Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 479(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 479(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
“You own this house?” Marc asked, his voice still low.
“Yes.” He sent Marc a smile he knew wasn’t convincing. He just couldn’t bring himself to pretend with any sort of skill. Not when his heart felt like it was being ripped out of his chest. He wanted to reach across the expanse between them and touch Marc, just feel his warmth. But that would only make things worse.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Marc staring at him, lips tight, before he looked away. “Why didn’t your mother move here? If her family is in Kentucky, why did she take you to Virginia?”
“A job. Plus, her family never liked that she’d married my father and disowned her. They were scared of them. Rightly so. My mom never got over that. She named me after her father. But later, her sister tracked her down. Used the small inheritance she got from their parents’ deaths to finance a private investigator. She asked us to come back. But she was already ill by then. Mom prefers the city, so my aunt left her home to me. I’ve been working on it, planning to flip it, but we found it works as an excellent safe house, so I’m keeping it.”
“Why don’t you just sell it to Rowe, then?”
“Because it’s not in his name this way. Harder to trace. Quinn is actually setting something up to get it out of my name and into some kind of LLC. It’ll still be mine, just with more paperwork.” He opened the door and stepped out into the garage, then walked into the house.
Marc followed, stopping when he saw the eat-in kitchen’s far wall.
“Yeah, Rowe has your propensity for using walls instead of paper or whiteboards.” A strange collection of colors and nonsensical words were scrawled across the wall in the same block letters that Royce recognized as Rowe’s handwriting. They’d been trying to crack Boris Jagger’s secret code for moving kidnapped kids. It had worked, but it had nearly cost two of Rowe’s friends their lives. “I plan to paint over it at some point. Asshole.”
They had grabbed food in the hospital cafeteria but stopped on the way there for drinks, so Royce went back into the garage to get the bag. It was easier than being alone with Marc in that kitchen while the man watched him so intensely. It reminded him of that first day when they’d met. Probing blue eyes that missed nothing.
An engine sounded, and he watched as Sven’s silver Charger pulled in. Garrett was the first to get out. “You really need all this crap, Quinn?”
“Crap?” The yell came out of the back seat where Quinn had probably ridden to make sure none of his precious equipment rocked too hard or fell onto the floor.
Royce winced and lifted an eyebrow at Garrett, who just shushed him with a finger over his mouth and a wink. Like him, Garrett was pretty damn fond of Quinn. The whole IT section of Ward, in fact. He was pretty sure Garrett and Gidget were close friends.
Garrett opened the back door, then grunted when a satchel hit him in the chest.
“Carry that. And no calling my shit crap.”
“Like that makes a lot of damn sense,” Garrett muttered as he passed Royce and disappeared into the house.
Royce had never been so glad to see any of them in his life. They would help with the tension between him and Marc, and it just felt good to be around them again. Garrett came back into the garage, and Royce handed his sack of sodas and water bottles to him. Garrett gave him a frown and rolled eyes before he took them inside.
Sven had pulled his big frame out of the car and already held a large, curved monitor.
“Carry that by itself, okay?” Quinn told Sven as he looked over the roof of the car. “That’s my new pride and joy, and it deserves special treatment.”
Deep chuckles filled the early evening air as Sven did as Quinn asked.
“Do we really need that?” Royce asked as he reached into the car for a bag that held blueprints.
“Wait until you see what it can do. I can split the screen to show different areas of the house. Because that place your uncle is in is a rental, there are pictures of every room in the house. Between that and the blueprints, we should be able to map out a route to your mom easily.”
Soon, they were all in the small kitchen. Garrett, who hadn’t been there before, eyed the wall. “Dominic is on a job today, but he asked for us to figure out his part of this, and he’ll be ready when it’s time. He’s been here before?” He nodded at the wall.
“That’s our boss’s handiwork,” Quinn said as he walked to the small table and opened his laptop. “We’ve decided the best day—and the soonest we can—to get your mother is Tuesday. Dominic will be back from his job, Garrett is off this week, and Sven is taking a sick day. I’ll be working from the office remotely. We decided it would also be best to keep this off Rowe’s radar.”