Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 59146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
“Because now we own the narrative,” Knight answered. “He thinks he’s tracking you. We can feed him whatever story we want him to see. At least, from the point of this tracker. If we can get him to follow where we lead him, we can take him someplace we can deal with him on the down low.”
They talked for a while longer, but I didn’t participate much. I was mentally exhausted and battered. I listened to every word. Nodded where I was supposed to nod.
Knight had been careful with my grandmother’s recipes, and I was more grateful to him than I could say. Inferno had gone with me back to our room after the meeting to let me put it in our kitchen. As I stowed it in the cabinet next to the stove, I had to smile. I wanted to be with Inferno and I knew he needed to be here. Truth was, I liked the compound and the people in it.
We ate dinner in the common room because Knuckles declared the compound on lockdown, which apparently meant nobody left and nobody came in without his say-so. The common room was warm and loud; the long table covered with pizza boxes and beer bottles. I kind of expected the place to be chaotic and loud, but most everyone was quiet and focused on the problem at hand. Which, apparently, was the threat to me and how best to deal with Brett.
Darby sat across the narrow table from me. Several of the other old ladies were also close. Right now, she’d propped her boots on an empty chair, a slice of pizza in one hand. “So here’s what I’m thinking,” she announced to me, and anyone else who wanted to listen. “We lure him to an open house. He loves open houses, right? We stage one. Empty house, fake sign, the whole nine yards. He walks in, we lock the doors, and then…” She mimed slitting her throat. “Kobayashi Maru.”
“Subtle,” Sully said from beside her. He smirked at his woman, shaking his head. “He’ll never see that coming.”
“Subtle is for people who aren’t having fun.” Darby took a bite of her pizza. “Next idea. We get him to agree to meet Juniper for coffee in a public place. He shows up and there’s me instead, with a taser and a very creative vocabulary.”
Hannah reached across the table and stole a pepperoni off Darby’s slice as she laughed. “Or,” she said, “we let Knight do his thing.”
“Why do you have to go being all logical and shit, Hannah?”
The other woman just smiled. “It’s a gift.”
I sat between Inferno and Hannah, picking at a slice of pizza I had no appetite for. My hands were free of bandages, but my palms still ached. If it weren’t for the psycho who refused to leave my life, I could easily say I was more content than I’d ever been in my life. These people had folded me into their lives like I’d always been here. Like I belonged.
Later that night, I stood at the window in Inferno’s apartment and watched the compound yard below. I knew Knight intended to have Brett chase the tracker to different places until he was comfortable following it out of the city again. Then they’d take him.
The truck we’d used earlier rolled through the gate. My guess was, they’d started laying the groundwork for their trap tonight. The guard on the gate raised a hand. The taillights faded into the darkness beyond the compound, carrying that Goddamned tracker into the night.
Then the waiting began.
The ghost route the guys ran with the tracker went to all the places Brett expected to see me. It took nearly a week before he finally swallowed the bait. We knew we had him on the hook when the texts began.
The first couple of days, there was only one or two, then they came in clusters. By the end of the week, they were coming morning and evening, sometimes midday if he felt particularly smug. At least, that’s how the texts sounded in my head when I read them.
Saw you at Perk Place this morning. That’s my coffee shop, Junie. You used to wait for me there.
I’d been in Inferno’s bed when that one arrived, his arm heavy across my waist, both of us half-asleep in the gray pre-dawn. The bakery had been closed for a week and I hadn’t been within a mile of Perk Place.
Supply run today? Why are you running low on flour when you’ve been closed? Something wrong with the building? I’d hate to see you lose it, Junie.
Each text used that stupid nickname he’d given me. Each text carried smug certainty, like he believed his own fiction. I also knew there was no way he’d ever back down, so trying to clue him in to the reality I would never take him back would be difficult.