Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 73043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Grinning at the response I got in return, I put the phone back down and went back to my report.
And, the entire time the meeting was taking place, I kept my eyes on Rafe through the partially open door.
I couldn’t help it.
I was trying not to make a fool of myself by throwing myself at him.
Then somebody cleared their throat, and I looked over to see my Uncle Sam frowning at me.
I flushed and went back to my report, but I couldn’t help but listen to their discussion.
The man, Dante, and the woman, Cobie, were here because of another guy, Drake, who was doing some not so good things.
Those not so good things turned out to be Dante suspecting Drake of killing one of our ‘birds.’ They were also discussing a few other things, such as the suspicion of that same man killing their infant son.
A bird, if I could remember right, that had willingly gone back to her husband. A first for us.
I’d actually looked into that one myself and had been watching over her from afar.
Though, every time I’d tried to get in contact with her, she’d be extremely evasive.
But, I couldn’t save her if she didn’t want to be saved.
I immediately started to pull up my old files.
I’d looked into the man, as well as the woman.
On the surface, though, everything seemed legit.
But I still printed them out, because I knew it was only going to take a few minutes for one of them to ask for the report I had.
That request came moments later when my Uncle Sam came to the partially closed door and looked at me.
“Janie?”
I grinned and picked up my pickle in the opposite hand of my sandwich.
“Yeah?” I questioned as I leaned forward to take a bite of my pickle.
It crunched noisily, and I looked sheepishly around the room, pausing only slightly on Rafe a little longer than the others, before returning my gaze to Sam.
“Can you do me a favor and bring me the report on a Drake Garwood?” he asked me. “Everything.”
I gave a chin tilt in answer and turned, not missing the way Rafe’s eyes slid over every single inch of my body.
I shivered as I returned to my previous activities, finished my pickle, and pulled my report off the printer.
I tried not to listen to the discussion—Uncle Sam hated it when I got too much into the particulars of cases without him vetting my safety—but it was hard not to hear.
Especially when the topic of conversation changed from the man, Drake Garwood, and moved to the child of Drake Garwood and Marianne Garwood—our bird. The child had been killed, and everyone suspected that the father was behind it.
My ears tuned into the conversation they were having as I finished what was left of my sandwich.
I became so engrossed in my food that I forgot I was listening to the men and woman speak in the other room.
What had enlightened me was the silence of the room beyond.
“Well,” Jack muttered. “I haven’t heard back from Winter yet. Once I do, I can give you the number on those boxes…do you mind if I keep this?”
I didn’t bother to say that I could find that information out.
Mostly because, again, they didn’t want me in the middle of a case that could possibly threaten my safety.
My father had made it clear the day I started to help them that under no circumstance was I allowed to do anything that could quite possibly put me in danger.
Therein lay my problem.
I was still being treated like a child at the age of twenty-three.
I was treated as though I couldn’t possibly know as much as I did know, and if I even tried to get into a conversation I wasn’t invited to, I was lectured non-stop.
Which was also why I hightailed it out of there when I did.
The look I got from Uncle Sam was one of anger. One that said if I stayed, I wouldn’t like the consequences…kind of like I didn’t like them last time.
See, my family was adamant that I wouldn’t get caught up in the dangerous side of the family business—and that was pretty much all of it but printing off notes and making myself useful for coffee runs.
Sam didn’t want my dad mad at him, and if that meant hurting my feelings, he’d do it.
What he would also do was give me the boot—which he’d threatened before.
Hence the reason I left.
Without me there, he couldn’t yell at me.
Maybe by the time he did find me, he might have calmed down.
I grimaced as I hurried out of the building, then hurried toward my place.
Once I collected my dogs, I further decided to leave altogether.
Choosing a walk over an angry lecture, I headed down the driveway without picking up my head so as not to make eye contact with anyone, thereby ensuring that I wouldn’t have to talk to any of them, either. Because most of them would surely find out that I was upset, and that would be a longer conversation than I wanted to have at this moment in time.