Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“Don’t,” I snapped. “What the fuck do you want? You want reimbursement for picking me up even though I didn’t ask you to? You want gas money, cash for that shitty coffee and that breakfast that actually made the slop they fed us in prison taste like a gourmet meal?” I held my arms out. “You should have said something before I tossed my granddaddy’s Rolex into the trash when I was given my personal possessions back.”
Sully fell silent and then reached for a glass and a bottle of scotch sitting on the corner of his desk. The sight of the alcohol made a strange sense of calm wrap around me like the warmest of blankets.
“I assume your taste for cheap whiskey hasn’t changed,” I said.
Sully practically growled as he began pouring the amber liquid into the glass. “Cheap scotch,” he automatically returned.
Since Sully’s father had been Scottish, the rule in their house had been to never ever refer to the alcohol as whiskey. It was scotch or nothing. And if you’d had the misfortune of calling it anything else, you’d have gotten a speech longer than your arm about how scotch and whiskey were not the same thing.
“‘Them blasted Americans are the ones who…’” I said, Sean Ferguson’s loud, booming voice still ringing in my ear.
“‘…started muckin’ it up when they got the two mixed up,’” Sully responded, completing the phrase.
“Where is he? Your father even know I’m here?” I asked. It was all I could do not to ask about the third member of the Ferguson family.
“Dad died last year,” Sully muttered before downing the scotch. He started pouring himself a second round without waiting for the first one to kick in.
For the first time since I’d walked down the steps of the police station, I felt something besides hate and fury. Sean Ferguson was gone. The man had been more of a father to me than my own, and I hadn’t been there as he’d been laid to rest. God, the last time I’d seen him had been when I’d been led out of the courtroom in shackles after the four guilty verdicts had been handed down. Despite the judge’s warning for silence, the audience had burst out into applause and cheers.
That was the memory of me that he’d taken to the grave with him; not any of the ones where he’d welcomed me into his family as a son.
As I tried to absorb the fact that the man who’d taught me what a real father was supposed to be like was dead, I looked around the bare, badly painted white walls of Sully’s office. I could see dozens of spackled-over holes. The only thing hanging on the wall closest to his desk was a framed certificate. From where I was standing, it looked like a business license.
Targes Executive Protection.
I didn’t need to look at the certificate to know that was the name of the business. I’d seen the same words gleaming as fine as the Ashby family silverware above the reception desk in the lobby. That space, compared to Sully’s office, had been pristine and looked like not a penny had been spared to turn it into the same kind of welcome lobbies the big guys in his industry had. The Targes was there too.
A flash of the night Sully and I had come up with the name of the company we’d planned to build together the second we were old enough flashed through my mind. I hadn’t had a clue what a targe was and had told him he was nuts because it’d sounded ridiculous.
Then he’d told me what it meant. What it had meant to his family.
A targe was a shield Scottish warriors had used in battle. Sully had always hoped he’d be able to use the family’s ancestral symbol in any endeavor he pursued. It was a symbol of who his parents had been and the battles the Ferguson family had faced from the moment Sean Ferguson had met his future bride and they had left behind the rural highlands of Scotland so they could travel thousands of miles to the country where everyone supposedly had the same shot at living the great American dream.
Building a business together may have been a naive dream between two kids who’d watched a few too many television shows about detectives and such, but Sully was clearly going for it.
“Executive protection,” I muttered. “Please tell me my father isn’t one of your clients.”
I’d stopped the timer in my head because hearing about Sean Ferguson’s death had rattled me.
Everyone knew my father never would have done business with a fledgling company like Targes. Even if things had been different and his own son had been part of the business, Chandler Ashby III always went with the best and most expensive of everything. Cars, clothes, women.