wait too long.
Sometime around three in the morning, the woods quiet save for the occasional hoot of an owl or scratch of an animal in the underbrush, I could hear it.
A car on the road that ran parallel to the woods.
Then, slowly but surely, it grew closer and closer.
They were smart enough to cut their lights, as dangerous as that was on a backroad with no street lamps.
One car.
And then another.
Then, fuck, another.
At the bare minimum, that was four men. At the max? Twelve or fifteen.
I was cursing myself for not calling in Cosimo, knowing he would have done this with me. Yes, even under Lorenzo’s nose. He’d already pissed off the boss as much as he possibly could. What was one more indiscretion?
But I’d purposely turned off my phone sometime on the drive after about a dozen missed calls from Lorenzo, who likely wanted to know why I’d run out of the meeting like that anyway.
“Fuck,” I hissed, rolling a crick out of my neck, then patting my pocket where the spare magazines were sitting.
I listened to the crunch of the gravel as they pulled in behind Millie’s car, then the sound of their voices as, I assumed, Neeley meted out instructions.
I was praying they would fan out.
That two or three would be close enough to clip off, and let me jump down, and run to the next spot in my plan.
My heartbeat tried to trip into overdrive, but I forced myself to focus, to stay calm, knowing the whoosh of it in my ears would make it hard to listen for the movements of Neeley’s men.