Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 72561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
“I left my report on the kitchen table. Hell, I didn’t even know Channing was in that neighborhood until my wife started freaking out that a suspected rapist was living down the street from her best friend. I didn’t tell you for the same reason you didn’t run any backgrounds on her. You didn’t want to know, remember?” He asked with a raised brow.
I threw my hands in the air. “Yes, but I’ve gotten...close to her in the last four months. Had I known...”
Cabe interrupted me. “Had you known, you wouldn’t have done a thing different and you know it. You’re serving the warrant in a few hours, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes, after he gets off from work I’ll be on the team to serve the warrant.”
“Cabe? Loki?” A soft, hesitant voice said from in front of us, pulling our eyes from one another to the woman, Channing, still huddled in on herself in the corner.
Her eyes looked wild as she took in the crew behind us collecting evidence, as well as the five cops gathered at the door to the room waiting for the okay to come in from the evidence techs.
“You okay, darlin’?” Cabe asked her.
For some odd reason, the question set my teeth to grinding. Rage started to swell in my chest at the Chief’s evident closeness to her. However, I tamped it down, knowing it had no place right now.
No one would benefit from my attitude right now, and I knew that. So I tamped it down, viciously stopping my snarl of outrage that was about to pour out of my throat.
Her eyes looked warily at me, then my badge; I knew when I wasn’t wanted.
Giving her a curt nod, I left, even though every cell in my body was telling me not to.
Chapter 5
I guarantee I will fill your life with copious amounts of sexual frustration.
-Life lesson
Channing
“What’s that sound?” My brother asked from his usual seat in the recliner.
I’d thought it was just the game he was playing that was making all that noise, but then he asked what the sound was, which made me get up and investigate.
Walking to the front window, I took a pull of my beer before flicking the blinds open with two fingers. What I found was our entire street engulfed in police officers, sheriffs, and even an ambulance and fire truck, about five houses back.
Surprisingly, all of it was centered on Varian Strong’s house, two houses down and across the street from my own.
There were men dressed in black tactical gear with these big...no massive, rifles held out in front of them. The back of their shirts said SWAT in bold white lettering, and I felt my throat start to close.
Knowing if I didn’t get my head together, that I’d wind up in another thirty-minute mental breakdown, I turned around and grabbed my bottle of Jack Daniels.
I didn’t even bother with the glass; I just drank straight from the bottle.
The burn going down my throat felt like fire, but I kept chugging until I couldn’t any longer.
Gasping for air to cool the out of control inferno in my throat and to replenish the oxygen in my lungs, I turned back to the window and started to watch.
The Jack Daniels coursing through my veins gave me courage, which allowed me to go out on my front porch and sit in my rocking chair to watch the activity.
I watched as seven black clad men entered the premises.
What in the world was going on? When I came to this town, it was because it was quiet, and had a small population.
Yet, over the past year, there’d been multiple apartment fires, rapes, and then this. Was I in the Twilight Zone or something?
The next couple of minutes were a blur as a flurry of activity started to overtake the small house.
Four large bangs preceded the men, breaching the door with them pushing inside the house, which caused me to laugh.
They reminded me of the Three Stooges, all trying to fit through the door at once. Somehow they’d gotten their wires crossed, and two men got caught up on each other as they’d tried to enter.
There was a little bit of fighting to see who got in next, but finally the man on the left, the one in the black BPD shirt, rather than the SWAT shirts, won. Only because he decked the guy on the right that was also in a BPD shirt, with a large elbow to the face.
I really, really wished I could hear what they were saying.
Minutes ticked by as I waited to see what would happen, and finally they started to exit the house, dragging Varian’s limp body out by the elbows and threw him bodily into a police car.
Nearly an hour of the hot afternoon passed by before the form that I’d been unconsciously searching for made his way back to his house after everybody started to disperse.
He walked sedately across the street.
He had his helmet in one hand, and his Kevlar vest that he’d been wearing in the other, as he walked across the street with his head hung.
The cop car carrying Varian honked, making Loki turn his head and glare at the man that was driving the car.
“Was that you who fought with the other officer to get in the door?” I yelled.
My face flamed as I realized what I’d said, and I slunk down into my seat a little lower just in case he turned that same glare on me that he’d just leveled at the police car.
“Yeah,” he growled loudly. “Fucker’s always trying to one up me. Oram’s going to get one of us killed some day.”
“Want to come sit?” I asked as a flare of courage sparked through me.
He looked tired. And alone.
And I didn’t like it.
Slowly, he walked from the road, through my yard, and came to a stop at the bottom of the steps.
My house was pier and beam, and it sat a few feet off the ground with three steps leading up to the porch.