Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Maybe I can call in sick and cancel class. I never let myself do that. Miss Perfectionist. Who knows, maybe I’ll wake up in twelve hours feeling right as rain? I’ll just play it by ear. Huh, what a concept. I could actually allow myself to be human for once. Just like everybody else.
I’m still slumped against Isaak while he pulls out the keycard for the hotel room, eyes drooped half-closed, so I don’t see whatever it is that has all his muscles suddenly clenching when he swings the door open. “What the fuck?” he growls.
That has my eyes popping open. I pull away from him and manage to stand up straight long enough to look at the room.
I scream even as Isaak drags me backwards.
But I already saw the walls graffitied with the words SLUT and WHORE written in what looks like dripping blood.
THIRTY-THREE
ISAAK
Kira was dead on her feet and there was no way we were just swapping to another room, no matter how much the hotel concierge was falling over his feet to offer us a suite.
Their security is obvious shit. We called the police and demanded that hotel security hand over the footage. I just managed to drag our luggage out of there before the police descended. Meanwhile, Kira could barely keep her eyes open to answer the officer’s questions, passing out on a lobby couch not much later. I hated letting her out of my sight long enough to check the footage when they finally pulled it up hours later. I only joined them in the back after making sure one of the female Dallas police department officers would stay with her while she slept.
And then the fuckers wouldn’t even let me in the back to see the tape.
“Sure,” the officer said. “I’ll just need to see your PPO authorization.”
Well, fuck. “It’s literally coming in the mail.” I pulled out my phone to show him I just completed the fifteenth hour of the Level IV program, but he’s not interested. Not even when I explain that the guy stalking Kira is a real psycho. “You can see from the footage and her room what we’re working with here.”
The DPD officer stands tall, hands on his belt. “Tape only shows you and Ms. Roberts exiting the room earlier tonight. Nobody else has been near your room all night. Not even housekeeping, and you’re on the sixteenth floor. Unless you’re saying the friendly neighborhood Spiderman did it, as far as I can see, the two of you are tryin’ to play some sort of prank on our boys in blue. Which will get you losing your protection license before you it even shows up in the mail, son.”
“What the—” I swallow down the fuck before it can make it out of my mouth. This guy looks like a real old school bastard in his mid-to-late sixties.
“Then he broke into hotel security,” I say low and vehemently. I don’t want Kira overhearing any of this, even if she was dead to the world when I left her back on the couch with the luggage. Which, as I glance over, I now see DPD is tossing for evidence. Jesus, they seriously think one of us did this? What the fuck? “My client’s already filed two complaints on him, if you’d just look. He’s broken into her home twice and done similar damage, leaving behind pictures and mutilated animals.”
The officer shrugs. “Coulda been you for all we know.”
“I didn’t even start working for her until two weeks ago!”
He just shrugs again. “I can’t begin to understand the mind of a criminal. Now, you gonna make me work overtime when it’s my night to get off early? ’Cause I’m happy to drag you down to the station so we can continue this interrogation.”
I wish I could say I was surprised at this bullshit. But I’ve never known the DPD to do anything that didn’t directly benefit or make life easier for themselves. Welcome to the criminal justice system in America.
Maybe if we threw around her father’s name, we could get some action. But frankly, she’s too tired tonight. And I don’t get the feeling the cop is lying about what he saw on the hotel footage. The DPD might be lazy, but I can’t see any reason in this particular case why they’d be colluding with a stalker.
It still makes me want to punch something—like this bastard captain’s face for example—that they aren’t doing more to protect her. But that wouldn’t help her and might get me tossed in the drunk tank, which would leave her unprotected for the night.
So I swallow my temper in a way I wouldn’t have a decade ago and head back to where Kira’s laid out on the lobby couch.
She blinks sleepy eyes up at me. “Did you catch him?”