Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Finished with her food, Sofia’s arms went around me, giving me a one-sided hug.
“See? Who needs a man?” I asked as some of the tension slipped out of me.
“And I am here to remind you how unhealthy that is,” Sofia said with a little laugh as she retreated to her side of the couch. “I think you should call Rune.”
“Yeah, I won’t be doing that.”
Sofia shook her head.
“I like him for you.”
“You met him for twenty minutes.”
“And he was sweet and charming and Hamster approved of him. She’s not usually a fan of men. Remember how she used to glare at Marcus?”
“To be fair, I used to glare at Marcus too.”
“You’re so mean,” Sofia laughed. “But it wasn’t just Hammy and vibes. You guys looked so cute snuggled on the couch.”
If by ‘snuggled,’ she meant ‘held against my will,’ then sure.
“I hear you,” I told her. “But don’t get your heart too set on this, okay?”
Sofia let out an exaggerated sigh.
“Fineee.”
“I’m going to bed. I have that pain-in-the-ass client in the morning.”
“The one who makes you hand wash all his fabric grocery bags?”
“That’s the one.”
“Have fun with that. You can get a whole audiobook or two listened to.”
That was the plan: keep my mind and my body busy at the same time to stave off the anxiety and uncertainty that came with having some ‘one-percenter’ biker showing up at my house after I tried to shoot him.
Of course, that plan was shot to shit when I was on all fours in a client’s house, scrubbing the baseboards with a brush… and heard a man’s voice behind me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carmen
I told myself I wasn’t going to look up what a “one-percent” biker meant. The last thing in the world I needed was something else to be freaked out about.
What can I say, though? My whole life the past year or so had been about research. It was hard to just shut that off.
So there I was with my coffee at the crack of dawn, carefully propping my phone against my thigh in case my sister came down, and typing into the search bar.
“Great,” I grumbled to myself as the results came up.
Apparently, ninety-nine percent of bikers were just guys who liked to ride bikes and sometimes hang out with other bikers.
One percent of them were actual criminals: drug dealers, enforcers, pimps.
I mean, I guess it wasn’t exactly shocking. Normal, upstanding citizens didn’t do things like Rune had done.
They also didn’t try to shoot people, a little voice reminded me—no matter how much they have it coming.
After a little more digging, I found that Navesink Bank had two biker clubs: the Vultures and the Henchmen. Rune, it seemed, belonged to the latter.
I was almost late for work as I tried desperately to figure out what kind of line of work they were into.
Apparently, not everything could be found online. These guys were either super careful or greased the right palms, because there were no arrest records for the members of the club that I could find that might point me in the right direction.
For reasons I chose not to analyze, my stomach lurched at the idea of Rune being a pimp. I mean, not that I had anything against sex work. I just knew that pimps were historically predatory and violent with their girls.
It was absurd to care what the man I almost shot did for a living. So I pushed those thoughts away as I slipped into the booties my client insisted I wear, then moved into his already meticulously clean home. The kind of clean where it was clear he spent hours a week maintaining it, only to pay me to clean it some more.
Once everything was dusted and the walls were wiped down, I grabbed my scrub brush and went to town on the baseboards. It was my most hated house cleaning task, which was probably why I was putting way more elbow grease into the already clean baseboards than necessary.
“You’re gonna scrub the paint off.”
The squeal that escaped me was a sound I didn’t even know I was capable of making as my heart lurched and my head whipped over my shoulder.
Sure enough, there he was. Leaning casually against the counter, arms crossed, watching me clean.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, pushing up to my feet.
How long had he been watching me without me knowing?
“Followed you.”
“No, really?” I said with an eye roll. “This is my client’s house.”
“I figured.”
“He’s going to see you on the cameras and fire me.”
“There are no cameras.”
Damn him. He was right. This client once went on a twenty-minute rant about doorbell cameras and surveillance technology when I asked about a security system at his house. When I arrived the first time, I noticed every device that had a camera had tape covering it.
The funny thing? The owner worked in tech.