Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 155775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Not that she thought Monroe wouldn’t want Dotty sitting in. There was no one better to have on your side than Dotty. That’s how she’d become such a successful lawyer. Because she fought for her clients like they were family.
Butch got up and followed them out as well. The detective gave him a long-suffering look. “Why are you coming?”
“Bodyguard.”
The detective gave him a look of surprise. “Bodyguard? You really think she needs that?”
Butch didn’t deign to answer. He just stomped out after Monroe and Dotty.
The detective followed them.
Ink grimaced. “Sorry. He’s not the person I was hoping we would be dealing with. Reeves is currently busy with something else, so we were given Jackson. He’s not a terrible detective, he’s honest and generally fair. Sometimes he’s just a bit of a dick.”
Addie nearly smiled at that honest assessment.
“A bit of a dick?” Cash repeated. “He seems like a supreme dick.”
“The king of dicks,” Ralen added.
“The dickiest of the dickheads,” Addie said.
They all looked at her, and this time she did grin.
Ralen let out a hoot. “That’s it, Trouble! He’s the dickiest of the dickheads.”
Ink just shook his head and left.
Monroe’s interview seemed to take a while, and Addie started to get restless. Standing up, she paced up and down the room.
When Monroe returned she was pale-looking, and Addie moved over to her. “Are you okay?”
By this time, her throat had nearly completely shut down on her, and she coughed after speaking.
Dotty, who’d entered soon after Monroe, walked over to her with a sharp look. “What’s going on with your voice? Are you losing it?”
Addie nodded. Her throat felt like it was on fire. But it was so irritating to stop and try to find something that she could communicate on.
“Stop talking, okay?” Dotty ordered.
She was aware that her cheeks were growing red, but she nodded again. Dotty was only trying to be helpful.
“Addie, are you okay to talk to the detective for a moment? We’ll find that same tablet you used before. Cash and Ralen will go with you?” Ink asked. “I’ll be there too.”
She nodded again and followed them all out. At the door, Cash took her hand in his, squeezing it and giving her a wink.
Ralen stuck to her other side, so they were flanking her like bodyguards.
It made her feel special, and that was a heady feeling, she had to admit. They entered Ink’s office, sitting on the sofa and chairs.
She’d snuck her squishy into her pocket and reached in to squeeze it as she felt her anxiety getting higher and higher.
Now, she really wished that she’d bought that hoodie with the squishes in the cuffs.
It would have been far more discreet than what she was doing right now.
The detective’s gaze went to her hand immediately, and his eyes narrowed. Uh-oh. Did he think she had something in there, like a weapon?
“It’s a stress ball,” Cash told him.
“What?” The police detective asked. Why couldn’t she remember his name? Oh, Jackson. That was it.
“A stress ball,” Cash repeated.
“Ah, right. Some of my colleagues have those on their desks.”
They did? Okay, she didn’t feel like such an idiot then, and she pulled the stress cube out of her pocket.
“Right. Just tell me about what you saw when you walked into the hotel room,” the detective said tiredly with a yawn.
“We keeping you from something you’d rather do?” Cash asked sharply.
The detective glared at him. “I’m here doing my job. I’ve just been up all night.”
“So have we,” Ralen told him with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Everyone’s temper is . . . frayed, I guess you could say. So let’s get on with things.”
The detective nodded. Cash told them everything, with Ralen adding a few things.
“And Addie, do you have anything else to add?” the detective asked, not unkindly.
She shook her head.
“No? Any thoughts on who could have threatened you guys? On who the threat might be aimed at?”
Addie shook her head again.
Her best guess was Vextar, like everybody else, but she knew her sisters would’ve said that.
There wasn’t really anything she could add to all of this. She wasn’t even certain why she was being interviewed.
“Are there any other things you’ve left out that you need to tell me?” There was a shrewd look in the detective’s eyes, almost as though he knew something else was going on, something that they were keeping from him.
But Addie just shook her head again.
The detective sighed and nodded. “Right. Well, we’ll try to get footage from the hotel security without going to a judge, but we’ll see how that goes. Then we might be able to spot who it was that broke into the hotel room. Well, not broke in, since they had a card. I’ve told your sister to be more careful about that. I might be tired, but I can assure you that I’m taking this threat seriously. Even if you are leaving, you should still be vigilant when you’re back home. And I’ll alert someone at the Las Vegas Police Department about all of this.”