Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
“They know I’m here.” Brady leans against the doorframe, unbothered, which I can already tell is the thing about him that gets under Caroline’s skin… nothing seems to rattle him. “As far as my new friends in the department are concerned, I’m liaising with Jameson on a joint case. They think I’m working you people from the inside like a mole.” He shrugs. “So I came to get some false info from Malik this morning. I’ll head back to work with a folder of very convincing garbage I get to feed back up the chain. Everybody’s happy. They think they turned me. I think I turned them. We’ll see who’s right.”
“That’s a good play,” I say, and mean it.
“It’s a dangerous play,” Caroline says.
“It’s my play.”
“It’s a dangerous play run by a man who thinks he’s bulletproof, which is how men like you end up in a ditch off I-90.”
Brady’s mouth curves, slow. “You worried about me, Prescott?”
“I’m worried about the paperwork. You go in a ditch, somebody’s got to write it up, and it’ll be me, because it’s always me.”
“I’d hate to inconvenience you.”
“You inconvenience me by existing,” she snarls.
Reid, from the counter, mouth full of peanut butter cookie, smiles around the crumbs. He looks at me, eyebrows up, like a man at a tennis match who can’t believe his luck with the seats.
Brady pushes off the doorframe. “You’re charming as always, Caro.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.
He winks at her and then turns to me. “You good, Josie?”
“All good,” I reply.
He winks at me too and not going to lie… he’s so gorgeously charming, my pulse skips a beat.
Bad Josie.
Brady glances at his watch and snags another cookie. “Only came up for some of these. Gotta get back to the grind.”
He fist-bumps Reid, ignores Caroline and squeezes my shoulder on the way out.
But then he glances back for just a second, attention landing on Caroline. “Try not to miss me.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ll do my best to manage the grief.”
Then he’s gone.
Reid waits until his footsteps recede, then lets out a low whistle. “You two should really just get it over with,” he says.
“There is no it,” Caroline barks.
“Sure.” Reid hops off the counter, brushes the crumbs from his hands, and ambles toward the staircase like a man who’s gotten everything he came for and then some. “Keep telling yourself that. See you later, Josie.”
And then he’s gone too, and it’s just me and Caroline and the high stain of red on her cheeks.
“What’s up with you two?” I ask.
“Nothing’s up.” She grabs her coffee, takes a hard sip. “I find him frustrating. He’s arrogant, he’s reckless, he thinks the rules are for people with worse reflexes than he has, and he has never once since he’s come here conceded a single point to me, even when I’m right, which is most of the time. I can’t stand him.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “That was a lot of detail for nothing.”
“Shut up, Josie,” she mutters.
I laugh. “I’m just saying. For a man who’s nothing, you’ve got a comprehensive file.”
“I will put you back in the Salish Sea myself.”
My phone buzzes against the counter and I snatch it so fast, I bobble it. Once righted, I see the text from Finn, and the warmth that goes through me is embarrassing in its completeness. Four words and I feel it in my whole body.
I’m here for you.
“I have to go,” I say, scrambling out of my chair.
Caroline’s eyes track to the phone, then back to me, and her grin returns, gentler now. “Your guy?”
“Reports, Prescott. Go do your reports.”
“Go enjoy it,” she says with a laugh. “Remember… the working-it-out is the thing. I meant that.”
I leave her in the break room and take the stairs down, and the closer I get to the lobby the lighter I feel. I clear the security doors and step out into the gray Pioneer Square afternoon, and there he is.
Finn’s leaning against the side of his Range Rover at the curb, ankles crossed, looking for all the world like a man with nowhere to be. Except his right hand is tucked into the front of his jacket, resting flat against his side, where I know to the inch what he’s keeping there.
His gun.
His eyes aren’t relaxed. They’re moving—taking in the cars, the corner, the man at the coffee cart, the windows across the street—in the steady sweep of someone who’s managing the whole block until I’m in the car.
It should scare me, but for some reason, it doesn’t. He’s here and I feel free.
It makes me want to needle him a little, because the alternative is letting the fear sit in my chest where it’s been on a low boil since the gallery.
“You know,” I say, crossing to him, “you’re not going to pull that thing and start a gunfight on the street at three in the afternoon. There are witnesses. There’s a man selling oat milk lattes nine feet away.”