Hawk (A Stepbrother Romance #3)(67)

"I don't care." She sighs. "I should’ve tried to find you as much as you should’ve come back to me."

I say nothing.

"We need to get away and start over again. We can make it like it was. I'll go anywhere, I don't care as long as I'm with you."

"Same. We do need to pick a place, though."

"Here's good for a while. Until this is all over."

She sits up, then slides off me and lays on the bed, and I can't take my eyes off her sweaty body. Then she stands and walks into the bathroom and the shower starts.

"I could go again," she calls from the bathroom, "but let's save our energy. If we're going to be here all week or whatever…"

Grinning, I follow her in.

When we're both cleaned up again, we dress. The clothes in the dressers are the wrong sizes but they'll get the job done.

May is in the kitchen, heating up a can of spaghetti and meatballs. She sees us and dumps a second and a third can into the pot.

"It's not home cooking, but it'll do," she says. "I know you two must be hungry."

"Right," I say.

"Because you were f*cking."

"May!" Alexis snaps.

"Oh Hawk," she mimics, stirring the pot. "Harder!"

"Shut up," Alexis snaps, but there's no heat in her voice.

May sticks her tongue out at her sister.

Then something about the size of a baseball crashes through the front window. I stare at the little round metal ball in dull surprise for a moment, and then the grenade goes off.





Alexis





Now





I turn to May and start to say something I will never finish. There is a sound of broken glass, like chimes, and a dull thud of something heavy hitting the floor and rolling across the carpet in the living room. Then the world goes white and a thunderous sound stabs into my ears, and I can't tell which way is up until I hit the floor. I know I'm screaming, but I can't hear myself.

I think I'm dead until Hawk's hand closes around my wrist. I can hear his voice as an echo, distant like a memory half heard.

"Flashbang!"

I don't know what that means, what's flashbang? I hear boots, but I feel them more than hear, thuds rolling through the wooden floor. A high shrill sound that drills painfully into my skull, and I think it's May screaming. Hawk's hand tears away from my wrist and suddenly I'm floating, carried away, something crushing my wrists and my calves, the world sawing under me.

Hot air hits me and I land on something soft that smells like piss, and cold cuts into my wrists and I think I'm going to bleed out but I move my arms and I feel steel bracelets constrict my movement, and more snap on my ankles. A heavy thudding sound might be a car door, and it leaves a ringing, burning sound behind it. When I open my eyes there's only purple shapes, the vague outline of what might be the front seat of a car, but there's something floating in front of it. A pattern.

It's wire. Wire embedded in glass. The light is like daggers but I can see again, and I throw myself up, sitting upright, trying to swing my legs around but they've cuffed them with shackles and my hands are locked behind my back. There's someone sitting in the front seat. It takes me a few seconds of blinking to realize it's a Paradise Falls cop. I think I've met him before. His name is Jackson or Johnson or Jameson or something like that.

My own voice sounds tinny, distant.

"What's happening?" I shout, or maybe whisper, I can't tell. "I didn't do anything."

"Shut up," his voice is far away and muffled.

I blink my eyes a few times and spot May as they haul her into another car, shoving her into the back seat.

Jesus Christ, Tom is here. He's talking to someone, a cop. There must be fifty of them.

They carry Hawk down the back stairs by the arms. There's bruises on his face, his lip is split, and his feet are dragging as they carry and finally drop him on the ground. Tom walks over and stands over him as he looks up. They talk but I can't hear.

Tom kicks dirt in Hawk's face, turns, and walks my way. He strides over and opens the passenger door to the police cruiser, opens it, sits inside. He closes the door and nods at the cop and the cop starts the car, backs it around, and drives away from the house. I twist to watch it recede in the background.

"What are you doing to him?" I shriek.

"You don't need to worry about him," Tom says, very calmly, very softly.

"Where's May? What did you do with my sister?"

"She'll come along with us. Don't worry, she'll be fine."

'Tom, don't hurt Hawk, please!"

He sighs. "Alexis, do you have any idea how disappointed I am in you? I thought you'd earned my trust, that you'd come around and started to understand the future and your place in it. Now you run off with Howard and Lance tells me you were doing something with my computer, and you encouraged Howard to beat him."

"That's not true," I shout, panting for breath. "Lance attacked me."

"Why?"

"He… he's a perv, I-"

"Because he caught you tampering with my computer. What were you doing?"