Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
With that, I whispered out a little ‘guard’ to the dogs, who were all too happy to start barking and snarling and snapping once again as I made my way inside the cabin, watching as the girls backed the men into the woods. And, presumably, away.
While I leaned back against the door, heart hammering, hands a little shaky.
I put on a good show.
But I sucked at confrontation of any sort.
I once packed my stuff and left in the middle of the day after a guy I was seeing sent me the ‘we need to talk’ text when he’d left for work.
For all I knew, he just wanted to tell me I was kicking him in my sleep or something, but on the off chance he wanted to confront me and say that this wasn’t working, that I was too closed off, that I didn’t let him in, that I was keeping secrets, I just went ahead and ghosted the poor guy instead of having that conversation.
I did everything in my power to avoid serious talks. And arguments. And entanglements of any sort.
I just wanted to be left alone. With my work. With my dogs.
Especially now.
After… everything…
“Stop,” I hissed to myself, knocking my skull back into the door hard enough to throb, to force my brain to think of the pain instead of the memories.
I was sure the guys were going to come back.
They likely had to head back to town, find some bars of their own, and talk to their boss. Who, I was sure, was going to say that he didn’t want the money back, that he wanted the guns.
Yeah, well, I wanted a safe life that didn’t make me sleep with guns under my pillow, that didn’t make me run off to a safe house, that didn’t have horrible nightmares plaguing me anytime I tried to catch some sleep.
We could want anything.
That didn’t mean we were going to get it.
The world didn’t work that way.
So, yeah, the guys would be back.
Which meant I had a choice to make.
Stay, and have that confrontation.
Or pack up my shit, grab my girls, and hightail it the fuck out of here.
I mean, come on, there really wasn’t any choice in the matter, was there?
If it came to standing and facing someone or getting the hell out of Dodge, I was always going to run.
Decision made, I cleaned up the mess from breakfast, poked apart the fire so it would burn out faster, gathered my supplies, loaded them into the cart that I used to drag it all to my car, put the booties on the dogs, and then we all packed into the car.
There was no avoiding stopping just once in town. To fuel up the SUV while the girls napped contentedly in the backseat, likely thinking we were on our way home.
I let the car fill as I dipped inside, knowing there was no way I was going to be able to do this drive without some serious caffeine.
I grabbed a couple bags worth of junk food too, always being prone to stress-eating, and, well, I’d been surviving on healthy crap for a while already. I deserved to pig out as I uprooted our lives yet again to go to another safe house. Unfortunately, this one was much further away.
“Alright,” I said as I got in the driver’s seat, taking a deep breath, trying to keep myself positive about the whole thing. “Let’s go on another adventure, girls,” I said, then I was off.
I blamed the music for it.
I couldn’t drive in silence.
The thoughts tried to creep in too much since driving was done so much on autopilot, leaving your brain free to drift to other things.
So the music was bumping, distracting me, until about twenty minutes into the drive, something made the satellite cut out, banking the car in complete silence.
Save for a… chewing sound coming from the backseat.
I mean, yeah, the dogs chewed at their feet sometimes, but that was an annoying mashing sound that made me feel twitchy. This was a munching and scraping sound.
Like they were chewing on bones.
Which I never would have given them on a long car ride where I couldn’t keep an eye on them.
My gaze shot to the rearview.
Then there he was.
Perched over the backseat, sitting in the trunk.
Shock gripped my system, making my arms move of their own volition, turning the wheel, sending the car into a spin that had my stomach plummeting and my heart skipping into overdrive.
The dogs let out startled grumbles.
And before the car even pulled to a stop when I slammed on the brake, one of my hands was shooting out toward the center console, flipping it open, and reaching inside.
“Looking for this, babe?” Sway asked, tone calm as could be as he waved around my heavily modified gun. “What does this do, anyway? Shoot laser holes in people?”