Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 109086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
First aid. CPR.
This was a part of the job I did for so fucking long, but I hated it.
I didn’t realize it until now, but this part, I hated it. But it’s what I signed up to do because I didn’t feel I had a choice in the matter. I couldn’t let Justin join the family business. I wouldn’t let him be turned into a criminal so I went to the academy to be something else, but goddammit. In the end, I became worse than what I was trying to save him from. I just didn’t know it until I turned my resignation in.
Fuck. How sad was that?
I kept giving CPR until the first EMT got to me. “We got it, Jake. You can back up.”
I looked up, confused, but I knew the paramedic. Recognized her.
Her partner rounded, taking my place and I moved aside, letting them do their job. “Stray bullet.” I motioned to the window, but the first paramedic had already clocked it, her glance at the window before straying over to me lingering. “We got it. Go downstairs.”
I nodded. That divider wall started to lift. Just a bit. Some of my adrenaline slipped through.
Another paramedic was in the hallway, talking to the child. He looked up, familiarity flaring because he knew me too. We gave each other a nod, but I kept moving, circling through the diner where I saw a couple street cops inside, questioning people. Both looked up, saw me, saw the blood on my shirt.
I reached to show my badge.
Then stopped because there was just air there now.
“Sir?” One stepped toward me.
I held up a hand. “I used to be a cop. OC.” Organized crime.
That made him pause. His gaze lingered on my holstered weapon before he motioned to the street. “Manhattan South is on the way. Homicide. They’ll want to talk to you.”
Homicide.
Shit.
The guy had died.
Chapter Eight
Sawyer
“You want another coffee?” The server came back, eyeing me, but I saw the strain on her face.
I turned in my booth, my back to the whole posse that had formed outside. The ambulances. The fireman. The police. The paramedics.
I was on my third cup since everything happened. I nudged my mug toward her. “Thanks. Yeah.”
This was all new to me.
I was alive.
And sitting in a diner, after a shooting that happened in front of me, literally, I was getting a wake-up call. My life was officially fucked up. I needed to unfuck it up.
She let out a sigh and didn’t move away from the table. Her gaze was on the commotion outside, and I looked too. Jake was in front of the window, his arms crossed over his chest, so it pulled his shirt tight around him, accentuating his athletic build.
“How do you know him? Have you two been a thing for a while?”
I knew who she meant. “I just met him. He stole me from a police station.”
“I—what?” She had to blink a few times, slack-jawed.
I shrugged. “His cousin made him.”
“What?”
“She’s in rehab now.”
She continued to blink at me, her face blank.
The door opened then, the bell jingling. Seeing who was coming in, she dropped her gaze and scurried away.
She’d been flirty with Jake earlier. Then she saw him kill a guy and her attitude changed. I paused, my eyebrows pulling down. Should that have the same effect on me? I checked, eyeing Jake as he walked over to me. He ignored the others that remained in the diner. Most took off after they were questioned, but two older guys who looked as if they had no intention of shaving in this decade were perched at the counter, turned all the way around so they could see outside. Their elbows rested behind them.
They had a front-row seat to the scene happening outside.
Both grunted greetings to Jake, who half raised a hand to them. But his eyes went right back to me, trained on me as he approached.
The stirring was still inside of me.
Nope. That didn’t have the same effect on me that it had on the server.
He came to the end of the table, his gaze sliding over me, inspecting every inch. After a bit, his jaw clenched. He asked in a gruff voice, “Ready to go?”
I needed to go back to my hotel. I needed to figure out my steps for tomorrow. I still had my list. Things to do. Activities to cross off, but I opened my mouth and nothing.
I didn’t want to leave him.
The thought of going our separate ways made my stomach dip.
But then he said, “I got a hold of your cousin. He said I could bring you to his place.”
My mouth snapped shut. “What?”
He went back out the door. He didn’t answer me.
I was—what did he say? I scrambled after him. “I never told you my cousin’s name. How did you get a hold of him?”