Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
My gaze slid to the coffee table where there was a bunch of shit spread across it. Including a map. One of those ones that fold out that tourists buy.
“Oh, sorry about the mess,” Kick said, rushing forward to quickly fold it all together. But not before I saw a bunch of Xs all over the map. It was gone, though, before I could figure out what area it was a map of, let alone what the Xs might be crossing out. “I’ll just… be right back,” she said, clutching the papers to her chest before turning and rushing down the hallway.
“That was weird as fuck, right?” I asked the cat that was staring up at me.
“Okay. Ah, coffee?” she asked as she came back, seeming no less flustered, her aura all bouncy and awkward.
“Sure,” I agreed, moving toward the kitchen with her. “How you feeling?” I asked.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I was coming back this week,” she added. “I promise.”
“I don’t care about that,” I told her. “I was just in the area and figured I’d make sure you’re doing alright.”
“I wasn’t even that hurt,” she said, shaking her head at my concern.
“Didn’t just mean physically.”
“Oh, well, yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
She wasn’t, though.
There were bags and dark circles under her eyes like she hadn’t been sleeping. She was jumpy. Then there was whatever that was with the maps and papers she clearly didn’t want me to see.
Something was up with her.
I just had no fucking idea what it was.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kick
My brother was missing.
I’d spent the last week trying to come to terms with that.
I’d been mildly worried when I’d left his apartment after hearing Bobby hadn’t seen Jake in a while. And that his cell wasn’t in service anymore.
But the real panic hadn’t set in until a day or two later after I’d worked through my anger about the robbery and decided I had to at least track the asshole down.
I’d spent the next several days hitting up all the places I knew he frequented. The comic book store where he—and sometimes Bobby—would go to play shit like D&D or Magic: the Gathering.
No one had seen him.
He hadn’t been in to the local bodega he used to visit several times a day, the bar he liked, the tattoo parlor he was always getting work done at, the pizza place he frequented.
He was… nowhere.
And no one had seen him either.
The guy behind the counter at the pizzeria had actually asked me where Jake was when he saw me.
Which left me to conclude he hadn’t just left Bobby to go shack up with a woman or something in the same area.
Sure, there was a chance he’d found a woman out of the area, but that didn’t explain the phone.
Maybe, if this was any other situation, I wouldn’t have been sweating it. He was an adult. He could take care of himself. And he was careless enough to forget to pay his phone bill and get his service cut.
But I’d seen him.
He’d been one of the robbers.
The crew who broke in really got me thinking, so I spent another two days researching local armed robberies and rapes. Even home invasions.
There was a depressingly large pool of options to sift through to see if anything matched the robbery at the meat shop.
Several hundred in just one month, to be exact.
I had the file of every single one. Then I had a map to mark where the ones that most closely matched the meat shop robbery were located.
I was only about halfway through with the Bronx. I hadn’t even started on the other boroughs yet.
I’d been deep in a research hole, my anxiety tripping into overdrive at the idea of never being able to narrow anything down when Rico knocked on the door.
Honestly, I’d been so wrapped up in trying to figure out what had happened with my brother that I’d practically forgotten that I had a job waiting for me.
I had the money to stay home.
I figured if Rico or Ricky called to ask where I was, I could just claim I was having some, I don’t know, concussion issues or something.
I never expected anyone to show up to check on me.
But there he was.
Looking even better than I remembered.
He was a little more dressed up than usual in black slacks, dress shoes, and a long-sleeve black button-up with a subtle shiny black stripe.
While I stood there in shorts that were just shy of being cheeky in a ratty t-shirt with hair I honestly didn’t remember the last time I’d washed.
He smelled amazing too. Smoky and delicious.
While I probably reeked of stale coffee and that metallic anxiety sweat.
“How have things been at the shop? How’s Ricky?”
“Things are fine. Nothing going on. Just the usual. Ricky is back at work. His wife was trying to make him drink kale smoothies or some shit.”