Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
“It’s been said,” I agreed.
“I don’t wanna tell you your business, but…you either need a helluva lot more sheep or, like, five guys with machetes,” she said, grinning at me. “And my money’s on snakes in the front. My son also takes in snakes if you want him to check.”
“That would be great.”
“It might cost you a donation to the sanctuary, since he’s wrangling at that point.”
“Wrangling?”
“You know, picking up snakes and lizards and getting them all together.”
“Ah. Herding. Got it.”
“Will that be okay?”
“Yep. Not a problem.”
“Excellent.” She was beaming at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever met such an agreeable man.”
Twice in one day. Unbelievable.
I told Gale at dinner.
“Was that news to you?” he teased me as he took another slice of pepperoni pizza. I noticed that he had yet to touch his salad. “Have others not thought of you as agreeable?”
“Not so much,” I said, grabbing another slice of the combination pizza, which had all the veggies plus sausage. “Thanks for bringing dinner.”
“Oh yes, Gale,” Ada chimed in. “Pizza is a treat.”
“You’re very welcome,” he said, reaching out simply to touch my cheek.
“You gonna eat some of your greens?” I asked, glancing at the antipasto salad and then meeting his gaze.
“Yes,” he said, scowling.
“When?” Ada asked pointedly. “Maks and I finished ours, but you—darling, you must eat some roughage for your bowels.”
“Yeah,” I seconded. “Think of your bowels, man.”
“You’re both disgusting,” he griped but picked up his fork.
After dinner, the two of us were walking Misha when Gale got a call. The entirety of the conversation, from his end, was a series of grunts and groans until he finally said, “I’ll be right there.” The long sigh afterward let me know he was annoyed.
“I’m sorry, Maks. We have a noise-disturbance call. Apparently things are getting out of control.”
“Party?”
He nodded.
“Misha and I will go with you.”
“What? No,” he said, shaking his head. “If we end up making arrests, you could both be there all night.”
“If that happens, I’ll get a cab.”
He scoffed. “Honey, there’s no cabs in Rune that run any later than ten.”
Did he know he just called me honey? “Then I’ll follow you in my Jeep.”
“Why do you want to come along so badly?”
“Because I’ve seen your two deputies, and I think it would be better if I came to back you up.”
Wicked grin from him. “You don’t trust them to take care of me?”
“Not at all.”
He was quiet a moment. “You can come with me, but I want you to retreat to the car if anything happens.”
“Certainly,” I agreed, but there must have been something about the way I said it because he was looking at me closely. “What?”
“You’ve never retreated from anything in your life, have you?”
I had not. It was not in my nature. “We should go, don’t you think?”
“We should take Misha inside.”
But I had a feeling.
Over the years, at different times, my intuition had told me things. My mother said it was my guardian angel, but in my case, since I couldn’t imagine I had anything heavenly looking out for me, I had to go with my father’s explanation. According to him, it was a memory from your past life. He believed we were all reincarnated over and over to live another shit life because we were all evil deep down.
“Unless you are perfect, like Pasha and your mother,” he’d told me, “you come back.”
So when I met someone I wasn’t sure of for whatever reason, that was because they had fucked me over in a previous life. One damaged, broken soul acknowledging another. At the moment, feeling that I should bring Misha with me meant I had to go with my gut. And maybe it was all crap and I just wanted to bring my dog because I liked him, or maybe there was something more I just couldn’t see right now. Either way, I told Gale that Misha was coming with us.
“Let’s go,” I prodded him. “The quicker we get there, the quicker we can get home.”
He couldn’t argue with that logic.
It was wrong and judgmental of me, but I was expecting us to drive to the poorer side of town. Instead, we wound up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood built around a man-made lake. There was a walking path around the lake, and the houses all had gates from their backyards that opened onto the path. This was the issue: the house party had people in the front and back, it was very loud, and it was now after ten at night on a weekday. The people who’d complained lived three doors down, and Gale pulled up there first. A man and a woman were waiting on the curb.
He got out, and so did Misha and I.
“Sorry about this, Gale,” the man said, “but our one-year-old keeps getting woken up because of the––”