Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“Hurry,” the upstairs guy said. “Something’s happening. If this goes south…” He left that dangling.
“Kala, I don’t think you should leave right now.”
She frowned but kept her eyes on the door in front of her. “The bathroom is right there. Do you want to humiliate me?”
The guard quickly put in the code, his gun up. “Hurry. You’ve got two minutes.”
Kala was back to her bratty self. “Awesome.”
She disappeared into the small bathroom. It was a tight fit, with no mirror and only the toilet, sink, and rudimentary shower that did not have a drop of hot water attached to it.
What was she doing?
And then he realized what she was doing when he heard a gentle snick coming from his left.
He groaned, trying to cover the noise. He wasn’t sure how or why, but there was something happening along the wall opposite of him. Maybe they were coming in through the vents, but he had to make sure the guard didn’t check. Kala had done her part. She’d realized her parents were coming and she’d hidden so they didn’t have to worry about her.
The rest was up to him.
“Hey, how the fuck long are you planning on keeping me down here?” He got loud. It might throw the guy off since he’d been a model prisoner up until now. He hadn’t tried a damn thing, and he was pretty sure the guy thought he was as much of a threat as Kala.
He wasn’t as hyper, likely-helped-out-by-steroids muscled as this guy, but he could handle him.
“Keep your voice down, asshole.”
He could hear something shuffling. Was someone moving inside the walls? “Why? What are you going to do?”
The guard stopped as though he could tell something was happening.
“I asked a question, you piece of shit.”
That got the guard’s attention. His nostrils flared like an angry bull, and he turned away from where the sound was coming from, giving Kyle his full attention. “You want to play, asshole?”
That’s what he needed. He needed this dude wholly focused on him. Perhaps then he wouldn’t notice that Kala wasn’t coming out of that bathroom and someone was moving around behind that wall, looking for a door that might be there.
Had MaeBe discovered that, too? Had she found this place and learned there was a secret way in?
Julia had always told him she wouldn’t live anywhere she didn’t have a way out of. She said her father had taught her that.
“I don’t think you can play at all,” Kyle taunted. “I think the lady upstairs has your balls in a vise, and you can’t do anything about it. She tells you what to do, and you do it like the lapdog you are.”
The guard’s shoulders straightened, and he probably had the instinct to beat his chest or something. “Fuck you. I do what I want. I don’t let any bitch tell me what to do.”
That was the moment the door opened and Charlotte Taggart moved in, her body encased in all black and a gun with a suppressor in her hand.
“Die.” She pulled the trigger and the guard went down quickly. Charlotte stared down at him. “This bitch seems to have been able to tell him what to do. Kyle, where’s my daughter?”
Ian had moved in behind her, his brothers and sister-in-law flanking out from the small door that had been revealed.
The bathroom door opened. “Mom!”
Kala ran out, hurling herself into her mother’s arms.
Theo and Erin carefully moved around them, covering the stairs. Ian joined his wife and daughter, wrapping his big arms around them.
“I knew it was you,” Kala said, her head resting on her mom’s shoulder. The tears had come now, and she looked more like the kid she was. “I knew when the lights went out that you were coming to get me, and I knew I should hide so you could do what you needed to do, but I couldn’t get Kyle out and I thought he would be smart enough to take cover, but I don’t think he did. I don’t think he knew.”
“I knew.” He’d been a damn CIA operative. “I absolutely knew.”
His stepdad moved in front of him. Sean looked so different, like this was a side of him he’d never seen before. He was in all black and looked exactly like the badass Green Beret he’d once been. But his eyes softened, and he was Sean again. “Hey, son. You okay?”
How much had his mom and stepdad been through the last few days? Emotion threatened to choke him. Why had he ever considered leaving this family for a freaking second? He nodded, reaching a hand between the bars. “Yes, Pops. I’m good. I kept watch over her. Uncle Ian, I take back everything I’ve ever said about you. You are a saint of a man.”
He wasn’t going to call him Sean again. He couldn’t call him Dad. That place was forever enshrined to the man who’d raised him as a child. But Sean had taught him so much about how to be a man. Pops would do.