Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 82187 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82187 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Law walked through it slowly, eyes fixated on Wes, the vapor wrapping him in a ghostly halo.
As he emerged through the veil, Wes had his hand over his mouth as if he was trying to stifle his laugh.
“A motto we’ll always live by, yeah?” Law said, letting the smoke part around him. “Cool guys don’t look back.”
Wes smiled a beat longer, then let it fall as if it’d betrayed him. He flexed his jaw, glare hardening.
“What do you want?” Wes asked, his voice like gravel. “I said don’t follow me.”
Law stopped a few feet away. “I want to apologize.”
“Yeah?” Wes scoffed, shoving his phone in his pocket. “Hell, I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve apologized. I’m not interested in hearing another.”
Law stayed still. Took the jabs.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” he said quietly. “But we could parlay this into something beneficial…if we do it together.”
Wes scowled. “Are you listening to yourself? This isn’t a stunt gig. You’ve dropped us into a real fuckin’ war zone. Did you ever think for one goddamn second that we might get shot, or killed?”
Law didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
Wes turned, and Law caught him in the crook of his elbow.
For a second, Wes hesitated. Their foreheads were pressed together, the heat of the blast behind them.
“I love you,” Law breathed. “And I know you probably don’t believe it, but I am sorry.”
Wes shut his eyes.
“Let me come home with you,” he whispered.
After a long, suffocating moment, Wes shook his head and pulled away.
He let him go.
Wes climbed in his truck, and without a word…slammed the door and drove off.
Law stood there until Wes’s taillights disappeared around the curved road.
This time, he didn’t chase after him, but he wasn’t giving up either.
Wesley (Wes) Drake
The basement reeked of cordite, oil, and molded concrete.
Maybe I’ll get lung disease and die, and I’ll finally be free of Law.
Wes sat on a metal stool beneath a single hanging light bulb that swung every time the washing machine’s spin cycle started.
His mom’s townhome hadn’t changed in decades, still dusty, cluttered, littered with various chemicals and gadgets, and still his sanctuary.
The solder-scarred table was covered with coiled copper wire, beakers of acetone, vials of potassium, and permanganate—the makings of what he hoped would be something the task force could use.
He released a slow exhale as he stared at the components.
It was supposed to be a diversionary firework for a heist scene that he and Law scribbled down on a bar napkin one drunken night.
A perfect funnel of smoke, vibration, flashes of fire, and blue light, made to disorient but not harm. Sleek black casing, titanium shell, reinforced core.
His fingers itched to make it useful, tactical…deadly if needed. It wouldn’t be the average SWAT flashbang with a dull pop and white light. It’d be heart-stopping.
It was all he could think of that might be helpful to a police squad that looked as if they’d never even heard of nonlethal tactics.
What the hell am I doing?
He’d asked himself this a hundred times since he’d gotten in his car at the station. That had been two weeks ago, and his heart was still hammering. Not from the danger emanating from that heavy gun-toting bastard, but from Law.
Fuckin’ asshole.
Wes knew he’d never be rid of him. Law was like the smell of sulfur that never washed out of his coveralls.
With all the havoc that came with Law, Wes still ached for him, his entire body humming with want.
Law’s mouth, that voice, his goddamn swagger that never faded, no matter the shit they were in.
Wes twisted the housing open and peeked inside. He added a bit more potassium so the microflare would erupt at twenty-seven hundred degrees, hot enough to burn, blind—maybe permanently. It was a God-sent message to a meth dealer poisoning the community.
Painful, violent…and sexy.
Just like…
Wes dropped the flare unit into the chamber, grinning as it hissed against the casing. It was perfect, no smoke or vapor, just light and heat with enough pressure that it would hit the chest like a punch from a heavyweight champion.
Law would swear it needed his touch.
He was all smoke and mirage. Vapor screens and slow-creeping chemicals that slithered into vents and under doors seals, assaulting lungs.
Wes was sure Law would cook up something good that God’s team could benefit from.
He thought of how Law’s mind functioned. It was beautiful in the most addictive way.
He’d always dominated the entire workspace. But Wes secretly loved the way he issued orders and argued in a deep, grated voice, leaning too damn close when they were building, as if he knew his presence could make Wes’s calculations form faster.
Annoying ass mother…
Lawson (Law) Sheppard
Law watched the vapor coil from the test chamber like a phantom spirit. It swirled and twisted in thick white-gray tendrils, rising like a slow explosion in reverse. Silent and under his control.