Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
“Get her flowers and get out of her life, man. The end.” I release him and walk back to the car, round the trunk, and climb inside.
“That was interesting,” Ana says, crunching a nacho chip. “He cried, right?”
I grunt. “Pretty damn close. Let’s go up the road and eat.” I start the car, and a few minutes later, I pull into a bowling alley parking lot and idle the engine with the heater on.
Ana hands me a hotdog. “What you did back there, helping that girl, was a good thing.”
“I didn’t help her,” I say. “You know as well as I do, she’s going to stay with him.”
“Statistically, yes, but sometimes something like what happened tonight is what makes people see the light.” She holds out her nachos in my direction.
I grab a chip. “Speaking of statistics and all kinds of mumbo jumbo, how are things at the FBI?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I really don’t—know.”
I glance over at her. “You’ve never answered that question any differently. You realize that, right?”
“I do, actually. After you left, I went into profiler training, and I thought that would change how I feel about the agency, you know, give me more purpose.”
“You’re catching serial killers now?” I ask, not sure how I feel about that.
She grabs my Slurpee and takes a drink like we’re still together, like she doesn’t have a Diet Sprite in her drink holder. It feels familiar and right when everything about us is now wrong. Maybe it always was.
“I thought so,” she says, setting the drink back down. “Which felt like I’d be doing something I could feel passionate about. Instead, I’m stuck in the white-collar crime unit unless I agree to move to another state.”
“And that’s a no, I take it?”
“I still have Kurt’s place in Littleton. I let the local police department train out there. It keeps his legacy alive and well.”
I remember the night she found out he was dead. Her knees had given out, and I’d caught her before she crashed to the ground. I held her through the tears. Shortly after, Ana took leave from work to help Kasey run the training facility, but he was drinking so much Ana couldn’t take it. She thought he was safer with me than with her for once. She wanted me to take him on a few missions to help clear his head. I’d said yes, and that was the worst decision of my life.
“Why don’t you leave the agency and run the training facility like you did after Kurt died?”
“Without Kurt, business faltered. He was what people came for. Renting out the property for use and recreating the training ranch is another story. I can’t walk away from my badge to sit at home and do nothing.”
She won’t inherit from Kurt for years, so I say, “You inherited from Kasey, I assume. Why not walk away from the agency and put your all into making it something?”
“I didn’t inherit from Kasey,” she says. “And please don’t ask for details. It’s complicated. And as for the business, I’d have to hire staff, and for what, if I have no business?”
She didn’t inherit from Kasey? He was rolling in the bucks just like Jake. Except, of course, he was in deep shit, that might have been deeper than I thought. If she knows that, she knows I wasn’t wrong about Kasey. Or maybe she’s still in denial, and eager to believe I’m a monster.
But damn it, I want to help her anyway. “If you want to go into this successfully, Walker might be interested. They’re committed to constant, diverse training. I was actually in Texas training at a damn horse ranch when I got the call from Jake. And not the kind of ranch Kurt ran. Blake wants us all to know how to ride horses, in case we ever need to escape by horseback. He’s ridiculously thorough about our training.”
“Not a bad thing to be,” she says. “But I’m pretty sure Blake doesn’t like me much which is a good thing. He’s supposed to be on your side.”
“I don’t need anyone to be on my side, Ana, and that’s not how Blake rolls anyway. He’s an honest, fair man.”
“And Adam and Savage?”
“Adam and I met when we crossed paths, both in the same place, for different reasons. I saved his life, and then he brought me into Walker, which probably saved mine. As for Savage, he’s a crazy motherfucker who tells stupid jokes, loves the hell out of his wife, and is the perfect killer you need by your side when you’re trying to save lives, as twisted as that sounds.”
“What does that mean?” she asks. “The part about Adam probably saving your life.”
I finish off my last hotdog and ball up the paper. “I told you. I’m not the same man I was when you knew me.” I glance out of the window. “It’s raining, and Jake is lying who knows where. We need to go.”