Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
The officer frowned.
“So let’s just say, I more than know who his victims usually are,” I snapped. “I haven’t seen him.”
The officer looked from me to Bram.
“Have you?”
I felt more than saw Bram shake his head.
“No,” he answered. “Been here all night. Haven’t seen him.”
That was a joke if I’d ever heard one.
Even I hadn’t been here all night.
But whatever worked.
We would obviously be each other’s alibis.
“What’s going on here?” he asked. “I thought you were with someone.”
The suspiciousness in his tone set me on edge.
“If you can’t figure out what I’m doing here, then obviously you have shit detective skills,” Bram grumbled.
“Pretty shitty of you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Your girl was broken up over your disappearance.”
Bram sighed. “I think you have no clue what’s going on with my relationship, nor do you really have any rights to what’s going on with it. If you’re interested in arresting me, I’ll be more than happy to answer whatever questions you have. But if you’re not, then I think it’s time to leave.”
The detective’s mouth thinned in a line, and I could tell he didn’t like being dismissed.
Needless to say, when he walked away, I wanted nothing more than to retreat back under my bedspread.
Instead, I said, “Do you need a ride?”
“My bike’s a couple blocks over from where he was being held,” Bram said. “It’s at the donut shop. So it won’t look weird if you drive me there right now. They’re about to open anyway.”
I looked at the officer as he got into his car. “This is going to go bad.”
Bram sighed. “I have a feeling that you’re right.”
• • •
And I was.
Three weeks later, the shit storm hit.
Amon’s body had been discovered, and we were the prime suspects in his murder.
How did I find this out?
Bram snuck into my window, woke me from a dead sleep, and then said, “Shit’s hit the fan.”
I was still gasping when I finally realized that I wasn’t about to die.
“What the fuck?” I gasped. “You can’t just come into a girl’s room like that.”
He grumbled something under his breath and then, more loudly, said, “I think you’re underestimating the urgency that I’m currently feeling. They found him.”
Oh.
Oh, shit.
“Oh, shit,” I choked. “How? What are the freakin’ odds?”
“Very slim,” he admitted. “A guy fell out of his fishing boat because he thought he had a monster catfish on his jug line that’d swept downriver. When, in fact, it’d caught on Amon’s jawbone. Pulled him out of the water yesterday afternoon. I just heard the news and came straight here.”
“Shit,” I grumbled. “What do we do now?”
“We prepare,” he admitted. “Because I have a feeling that detective is going to come back and ask us some questions.”
“Prepare for what? How do you prepare for that?” I gasped. “That’s not something you can prepare for!”
I was slightly freaking out, and you could tell because of the way my voice had risen about five octaves.
“We have to sell the lie we told that night that he came knocking, looking for your brother,” he said. “You think you can do that?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Sell what lie?”
I mean, logically I knew what ‘lie’ he was talking about. But what did he mean by ‘sell’ it?
“We have to act like we’re a couple,” he grunted. “And I have to break it off with Mimi.”
I felt my insides stir.
“What?”
“I have to break it off with her,” he repeated. “Because it wouldn’t be fair to her otherwise.”
No, it wouldn’t.
But was it really necessary?
That question was answered a few seconds later when there was an insistent knock on my door.
Bram cursed and yanked off his shirt, then started to toe off his boots.
“What are you doing?” I squeaked. “I need to be putting clothes on. You don’t need to be taking them off!”
Bram shot me a grin. “Gotta look the part.”
That grin did things to my insides I’d never felt before.
“Bram…”
He disappeared through my bedroom door, then out into the living room.
I could hear men’s voices, and I cursed.
Pulling on some sleep shorts, I hurried out of my bedroom to find Bram facing off with two of Intercourse’s finest. One of which being Detective Alto, the man that always looked at me as if I was crazy pants.
The one that’d shooed me away more times than I could count, thinking that I was full of shit.
I hope it weighed on his conscience, my friends’ deaths in addition to the deaths of our parents and my foster parents.
Had he taken me seriously, they might be alive right now.
I might not have lost my only two friends in the world.
“What’s going on?” I asked quietly, my voice shaky and filled with fear.
Detective Alto turned his gaze to me, and I felt like I was being stripped alive.
His eyes lingered on my unrestrained breasts—hello, didn’t everyone sleep braless?—until the other man beside him cleared his throat.