Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
And she’s read the Rock Chick books. She knows how those Hottie Squad men are supposed to win their women.
Javi is just not trying to win her.
Then one evening Harlow is undercover on a mission for the Avenging Angels, and Javi blows her cover. She’s not happy about it. They share words and some of the ones Javi uses aren’t all that great.
Harlow retreats. Javi goes on the advance.
And the man Harlow was investigating winds up dead.
The Angels go all in to discover what’s happening with a dating app scam that ended up with a dead guy. The Nightingale men aren’t fans of the women wading in on such a dangerous case, and they’re doing something about it.
It’s a race between the Angels and the Hottie Squad as to who’s going to solve the mystery.
While all of that happens, Javi’s not taking any chances with Harlow’s safety. He moves her into his place and Harlow learns firsthand what it means to be in the romantic crosshairs of a member of the Hottie Squad…and the heartbreaking reasons why Javi kept her at arm’s length
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
“THE PROPHECY”
(TAYLOR SWIFT)
“All quiet on the Western front.”
“You were just dying to say that, weren’t you?”
“Well…duh.”
“Though, how do you know? You’re on the Eastern front.”
“Semantics.”
“Directions.”
“He’s late.”
“I’m not liking this.”
“Is this business usually this boring?”
In order, all the above was: Luna, Raye, Luna again, Jess, Luna, Jess again, Willow and Shanti.
My crew. My besties.
The Angels.
This convo sounded in my new ear thingy. One of the ones Arthur gave us.
It was fancy-dancy. It received and sent. In other words, it picked up my voice and the conversations I had. My girls could hear everything, and I didn’t have to speak into a wristwatch or something like that.
It was extra cool.
Then again, Arthur tended to spoil us, and as such, always got us the best stuff.
The ear thingies even matched our flesh tones so they’d be harder to see. Like really matched, as if they were made just for us. Mine was a peachy pink. Jess’s was an oliveish peach. Shanti’s was mocha. You get the picture.
Though, I wore my hair down, just in case.
I wasn’t taking any chances because, with this loser I was going to be dealing with that night, I was our only shot, and I couldn’t blow it. He went for girls like me (and Willow), and one could say Raye, Luna, Jessie and Shanti weren’t at all like me (or Willow). And since he was Willow’s ex, and he was giving her troubles, me and the other Angels were trying to shut him down.
It wouldn’t do for him to see my ear thingy and the jig being up.
It’d taken some doing to get to the point of this fake date, even if he didn’t know it was fake, including some reconnaissance (to others this might be considered stalking, though stalkers tended to stalk, and we were stalking as a means to an end—I liked to think that made all the difference so it didn’t feel skeevy).
It also included me signing up to a dating app (not my thing at all, when I found my guy, it’d happen like it was supposed to happen…organically) and arranging for me to be in his vicinity because the app he used to prey on women was one that binged with a possible match when someone was close.
Seriously.
Creepy, or what? (I’ll answer that…it was creepy.)
Why any woman would willingly allow strangers to know she was nearby, I had no idea.
I didn’t suspect that app was going to have a long lifespan. I’d messed around with it, and unsurprisingly, the vast majority of people on it were men.
And I suspected many of those men were what we weren’t but were forced to be under the circumstances: stalkers.
But there I was, after Kevin and I “matched.” With Willow’s guidance, the Angels created a profile for me he’d go for, and I had to admit, with no small amount of disquiet, what we wrote wasn’t far from the truth.
Me and Willow’s ex, Kevin, had been messaging each other for a week.
It was time for a meet.
Let me rewind.
My friends and I were the Avenging Angels. We were vigilantes (of a sort). We investigated crimes on our time off from being servers, baristas and bartenders at a fun, hip spot called The Surf Club.
We had a benefactor: Arthur. He was our Charlie. He seemed to have unlimited means, but none of us had met him, nor did we know who he was.
We also had a Bosley, but her name was Clarice, she was a high-powered, expensive lawyer, and she didn’t like to be referred to as Bosley.
I know this sounds crazy, and maybe to some, it was.
But surprise of surprises, even with zero training, we were really good at this investigating stuff.
It might be dumb luck, but I was an optimist, so I liked to think of it as good intuition.
Since we started doing this, we’d solved the mystery of women going missing, abducted by a human trafficking ring.
We’d then solved the mystery of people from homeless camps also going missing, kidnapped to be forced labor in drug dens.
Now, we were doing this.
It all started when Raye was triggered, because her little sister had been kidnapped and murdered when she was super young, and her entire family had fallen apart. Raye descended onto a path of wreaking justice to injustice and eventually investigating the disappearance of a little girl (who, yeah, you guessed it, Raye found with zero training).
The rest of us got roped in (by “the rest of us,” I mean Jessie, Luna and I).
Recently, we recruited Shanti and Willow, mainly because Arthur picked Shanti, and she was tight with Willow, and Willow was having man problems, so we girls pulled her in because we figured that was what Arthur got us all together to do.
Not to mention, Willow was already a loose member of our crew. She worked with us at SC, we all liked her a whole bunch, she thought our Angel business was cool, so why not?