Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Charlie followed a shuffling Kairo to the workstation he’d set up on the dining room table. It held a mad scattering of papers and a couple of dirty mugs, but the man managed to do all his incredible technical work with a single laptop. The only thing more impressive was what this genius could do with his phone.
Kairo dropped into a seat, tapped a few keys, and held up a tiny earpiece to Charlie that would give him direct contact with both teammates in the field.
“I’m handing shit over to Charlie while I grab some sleep. Don’t blow anything up,” Kairo muttered. He had to be talking to Edison and Westin. There was a brief pause, and Kairo chuckled. “Don’t worry, big guy. You know we rarely leave a town without creating one new crater.”
Charlie snorted. That had to be Ed complaining about the lack of action on his part. For the demolitions expert, it wasn’t a party until something exploded or was at least burning.
Kairo reached up and pulled out his own earpiece and set it in the protective case for later. He gazed up at Charlie, his eyes widening slightly when he found his boss still holding the tiny earwig.
“Were you able to locate any security cameras near the art gallery?” Charlie inquired, hating the hesitance in his own voice. He hadn’t told Edison or Westin that he thought he’d seen Will outside The Blue Wind two days earlier. They wouldn’t get it. Or maybe they would, and he was just too chickenshit to face their teasing remarks.
A long sigh slipped from Kairo’s full lips and he slumped in his chair. “There were a couple that were a good distance off, and they weren’t exactly focused on the corner you indicated, so I wasn’t able to pull anything incredibly clear.”
“But was it Will? I want to know if I’m losing my mind.”
“Oh, there’s always a chance that you’re losing your mind. You’ve always been crazy. But because of this?” Kairo paused and shrugged his shoulders. “What I can tell you is that at the time you and Ed were leaving the gallery, there was a guy standing on that particular corner who was of medium height and appeared to be between the ages of twenty-five and fifty.”
“That isn’t helpful at all.”
Kairo flashed him a tired, crooked grin. “I never promised it would be.”
“Yeah. Okay. I need to let it go. It wasn’t him. It…the guy caught me off guard.” Charlie scrubbed his empty hand across his face. When he dropped it to his side, he shoved the earpiece into place. It was time to move on. “My mind was a million miles away thinking about this artist and Little Shit. I wasn’t expecting a blast from my past.”
“Listen to that! The Boss Man has come to keep us company,” Edison crowed softly.
“What blast from the past are we talking about?” West demanded with expert precision. He would go straight to the heart of the matter he was not supposed to know about.
“None of your business,” Charlie growled. His team knew far too much about his love life, and most of the time he didn’t care because he engaged exclusively in flings. But Will was different, and he didn’t want to discuss Will.
Kairo pitched his voice lower so it was unlikely to get picked up by the earpiece. “I could do some digging. He wouldn’t be all that hard to locate in the US. I could confirm his current location to ease your mind.”
Oh, that was tempting. So very tempting.
In six years, Charlie had not once caved and asked Kairo to locate his ex, though the thought had occurred to him numerous times. And it would help to settle his frazzled nerves. But this was a dark path to go down. He’d always believed that going cold turkey with Will was the best route, and he was sticking to that.
“No. Don’t bother. It’s fine,” Charlie replied, very aware that Ed and West were hanging on his every word, dying to know what he was talking about.
“All right, then,” Kairo said with a groan as he stretched his arms over his head. Joints popped, and it was on the tip of his tongue to tease the younger man about his advancing age. But none of them were twenty, stupid, and indestructible any longer.
“Shit!” West snarled the second Kairo’s butt left the chair. “We got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” Charlie barked.
Beside him, Kairo whimpered softly but still dropped back into the chair and turned toward the laptop. He snagged the earpiece he’d just taken out and shoved it in place.
“Shooting at the restaurant. People are fucking pouring out of the place. It’s total anarchy,” West described.
“Of course he got the fun location,” Edison moaned, but Charlie ignored him, his eyes locked on the computer screen as he stood behind Kairo’s shoulders. Different screens flashed by him at an astounding rate. He couldn’t make sense of most of it, but as long as Kairo could, that was all that mattered.