Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
I’ll be back tomorrow.
I slip the key into the ignition, the engine rumbling to life so loudly that I don’t register the doors opening. In a moment, someone sits in the passenger seat. Another person behind me cocks a gun at my head.
I freeze; the nozzle of a pistol pressed into my skull as cologne fills the car. I glance at Fallon’s workshop door. Don’t come outside.
“You weren’t a problem for years,” the guy in the seat next to me says with a slight accent.
Hugo Navarre.
Head of Green Street. Reeves’ successor. Farrow Kelly’s boss. It can’t be anyone else.
I glance in the rearview mirror at the other guy, but all I catch is his shoulder-length, light brown hair.
“Not because you were banished,” he points out. “But because you wanted to leave.”
I lock my jaw together, one hand on the wheel and one still on the key.
“You know why you wanted to go?” he continues, elbow propped up on the door as he sits back, fully relaxed. “You couldn’t stand your ugly soul and the place where you grew into it. That’s the difference between doing bad things in order to eat and doing bad things because you’re a fucking coward.”
I draw in a long breath through my nose, grinding the wheel in my fist.
He leans in. “Now I permitted you entry out of respect to take care of some family business,” he tells me, “but it doesn’t look like you’re leaving, and if Reeves has to hide, then so do you.”
Bullshit. He doesn’t want Reeves back. He likes being boss.
Just like he enjoys putting that tattoo on the people close to Madoc. How long before Farrow gets it on Quinn? Or on Hunter or Dylan?
Closing the distance, he nearly breathes on me as he whispers, “I could hide you tonight. Forever.” His voice turns sinister. “Unless there’s a reason you’re still here. I could hide her too.”
I whip around, backhanding the kid behind me, his pistol dropping to the ground as I grab the collar of Hugo Navarre’s leather jacket.
I glare into his brown eyes, a shade darker than Quinn’s as his pal retrieves his gun and points it back at me.
“You permitted me entry?” I growl. “Permitted me?”
Who the fuck does he think he is? Reeves got me cornered all those years ago because I was a threat, and that hasn’t changed. He has no idea if I’ve told the people close to me everything that happened. He’s not going to do shit.
Hugo’s eyes gleam, but he doesn’t fight back as I press him into the door, squeezing his collar in my fists.
“Don’t cross the river again,” I bite out. “And don’t concern yourself because I own the building you squat in, and I know you do a hell of a lot more than is necessary to eat.”
Yeah, I ran. I was twenty-five years old, scared, and ashamed, but nothing I did was for food. I would’ve rather starved.
Navarre grins. “You forget…I have nothing to lose.”
“And no one to mourn your disappearance,” I retort.
Anyone who missed him would simply sweep in to take his place.
“You won’t hurt me,” he says. “You’re going to try to stop me.”
“Why would I do that?” I narrow my eyes, feigning ignorance. “You’ll come after me.”
He laughs, but I don’t mistake the shaky breaths. “Because Reeves was scared of you.”
He wasn’t scared of me. He was sick of me.
“And there’s only one way to come after you really,” Hugo goes on. “I have to find the body.”
I hold back the shudder that quakes through my chest.
“Out in the forest, right?” he continues. “Somewhere around the train tunnel, I’d heard.”
The train tunnel. The synapses in my brain fire, memories crystallizing.
A wall.
Stone. Yes…
I force my voice to stay flat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But he just laughs. “Luckily, you and Reeves are the only ones who know exactly where it is.”
He opens the door, and I don’t stop him as he turns and climbs out. The long-haired guy in the back follows him, tucking his pistol into the back of his jeans.
“For now anyway,” Hugo calls out and peeks his head back in to look at me. “The Caruthers are having the land out there surveyed for trails and a park ranger station. They probably won’t stumble over it.” He grins. “But they might.”
And he slams the door, both of them walking away.
Heat climbs the back of my neck. I watch them go in my rearview mirror and then glance to the door of Fallon’s shop, making sure she didn’t see anything.
There may very well be no tracing the body to me, but even so, it would still reflect badly on the town. Especially its mayor and his association with me.
Why didn’t I just face it the night it happened?
But I know the answer before I exhale another breath. Because Drew threatened Madoc, and I was in too much pain to come clean so we could deal with it together.