Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
I barely finished my last word before my Perrier was on the lustrous conference table (without a coaster!), my hand was in Javi’s, and he was dragging me to the door.
“Bye Angels!” I waved behind me. “And Rock Chicks! And Hottie Squad! And Tito and Tex!”
The last ones I had to shout from the hall.
I waited to speak all the way until Javi started to bend to pick me up to put me in the front seat of a Denali.
“Honey, stop,” I urged, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He straightened and scowled down at me.
I got up on tiptoe and cupped his face in my hands.
“I can climb into a car. I can climb out of it. Was what happened fun? No. Did it have a good ending? Yes.” I pressed against him. “I’m fine. Willow’s fine. The case is solved. It’s all good. You can stop being pissed and worried.”
“We have cameras outside SC,” he stated.
Oh boy.
“I saw the footage,” he continued.
Oh no.
“I saw him flip you. I saw you land hard. I saw him tase you. And I saw him shove you in the back of a car,” Javi carried on.
Yikes.
“Honey,”—I stroked his cheek—“I’m fine. Yes, I could use a bubble bath and some Tylenol. But I promise you, I’m good.”
“Life turns to shit,” he growled.
Oh, my poor guy.
“That was before.” I smiled brightly. “Now, even though there might be clouds to darken some days, you have to remember, you live in sunshine.”
He growled again, this time there were no words. He did this before his arms closed around me, and he kissed me.
It was a good one. Then again, they all were.
And when he was done, my man seemed in a much better mood.
“Let’s go home,” I requested.
Javi bent and nuzzled my earlobe with his nose (another new thing, and…nice!).
And his lips quirked as he picked me up and put me in the Denali.
Okay, so, if he wanted to cart me around, it made me feel delicate and pretty, I wasn’t going to argue.
Javi got in beside me.
And we went home.
TWENTY-NINE
“INVINCIBLE”
(KELLY CLARKSON)
Four Months Later…
It was a Saturday.
We were at Angels Headquarters, all lazed in our curved couch.
And Raye’s burner phone was on the desk in front of us, the speaker enabled, and Raye was talking.
“So, I can’t tell you who I am, or how I know,” she was saying. “What I can tell you is that video has been deleted. It doesn’t exist. It’s gone. I can assure you of that.” Raye paused and then said, “You’re free.”
There was a moment of silence, then a hiccoughing sob.
This was the last woman who Brody found. Between him and Arthur, they’d been at it for months, but they didn’t give up. Not until the very last woman had been found.
It took longer for this last one because they had to widen the search. She’d apparently run into Trev during a vacation to Phoenix from her home in Toronto.
We’d heard a lot of hiccoughing sobs (and other verbal responses) over the months.
Precisely fifty-six of them.
I was glad this was the last one.
Allow me to sum up:
Let’s hark back to the Sunday after I got to work on my first paid organization gig (and yes, the organization of Shirleen and Moses’s condo was a massive mountain I had to climb, one could say Shirleen really liked shoes…and handbags…and fingernail polish…and fancy Tupperware, I could go on—but I was there for it).
Javi and I drove up to Flagstaff.
We did this to visit his mom.
I was nervous for the first hour of the drive, until Javi took my hand, squeezed it and said, “Babe, she’s so doped up, she isn’t even going to remember me. You don’t have to be worried about making a good impression.”
This gutted me.
Though, it made me less nervous.
It turned out, he was right.
When we got to the facility, and were shown to a social room, Javi led me to a beautiful woman who was vaguely shifting pieces of a puzzle around on the table. When we arrived at her side, she looked up at him like she didn’t know who he was.
It was absolutely heartbreaking.
Since she looked like she also didn’t know where she was or that anything was happening around her so it stood to reason she wouldn’t recognize her own son, that made it a little less heartbreaking.
But only a very little.
I marveled at how easily Javi took a seat close to her, held her hand, introduced me as his girlfriend, said, “It’s very serious, Ma,” (gah! he was the best!) and generally filled her in on his life, our lives together and other chitchat like she could comprehend what he was saying.
I mean, honestly.
If I didn’t completely and totally love him before (who was I kidding about “falling,” I was head over heels for the guy), that did it.