Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 138334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 692(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 692(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
She murmured something under her breath he couldn’t quite catch.
“Spit it out, Lotus.” Gedeon accelerated and deliberately passed her and several other cars, bringing him nearly side by side with their quarry. He didn’t look over but bobbed his head up and down to the beat of the music playing loudly. He wore dark sunglasses and a baseball cap backward on his head. When the car in front of him didn’t move over immediately, he revved his engine impatiently.
Meiling laughed. “You don’t miss much, Leopard Boy. I just said I wanted to kick her dad hard somewhere it might do him some good.”
He winced, having the feeling he knew exactly where she was thinking of aiming, and his Lotus Blossom knew how to kick.
“He deserves it,” she added.
“A wise man knows not to argue,” he intoned, and passed the moment the car in front of him pulled into the middle lane, almost directly in front of Georgi’s pretty little Porsche. The driver gave Gedeon the finger, but he ignored it, rocking out to the music, his head banging up and down.
“When did you get wise?” she asked as the beat-up Honda glided up three cars to settle behind the Porsche.
“Suggesting kicks can straighten a man right up, Lotus,” he said, and let his truck slow just enough to annoy the hell out of Georgi. He wanted the man’s attention on him and his kick-ass truck, not the unremarkable little Honda sliding in and out of traffic, keeping right up with the Porsche.
As expected, Georgi pulled around the truck at the first opportunity and accelerated, wanting to put distance between him and the truck—or wanting to get to his destination faster. Gedeon wasn’t in the least surprised when he took the exit leading away from the city and toward Elijah Lospostos’s vast estate. The gently rolling hills were covered in trees placed close enough that their branches had grown strong but twisting together as they reached upward, forming an arboreal highway. Only a shifter would recognize it for what it was: essentially a road to use when one wanted to escape quickly.
The Honda pulled over in a small turnout under the shade of weeping trees someone had planted in the hopes of staving off the relentless sun on the side of the two-lane road. Gedeon pulled the truck in tight behind her so that not one part of his flashy vehicle was showing. He leapt from the truck into the Honda.
“Stay as far back as you can without losing him. Head for the knoll I told you about,” he instructed.
She glanced at him, her dark eyes soft. “Gedeon, we’re close, I can feel her.”
“I wish I was closer. If that note said to kill the child instead of providing proof of life, we’re fucked.”
Meiling drove with the same casual ease she did everything. He kept his gaze fixed on the Porsche, which was several miles ahead of them. They were slightly above Chaban and could see his car weaving in and out around a few of the circular turns. Meiling didn’t push the speed, although she had to be feeling the same sense of anxiety as Gedeon was.
This was one of those cases that inevitably took him back to a childhood where he had no control. Where murderers decided the fate of children for whatever their reasons. It didn’t matter that he was called in at the last minute and he had only a couple of hours to find the victim; he always felt responsible if he didn’t get there in time. Finding a dead child was one of the worst failures imaginable to him.
She abruptly pulled the Honda over and both bailed. They’d chosen this spot ahead of time because it gave them the best view of the small house Georgi Chaban leased on Lospostos land. Chaban’s parents had the home a mile from his, also leased from Lospostos, but they’d held that lease for years.
Chaban pulled his Porsche into the garage and was instantly swallowed, out of their sight. The moment he was in the garage, Gedeon and Meiling swept their entire surroundings for signs of guards or anyone else who might be watching over Georgi. Both had extrasensory gifts they had learned to rely on, and when neither could spot anyone and radar hadn’t gone off, they crouched low and ran toward the leased property.
Chaban’s land was very neat and set back from one of the well-maintained roads on the property. Everything on the Lospostos estate was very well kept, although it could appear wild to an outsider. The trees were sculpted for leopards, the branches thick and twisted to bend toward one another throughout the massive estate.
Chaban’s leased property was a distance from the main house, where Elijah and his family resided. Many of the Lospostos workers were considered family and had leased portions of the land for their own families. The land around the houses was maintained by the families, but all roads and the surrounding property were kept up by Lospostos.