Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 72945 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72945 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“The guy’s got to be clear for a while. No fucking drugs.”
“I’ll do what I can. Is everything okay, Baptist? Should I be worried?”
“Do you ever worry? No, don’t answer, we’re fine.”
“I’ll see what I can do then.”
He hangs up and I shove my phone away, feeling guilty. I shouldn’t have called in a favor from Ansell like that. I walked away from Drake Entertainment to start on my own because I wanted to get away from his extremely long shadow, and yet now I find myself needing his help all over again on top of taking his money as an early seed investment.
It’s far from ideal, but I can’t have Cowan getting himself killed by mobsters or dragging Blair into danger again because he got himself hooked on fucking crack or fentanyl or whatever else is popular on the streets these days.
I shoot a quick text to Blair. I’ll have the paperwork ready. We’re nailing him down ASAP.
She answers right away. Great, now leave me alone. I have a date with my bubble bath.
Chapter 6
Blair
I park outside of Cowan’s house and kill the engine. Beside me, Baptist is unusually subdued, even for an early Monday morning.
It’s been a week since I went to pay off Cowan’s drug debt. In that time, I had my first visit with an OB, and while it felt good to talk to an actual doctor about what’s going to happen throughout the pregnancy and what my options are, I’m still lightyears away from knowing what the hell I’m going to do.
The not-knowing is killing me. And the man that should know about all this—the man that needs to know about all this—it sitting beside me in this car, my business partner, my nightmare, and the only person that might potentially understand what I’m going through.
I still can’t find the strength to open my mouth.
“It’s quiet,” Baptist comments as we sit there staring at the door.
“I think that’s a good thing. No shotgun blasts.”
“His lawyers were too easy.” He frowns and leans forward. “Did you notice that?”
I hadn’t noticed, but now that he says it— “They didn’t ask for any revisions.”
“Exactly. I mean, it’s a fair contract, but it’s a bit one-sided in our favor. They didn’t push back at all. They practically rolled over and accepted it.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking nothing is this easy, especially not with a guy like Cowan.” He sighs and pushes the door open. “Come on, let’s go see what fresh hell we’re in for.”
I follow him to the front door. He knocks, and knocks, and knocks again, but there’s no answer. Finally, out of frustration, he tries the knob and the door swings open. His eyebrows raise and he gives me a look like, we might as well, and I just shrug. Cowan’s crazy enough already, he won’t care if we just walk inside.
Although maybe we should’ve brought some bulletproof vests.
Baptist steps into the entryway and doesn’t move.
I hesitate next him, staring around.
“Something’s off.” He moves closer to me, like he’s being protective. “What’s different?”
The feeling was nagging at me too, and the realization snags in my brain all of a sudden. I suck in a breath and grab his arm.
“It’s empty,” I say and slip past him, heading toward the living room. He hurries to keep up but I reach the doorway first.
It’s empty. Entirely empty. Two weeks earlier, when we first came here and watched Cowan fire a shotgun at what I’m still positive was an imaginary raccoon, this room was packed with books. They were everywhere, on every surface, in moldy cardboard boxes, piled on tables, leaning in massive towers that likely would’ve crushed me if they tipped the wrong way.
Now there’s nothing. Only gleaming hardwood floors like they were refinished recently.
“Look at this.” Baptist moves past me, deeper inside. I want to tell him to stop—this is too fucking weird—but I can’t seem to open my mouth. He pauses beside some marks on the wood and kneels down. “Buckshot. From his shotgun.”
I walk up beside him and sure enough, little pellet-sized holes are dotted in the floor in a spray pattern.
Which means we’re in the right house and didn’t somehow head up the wrong driveway.
“What the hell is going on here?” I ask quietly, looking around. “Why’s the place empty? Actually, better question, how is it empty? There was like a decade worth of hoarding in here.”
“I don’t know, but let’s find him and figure it out.”
We head back onto the solarium. It’s also empty. All the plants are gone, the fainting couches, any signs that it was ever filled with life, utterly gone. The backyard looks the same and there’s no sign of Cowan anywhere.
We check the whole house. “Cowan!” I call out, too afraid not to say something, expecting to find some fresh nightmare around each corner. I have this irrational fear that something terrifying is going to leap out of every single dust-bunny-filled closet. Instead, my voice echoes back at me, and we only get a nice tour of a very empty, very gorgeous house.