Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
“Still, they need to see us together.”
“They do, they have. Sorry.” I pause for a moment, then say, “You could come with me. Dr. Abrams knows I’m going to my sister’s, so it would be like you’re supporting my family.”
“No way. I don’t want to go over there. Your family hates me,” she snaps, and I roll my eyes. “But I will use that excuse, for sure.”
“My family hates no one. They just don’t understand why you aren’t very friendly with them.”
“Because I don’t care one way or another about them. This arrangement isn’t between me and your family. It’s with you.”
“I understand—”
“I don’t think you do, but whatever.” Her voice turns dark. “It’s your career if this doesn’t work.”
She hangs up then, and I know she expects me to call back. To say I’m coming. But I have no intention of doing that. I bent to her will a lot when I first agreed to this, but now, I’m getting annoyed. She wants me to be weak, and I’ll admit I have been. I’m not proud of that, but I stopped caring. After a full year without Emery, I was more broken than I like admitting. To my family… Hell, to myself.
I hadn’t felt anything in years, and when Ava buttered me up and then asked for my help, I couldn’t say no. I liked how it made me feel. I don’t know what has happened since I agreed to this. Ava has always been snotty, but she was kind to me. We hit it off from the top, and we enjoyed studying together. We challenged each other. And when we found out we were both Nashvillians in Boston, we clicked. I thought she was cool people, but now, I’m not so sure.
I feel used.
Which, I guess, in a way, I am.
We pushed back the wedding because Benson and Cameron are getting married at the end of the month. Ava and I are to wed the first week of June, and it can’t come quick enough. I want this to be over. I want to be done with her, and once we’re married, things will even out.
Well. That is, if I can control Emery.
Which is like trying to wrangle a tornado.
That’s a later problem, I tell myself.
My sister needs me, and that’s all that matters.
Chapter
Six
Emery
“If you go to 15:29 on the video, you’ll see the suspect looks over at the green egg-shaped canister on the counter.”
Ralph, a detective in the Nashville crime unit, hums. “There isn’t an opening.”
“There has to be. He kept looking at it,” I insist, watching the video again. I study the perp, who is very clean-cut and also good-looking. He doesn’t look like a murderer, but I know better. He has the gleam in his eye. The one that tells me he’s hiding something, and it’s my job to find it. It’s insane how he looks over at the egg any time he thinks no one is watching him.
Sorry, buddy. I’m always watching.
With a grin, I point to the screen, even though Ralph can’t see me. “Any time anyone wasn’t looking, he was staring at the egg. He even stood in front of it when you guys got closer to the counter.”
“Ms. Brooks, I’m telling you, there is no opening.”
“Break it.”
“What?”
“Break it. I’m telling you, that egg is important.”
He mumbles something along the lines of me being a nutcase before I hear him smash the egg, and then he lets out a whistle. “Dumb fuck hid the knife here?”
I smile triumphantly. “I bet he made the egg around the knife. Just so he has a trophy of the weapon he used to kill his wife.”
“Sick fuck.”
“Exactly,” I agree, adrenaline coursing through me. This is what makes this job so fucking cool. Catching the bad guys with the equipment I invented.
With Quinn.
I never thought we could do it; it was just some crazy thing we thought up after watching a crime doc and we were lying in his bed in the afterglow. He said the cops in the doc would have caught the dude sooner if they’d had an extra set of eyes. Those eyes became my video recording device that offers a full bird’s-eye view of the scene from the camera the police officers wear. It’s like a body cam on steroids. With the program we developed, we can watch in real time or watch the footage back at a later time. I have groups of employees all over the United States who watch the videos as an extra set of eyes for each crime bureau. But some detectives have my number to use for cases like this. To make sure they aren’t missing something when they feel they are. When no one else sees the little details that make my brain go wild.
I love the rush I get when I see something no one else saw. It used to be a game between Quinn and me. Who found the best evidence. We were both great at it, and it still doesn’t feel right doing it without him.