Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 50373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 252(@200wpm)___ 201(@250wpm)___ 168(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 252(@200wpm)___ 201(@250wpm)___ 168(@300wpm)
“Who told you to meet me here?”
“Knuckles.”
She grinned. “Looks like you have your answer.”
“I’m not sure Knuckles counts.”
“You said your parole officer told you someone would contact me. He say who?” I could tell by the look on her face she knew the answer to this question, but I was committed now.
“He said to do whatever the fuck Knuckles told me to.”
“Uh huh.”
“You know, people would like you better if you weren’t so smug.” I wanted to be irritated at the woman, but really, her making fun of me was my own fault. The joke practically wrote itself. I raised my hands defensively. “Knuckles told me to be here and I’m here. I was told three o’clock sharp.” I gave her a pointed glance, then down at my watch.
“Yeah,” she breathed with a sigh. “Sorry about that. Poor thing’s balking hard.” She nodded to the vehicle and her passengers. “Her son and I had to coax her into letting him do this, and we still had to practically drag her into the car.”
That got my attention. “What’s going on? What is it I need to do?” Something inside me coiled tight. I knew without a doubt something was about to happen that would change my life. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to pay attention, because I was about to get knocked on my ass.
“My client is about to testify that his father beat his mother. Kid knows his mom is the underdog in this fight. His father’s a big shot with a whole team of lawyers and she’s got me.” She grinned, but that feeling in the pit of my stomach was getting stronger by the second. “Caleb is a good kid. He’s so protective of his mother it almost hurts. If his father gets Caleb alone, Caleb will do his level best to kill the guy.”
I gave her a hard look for long moments, replaying her words to make sure I’d heard her correctly. The weight of everything she was saying was hitting me like a wrecking ball to the fucking head. This woman had chosen me for more than one reason. “You fuckin’ bitch,” I bit out. “Only reason I don’t kill you right here is because it’s not worth goin’ back to prison.”
“Good!” Bitch Thompson, as I would now refer to her, said with wide-eyed enthusiasm. “You don’t want to go back to prison. That’s great! But the only way you stay out of prison is by doing your community service, big guy, and this is it.”
“Why? Why me? There’s got to be hundreds of other people you could use for this.”
“You don’t even know what I want you to do yet.”
“Got a pretty fuckin’ good idea. Is this supposed to make me feel better about what happened and about what I did?”
Instantly, Lana Thompson was in my face. This was the side of her everyone in the courtroom feared seeing. She’d used the same expression and tone of voice at my parole hearing as she was using now. Only this time, she grabbed hold of my ear and yanked, twisting my earlobe painfully. Sure, I could have made her stop. I could have seriously hurt her. But I didn’t hit women. Not for any reason.
“No. It’s not supposed to make you feel better. It’s supposed to keep that young man out of fucking prison. Now. What are you going to do about this situation, hmm?” Lana’s voice was silky smooth as she purred in a supremely satisfied voice.
“The fuck kind of question is that? Have you lost your fuckin’ mind?”
“Can’t you get out of a simple ear hold from a woman half your size?”
“Lana, what the fuck’s your problem? I could fuckin’ break you in half and you fuckin’ know it!” I felt like I was the butt of some joke I didn’t get.
“Exactly!” I thought she might let me go, but she didn’t. Instead, she twisted harder and I had to lean down to keep her from taking my fucking ear off. “You’ll stand there and let me hurt you rather than take a chance on hurting me.” Yep. Definitely the butt of the joke.
“What the fuck do you want me to do?” I snarled my question at her. “I ain’t gonna hit you. I don’t hit women. Or kids. Now, let go of my fuckin’ ear!”
To my surprise, she let me go and stepped back, grinning from ear to ear. “Which was my whole point.” She called out to whoever was in the car. “You see? Come on out.”
I rubbed my ear, trying to get blood moving again as well as ease the ache. As I was working up to a scathing remark to Lana, the doors to the car opened and a boy of about eleven or twelve got out of the back while a short, slender woman emerged from the front. She wasn’t much taller than the boy, and it was a tossup as to who weighed more.