Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
That was the trouble with her “condition.”
Red dye was a huge no-no, so when I actually found something that she liked, it was something we ate a lot of. Which, inevitably, became something that she was put off of because there were only so many times a week you could eat macaroni before it got really, really old.
“I’m going to get in my bunk and watch the new series I started,” she paused. “You’re really staying, Kobe?”
In the four hours he’d been there, it was as if she’d imprinted on him.
I liked it, but I also feared it.
Because when he inevitably went home, she’d throw a walleyed fit.
And that would be fun to deal with…not.
“I’m staying.” He paused. “I have to go work tomorrow…but that’s only for an hour or two.”
JP fist-pumped the air, then she headed up toward her bunk, which was above the kitchen.
She snuggled in, pulled her curtain closed, then there wasn’t another peep out of her.
Kobe watched the curtain for long moments before he said, “You did a really good job on this place. It’s homey while still being efficient.”
I nearly snorted.
Out of all the things we could be talking about right now, we were talking about my bus?
Or the bus I’d leave behind if I ever needed to cut and run?
Yeah, it was homey and efficient. But what it also was was just another place to live for now.
Instead of talking about the bus, I turned the tables on him and asked him directly.
I asked him what I’d wanted to know the answer to for what felt like forever.
“Do the guys know that you’re the one that got them out?” I asked, startling him.
He opened his mouth and then closed it, eyes narrowing on me in accusation. “It was you, wasn’t it? You’re the reason he approached me.”
I smiled smugly. “I didn’t like seeing you in there.”
He shook his head. “I thought I had years left. I mean, I murdered a supposed innocent man. But you…I was slowly losing my mind in there.”
“The idea of seeing you in there…” I shook my head. “It felt like one of those things that ‘just wasn’t right.’ So I started searching, trying to find some loophole to get you out. Something that your lawyer didn’t think about. Which ended up being a lot, by the way. Your lawyer was incompetent and I got him disbarred shortly after you were put away.”
“Are you the reason that it was suggested to me to do a mistrial?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “When I said I was trying anything to get you out of there, I was really trying anything. I was looking into ways to break you out of that prison—which would’ve been really hard because the damn place was made before the invention of computers—when I ran across a guy named Hunt, a hacker. One late night, we got to talking about some things. And I told him what I was working on—you. And he asked how badly I wanted you out.”
His eyes were really intense when I said, “I wanted you out badly. So I told him that. A few weeks later, he came to me with this Lynnwood guy. Told me that he passed on your information. I started doing some digging into the guy—but let’s just say the hacker known as Hunt really knows how to hide his trail—and by the time I found out that he was a mayor somewhere, I got the message that you were being released.”
He crossed his right leg over his left knee, and though it wasn’t sexual in any way or form, I still felt it deep inside my belly when the muscles in his thigh and forearm rippled as he did it.
“What do we need to do first thing?” he asked, once again changing the subject. “I want you to come home.”
I looked around the remodeled bus.
Though we’d been living in it for nearly six months now since it’d been finished up, it still didn’t feel like home.
No, what felt like home was Accident, where I’d made friends and a best one at that. Been offered a permanent job more often than I could count. And where Kobe lived.
“Find the newest person hired to kill me. Fry the computer that Farrell keeps using to take all these hits out on me…or drain his bank accounts so he can’t pay for what he wants.” I paused. “That’s a new one that I hadn’t quite considered until just now.”
“Right now, you can go ahead and do that,” he pointed out. “Right?”
Just go ahead and drain Lisbeth and Farrell’s bank accounts? At least the ones that were blatantly obvious? Easy.
“Yes,” I answered.
“And how much evidence do you have right now that we can pass along to authorities?” he asked. “Hiring someone to kill another person is illegal.”