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)
“A break-in, a breakdown, and a drive-by.” She shook her head and knocked on her door, then slipped inside when Sofia opened it.
I watched her disappear before heading down to my bike to get my change of clothes, then inspect my room. It was similar to the girls’ room, just smaller.
I took a shower, changed, then sat down on the bed to text my brother.
Chances are, they would be partying and distracted. But with him being suspicious, chances were he would look for me eventually. If he found me missing, he would likely track me and show up instead of just texting me. Better to get out ahead of that.
Once that was done, I threw myself back on the bed and tried like hell not to think about Vicky’s last moments, of the screaming, the bloodshed, the violence, her crying, her pleading, the second she realized she wasn’t going to live through it.
I failed miserably.
I couldn’t stop myself from falling into old, toxic patterns of thought, going over every minute detail of that whole day, week, month, year, trying to trace it back to the moment where I could have done or said something to change that outcome.
But it all came back to the same frustrating truth: there was nothing I could have done. I had been working with the information I had at the time. There was no way I could have known how sideways things would go.
I didn’t know how long I lay there.
But eventually, there was a soft knock at the door.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Carmen
“I feel guilty for ordering two entrées,” Sofia said as she shared a small piece of her burger with Hammy.
“Don’t be.” Clearly, if Rune could afford two fancy hotel rooms and spa packages, he wasn’t going to sweat a room service charge. “One is for celebrating and one is for comfort. I feel like today needs both.”
“You’re not wrong about that. I still can’t believe there was a shooting.”
“Promise me when you move to California, you will live in a safer neighborhood than we do here.”
“I haven’t even thought about that yet.”
“Oh, please. I bet since the day you first saw the listing, you have been looking up all the different neighborhoods, apartments, and public transit.”
She shot me a guilty little smile.
What can I say? I knew my sister.
Which was how I knew that after we ate, fed Hammy, then took her out, she was going to want to take a long bath, then pass out hard.
I tried to get an early night myself, but my mind refused to settle. All I could think about was what Rune said in my room before the bullets started to fly.
That he hadn’t shot Vicky.
But he’d been there.
He’d seen it.
That meant, if I believed him, that he would also know who’d done it.
And if I’d been wrong, if I’d been chasing the wrong man all along, that meant Vicky’s killer was still out there. He was still walking around, smiling, laughing, spending time with friends and family, maybe falling in love. All things Victoria would never get a chance to do again.
It was wrong.
He had to pay for it.
I waited for Sofia to curl up with Hammy and pass out. Then I grabbed my key card and quietly made my way out of the room and down the hall.
It was getting late.
There was a good chance Rune would be asleep.
But I barely finished knocking when the door slid open.
And there he was.
In nothing but a pair of black basketball shorts.
Desire sliced through me, stealing my breath, making my belly twist as my gaze drifted across his wide chest, down the indents of his abdominal muscles, then traced the deep V that disappeared into the waistband of his pants.
“Carmen?”
I swallowed hard and pretended that there wasn’t an ache between my thighs. “Can we talk?”
Hopefully if he heard the breathlessness in my voice, he attributed it to wanting to be quiet so the other guests didn’t get annoyed.
“Yeah,” he said, pulling the door fully open, but barely moving out of the way. When I stepped through, my body brushed his. I swear each inch that touched warmed, sparked.
Rune’s room was smaller than ours, without a kitchenette, but dominated by a king-sized bed.
“You okay?” Rune asked, closing the door.
Aside from the throbbing need that was making it hard to think clearly? “Yeah.”
“Sof?”
I liked how he always thought to ask about her, to think about her.
“Sleeping. This was a lot. She hasn’t been plotting her own criminal lifestyle for the past year.”
“Yeah, about that,” Rune said, leaning against the wall, crossing his arms. “Why a year?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve been back in Jersey for longer than a year. And… and Victoria was—” he paused, softening his voice, “killed just before then.”
“I didn’t know at first,” I admitted. “We, uh, we were kind of… on the outs when she went to Puerto Rico for the summer.”