Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 132657 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132657 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
“Are you okay?” Harlow asked, her eyes wide as she looked at him.
He nodded. He wasn’t going to admit that his inner caveman was dying to make an appearance. He had a brief fantasy of tossing her over his shoulder, shoving her in his piece of shit Jeep, and making for Jensen’s old place a few hours west of Fort Worth. It was a ramshackle house set on what was left of his family’s ranch. Up until a couple of months ago Jensen’s aunt had lived there and kept the place up, but she recently moved to be near her daughter and grandkids, so with the exception of needing a cleaning, the place was ready to stay in. More importantly, it was isolated and he could keep her safe forever. He would call Jensen and tell him to finish his shit up and meet them there and they would work everything out.
“Yeah,” was his reply because he was a man who knew how not to piss his woman off. “I’m good. A little nervous.”
She softened immediately, going up on her toes to kiss him. She did it more and more often now. Like she couldn’t help herself. “There’s nothing to be nervous about.”
He was lapping it all up. Though his dick was definitely complaining. “I don’t want to fuck this up for you. What if I say the wrong thing and she runs?”
“You won’t say the wrong thing,” Harlow assured him. “You don’t have to say anything at all. Let me find her and talk to her. I’m going to try to figure out how bad the situation is before I tell her who I am. I might not even do it this time. It might take a few meetings to get her to trust me.”
So they would have to do this again. He better get used to it because Harlow loved her job, and he wasn’t sending anyone else in with her. “Then we should get to it. I’m going to tell anyone who asks that we’re just exploring. I’m not going to give away the fact that we know what we’re doing.”
He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know since this was her plan. He was simply reminding himself.
“We’re ready, babe.” She put her hand in his. “Let’s do this thing.”
She seemed eager, anticipating the job like it was going to be fun.
See, this was why he got out of the military. He was not the dude who liked an adrenaline rush. As they crossed the street he had to wonder what shit Jensen was up to tonight. He’d been careful about not telling Niall anything specific about what he was doing. He wanted Niall to have what he called plausible deniability.
Because it was almost certainly criminal shit.
They’d talked around the Jensen issue, Harlow not saying much more than she’d had a passionate affair that ended when the guy fucked her over in an unpleasant way. But he had to wonder if Jensen’s unique style wasn’t more of what truly called to Harlow. Would she wake up one morning and decide Niall was boring and ordinary? He was the guy who made her coffee every morning and watched TV with her. He wasn’t the guy who swung in and swept her off her feet and into some wild adventure.
When she saw Jensen again, would she realize what she truly wanted?
And where the hell was the guy? Niall had called the burner number Jensen gave him to use in case of emergencies. This wasn’t an emergency, but he would have liked some advice on how to handle himself. Maybe some background on the club. Jensen was excellent at research.
Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to feel like he was alone in taking care of her.
He didn’t even know where his best friend was living at this point. He knew Jensen was in Dallas and working at a business that was a front for a criminal organization. From context he’d figured out Jensen was some kind of bouncer, so it was a club or a bar, of which there were almost a thousand in Dallas proper alone. When he took in the close suburbs, the number jumped considerably.
“Hey, it’s going to be fine,” Harlow said as they approached the door. “This is a simple case. If I can’t get Miranda to come with me, I have to give her mom all the info I have and let the police deal with it if there’s anything illegal going on. She’s an adult. I can’t kidnap her.”
“Kidnap? You’ve kidnapped someone before?”
She gave him her “what, me” look. “I wouldn’t call it kidnapping. I would call it liberating. And it wasn’t a person. It was a poodle. My client totally had every right to her dog. Her asshole ex was starving the poor baby. I would leave the human extractions to the professionals. Ruby and I are more like intelligence gatherers. That’s what we’re doing tonight. Getting a lay of the land.”