Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
It wasn’t supposed to happen in the heat of the moment like this. With no plan.
I didn’t really even mean to follow them out here.
I’d been hiding out behind the clubhouse when I saw several of them heading out, three on bikes, one in a car.
The car was what made me curious.
What did they need a car for?
So I hung back, then followed at a safe distance.
Luckily, they were the same morons they’d always been and didn’t even think to look for a tail.
Not even when my bike rumbled along with them as they rode off into the rural areas around the creek.
I was pretty sure I saw the other car long before they did, crawling up the street, a small bit of light coming from the passenger seat.
Which was how I’d seen him so clearly.
He was a tank of a guy, taking up the whole passenger seat, looking like his head was damn near brushing the roof.
It was hard to tell, but his hair seemed lighter. Maybe a dirty blond. His beard was thick and well-groomed, just a shade or two darker than the hair on his head.
He had that masculine bone structure that made you think of mountain men, lumberjacks, or cowboys. Handsome, but in a rugged way.
I hated to admit it, but it was him my focus was lasered in on when the men climbed out of the car to approach the club.
Aside from his height and tight, almost militarily perfect, posture, I noticed the cut first.
These were bikers.
And my vision was good enough to see the town of Shady Valley on his rocker.
The name wasn’t familiar to me. But, then again, it wasn’t like I knew every town in every county of California. All I did know was that it wasn’t from anywhere nearby.
They’d traveled to meet with that fucking loser Roach and his goons.
It went downhill fast.
Of course it did.
Roach was not someone any sane person wanted to do business with.
My gaze had tracked the whole fight, delighting in each blow one of these other bikers got in and rooting for them to rally each time one of Roach’s guys got a lick in.
Did my eyes keep tracking one particular biker more than the others? Yep.
And good thing.
Because his head would have busted open right there in front of his friends if I hadn’t been watching so closely.
My hand went for my gun without even thinking about it. And I guess I could thank my father for all the weekends he’d dragged me—often kicking and screaming—to his homemade range and forced me to practice.
My aim was true.
The bullet ripped through his heart.
He was dead before he even wobbled.
It was my gunshot that had everyone scrambling.
But not before the hulking biker looked straight at me.
I didn’t want to think he could see me.
I saw them so clearly because they were standing in an opening, no trees to cast shadows over them, so the moon illuminated their faces.
I was right next to an ancient tree trunk, completely in shadow.
Still, I felt his gaze with impact, knocking what little was left of my breath out of my lungs.
I was so focused on him looking at me that I had no idea if anyone else saw me.
I stopped halfway home, finding a neighborhood with their bins at the curb for trash day, and quickly dropped the magazine in one of them before continuing on.
I expected to start feeling better as I got further away from the crime scene—both literally and figuratively. But the shakiness seemed to only get worse the further I went.
By the time I pushed my bike into the storage unit again back at my apartment, my insides felt shaky too. My legs felt weak and wobbly.
“Okay. Almost there,” I told myself as I climbed the steps toward my apartment. “You’re okay.”
I unlocked my doors with a jangling of my keys and beelined right for my counter, wiping my finger, pricking it, and testing my sugar.
Only to stare at the readout with a sinking feeling.
My sugar was fine.
That wasn’t why I was shaking, why I was dizzy.
I slid down the side of the island, my knees pinned to my chest as Sugar came up beside me to lick my face and dance around, happy to see me even if I was a mess.
If my sugar was fine, then what?
Was I having a panic attack?
Me?
I didn’t have panic attacks.
Except…
Well, except that I wasn’t who I’d been just a year ago. I wasn’t cool and calm and unflappable.
This whole health thing had made me really anxious and antsy and, well, flapped.
I was used to a body that just… did what it was supposed to do, that regulated itself, that didn’t need oversight.
Learning that mine now not only needed monitoring but a careful diet but—no matter how perfectly I ate—two different kinds of medication had made me suddenly very paranoid, very untrusting of myself.