Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 49989 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 250(@200wpm)___ 200(@250wpm)___ 167(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49989 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 250(@200wpm)___ 200(@250wpm)___ 167(@300wpm)
“So if there’s no deal between you and blondie, does that mean I have a shot?”
He glared at him. “You touch her and I’ll cut your dick off.”
Harb laughed and held his hands up. “So there is a deal there. She’s cute, that I will say about her. I hear she’s a talker. What about a screamer?”
“I swear to God, if you don’t shut your fucking mouth, I’m going to shut it for you.” He’d already heard enough.
“Hey, guys, sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Was it a number two?” Harb asked.
Cleo went beet red. “I can’t believe you even asked me that. I wasn’t gone that long.” She turned to him. “Was I?”
“No, you weren’t.” It felt a whole lot longer because he was with Harb.
He turned toward the other man, but he saw the tension in his body, and Priest went on high alert, pulling Cleo against his side.
“Get in the car,” Harb said.
All the play and teasing were gone from his voice. His face was something completely different. This was the man Priest had encountered a few times. The one Boss wanted.
Boss only ever recruited the best. There were many men in the world who could kill, but there were a select few who didn’t have a single moral bone within their bodies. They were devoid of any kind of emotion. They didn’t care who they hurt or killed to get what they wanted, and they often ended up at the Circle of Monsters.
He refused to dwell on those kinds of men. Boss wanted something different—killers with some kind of conscience. Men he could trust.
Opening the back door, he pushed Cleo into the car and got in himself.
“What’s going on?” Cleo asked.
He shoved her head down into his lap so she wasn’t in any easy path of a bullet. All the while, he tried to keep it cool, to keep an eye for any suspicious activity.
Harb slapped his hand on the car and climbed behind the wheel.
“If you’re fucking joking around with me—”
“No joke. I saw the glint of metal just past the tree line. A perfect shot for a sniper. You know that. What I don’t know is if it’s for us or someone else. Also, clock the car at five. They turned up one minute after us, but no one came out. Not any movement at all. I don’t like that.”
Priest had noted the car himself, but he’d been more interested in Cleo’s ass as she walked away.
Shit. She was messing with his head.
“Can I sit up now?” Cleo asked.
“Let her sit up,” Harb said.
“Are you fucking crazy?”
“Let her up. We need to know if it’s her they’re after or us.”
“How the fuck will we know that just by her sitting up? She stays down and we drive.” Priest wasn’t about to have her put in harm’s way. Not for anyone.
“I swear, I’m going to make Boss double my fee for you.”
“Fuck off. It’s a good plan. We drive, they follow but don’t do anything, then we know it’s just us being crazy.”
“No, if we allow them to follow, maybe they do nothing. We let Cleo sit up, and then we get to see who they’re after,” Harb said.
“Not happening.”
“For goodness sake, guys, stop arguing. Harb’s right, Priest. I know you want to protect me, and I appreciate it, I really do, but we also need to be logical about this. If they’re going to keep on tailing us, we can’t make it to the safe house. Let me do this.”
He still held the back of her neck, and he didn’t want to let her go.
There was no way he could allow anything to happen to her. Not on his watch.
She reached up, putting a hand on top of his. “I’m fine. I can do this. Please, let me help.”
He had so many reasons why she shouldn’t be helping, but he couldn’t think of a single one right now.
He nodded at Harb.
“I won’t let anything happen to her,” Harb said. “You have my word.”
Priest didn’t trust Harb’s word. Or anyone’s for that matter.
He shouldn’t have been in the same car driving with Harb. Boss had made the decision as some kind of punishment. Boss was going to make his life a living hell because of what he’d done. Not that he could blame him. He’d do it all again.
Cleo was a special woman. She deserved the best, and no one had the right to snuff the light out in her eyes—not him, not anyone else.
She was the first person in his adult life to finally make him believe that good still existed. For the longest time, he had only known death and hate. Cleo was so much more than that.
Glancing out the window, he watched as the suspicious five o’clock car followed them at a reasonably safe distance.