Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
The Ram drove off, towing the BMW.
And Cap and Gabe, with Titus’s men helping, picked up the dudes they’d just nabbed and carried them to Titus’s man cave, walking right by us, and I wasn’t the only one who watched with my mouth hanging open.
Oh, and by the way, Titus winked at us as he passed.
The door closed behind them when they got the men into Titus’s garage.
And Titus’s street looked like a perfectly executed takedown didn’t just happen.
I thought I even heard a bird tweeting.
All of this took, at most, five minutes.
Maybe half a minute later, as we stood in stupefied silence, Jinx rolled up in her older model BMW, parked on the curb, got out, and called, “Hola, bitches!”
No one greeted her.
But Willow whispered, “Did I just see what I think I just saw?”
“I think we all saw it,” Jessie replied.
We hesitated two more seconds.
Then we raced into Titus’s garage.
We were sitting on Titus’s couches in his man cave: Luna, Raye and Shanti on one, me, Jess and Willow across from them.
Titus was sitting on his throne up on the dais at our sides, Jinx lounged at his feet, her back to his chair, her short legs stretched out in front of her, angled down the steps, ankles crossed.
We were sipping delicious palomas Titus made for us from his fab wet bar (they had a sugar rim and everything).
Don’t get the wrong idea about Titus’s throne, or the killer portrait of himself behind it, or the gold Camaro that was parked in that garage (though it was more like an art showpiece). The wet bar. The floor-to-ceiling wine rack.
Yeah, it was all way cool, but it wasn’t affectatious.
This had to be as it was because serious stuff happened in this room.
Like, lives being saved.
We did not, as we’d all hoped we would, get to witness a Nightingale interrogation.
Within minutes, Roam, Liam, Brady and Jacob showed. They cut the zip ties that connected wrists to ankles, yanked the bad guys to their feet, loaded them up in their Denalis, and they took off. Cap and Gabe went with them, leaving us with Titus to look after us, and promises we’d stay with Titus until someone returned to play bodyguard.
Roam, by the way, lived on the streets with Cap when they were kids. They were both adopted by the same lady, Shirleen (who I knew, because she’d moved down to Phoenix—she was amazing, and not just because she did that). So they were like brothers (or even more like brothers than actual brothers).
But also, Roam, along with Cap and Eric, were Mace’s seconds in command because they all had the most experience and had been working with Nightingale or at Mace’s security company (which had merged with Nightingale Investigation) for years.
As they took their new suspects (prisoners?), Titus made us cocktails.
All of Titus’s guys were long gone.
One thing that was good about all of this (outside the cocktail and getting to hang with Titus), Roam had assured us the team had been made privy to what was happening and would be on more than their regular high alert.
Nevertheless, for the most part, none of us had been able to process all we’d witnessed outside in the ensuing time.
I knew we were going to process when Jinx groused, “I’m ticked I missed all the action.”
That was when Raye looked to Titus and remarked, “Methinks you’re not a one-man band.”
Methought so too.
Big time.
Titus smiled largely and replied, “Would love to have that kind of pull with the people, darlin’, but as it’s been throughout the millennia, the only way to keep the peace is to raise an army.”
Hmm.
I’d sensed there was way more to Titus than we knew.
Now that was certain.
Like this was any other day, hanging out with Titus in his pimped-out space, Jinx set aside her drink, dug in her bag, pulled out a nail file and started filing her nails.
This reminded me to ask, “How’s your accountant?”
Jinx stopped filing her nails and shot a sour face at me.
I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I wasn’t a fan.
Neither was Luna, because she asked, “Has he stopped seeing you?”
Jinx rolled her eyes.
I smiled.
He hadn’t stopped seeing her.
“What’s this?” Titus asked.
“Jinx has a client who brings her flowers,” Luna spilled.
Jinx turned her sour face to Luna.
“What’s this, baby?” Titus repeated on a murmur.
“It’s nothing, Titus,” Jinx said. “It just makes him feel better about fucking a whore.”
Titus’s lips thinned before he admonished, “You know my rule about runnin’ yourself down in my space, girl.”
Jinx shut her mouth but gave us the stink eye.
“You girls met this guy?” Titus asked us.
“Met? No,” Jessie answered. “But we’ve seen him and he’s cute. They wave at each other when he leaves.”
Now Jinx was giving the homicidal eye to Jessie.
“You bein’ courted, Jinx?” Titus asked.