Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
A sharp clinking cut through the room.
“Excuse me, everybody,” Jarod called out, smacking a knife against his glass.
Amka bit back a groan. His voice had that slight slur she recognized. She hadn’t been watching his intake. He served himself, and that made it hard to track.
He walked around the bar and slung an arm over her shoulder, pulling her tight to his side. Pain shot through her ribs and down her arm. She smiled through it and definitely had to figure a way out of this mess.
Across the room, Christian stood. Not fast, not loud. But she felt the shift in the air like a wire pulled taut. Her spine went rigid.
Jarod didn’t notice. He raised his glass. “I wanted to tell everybody—since you’re all here—that Amka and I have set a date.” He grinned. “We’re getting married. June eighteenth.”
A few people clapped. The murmur rolled through the crowd like a light breeze, one mostly of excitement.
Flossy, seated across the bar flipping through the bridal magazine, looked up. “That’s only three weeks away.”
“Yes,” Jarod said, leaning in and pressing a kiss against Amka’s cheek. “We couldn’t wait any longer.”
Her stomach twisted, and the pain along her ribs deepened. She smiled, or tried to, but her lips trembled. “We didn’t talk about this, Jarod,” she said under her breath.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s going to happen.” He kissed her on the temple again.
Her body went still. She kept the smile on her face, or something close to it, and tried to hold it steady. Even so, her eyes drifted across the room.
Christian was staring. Not just him—Brock and Ace too. All three Osprey brothers watched her with the same expression. Confusion, maybe. Something close to anger. Definitely suspicion.
She shifted slightly and caught Flossy’s face across the bar. She had the same look with maybe a bit more bewilderment. Amka forced her smile wider.
“Drinks are on the house!” Jarod yelled.
A cheer went up from half the tavern. A few claps, a couple whistles. Someone slammed a hand on a table.
“Just great,” Amka muttered, finally pushing away from Jarod as he began lining up shot glasses on the bar.
The door opened and Doc May walked inside with a box in her hands. “Hey. I told you to go home and rest.” She pushed the box across the bar. “You should be home in bed binge-watching something good.”
Amka would need to work late just to pay for the drinks Jarod was already spilling. “What’s in the box?”
May sat on the stool next to Flossy. “No clue. It was right outside.”
Amka leaned over to see her name scrawled on top in black marker. She swallowed. “That’s weird.” Reaching beneath the counter, she found a knife and quickly opened the top, looking in.
May leaned over. “What is that?”
Amka pulled out a can of lighter fluid, dropping a note on the bar. Her breath quickening, she turned it over to read: That was just the beginning. The whole world needs to burn.
Chapter 5
After midnight, Christian leaned against the rough wood siding of the Kattuk family mercantile, arms crossed, boots set firm in the gravel. Across the narrow road, the sheriff’s office sat quiet under a mist that curled and lifted with the breeze, too thin to be rain, too thick to ignore. The silence had weight to it, like the town was holding its breath.
Tika sat to his side, the wolf-pup’s ears flattened in what looked like ease. He yawned wide, jaw splitting with the slow, lazy stretch of a creature comfortable in the night. Christian reached down and scratched behind one of those ears, fingers moving in the familiar rhythm. It grounded him more than he’d ever admit.
The door to the station creaked open. Ophelia Spilazi stepped out, gaze sweeping the street. She found him instantly and came down the stairs to cross the road on a pair of very fashionable boots.
Brock’s woman loved her boots.
Tall, all angles and confidence, with long black hair pulled back and eyes that saw more than most people wanted her to, Ophelia was a force. The scent hit him halfway across the street—strawberries. Not strong, but deliberate. Brock’s favorite. Of course.
Christian hadn’t expected his brother’s happiness to come wrapped in a city girl with a badge who looked like a model with a gun. But she’d shown up and stayed, and more than once she’d proved she belonged in a place like this.
“Hey,” she said, slipping her hands into the pockets of her black leather jacket.
“Hey.”
Another thing he liked about her—she didn’t press. Didn’t ask why he hadn’t walked into the station. Didn’t try to fix whatever she might see wrong in him. She let people be who they were. Just like Amka did.
“Brock’s sending the box, lighter fluid, and note to Anchorage along with the small bits of shrapnel from the device,” Ophelia said. “There’s an FBI agent there. We’ll see if we can get fingerprints.”