Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 100791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“I’m sorry, baby, but if everything Damien and his aunt suspected is true, then... yes,” she said softly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
I spun around, heading back the way I came. “I’ve got to tell my folks. There’s no doubt they hunted down whoever set the fires, but I was a kid when it happened. They didn’t give me any details.”
“Then, you should also tell them that Aunt Della got as far as Leonard Stevens and a police interrogation video where he bangs on about setting the fires in the name of his family. They leaned on him for names, but he claimed that he’d never betray Mom and Dad. His parents died when he was a toddler, so Damien and Della figured Mom and Dad were leaders of the Brotherhood, and that was just another way they were ripping off the Merchant family,” she said. “By pretending they are a family.”
“They might be right. There are plenty of criminal organizations that keep it in the family, but they don’t make their members call them Mom or Dad unless they’re their actual mom and dad. Going by those titles could be the leaders making some kind of creepy point, because everything with them has to be.”
I could sense her nodding on the other end.
“There’s one more thing,” I went on, letting myself back into Genny’s apartment. “You’re on your way back but you need to know the compound is on guest protocol.”
“Guest protocol? What does that mean?”
I cursed. “Sunny was supposed to explain all this to you. Real quick, there are different levels of security depending on who is home. When it’s just the family and staff, then we can move from floor to floor with just the elevator and stair codes. When we have unvetted guests in the building, the elevator and stair doors need both the correct code, height, and weight to open or move.”
“Height and weight? What do you mean?”
“As in, if someone got their hands on Sunny’s floor code, when they got into the elevator and put it in, they wouldn’t go anywhere. The floor and wall sensors would note that no one of that person’s height or weight has been put into the system as having access to Sunny’s floor.”
“Wow. No wonder people say the Fairfield has better security than the NSA.”
“And that’s just guest protocol,” I mused. “On hostile enemy protocol, the elevator would seal itself with the intruder inside, then fill with a toxic gas and kill the fucker.”
“Fucking hell!” she cried. “Wait— Are me, Sienna, and Laurel in the system? Does it know we aren’t hostile enemies?!”
“Of course it does. Your heights, weight, gait, voices, and even your DNA have all been entered as family. Even the combinations of all of those have been entered,” I said. “So Sienna holding Laurel will come up correct on the sensors. It’ll know the extra weight she’s carrying is our baby girl.”
“Goodness,” she breathed, but I could sense her relaxing. “You guys don’t mess around.”
“We can’t. Our parents raised their children here. Liam is raising Tricky here. You, Sienna, and Laurel live here. It has to be safe from our enemies because the one time it wasn’t...” I trailed off, knowing I didn’t need to go on.
Because the one time we let someone that we thought was safe in the same building as Kenzie and Laurel, they were kidnapped and thrown into the hands of a soulless trafficker.
“I understand,” she whispered, “and... thank you.”
“No one is ever going to hurt you, Kenzie. If I’ve got to exterminate the entire human race to ensure it, you will be safe.”
She chuckled. “Now that sounds like something Sunny would say.”
“What can I tell you? The guy gets his best traits from me.”
Now she was full-blown giggling, which put a smile on my face. I loved Kenzie’s laugh more than the smell of gunpowder in the morning.
“But, wait,” she said. “Why are we in guest protocol?”
“Because last night Liam and Sunny led the Brotherhood on a high-speed chase through the streets of Cinco, and then I broke the land-speed record racing Genny here and into the hands of the doctor. All that meant we didn’t have time for a pit stop,” I confessed. “We had to bring the Cardinals, the Sons of Saint, the Scourges, Liam’s crew, and the freed hostages here.”
“Ah, I see. But why are they still there? Is it not safe to leave the building?”
“No, it is not.” My feet carried me away from Genny’s bedroom and over to the window. Peering down, I saw them clear as day—no matter that I was fifty-feet up. “They’re all camped out around the building, Kenzie. In the cars parked on the street. In the cafés across the building. In the street-facing hotel rooms. And even on top of the buildings, with their sniper scopes pointed right at our windows.”