Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 65225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I do know that I introduced you, and you went out on a few dates.”
“Three to be exact. One of which I was forced to take her on because she was walking down the road, and I couldn’t let her ‘walk’ when her car had broken down. Which it hadn’t. She’d actually known my schedule, and I played right into her plans. Her car was ‘broken down’ at the Cefco on the corner. Anyway, fast forward, I had decided on the first date that she wasn’t really my type, mostly because she ended it with ‘I love you.’ But holy cow, by the third, I knew that she wasn’t. And she’s done nothing but haunt me the last few months. She’s always where I’m at, no matter if I show up there at a random time or not. She was getting to the point where it was seriously noticeable… so I asked her to please respect my boundaries and leave me alone. That just pissed her off.”
“What happened to make you think she’s bad, though? Stalking is odd… but it’s not the end of the world,” Trouper tried to defend her.
Tried being the operative word.
Instead of calling him on the bullshit that was leaking out of his mouth, I stayed silent, allowing Easton to continue his tale.
“No, you’re right,” he agreed. “It would’ve been a nuisance, yes. But it didn’t end up being just that. She was following me home. Following me to work. She tried to break into my house a few times, along with my office. All under the guise of ‘suspicious activity.’”
Bruno grunted out a ‘that’s crazy, bro’ under his breath, which had me smirking at him.
He was right.
That was fucking crazy.
“What happened to make you think that this” —Trouper gestured at my truck— “is because of her.”
“Getting there,” Easton grumbled. “Anyway, then shit started happening. I got called into a joint task force meeting and she ‘accidentally’ cut me with a knife.”
Trouper froze.
“And I’m fairly fuckin’ sure that she purposefully shot me last week,” Easton continued.
Trouper’s mouth opened and closed. He did this a few times before he exploded.
“What the fuck do you mean she fuckin’ shot you?” Trouper bellowed.
The next couple of days all but poured forth from Easton’s lips, and I realized that it was a cleansing of sorts.
This had been building up for a long time, and Easton hadn’t wanted to disappoint his brother to the point where he felt bad about something he couldn’t control.
Trouper was pinching his nose. “You have stitches from a knife wound, broken ribs, and a bullet burn across your back. Which, you think, she was responsible for.”
Easton grunted out a “Yes.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” Trouper grumbled darkly.
He was pissed.
But he was also upset that his brother had been hurt and hadn’t told him.
Which led to allowing him a little leeway in how he’d missed other signs of his brother’s abuse when he was younger. Had he known…
“Oh, shit.”
I looked up to find a cop car driving past where we were standing slowly, as if he was looking for something.
He spotted it a few seconds later, getting out of his cruiser and heading our way.
The three large men all but closed the circle around me. The truck was at my back. Easton at my front. Trouper at my left side. And Bruno at my right.
Literally nothing would get through them.
“Officer,” Easton said, moving forward far enough to stop the officer’s forward momentum toward us.
“Sir,” the officer said. “We had a tip that led us here.”
I stopped listening because Easton gestured for the cop and him to head to the back of the truck, where my doors were still wide open.
I really needed to go soon if I was going to be on time with my load. But it was more than evident that wasn’t going to happen in a timely manner.
So I sighed and leaned against the truck while Bruno joined the officer and Easton at the back of the truck.
“I’ve done more protecting of him than you can ever imagine,” Trouper said into the silence.
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“You might’ve done a good job with the stuff that you could see,” I acquiesced. “But what about the stuff that you couldn’t?”
Trouper didn’t have anything to say to that.
And eventually couldn’t because Easton came back with his phone to his ear, and my laptop in his hands. The cop went to his cruiser and left, leaving us alone once again.
“Look,” he said to us all. “This is what Hank was able to find in the last few days. These are the emails she exchanged with a few colleagues that work in different states. And the text stream on the right is the conversation she had with the first cop that pushed you down yesterday, Bang Bang.”