Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Hush was Jasper Madden, and the one man in the Truth Tellers that I could say I knew the least.
He was quiet—hence the name “Hush”—and barely spoke even when he was spoken to.
He was very intriguing to me, though.
It was always the quiet ones that surprised you the most.
The door to the house opened and closed again, and then Hush was there.
Lottie, who was busy rearranging the letter magnets on the fridge, looked up and squealed. “Jazzy!”
Hush winked at Lottie. “Hey there, Beanie Weenie.”
“Why do y’all all call her Beanie Weenie?” I asked the room at large.
And why did I just pick up the nickname and roll with it?
“She loves ’em,” Apollo said. “Eats them straight out of the can.”
“Gross,” I mumbled. “How did y’all figure that out?”
“When she was a baby, Audric had dropped her off with us at the clubhouse because he had an emergency job he needed to take at work. She was hungry, and the only baby-appropriate items we had were Beanie Weenies. She loved them, and the rest is history,” Hush murmured.
That was the most I’d heard that man talk ever.
I was impressed.
He had a raspy, deep and strangely melodic voice.
I idly wondered if he could sing.
Based on the timbre of his voice, I bet he could.
“So what brings you here?” Gunner asked as he put the rest of the waffles onto a plate and warmed them up.
Apollo took the first waffle and smothered it in syrup while he started talking.
“Looked into the wreck last night like you asked me to,” he explained. “Aleah was driving.”
I groaned. “Of course she was.”
“Oh, and the Combs put a hit out on you,” Apollo continued as he took a large bite of his waffle. “On both of you. Got the hit pulled down, and I’m sorry I didn’t catch it earlier. The only person they were able to get to agree to the hit was Aleah, though. Which, I think you’ll be happy to hear, her husband wasn’t very pleased to find out about. Yates left her on the side of the freeway. She stole the car that she tried to hit you with yesterday. When she couldn’t get you, she took out your car. Tried to collect twenty minutes later. The Combs are already in custody. Aleah has a BOLO—be on the lookout—for her. Yates is cooperating with the police.”
“Wow,” I breathed. “That’s…”
“These waffles are fantastic,” Apollo said as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on us. “Will your uncle share the recipe?”
“It’s Krusteez.” I pointed at the bag on the counter. “You can buy it in bulk at Costco.”
“Sweet,” he said. “I’ve been craving one of their chicken hot pocket things in the food court. Hush, you gonna eat all those?”
Hush shared his waffles with Apollo.
I made eye contact with Gunner, and he could only shake his head and mouth, “Wow.”
Apollo was right on all counts.
The news of the hit that was taken out on “Star baseball player turned hero security specialist” made the five o’clock news.
Even weirder, my social media clients found out that I was dating him, and we were declared a match made in heaven an hour before I got ready for bed.
Lottie was curled up between us, dead to the world, when Gunner said, “This is the weirdest thing.”
“I agree.”
Before he could say anything else, his phone beeped and he frowned. “The club is apparently having a get-together tomorrow night at the lake. Do you want to go?”
I looked at my swollen ankle, which seemed to hurt even worse after he did his torture on my tendons, and said, “As long as you have a chair that I can sit in, I’m down for anything.”
Famous last words.
Twenty-Five
I act like everything is fine, but deep down I want to strip for one night to see how much money I make.
—Sutton to Gunner
GUNNER
Packing for a weekend trip for two females was hard.
Whereas I would’ve just packed up the camper and left, leaving it for chance whether I had everything we needed or not, that was not how Sutton worked.
She was downright militant as she went through a checklist on her phone.
“Bug spray?”
“Got it,” I said.
“Chairs?”
“Got them.”
“Baby wipes?”
“Got them.”
“Sunscreen?”
“I think I got it.”
Her brows rose at me. “You think?”
“Well, I think I have it in the camper,” I said. “Does sunscreen expire?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “We’ll take mine. It’s not the baby kind, but at least we’ll have something.”
The rest of the hour we spent packing went like that.
And by the time we actually arrived at the campground in Uncertain, Texas, I felt like I was in need of beer.
Lots of beer.
Because Lottie spent the entire drive to the lake screaming her head off because we’d accidentally left her bear.
I’d turned around thirty minutes into the drive to go get it.
And then halfway back to the campground, I’d popped a trailer tire and had to change it on the side of Interstate 20 with cars whizzing past my face while Lottie and Sutton sat inside the truck strapped in just in case.