All Bets Are Off by Kristi Rose

Author:Kristi Rose [Rose, Kristi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944513313
Publisher: Vintage Housewife Books

21

Monday

I arrived at the shooting range right on time. Sleep had been elusive. Maybe because I was jumpy at every sound coming from outside my bedroom door. Or maybe it was because I didn’t know where to hide the metal bar when I was home so I taped the thing to my back. I was scared to let it out of my sight so I slept with the stupid bar taped to my body, and I drove with the bar taped to my car. This was ridiculous.

Getting the bar stuck to my back would have won me money on any of those home video shows. I made a bed of duct tape on my floor, sticky side up, the bar running down the center. Then I aligned myself so I could plop backward onto the tape, affixing it in place. And it worked. The first five minutes after I’d flopped back onto the tape and squirmed like a puppy on her back to get the tape to stick, I’d felt like a super genius. Like maybe I was getting the hang of this PI thing. Then I tried to sit in bed and watch some TV only to have the tape pull my skin. The skin under the tape was hot and itchy. The skin around it was sweaty. So between fear and tape discomfort, I barely slept. Around four in the morning, I’d had enough and ripped off the tape, clutched the bar in my hand and fell into an exhaustive sleep that felt like five minutes before my alarm went off at seven.

At the last possible minute, I put on yoga pants, a large Seahawks T-shirt, sketcher slip-ons, and pushed my hair out of my face with a headband. Where the tape had been on my skin was now a large patch of red welts that itched something fierce. I did remember to brush my teeth, thankfully.

Leo was parked in his police SUV and hadn’t seen me pull up. I had a moment of pleasure when I startled him by tapping on the passenger window. He wasn’t in uniform. He wore dark-washed jeans and a long sleeve dark green T-shirt that showed off his darker skin and light eyes. The color suited him. The shirt did a nice job showcasing his bulky arm muscles and wide shoulders as the material hugged every contour of his body.

“Lemme in.” I jiggled the handle.

He pointed to the back where the criminals sat.

I narrowed my eyes, and he unlocked the door.

“Very funny,” I said, sliding into the passenger seat.

“Didn’t wake up with a sense of humor today?” He eyed me up and down, pausing at my hair.

I stifled a yawn. “Wanna trade lives? Then I get to tell the jokes.”

“Did you eat?” He handed me a bag from Freshii, my favorite clean-eating restaurant. Every ingredient was pure, whatever that meant. I loved their breakfast burritos. Sometimes, though, they didn’t love me. The clean food liked to clean me out, if you get what I’m saying.

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