Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
There were times where I even pulled over in my car at a rest stop and slept.
Some days I slept thirty minutes. Others I slept for four hours.
It was just the way my body was wired.
The ringing from my phone stopped and immediately started up again.
“Damn,” I whispered, trying again to move.
I got my hand up and over the side of the bed before a sharp, stabbing pain in my shoulder froze me in my tracks.
An agonized scream left my lips, and I felt tears start to drip down my cheeks.
“Oh, darn,” I whispered, knowing something was wrong with the cut on my shoulder.
An infection, maybe.
The phone stopped ringing, and I stared at it for a long minute before my eyes closed of their own volition.
The next thing I knew, I was dead to the world.
***
Dean
“Hello?” I answered my phone, shifting it so it was wedged between my shoulder and ear as I stirred a pot of beans I was making at the fire station.
“I can’t get a hold of my sister and I caught a big case. Can you go check on her?” a man asked.
Dropping the spoon against the side of the pot, I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it.
I didn’t know the number.
“Who is this?” I asked as I licked my fingers free of the juices I’d somehow acquired when I picked up the spoon I’d been stirring the beans with.
“Wolf,” Wolf growled.
I blinked in surprise.
“What do you want me to do about it?” I asked, my good mood disintegrating almost instantly.
Wolf didn’t like me; the feeling was mutual.
He didn’t think we were right for each other. He was fucking happy the day we called it quits, too.
The fucker.
Me, not so much. Him, he threw a motherfuckin’ party.
Him and his Uncertain Saints Motorcycle Club were all a bunch of fuckers who thought it’d be funny to stick it to the ol’ fireman who wasn’t in the right profession.
Something he never missed a chance to tell me when he saw me.
“I want you to get on your little fire truck and drive over there to her house and check on her, motherfucker,” Wolf growled succulently. “Don’t be a fucking dick. Just go do it.”
I laughed under my breath as I picked up my spoon again.
“What if she just doesn’t want to see you?” I challenged. “Maybe you pissed her off because you’re you.”
Wolf growled at me.
“She was supposed to watch Nathan while I work,” he said, making my back straighten at the seriousness of what he’d just said.
July had canceled not one or two, but six dates because of something that happened with Nathan. Nathan was her world, and she loved that little booger like her own child.
She wouldn’t miss watching Nathan. Not for anything.
Not unless something was seriously wrong.
“I’ll go now,” I grunted roughly, turning the burner down to the ‘warm’ setting.
“She still at her old place?” I asked him, stepping away from the stove and turning around.
Skirting the island that separated the kitchen from the living room area, I headed straight for the back hallway that led to the gym.
The hallway was long and narrow, doors that led to the rooms where we all slept on both sides of the hall.
On the back left of the hallway was the Chief’s office, and on the back right was the gym.
“No,” Wolf said. “She sold her place. She’s in the old apartments by the college.”
I growled at hearing that news.
I did not like those apartments. Not for anyone, but especially not July.
At the best of times the fucking place was a disaster.
Meth heads were caught at least once a week working there, and when one got taken down, two more popped up in their place.
Then there were the hookers that most obviously lived there, not to mention the drug addicts.
No, I wasn’t happy to hear that she was living there, and I was surprised as fuck that Wolf would allow it in the first place.
“Have you been there yet?” I asked him, my hand on the door to the gym.
That had to be the only possible reason she was still there. He didn’t know what kind of a place it was.
“No,” he denied. “She moved one weekend while I was working, and when I come visit we always meet in town or at her project house. Why do you ask?”
I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me.
“Not now. I’ll go. Let you know when I hear something,” I pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed the red ‘end’ button without waiting for him to reply.
Pushing open the door, I stared at the men that were standing in a circle.
Booth, Bowe and Chief Allen Shepherd were watching Tai and Drew spar.
They weren’t doing it seriously, and I could tell that by the trash talking that was going on.