Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 74668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
He was a weasel.
Harmless, but a weasel nonetheless.
His daddy, though.
Now his daddy was the big wig.
He wrote all the checks for the city. Not the mayor, but the mayor’s advisor. He also had plans to run for the senate, and didn’t like me because I was a threat to him.
Ronnie Prescott was the man my mother had turned down to marry my father. He’d also been the man that my mother turned down a second time when she’d lost my father.
I, unfortunately, was the spitting image of my father.
And since my father wasn’t here to take it out on, he took it out on me.
Ronnie Prescott owned the property butting up to mine, as well.
We were enemies. Or, at least, he thought I was his enemy.
I’d never done anything to provoke the man in my life, but ever since I’d found out the property my mom’s house was on was mine, he’d made it a point to let me know that he, in no way, shape, or form, liked me.
Unfortunately for Adrian Prescott, his daddy was pushing him into a war he didn’t even know was happening.
Right now he was just an annoying rookie. Who knew what he’d be in six months. Or hell, even next week.
“So you’ve met Prescott, I see,” Chief Rhodes drawled.
Miller snorted. “Sure have. It was a wonderful experience.”
The sarcasm in Miller’s voice didn’t go unobserved, but the chief chose not to call him on it.
He knew, just as well as I did, that the Prescott’s were all shitheads.
Every fucking one of them deserved a throat punch.
“Alright, well, take a seat in the back. Don’t interrupt,” the chief growled, tilting his head to the back of the room where an open seat was located.
“Hmm,” Miller hummed as he walked to the seat the chief had indicated and sat, staring at me as if he was enraptured by me.
“Ham,” the chief muttered.
I snorted and sat down on the desk in front of the room.
The chief’s cell phone and papers were spread out over the front, but I just shoved them all to the side and made room, letting my feet dangle.
“Please, make yourself at home,” the chief said dryly.
I gave him a thumb’s up, drawing a laugh from my neighbor who’d just walked in the room.
“Now, now, Ms. Memphis, there’s no reason to encourage him,” Chief Rhodes sighed.
Memphis.
Wow, I’d have never expected her name to be Memphis.
“Memphis, eh?” I drawled.
Memphis looked at me with a brow raised in challenge. “Yeah. Got a problem with that?” She asked.
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I just didn’t expect to hear that. I figured you for a Jessica or a Sylvia, by the way you dressed.”
Her head turned. “And how exactly do I dress?”
I blinked. “Like you’re high maintenance.”
Her jaw dropped, but before she could let out the sharp retort I could see resting on the tip of her tongue, the chief cleared his throat, halting Memphis’ scathing retort in her tracks.
She glared as she finally took a seat and turned her attention to the chief.
I, however, couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I wanted to laugh, in fact.
The expression gracing her face was comical. Her eyes were narrowed, and her brows pinched. Her nose slightly wrinkled, causing the sparse freckling covering the bridge of her nose to blend into her skin.
It also looked as if she were holding her breath, wanting to fling that comeback in my face.
Well, it was obvious she didn’t like to be called high maintenance.
Dually noted.
“Officer Lachlan Downy is an officer with the Kilgore Police Department,” the chief started, turning his attention to a young man in the front row. “He’s on the SWAT team, and also holds his certification in level two crisis hostage negotiation. He’s going to talk to y’all a little bit today about what his job is like on a daily basis.
Chief Rhodes then gave the floor up to me, and I went about telling them about my job. What I liked about it. What I didn’t like about it. What the hardest negotiation I’d ever done was.
Then she chimed in, and we got into what seemed like a mini battle. One, in which, my dick was the winner.
“Officer Downy, have you ever had to use your hostage negotiation skills since you received the training?” Memphis asked.
Knowing it was a trap, but unable to see exactly how, I answered with, “Once.”
“What happened?” She asked.
“It was a gas station robbery where the clerk and a pregnant lady were held at gunpoint by a man wanting money to fill his bike up,” I explained. “Filled his bike up for him, but made sure to drop a little sugar in the gas tank. He got away, but he only made it about two miles down the road before he broke down and we caught up to him.”
She blinked, and then looked disappointed when I didn’t go into the exact details. Not that I could. I did my best to ignore the fact that I botched my first hostage negotiation.
The whole thing had happened so fast.
I’d been in that gas station, too, when the biker had tried to rob it.
He’d been desperate, and I’d known it.
I’d done everything I could to talk the man out of the direction he was going.
When he shot the girl behind the counter, I knew that the cops wouldn’t arrive in time.
I also didn’t have any way to protect myself, nor help them.
So, I’d offered to go fill his tank up.
He’d allowed me to do it by myself with his gun trained on my back the entire way, following me outside but staying at least ten feet away from me as I did.
He hadn’t seen me slip the sugar packets into his tank.
The biker, a mid-thirties man like myself, had then tossed me the keys to his bike and demanded the keys to mine.
Drive it outside of town. I’ll follow you, he’d said.
The bike had made it all the way out of town and to the county line before the sugar had made its way through the bike’s motor.