Total pages in book: 19
Estimated words: 18063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 90(@200wpm)___ 72(@250wpm)___ 60(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 18063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 90(@200wpm)___ 72(@250wpm)___ 60(@300wpm)
“Could you put your seat belt on, please?”
“I—yes,” he agreed, sliding back, and I heard the click that told me I could accelerate.
It was quiet then, and I imagined I could hear my watch ticking, which was impossible—it was far too expensive a timepiece for that to be the case—but the moments dragged by in excruciating awkwardness, which I loved.
Hannah coughed softly. “You wanted to meet George to get a better understanding of the people in my life. Isn’t that right, Dr. Butler?”
“That is right, yes,” he affirmed, picking up the conversation. “And because I’ve heard so much about how very lethal you are, Mr. Hunt.”
Fuck my life. “Well, you know,” I replied flippantly, “sometimes ya gotta kill people if you want ’em to stay down.”
He inhaled sharply, Hannah groaned, and that basically killed the rest of the conversation that would have been had on the way downtown to the Hilton Chicago.
* * *
It was funny to imagine Hannah turning eighteen. All I could think was now there would be a whole new world of horrors. Thank God she was talking about college in Chicago. I had no idea what I was supposed to do if she was in another state and I wasn’t there to protect her.
It was the most ridiculous thing that I never saw coming, my affection for a young woman who would somehow become the little sister I never knew I wanted. I had no idea I would get so attached in just a few short years.
I’d been sitting in the waiting room to meet Miguel Romero, the head of security for Sutter International, a global company headquartered in Chicago. Since I retired from active duty with the military after my last time out on an operation that was fucked-up from the beginning and nearly got me and my whole team killed, I had been going out only with a special forces team for extractions or eliminations. In between those outings, I needed a job. When a friend suggested private security, I looked at a few companies. I thought working in security would entail lots of travel. I would be guarding executives on trips. I would be accompanying people to glamorous, and sometimes not so glamorous, destinations on every continent. It sounded simple compared to my old job of being dropped into every hellhole on the planet to either rescue someone or kill them. I had a finite skill set that allowed me to do one or the other but not much else. Like, I couldn’t teach biology or fix a car or wait tables. I barely finished high school, not because I was stupid but because I was bored out of my mind, and when you couldn’t be sure of having a bed at the end of the day, life got dicey. That whole hierarchy-of-needs bit, the bottom part of the triangle where shelter and breathing were—that was where I lived. Hard to do homework in a bus station or a bowling alley when people would roust you when you overstayed your welcome. Turning fourteen had been huge, because I could work without parental consent. Sitting in a plexiglass box at a gas station all night where it was warm, where I had food and light was like a dream come true. That, along with the fact that there were showers for truckers that my boss let me use for free meant that in high school, unlike middle school, I was clean every day. It was a big deal.
At eighteen, I signed on the dotted line and went into the Army, ready to spend the rest of my life there. It was the first time I could ever remember being taken care of. Not only was I fed and clothed and had my own bed, but they taught me valuable life skills. When I excelled in certain parts of my training, like target shooting, endurance, and split-second decision making, my path diverged from my peers and my combat skills were honed so there could be no mistaking what I was being trained to do. I was there to kill people.
What was surprising was that after ten years, I was tired of the Army. I was ready to do something different. I just wasn’t sure what that was. I knew I didn’t want to be a cop, or a marshal like my buddy Ian, or any kind of law enforcement. I also didn’t want to open a bar or make pottery or start up a school in self-defense. I needed to figure out my life, so I dropped my packet, retired from the Army, signed up for the reserves, and went to interview for a job at Sutter. When I got it, I was surprised that instead of safeguarding an executive, my new boss, Miguel Romero, informed me that I would be guarding Mr. Sutter’s niece.