Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
And maybe she’s a bit too cocky about it.
While riding a hunch about the identity of a kidnapper, she runs into Julien “Cap” Jackson, who was trained by the team at Nightingale Investigations in Denver. Now he’s a full-fledged member at their newly opened Phoenix branch.
It takes Cap a beat to realize Raye’s the woman for him. It takes Raye a little longer (but just a little) to figure out how she feels about Cap.
As Raye introduces Cap to her crazy posse of found family and his new home in the Valley of the Sun, Cap struggles with his protective streak. Because Raye has no intention to stop doing what she can to save the world.
But there’s a mysterious entity out there who has discovered what Raye is up to, and they’ve become very interested.
Not to mention, women are going missing in Phoenix, and it seems like the police aren’t taking it seriously.
Raye believes someone should.
So she recruits her best friend Luna, and between making coffees, mixing cocktails, planning parties and enduring family interventions (along with reunions), the Avenging Angels unite to ride to the rescue.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
NATURAL BADASSERY
“I’m gonna go in.”
“Are you insane? You can’t go in!”
“I’m just gonna have a look around.”
“What if you’re right? What if this guy is the actual guy?”
“Then I’ll call the police.”
“What if he sees you?”
I sighed. “Luna, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
“Exactly!” she cried in a Eureka! tone. “So, yeah, let’s talk about that, Raye.”
Sitting in my car, talking to my bestie on the phone and casing the house in question, I cut her off quickly before she could start in—again—about how she felt about what I’d been up to lately.
“I’m just going to wander across the front of his house and look in the windows. No biggie.”
Truthfully, I was hoping to do more than that, but my best friend of all time, Luna, didn’t need to know that.
We’d had chats about what she called my unhinged shenanigans, or my lunatic tomfooleries. Then there were also my deranged mischiefs (Luna read a lot and her vocabulary showed it).
But I did what I did because, well…
I had to.
Luna spoke into my thoughts. “Okay, so if I kidnapped a little girl from my church, and I was holding her for things I won’t even contemplate why someone would do that, and some woman I’d never seen in my neighborhood casually strolled in front of my house and looked in my windows, what do you think I would do?”
“Sic Jacques on them, whereupon he’d lick them and dance around them and race away, only to race back, bringing his toys so they’d play?”
Jacques was Luna’s French bulldog. He was gray, had a little white patch on his chest, and I considered myself for sainthood that I hadn’t dognapped him yet. I was pretty sure I loved him more than Luna did, and the Tiffany’s dog collar I’d splurged and bought him (which she refused to let him wear because she said it was too bougie, like that was a bad thing) proved my case on that.
“This isn’t funny, Raye,” Luna said softly.
That got to me, her talking softly.
She was yin to my yang, Ethel to my Lucy, Shirley to my Laverne, Louise to my Thelma. Dorothy to my Rose/Sophia/Blanche (and yes, I could be all three, dingy, sarcastic and slutty, sometimes all at the same time, I considered it my superpower).
You get the picture.
We were opposites, but she loved me.
And I loved her.
“I promise to be careful. It’s gone okay so far, hasn’t it?” I asked.
“Luck has a way of running out.”
Hmm.
I struggled for a moment with the use of the word “luck,” considering I thought I was pretty kickass, but I let it go.
There was a little girl missing. And I had a feeling I knew where she was.
“I need to do this, Luna.”
It was her turn to sigh, long and loud.
She knew I did.
“Call me the instant you get back to your car,” she ordered.
“Roger wilco,” I replied.
“You don’t even know what that means,” she muttered.
“It means I heard you.”
“Yes, it also means you will comply with my orders. That’s what wilco is short for.”
See?
She totally read a lot.
“Okay, so, samesies, yeah? I heard you, and I’ll call.”
Another sigh before she said, “You won’t call because either, a, you’ll be tied up in some villain’s basement, and I’ll then be forced to put up fliers and hold candlelight vigils and harass the police to follow leads. This will end with me being interviewed, weeping copiously, naturally, saying you lit up a room in a Netflix docuseries about solved cold case files once some hikers find what’s left of your body at the bottom of a ravine in fifteen years. Or, b, you won’t get anything from the guy, so you’ll start devising some other way of figuring out if it’s him or not. You’ll then immediately begin scheming to implement plans to do that, at the same time you’ll remember you forgot to buy tampons for your upcoming cycle, and you need to pop into CVS, after which you’ll realize you’re hungry and you’ll stop by Lenny’s for a cowboy burger and a malt.”
She was hitting close to home with that first bit, and she knew it. Including when my period was coming, something she always reminded me to prepare for because I always forgot, and as such, was constantly bumming tampons from her. Though, her remembering this wasn’t a feat, since we were together so often, including working together, we were moon sisters.
“I will totally call,” I promised.
“If you don’t, I’m uninviting you to my birthday party.”
I gasped.
“You wouldn’t,” I whispered in horror.
Yes, you guessed it. Luna threw great parties, especially when she was celebrating herself.
“Try me.”
“I’ll call. I’ll absolutely call. Long distance pinkie swear.”
“Lord save me,” she mumbled, then stated, “If you hit Lenny’s, definitely call me. Since I brought Lenny’s up, I now realize I need a malt.”