Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 128307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Her guilt-filled yet genuine smile chips away at the memories of her pained expression in my head, and the sluggish withdrawal of her eyes from my abs replaces them with something more profound. “Better than I have in months. Thanks for giving up the bed.”
I wave off her gratitude; her praise is unnecessary. I got all the fuel I need to keep going from her needy stare. “You needed it more than I did. Besides, I’m used to sleeping on couches.”
After walking to the kitchen, I grab the bag of muffins I purchased this morning after a run and hand them to Macy with a heartburn-approved beverage. Laughter rumbles up my chest when she sniffs the herbal tea before she takes a hesitant sip. It must taste better than it smells, because after swallowing down the minute mouthful she took, she takes another sip before she pulls a blueberry muffin out of the bag.
She talks through a moan, the muffin melting on her tongue. “You’re too good to me, Grayson.”
I grin before flattening my hip against the kitchen counter and folding my arms over my chest. “Let’s see if you’re still saying that in a couple of hours.”
Macy raises a brow before she sucks in a sharp breath. “Did you find something in the files?”
I slacken her steps to the first lot of bulletin boards by shaking my head. I meant she should hold back her praise until after the excessive “healing powers” of the prenatal juice passes her intestines.
Online forums tout their benefits, but the juice bar employee warned me to keep the mom-to-be close to a restroom when I rattled off the ingredients I wanted included in the licorice, ginger, and chamomile concoction.
Hating that I got her hopes up only to dash them seconds later, I say, “I’m analyzing personal and behavioral characteristics on each individual you’ve identified as a suspect, but I need a few more hours to complete a thorough profile.”
When her nose crinkles in confusion, aware that it takes longer than twelve hours to conduct an in-depth behavioral analysis on one suspect, let alone multiple suspects, I explain that Brandon is uploading the files to a better version of ViCAP and that we can’t touch any of the files for another seven-plus hours.
Gratitude is Macy’s first expression. Panic quickly follows it. “Are my reports safe with him?”
“Yes,” I answer without pause for contemplation. “I give you my word. I wouldn’t have brought him into this if I didn’t trust him.”
She rewards me her faith way too easily. “Okay. Good.” I realize there’s more to the incident reports I read this morning than they portray when she whispers, “I’ll take all the help I can get as long as it comes from the right people.” After schooling her angry expression, she peers up at me. “I emailed over a dozen requests to have a profiler brought onto this case. They denied every request within minutes of its receipt.” Her following words puff out my chest. “Now I have the best of the best.”
The pain in her eyes clears for loyalty.
If I were honest, I’d also admit she looks a little lost.
Undercover agents bury themselves so deeply into the case they’re working that they are barely recognizable to their loved ones when they return home. Although Macy isn’t immersed as deeply in the trenches of this outfit as in the other undercover assignments she’s worked, it has a stranglehold on her emotions.
She doesn’t know who she is without a suspect file in her hand, and an unhealthy obsession with unearthing the identity of the perp running through her veins.
My theory is blatantly obvious when she wordlessly seeks my suggestions on how she should occupy her time, since she can’t touch the files she’s rarely without.
I shrug, also clueless. The hours I put into her fellow agents over the past three years are the most I’ve put into any case that isn’t part of a sex-trafficking or baby-making ring in seventeen years. I don’t know who I am outside of the bureau’s net either.
When Macy accepts my who-the-fuck-knows gesture as readily as she did Brandon’s inclusion in this case, I could leave it there, but my heart speaks before my head gets the chance to object. “We could probably kill time with some light shopping.”
Her gag is authentic, and it has my head giving my heart a pat on the back for the first time in over a decade. “Shopping, Grayson? Really?”
“Why not?” I grin like I’m at the comedy club instead of the seedy smile I usually give members of the opposite sex when I want them eating out of my palm. “It isn’t like we have anything better to do.”
She looks like she wants to shoot down my suggestion, or perhaps sulk that the one-bed trope isn’t as fire-sparking in real life as it is in romance novels, but it is the gleam of anticipation in her eyes I pay the most attention to. It shows that she is as desperate as I am to fill her lungs with something more than corrupt and immoral air.