Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107376 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107376 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Hunter glances down at her, his brows pinched. “The fuck are you talking about?”
She shrugs. “You know, trunk space.”
Hunter snorts into his coffee and Lyra immediately gets to her feet, shoving in what’s left of her late lunch as excitement dances in her eyes. “Come on, let’s go look.”
Twenty minutes later, we’re wandering through the dealership like three people who absolutely shouldn’t be trusted around motor vehicles. The salesman approached us earlier, but upon hearing part of our conversation, he’s now hiding inside.
Smart man.
We hover around a brand-new car. Hunter is inspecting the engine, I’m looking at practicality and overall sex appeal, while Lyra is simply causing trouble.
She stands by the trunk, her arms crossed over her chest and a frown marring that pretty face.
“What is it?” I ask, unsure I want to know the answer.
“I don’t know if this is the right one for you,” she tells me.
“And why’s that?”
She lets out a sigh and then steps right up to the back of the Mustang before opening the trunk and gesturing inside. “It’s good for a woman,” she says before climbing right in and showing me how she fits inside the trunk.
“Jesus Christ,” Hunter mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose, already seeing exactly where this is going.
“But?” I ask as another salesman begins to approach.
She moves her arms and legs around, trying to make herself bigger and showing just how cramped it gets. “It really depends on your target demographic,” she muses. “Me? It’s cramped but could work. But say you wanted to shove . . . Hunter, in here. He’d never fit. Not unless you chopped him up into little pieces.”
The approaching salesman catches her comments before turning on his heel and quickly hurrying away, hiding himself behind a nearby vehicle.
But Lyra isn’t nearly done. She sits up in the trunk, her hand brushing over the carpet. “And this will never do. Could you imagine the mess it would make? You’d have to clingwrap all of Hunter’s body pieces before you shoved them in here, and even then, that’s no guarantee. I’d be asking about custom trunk linings. Maybe they could do it in rubber for easy cleaning.”
Hunter glances at her through a narrowed stare. “Clingwrap?”
“What?” she says, batting her lashes. “I saw it in one of those serial killer documentaries.”
I grin at her, and get back on track. “What would you recommend?”
Lyra shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not really a car girl, but definitely something with a wider opening. And more depth. Oh, and if you care about customer satisfaction, maybe something with a little more padding. It’s not very comfortable in here.”
Hunter sighs. “You two are the reason the city is having a meeting.”
She shakes her head. “Ahh, correction, that would be you two,” she says before climbing out of the trunk and moving in beside me. “I’m just saying, if somebody was hypothetically evaluating storage capacity, this one ain’t it.”
I look over the car one more time. “What’d you rate it out of ten?”
She considers the car. “If the trunk space wasn’t an issue, a seven.”
“A seven?”
Lyra nods. “Oh yeah, a strong seven.”
Hunter scoffs and manages to look offended. “A seven is generous.”
“It’s absolutely a seven,” she argues.
“It’s barely a five,” he says.
We spend another twenty minutes arguing about vehicles, storage space, fuel economy, and why Hunter insists black is the only acceptable color for a car. I don’t realize how long we’ve been here until I check the time. “Shit. The meeting,” I say. “We’re late.”
Lyra gapes at me. “How could we be late? It doesn’t start until four.”
We all start heading out of the lot and across the road toward Hunter’s Challenger. “Because you spent fifteen minutes demonstrating how efficiently you could shove a woman into a trunk.”
“A woman,” she agrees. “I think I would struggle with a man. I gotta hit the gym.”
Hunter spares her a glance as we reach his car, and Lyra glances back at the lot. “You know, realistically, that black SUV is probably the best option.”
I nod. “Good trunk.”
“Excellent trunk,” Hunter muses as he shifts into gear and takes off.
I sigh. “Not the best sex appeal.”
It only takes a few minutes to drive to city hall, and as we pull up, we find the place overflowing with what looks like half of Onyx Heights.
Everyone is here. Elderly couples. Business owners. Parents. People who suddenly care deeply about local politics because a killer has started decorating the city with corpses.
People are hovering out front protesting with signs that read: Our town is not a hunting ground, and my particular favorite, This killer is killing my sex life.
I feel bad for the guy. But then, maybe I don’t.
I laugh as we climb out of the Challenger and make our way toward the door. People are everywhere, but for the most part, it looks as though they’ve just started going in.