Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
In her current state, Bonnie was a damn liability for herself, Maisie and everyone connected to them, which meant she needed to be contained. Protected. But as the scenery changed from the over the top lights and neon dazzle of Vegas to the more subdued glamour of Glitz, another thought crept in, one that was insidious and haunting.
Maybe my need to help Bonnie had more to do with the passing of my old man than I wanted to admit. I didn’t remember him as clearly as Jasper or Virgil. I didn’t even have the scraps of memory Kat described, but I remembered enough.
His broad smile and big booming laugh, the slight Irish lilt he brought out when he was being especially charming. The booze. The beatings. The gambling. All those details. They’d stuck with me. Hard.
Colm Ashby lived his life hard, balls to the walls. Drinking and gambling, probably even screwing around, though in his own twisted way, he loved Ma. He couldn’t stop drinking to save his life, not even when Grandpa threatened to take everything away.
In the end, wasn’t it just fucking ironic that it was his gambling addiction that had ultimately ended his life?
Helping Bonnie couldn’t change my past, couldn’t change the fact that I’d been so high the night Dad died that the news hadn’t hit until the next morning and it devastated me. Took me a long time to come back from the brink of the same kind of disaster.
I knew a shrink might have a field day trying to figure out my motives with Bonnie because hell, I couldn’t even figure it out. All I knew was that Bonnie needed a friend and she needed help. The question was, could she be helped. Was she a full-fledged junkie already, doomed to a life on the streets that ended brutally or was she just a girl struggling through having her life turned upside down?
My black SUV passed the Welcome to Glitz sign, and I blinked at the figure standing between a stop sign and one of those old green postal deposit boxes. Brendan fucking Rhymer. As sure as I was that it was him with one side of his face horrifically burnt, I was equally sure it couldn’t be him. He was dead.
There hadn’t been a funeral for the fucker yet, but I figured that had more to do with Savannah’s absence than anything else. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
“Fuck!” I couldn’t go home without checking this out even though it wasn’t, technically, part of my responsibilities to the family. Jasper and Virgil were busy, and Lance was too, which only left me.
I flipped a U-turn to get closer to the figure who still stood there, staring into the distance, at everything and nothing all at once. Pulling up to the curb across the street to get a better look, my attention was snagged by the appearance of blue and red flashing lights behind me.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” The last thing I needed was to deal with the goddamn cops.
I kept my hands on the steering wheel and waited, groaning when two familiar faces appeared, one at the passenger door and one at mine. Lucky me. “That was a pretty reckless U-turn, Mr. Ashby.”
I relaxed a little and smiled. “Traffic stops are out of your jurisdiction, aren’t they, Agent Marshall?”
Baxter Marshall, age forty-eight, was a twenty-year veteran with the FBI. He had a mostly clean record in the department and was fair and decent, except for his obvious beef against my family. “It is, but we spotted you and decided to take advantage of the opportunity.”
“To?”
Agent Beck chose that moment to chime in. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the murder of Father Seamus O’Brien, would you?” Her tone was as harsh as the neon lights I’d just left in Vegas, but I didn’t let it get to me.
I shrugged and kept my gaze focused on Agent Marshall. “I don’t know any priests, don’t even believe in the man upstairs anymore.” A Catholic childhood had cured me of any desire to believe or belong to any religion. Ever again.
Marshall’s brown eyes went wide in surprise. “The old faithful Irish Ashbys aren’t true believers?” He let out a low whistle followed up by a deep, rumbling laugh. “Maybe you or someone in your family has an unknown beef against the Church?”
He wasn’t all that far off, so I tossed my head back and let out a laugh of my own. “Lapsed Catholics would be more accurate, not that our religious practices are any of your damn business. Then again, Agent Beck’s been watching us closely enough that she’d know if any Ashby had anything to do with these murders. Isn’t that right?”
Beck faked a deer in the headlights look that might have been hilarious if the disfigured dude who looked a hell of a lot like Brendan Rhymer hadn’t vanished while these two harassed me. “Just keeping an eye on any and all suspects.”