Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“She’s suffering from a concussion because she got a little… rowdy,” Erich said. “I had to punch her in the temple to get her to come.”
“If she was yours”—the man’s voice was closer now—“she would’ve come with you without protest. What else are you lying to me about?”
I finally got one eye to crack open and was met with an eye of purest blue staring back at me.
The man. He was definitely familiar.
“She’s sold me the best chocolate cupcake I’ve ever had in my life.” He studied me like a bug. “She’s not yours, though. I remember her saying that she was in love with a man that was years and years older than her. One who didn’t love her back.”
Now I remembered.
During my five days of hell after seeing, or thinking I was seeing, Jeremiah talk to me. The man in front of me had come up to me in the parking lot and all but begged me to sell him a cupcake for his pregnant wife. I had, even though at first, I’d been reluctant to, and he’d been so grateful he’d given me a fifty-dollar tip. All because his pregnant wife had started crying because she’d wanted a chocolate cupcake from us.
He’d been nice.
Or so I thought.
He couldn’t be nice now if he was here with Erich after Erich had knocked me out.
“Listen.” I heard something hard hit the table in front of me, only belatedly realizing that my hand had been the something that was hit after it jolted my body forward awkwardly.
“Touch her again, and this meeting is over,” the man told Erich.
That’s when Erich laughed.
• • •
JEREMIAH
The man walked into the power company, and I knew immediately that he was bad. A stone-cold killer.
It took all of an upsweep of my eyes to realize that something was seriously wrong.
“Your girlfriend,” the man said. “She’s at this address. I couldn’t stay. But she’s there.”
He then produced an address written on a sheet of paper.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, feeling my stomach drop.
The man didn’t stay around to answer.
And I had no other recourse but to follow my gut.
And that was to get to that address as quickly as possible.
Because if it was Gracie there, then that was bad.
Very, very bad.
CHAPTER 22
These can’t be the same men Dolly begged Jolene not to take.
-Gracelynn to Jeremiah
JEREMIAH
Upon arrival at the estate where the man had told me that Gracie was at, I saw Erich in the front yard.
He had a bullet hole through his forehead, and he was staring lifelessly up at the sky.
That must’ve been why he couldn’t stay.
He’d done me a favor. And by doing that favor, he could be visiting the inside of a jail cell for a very long time.
Something in which I would not be allowing him to do if I found Gracie safe and sound inside.
“Let me go in first.”
I looked at Price.
“I…”
Price shoved me hard to the side, then shouldered through the door.
Gracie may not be his girl, and Price may not know her all that well, but he knew she was mine. And I belonged to the club.
Anything that was mine, meant that he would protect it with his life.
He knew that I didn’t have my head on straight, and he also knew that I’d go in half-cocked.
Meaning, he took the lead, and the possible danger onto his shoulders, because he could. Just like I would do for him if situations were reversed.
Not that I was very happy about being pushed aside.
But I’d let him have it later.
Right now…
“Oh, holy fuck,” Price said.
That’s when I knew what I was about to walk in on was bad.
Very, very bad.
Swallowing past the bile that was already rising in my throat, I followed behind him closer than he probably would’ve liked me to be.
But the urgency to get inside, to make sure that I could get to Gracie… it was like an itch in my veins.
I needed to see her.
I needed to make sure…
Price stepped toward the middle of the room so fast that I was momentarily startled by his quick speed.
But then I saw why he’d moved.
In the middle of the otherwise empty room was Gracie.
She was passed out, strapped to a chair with duct tape holding her in place.
The plastic chair was flimsy. Some of that cheap plastic shit that you purchase at the Dollar Tree and never expect to make it past that summer.
She was slumped forward with her hands strapped to the makeshift table in front of her. But the table was only a frame.
Two-by-fours with no middle. Her head was thrown over one such two-by-four, her hair dangling down around her legs. But it was her hands…
“Oh, fuck,” I said the moment I saw her hands.
Price reached for his knife, but I stilled him.
“Don’t take that tourniquet off her hands,” I urged.