Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“Hawk.” He opens his eyes fully now. They’re bloodshot. “No.”
Silence presses in. The machines keep humming.
He works his jaw. Swallows. It looks like it hurts. “You don’t…understand.”
“Then help me.” I tighten my hand on the rail. “Tell me.”
He looks to the ceiling and back to me. “I didn’t take it.”
He didn’t take it? Didn’t take what? “What?” I finally say.
“The coke.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I didn’t take it.”
“Eagle—”
“I didn’t even know the coke was in your truck still.”
My mind whirls. What the hell is my brother saying? Of course he took it. He was relapsing, and I should have been there for him. Been there to stop him.
“I was injected.” He licks cracked lips. “By force.”
For a beat, I don’t move. Don’t breathe. The room tilts a fraction, the way a plane does when it hits a crosswind. Then everything inside me goes very, very still.
Injected.
By force.
I look at the tape on his forearm again. I never looked too closely before—it was just a reminder of my failure as his older brother. But now that I’m investigating closely, there’s bruising there. Not the neat kind you get when a nurse says, “little poke.” The kind that blooms when someone doesn’t care how much it hurts. There’s another mark near his shoulder under the edge of the gown. Finger-shaped shadows at his bicep. Old? New? It doesn’t matter. My stomach drops.
“Who?” I finally ask. “Who did this to you?”
He closes his eyes. Opens them again. “Don’t…know.” He breathes. Winces. “Two. Maybe three. Black van. A garage, I think. Thought I heard…music. They put a hood on me. Tied me. Quick.” He swallows. “Then a sting. Then…nothing.”
My hand is on the rail so hard my knuckles ache. For a flash of a second I see Reyes’s face. Then I push past it. Haynes. Dead. The chocolate. The note. The grenade. The flowers. A long chain of men who like to work in shadows. It all tries to crowd in. I hold it back with my teeth.
“When?” I ask.
“Same night.” He breathes out. “I called you first. Left you a…message.” A ghost of a smile twitches at his mouth. “You didn’t pick up.”
The knife inside me twists into my gut.
“I know.” I make the words steady by force. “That one’s mine.”
“Then I came by.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He looks past me for a second, at something I can’t see. “I don’t want Mom to see me like this.” His mouth tightens. “I didn’t want you to, either.”
“You don’t get to protect me,” I say. “That’s my job.”
He huffs something that could be a laugh, and the monitor bumps again. I ease back.
He shifts a little. The movement pulls at his IV, and he flinches. I hate everything in the room at once—tubes, tape, the stupid beige blanket that doesn’t cover enough.
“Tell me more,” I say. “Everything.”
“Dark.” He stares at the ceiling. “Smelled like oil. Rubber. Someone wore…aftershave. Cheap shit, like Aqua Velva or something.” A breath. “They were quiet. No talking. Just…work.” He swallows. “Needle. Then…like drowning.”
The anger comes hot and clean. Not the kind that makes you sloppy. The kind that makes you precise. My vision gets very focused. The edges go away. It’s just me and my brother and the fact that someone put poison in him. And why? What the hell motive could there possibly be after all this time? With Diego Vega dead and—
Except the body… It’s gone.
Eagle looks at me, and for the first time in a while, I see the little brother he was before the drugs. “I’m sorry, Hawk. I fucked up. I needed to talk to you, and I thought about drugs. I did. But I swear to God I didn’t take any. Not voluntarily.”
“I know.” I lean in. “Listen to me. This is not on you. Not one inch. You didn’t choose this.”
He nods, and that says everything.
I believe him. Not because he’s my brother, and not because I trust him. He used up his trust with me long ago.
But because I see truth in his eyes.
“I’m here now,” I say. It feels inadequate, but it’s all I have.
We sit in silence for a moment.
“You’re going to be okay,” I tell him. “The docs say so. Falcon says so. Mom will say so until it’s true.”
At the mention of Mom, his eyes sadden. “She knows?”
“Not yet.” I swallow. “Falcon’s telling her after we’re done.”
He nods. Relief and dread twist together in his expression. “I don’t want her to see me like this,” he says again. “She’ll cry.”
“Yeah.” I exhale. “She will.” I don’t bother telling him she’s been crying nonstop since we found out about his OD.
He licks his lips. “It wasn’t me this time. I know I’ve relapsed a million times, and you always took care of me. Kept it from the family.”