Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 133738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Ryn fell silent.
I twisted my hand until I got it into position to hold hers.
I could only grab on to her ring finger and pinkie with my own.
But I held on.
Her fingers curled around mine.
And she held on too.
“I’m sorry, Ryn,” I said quietly.
“He was the best brother in the world,” she replied.
“And now, he’s not,” Pepper noted.
“Pez, cool it, okay?” Hattie said softly.
“I haven’t been a good friend,” I declared. “I didn’t know any of this about any of you. You’re all kidnapped because of my brother. You took my back. And I didn’t make the effort to take any of yours.”
“You get a pass this time, Evz,” Pepper said. “Things have been tangled for you. For instance, all of us tied to chairs, waiting for rescue.”
That was when I fell silent.
Actually, we all did.
Though part of mine was that I was thinking about her calling me “Evz.” She’d never called me that. I’d heard, in passing, them calling each other Hatz, Pez and Rinz, but they’d never called me Evz.
I felt like I’d gone through an initiation.
And passed.
And the crazy thing was, that made me feel good, no matter how tough that initiation was proving to be at this moment.
Ryn broke the silence by saying, “I bet the Rock Chicks didn’t just hang around, waiting to be rescued.”
“Have you seen Luke Stark or Vance Crowe?” Pepper asked. “They soooooooo did.”
I had seen Luke Stark but not Vance Crowe.
But more, I’d definitely seen Danny Magnusson, Axl Pantera, Auggie Hero and Boone Sadler.
Which meant I giggled.
They all started giggling with me.
We stopped when the door opened and the guy who’d been in with us before strolled in.
Behind him came another guy I hadn’t seen before, followed by one of the guys who’d kidnapped Ryn.
The last guy was carrying another chair.
He closed the door behind him.
But it was the middle guy I paid attention to.
Because he scared the shit out of me.
Yeah.
One look at him, he scared the absolute crap out of me.
And, unsurprisingly, he only had eyes for me.
He also came to a stop three feet in front of me.
“I gotta say,” he began, “I been to Smithie’s. And when I went, I was into you even before I knew you were Dirk Gardiner’s daughter.”
Oh crap times three.
One, this tall, beefy, dark-haired, pug-faced, creepy guy with mean and openly crazy brown eyes had seen me mostly naked.
Two, he was into me.
Three, he knew my dad.
“Um, I don’t think you got the memo, bud,” Ryn said from behind me. “But we have protection. The serious kind.”
The chair was set behind creepy guy, who I was assuming was the infamous Cisco, and creepy guy reached around to it.
He flipped it, sat in it in that man-way where he apparently was forced by the laws of nature to straddle the thing to prove he needed plenty of room for his big balls (which might be indicative he actually didn’t have big balls), and he did this stating, “I know you got protection. But, you know, shit is real for me.”
And he spoke all these words to Ryn, but he did it staring at me.
Ryn kept talking.
“By my estimation, you got T minus five minutes before our guys bust in here and kick the shit out of your guys.”
He leaned into both arms folded on top of the back of the chair.
And he continued to talk to me.
“This will be a problem for them considering every entrance and a variety of scan spots outside are rigged to blow.”
As my stomach started to burn, he tipped his head to the side and assumed a smile that made his creepy factor shoot through the roof, which in turn made my skin start to crawl.
Well, one good thing about that, and only one.
It was good we didn’t try to escape.
“Did you know you can buy land mines?” he asked me. “Right here. In Denver. Got a guy, out on East Evans. Front of his shop, he does tailoring and alterations. In the back, though. That’s where the fun stuff is.”
I held his gaze, my stomach feeling sick, my throat feeling funny, like it was drying up while at the same time preparing to conduct vomit.
I did not want Mag to blow up.
I did not want any of the guys to blow up.
I didn’t want any of my girls to blow up either.
And last, I, personally, did not want to blow up.
It didn’t say a lot about me, but in that moment, I was uncertain if I wanted this creepy guy to blow up, but I was leaning toward yes.
However, so I didn’t damn my soul to hell for thoughts such as that, I had to pull myself together and finesse this situation so no one blew up.
“I think I know what you’re looking for, and I don’t have it,” I told him.