Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Put your hands behind your back and get down on your knees!”
“Now, CJ!”
“Do not resist! If you resist, we have the right to shoot.”
“He isn’t resisting,” I plead on JR’s behalf when I remember how concerning his size can be to some people, much less his inability to communicate in what society deems an acceptable manner. “He’s deaf. He can’t hear your demands.”
“Why are you defending him?” Cedric asks in shock, his voice more disgusted than curious. “He tried to kill you.”
I snap my eyes to his so fast, I make myself dizzy. “And when he supposedly couldn’t go through with it, you told the men exactly where to find me!”
“To save you from him!” he shouts, his words overtaking the federal agents’ repeated demands for JR to surrender.
“Dogs wanting to tear me apart aren’t rescue dogs, Cedric!” I push him away from me with all my might before falling to my knees so JR can see me under the cloud of smoke. “Stay down, don’t resist, and maintain your right of silence until you have a lawyer present.”
My heart breaks when Cedric sneers out, “He just confessed to murder on tape. You can’t fucking save him, Jae.” He yanks off a length of wire taped to his chest, unlatches his necklace, dumps both products into the hands of an agent wearing a black balaclava and thick gloves, then exits the room like I cheapened our relationship by bringing in a third party into our duo.
Although some may say that is what JR is, I don’t feel the same way.
He saved me from a lifetime of misery.
He didn’t push me headfirst into it.
Chapter Nineteen
JR
With the roar rumbling up my chest louder than the vibration of a dozen pairs of boots stomping across a carpeted floor, I pin one agent to the wall by his throat before kicking another away from me.
A baton slams into my back at the same time I toss the agent I pinned to the wall into three of his comrades. I can’t trust the FBI. They did me wrong years ago, and once again, it is more than my life at stake.
My blood boils when, in the corner of my eye, I spot Jae pushing Cedric away from her with the same amount of aggression I’m instilling on the federal agents. For a woman with a short stature and waif-thin appearance, she has a lot of strength in her push. She sends Cedric flying before she bobs beneath the choking haze of smoke separating us, then locks her eyes with mine.
The panic flaring through her pretty green eyes could be excused on the insurgence of federal agents swarming our room, but I know it’s more than that, and her signed words confirm it. “Stay down, don’t resist, and maintain your right of silence until you have a lawyer present.”
When Cedric towers over her with the same angry sneer he wore when he was informed her convertible was corpseless, I race for him so fast, I only recall I’m not wearing a stitch of clothing when a prick with a death wish tasers me in the cock. It rockets a painful zap up my spine, but since it isn’t one-tenth of the bolt I feel when Jae’s lips circle my cock’s head, I rip off the cords powering the prongs with electricity, knock out the guy who tasered me with a fist to his nose, then continue with my mission.
Cedric can’t be trusted. Not only did he give Roderick’s goons information to access the LoJack in Jae’s car, he also watched them release a pack of dogs trained to rip Jae apart the instant they find her. He’s a part of this. I just haven’t worked out exactly where he slots into a two-decade-long dispute.
I hammer Cedric like I wanted to earlier but couldn’t since Jae was too close to the firing zone not to get hurt.
I only get in a handful of hits before I’m stung for the second time. This time, I’m not hit with the prongs of a taser.
I’m jabbed with a needle.
The serum it races through my veins pulls my legs out from beneath me in an instant. I fall to the ground with a roar, and even quicker than that, Jae curls her body over mine to protect me like I did her last night when Cecil’s truck sailed off the freeway.
Her quick thinking saves my bruised hip, back, and spleen from additional injury, and thrusts my thoughts back to the last time I was defended by a woman…
“M-Mommy…”
While praying her tummy isn’t as sore as mine, I sneak into her room. Daddy said she went to bed early because she was sick, but he lies—a lot—even more than my older brother, Roberto. The marks on Mommy’s face she calls ‘kisses from Daddy’s hands’ don’t make her stomach swishy like mine. They make her sad, grumpy, and a lot of the times she cries, but she never gets sick.