Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“We’ll see,” he replied.
“Right. Tell Ledge and Nadia I said hi.”
“You still hanging with Lynne?” Riggs asked, because he was interested, for Storm, and for Ledger and Viggo.
“Lynne?” Storm asked back, like he didn’t know who she was.
Riggs started chuckling.
Storm did it back, but assured, “She’s just a friend, man. Good woman, but I’ve been burned, you hear me? I’m gonna wait for someone like Nadia. Sweet and easy to look at, but more, funny as all hell.”
Lynne was a fine woman, but she was no Nadia.
“I hear you.”
“Later, Doc.”
“Later, Stormy.”
He turned and was mildly surprised it wasn’t Nadia standing on the front deck, waiting for him.
It was his mom.
He walked to her.
“They’re doing the dishes,” she informed him when he hit the deck in front of her.
“Going in to help,” he replied.
She didn’t move out of his way.
“What takes you away from your family?” she asked.
He talked to his mother. He didn’t go into detail, especially about all that had been going down. But she lived in Misted Pines, so what he left out, she could ferret out, and she was a mom, so she always did.
“Either Angelica is in a snit, or she just called to tell me she’s not fighting my petition for full custody. She doubled down with the same thing for Storm. So we’re getting our lawyers on that before she changes her mind.”
His mom’s shoulders slumped with relief.
He wasn’t certain he should do what he was going to do this early.
But he did it.
“Gonna make at least one blonde baby girl with Nadia, and she won’t carry this baggage.”
His mom’s eyes lit, she pulled him into a tight, but brief hug, slapped him on the back once, then let him go and went inside.
So yeah.
It was good he did it.
Riggs followed her in.
“Dad.”
Riggs opened his eyes to a moonlit room and his woman tucked in front of him in a spoon.
His shoulder moved and his son called in an urgent, but quiet, “Dad!”
He shot to sitting and turned to see Ledger by the side of the bed, reaching toward him.
Gia, who slept in Ledger’s room at their order and her preference, was standing at attention beside him.
“Outside,” Ledger said.
“What, buddy?”
“Come.”
“Riggs?” Nadia asked sleepily.
He was out of bed, pleased when he had not been earlier when one of her stipulations to staying with them, especially considering shit was going down in the middle of the night, was, after they fucked, they put pajamas on just in case something happened.
Something like whatever this was.
He followed Ledger to the window, Gia dogging their heels, and he pointed to the west side of the lake.
“Look,” Ledger said.
It took him a beat to see it, but he saw it.
A soft glow in the trees. And there was another light, bobbing, like someone was holding a flashlight and walking.
He moved immediately to the chair, turning his back to his kid to pull off his pajama bottoms, and he grabbed his jeans, ordering Nadia, “Call the station.”
After he had his pants up, he turned back to see she was standing at the window with Ledger.
But her eyes were on him.
“Are you going out?” she asked.
He was buttoning his jeans. “Fuck yes, I’m going out.”
“Riggs.”
“Call the station, honey,” he repeated, pulling on a shirt.
“Take Gia,” she demanded, dashing to her nightstand for her phone.
“She stays with you two.”
“Take Gia,” she reiterated.
He sat on the bundle of clothes on his chair to put on his running shoes.
“Dad, take Gia,” Ledger urged.
Fuck.
He should have borrowed Hannibal.
“Yes, hi. Sorry. This is Nadia Williams out at Doc Riggs’s house on Coun—” Pause then, “Yes, hi, Karen.”
Fuck, his woman hadn’t been there a month and she knew every deputy in the department by their first names.
So, oh fuck to the yeah.
He was going out.
He went to his boy, wrapped his hand around his head and kissed the top of it. Went to Nadia, did the same but kissed her forehead. Went to his side of the bed and snatched up his phone and army knife. Then he raced out, calling, “Gia! Here!”
She took off with him.
He found his Maglite in the kitchen junk drawer, tested it, went to the laundry room and grabbed his stash of digital cable, drawing the ring of it up his arm to hang from his shoulder. He then clipped on Gia’s leash.
And they headed out.
He found the trail and didn’t use his Maglite because he didn’t want them to see him coming. He used the moonlight as he tore down it, Gia running at his side.
When he suspected he was getting closer, he slowed, she did the same the instant he did, and when he saw the lights in the distance, he whispered, “Gia, quiet. Heel.”
She crept beside him as he moved as carefully as he could, but without light to show him where he was walking, and with a dog, it’d be impossible not to step on a branch. He’d be lucky he didn’t stumble over a fallen log.