Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 138522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
“He was a dick. He made an offer as you said. Reid got it up but if it’s too high it looks like you had a reason to get rid of Kenneth.”
“I want to take it.”
“I knew you would.”
The doorbell rings with our delivery and we shut down talk of Jean Claude. Neither of us bring up anything but Dexter, food, and Game of Thrones. I let Jean Claude wait until morning. She lets murder wait until morning.
And so, we eat Chinese food while Dexter gives us doggy eyes that can’t be resisted. We give him chicken. He farts his appreciation and we end up on the balcony in the cold, hiding from a farting serial killer dog. It’s pretty fucking perfect. Except for my secrets. Except for interviews with the police and the uncertainty of the investigation. Those things hang in the air like a fine mist laced with poison.
When we finally head to bed and lay under the covers in the darkness, Abbie whispers, “I don’t want anyone to take us from us.”
I stroke her hair. “The only ones that can take us from us is one of us, and we aren’t going to be foolish enough to allow that to happen.”
“I like that answer,” she says, relaxing into my side, fingers flexing on my chest. She is tiny and yet she is a force of nature.
She doesn’t speak again and I lay there for a good hour after she falls asleep, listening to her breathe, playing all the ways my confessions might go in my head. The one thing I go back to is the delivery. I can’t change what happened with Kendall. I don’t want to change what happened with Kendall, but I can change how my father affects Abbie. I can make sure that she doesn’t feel any more distress by way of my father’s manipulation. I slip out of the bed and I whisper for Dexter to stay at the foot of the bed. He’s a damn good dog who seems to understand just about anything I tell him. His previous owner must have passed away and then some asshole relative dumped him. Nothing else makes sense. He was loved. I can tell he was loved, and then the anger issues came from losing that love. I relate. That dog is my animal soulmate.
It’s midnight when I stand at the window in the living room in pajama bottoms and dial Blake. “If it was a wig,” I say without preamble, “it came on and off at some point. What about cameras catching that moment?”
“We tried. We don’t have that wig or the coat that was being worn going in and out of the building. Nor does that person show up anywhere on a camera we can hack within a two-mile radius.”
“Are there cameras you can’t hack?”
“Correction. Any camera within a two-mile radius. We hit them all.”
“Search my father’s house. Get inside. Do what you have to do and take him down if that’s what has to happen and if you can’t make that happen, I will.”
“We don’t know that your father did this.”
“He did a hell of a lot of other things, so ask me if I care, Blake. He needs to go down.”
“You know I don’t frame people, Gabe. That’s not how we operate.”
“I’ll fucking frame him if you won’t.”
“Are you sure you and Reid aren’t twins? Because I just had this conversation with him. Both of you are operating emotionally, which isn’t your way. Exactly why you both need to step back and give me some room to work. A little birdy tells me there’s something in the wind.”
“What something?”
“A way out of this. Go to bed and let me do my fucking job. More tomorrow.” He hangs up. Fucking asshole hangs up when I’m the one paying him. I shove my phone into my pocket and press my hands to the window. “Damn it,” I growl. “Damn his little birdie.”
“Gabe?”
I turn as Abbie draws near, wearing only my T-shirt and I notice every part of her, from her wild red mass of curls to her pink painted toes. And her companion: Dexter. He’s by her side, her private escort. I drag her to me and settle her against the window. “Miss me?”
“I heard, Gabe. I heard what you just said. I heard you talk about framing your father to save me.”
I inhale and look skyward before I level her in a stare, knowing everything I want to protect her from is charging at me, at her, at us. “My father is a bad man, Abbie.”
“You keep telling me that, but—”
“He may well be the one who did this, all of it.”
She pales. “What?”
“He took over your ex’s role in the development project when Kenneth died. He has the most to benefit from his death. Jean Claude—”