Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 75861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Jules shook her head. "No. Calm. Eerily so. Her voice shook, but so long as she holds it together until you get there to assess everything, I think she will be workable."
Workable was what I wanted, no, needed in a situation that was going to require a lot of careful footing, succinct lying.
"Smith," Jules called behind me after shooting off a text to Finn while she watched me head toward the exit.
"Yeah?"
"I don't know if you were in town at the time, if you remember this or heard of this, but do you know about Senator Ericsson's son, and his wife, and the Mallicks?"
"I know," I affirmed, moving out the door. "Call Quinn," I added, locking her in before taking off toward my truck, shoulders hunching forward to ward off the December chill. Never put much weight in the Farmer's Almanac, but this year they said it would be cold and snow-filled, and it had been frigid and the town seemed perpetually white. Or brown-covered white from the plows and traffic kicking up muck.
By the time I climbed in my truck, being assaulted by the freezing air blasting from the vents, Jules had texted me the address.
Watching my breath puff in the air around me, I reversed, turned my truck in the direction of the other side of Navesink Bank.
The wealthy side.
Where most of our clients who were from the area lived, always giving Quin shit about setting up shop a stone's throw from the Third Street Gang and across the street from a half rundown apartment building.
Quin just claimed it was the only place in town to get a large chunk of real estate at a steal. And left out the part where the best forger in the world - and his new apprentice - lived in that rundown apartment building that any one of us could get to in a pinch for a client.
Besides, Third Street was a pathetic facsimile of the organization they used to be. Not that being so was safe per se since any organization lacking strong central leadership meant that an inevitable civil war was coming. And, with low-level street gangs, that often meant an undue amount of bloodshed, shooting in the streets, fucking drive-bys. But Quin made sure the building was locked down tight no matter what happened. It was, after all, where we brought the most valuable of people to hide out when their usual security teams couldn't protect them - no matter how much money they threw at them. We couldn't exactly expect them to shell out a quarter or half mill to stay for a spell and let a stray bullet take them out thanks to some stupid street war.
I parked my car in the driveway of a client who I knew to be in the south for the winter, not wanting it parked on the street, rousing suspicion in this kind of neighborhood, and not wanting it linked to an active crime scene either, and climbed out, making my way down the streets.
These weren't McMansions - those giant homes that sure looked beautiful, but if you inspected it more closely, you would see that the tile was cheap, the countertops laminate, the wood floors sub-par.
No.
These were actual mansions.
Or, as the owners of these kinds of homes preferred to call them, estates.
Each was set on an identical lot somewhere around three acres, their long, winding driveways with nary a speck of snow, white Christmas lights still on even this late at night.
White Christmas lights.
Was there anything less festive than white Christmas lights?
And, besides, what was the point of putting up Christmas lights at all when you had floodlights lighting up the entire front of the house just to make sure that no one forgot - not even for a second - that your house was very nice and very expensive.
Two people in massive estates were, in my opinion, one of the most ridiculous shows of ego second only, perhaps, to dropping over a hundred-k on a sports car that you only use to drive to errands or social outings disguised as charity events.
I had nothing against being rich - or the more long-standing, multi-generational version of it - extremely wealthy. I just hated the showiness, the one-upping of each other in some desperate attempt to appear at the tippy top of the upper class.
I mean, did they know how many mouths they could feed with the money they dropped on their third damn Porsche, Bentley, or Lamborghini?
When my income surpassed my yearly - and retirement savings - needs, I started having a handful of my chosen charities charge me monthly donations. The amount of surplus - unneeded - money the men and women on this street alone had could probably end world hunger or completely fund inner city schools, keep seniors and veterans fed, get the homeless off the streets, fix the goddamn water in Flint.