Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so why are Owen and Nash on their way to see her?”
“Because Owen was so impressed, he wants to talk to her about becoming a contractor for Torus.”
“She’s not gonna want to—”
“She agreed to talk when Owen said who he worked for.”
“So basically, he said Jared Colter and she said yes, absolutely, let’s chat.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t even—whatever. All I care about is—”
“That she made sure Furniss could never hurt Ashford Lennox.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I was worried.”
“Well, she was too, going by all she did. The word is that she never liked Furniss, but your man, she told Owen, is too nice for his own good.”
“Agreed.”
“But she has a new person for him who will meet him on his movie set after he leaves the wedding.”
“That I knew.”
“This Bridget Carran sounds great. I’d like to meet her.”
I groaned.
“What’s with that?”
“Don’t be you.”
“Why is that bad?”
“Never mind.”
He cleared his throat. “I heard you didn’t want to go and guard the actor at the wedding he’s attending.”
“I plead the fifth.”
“Still feel that way?” he goaded me.
Clearly not. My whole life had changed in the span of one amazing day.
“Coop?”
“I am not upset, no. The opposite is true.”
“I thought so,” he replied, sounding a bit patronizing.
“Though when you called just now, my phone was passed around the table before I could answer it, so I think perhaps he might have preferred you.”
He chuckled. “I would love to be friends with a movie star, and I think he’s a great actor, so that would be a bonus. But Nash said the job is over already since he and Owen found you and Ash”—he drew out his name—“in bed this morning, which is another reason for the call.”
“Which is?”
“Do you want me there to protect your new man so you can just be the boyfriend, or do you think you’re good?”
“Boyfriend? Really?”
“Fine. Lover.”
I groaned.
“Dude, whatever. Your man. Do you want me there or not?”
“The only threat to Ash that I can possibly think of is Elliot Voss, and if he’s smart, he left the country already.”
“And speaking of…”
“Yeah, tell me.”
“Kit Riggs is dead—we have confirmation on that. The Feds notified his family, so that’ll hit the news cycle probably late this evening. I’m so sorry, Coop. Please give our condolences to Ash.”
“I will. Can you tell me how the ID was confirmed?”
“It turns out, Kit Riggs had titanium screws in his left knee from a childhood boating accident, and they recovered those.”
“What about the writers? Any word on them?”
“No. The Feds are hoping that when they catch up with Voss, they can get him to tell them where their bodies are.”
“So the manhunt is on?”
“Yep, and that too will hit the news shortly. They’ll start with the announcement of Riggs’s death, then move on to Voss. You should talk to Ash before it comes up on his news feed or in his socials.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“If anything gets weird there…”
“Oh, come on, you really think Voss is going to show up here to kill Ash? That makes zero sense. Everyone knows it was Riggs in his car now, not him.”
“True, but if Riggs mentioned to Voss his meeting with Ash, Voss might infer, and rightly so, that because of Ash, the Feds know he isn’t dead. If I were stuck in the US now with no way to get out because everyone was looking for me, I might just go put a bullet in the head of the guy who made that happen before I spend the rest of my life in prison.”
“But wouldn’t he be looking for Ash in LA or on the set of the movie he’s making in Turks and Caicos?”
“No,” Rais said indulgently. “I’d be looking for him at Bitsy Walder’s wedding in Castine, Maine, because there’s a hundred thousand pictures on social media of him being there.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. But I have to tell you, you look much better than usual.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
“I mean, there are a lot of pictures of you looking very intimate with Mr. Lennox, and he can’t seem to keep his hands off you.”
“It’s terrible. It’s a real hardship for me.”
His laugh, as always, was good. “Well, regardless, for once you don’t look like you’re posing for a mugshot. You look happy, and apparently, when you’re happy, you’re not horrible-looking.”
“That’s charming, thank you.”
“I just mean, normally, you don’t photograph well. In person, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you’re handsome, but I could see you getting laid.”
“This is just getting worse, are you aware?”
“But in these pics, the grin is good, your eyes don’t look dead, and the only thing I can think of that it can be is that you like Ashford Lennox just a bit.”
I grunted.
“Don’t move to LA, though. You’re not gonna thrive there. Believe me, I lived there. You need seasons.”
“Fuck off. I live in Chicago. My family is there, my douchebag friends are there—”