by Layla Reyne
“I know,” Hawes said, taking another step toward him.
On his periphery, Hawes saw Chris lower his gun and raise one hand. “Scotty, put down the gun.”
“I can’t! She caught me sending that message. Caught me trying to leave.” He wheezed between heavy, labored breaths. “And she knows about Sam. She knows where Sam is! She’s going to…”
“We won’t let anything happen to Sam.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Scotty,” Hawes said calmly, drawing the agent’s attention off Chris. He pointed at his chest.
Chris grabbed at his other arm. “Hawes, no, please.”
“It’s all led back to here, Dante.”
“What part of don’t sacrifice yourself—”
Hawes glanced over his shoulder, meeting dark, terrified eyes. “I understood. All of it. I also understand this can’t end any other way.” And it would seal the charges on Rose. No one in his family would ever be hurt again.
“Hawes, please.” Barely a whisper, the last word cracking and cracking open Hawes’s heart with it.
“I love you,” he said. “Now trust me.” He held Chris’s gaze as he tugged his arm free.
Chris let it go, like making his fingers unclench was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, and Hawes supposed if it were him in Chris’s position, it would be for him too. “I love you too.” Chris lowered his gun the rest of the way, and Hawes turned back around to Scotty, pointing again at his center mass.
“I’m sorry,” Scotty said, aiming for his chest and pulling the trigger.
The lack of a good brace, owing to the missing finger, sent the bullet searing through Hawes’s shoulder. It burned, like fire, and the force of the hit spun Hawes, like it had Tran, and he fell to his knees.
Behind him, he heard the gun hit the ground, then Scotty’s body hit the side of the car, collapsing back against it with heaving sobs, Helena trying to quiet him.
Then Chris was in front of Hawes, helping him down onto his side, face pale with worry.
“I sold it.” Hawes patted his breastbone, or rather the Kevlar over it, underneath his dark dress shirt. “But he was supposed to shoot me in the chest.”
Chris heaved a half sob, half-relieved chuckle. “It wasn’t your head, so I’ll take it.”
Speaking of his head, Hawes’s felt woozy, light, like the whiteout from the pain was spreading through the rest of his body.
Chris scooted behind him, holding his body up, a wad of fabric pressed to his shoulder. “Hang on, baby.”
“Give the order to Kane,” Hawes said to whoever was still listening. “Take Rose into custody, and tell him to add conspiracy to commit murder to the charges.”
“On it, Big H,” Holt said.
“Good,” Hawes mumbled as pain and exhaustion grew heavy, too heavy to hold his eyes open against any longer. Once he heard Kane’s, “You’re under arrest,” over the comm, he turned his face into Chris’s neck, smelling eucalyptus and leather. “It’s over.”
“It’s over,” Chris said, his warm lips pressed against Hawes’s temple, easing him into the darkness. “The empire is yours.”
“Ours,” Hawes said, then for the first time in three years, he rested.
Chapter Fourteen
Being on this side of the hospital bed sucked, maybe even worse than being the one in it, which Chris remembered all too well as it had been him there only three days ago. Hell, the surgeon who’d worked on Hawes’s GSW was the same one who’d mended him. Once Hawes was in post-op, she’d insisted on checking Chris’s injury and wouldn’t let him into Hawes’s room until she’d wrestled his arm back into a sling. But that had been hours ago, and while Chris’s arm did feel better, his heart and head worried over the too still form in the bed.
He scooted closer and reached out his good hand, laying it on Hawes’s hip, hoping this time, unlike the dozens of others, it would wake him. It didn’t. Hawes’s injuries weren’t life-threatening. The GSW was a through and through, no major arteries hit, but as with Chris last week, Hawes’s mind and body had suffered more than just physical injuries. He needed time to recover. And as long as he was here, Chris would be too.
His head had just hit the bed next to Hawes’s hip when a soft knock sounded against the door. He was halfway out of the chair when Tran slipped inside and waved him back down. She didn’t come any closer, though, leaning against the wall next to the door. A safe bet, as Chris’s anger still simmered. It hadn’t exploded yet—he was too tired for that—but it was there, bubbling beneath the surface.
“Rose is in custody,” Tran said. “We picked up Brewster too.”
The former Chris knew about, the latter was welcome news. “That’s good.”
When he didn’t say anything more, she nodded toward Hawes. “How’s he doing?”
“Doc says fine. He just hasn’t woken up yet.”
“Payback’s a bitch.”
If not for his anger, if not for the exhaustion, Chris probably would have laughed at her attempted joke—something he’d never thought he would hear from Vivienne Tran—but as pissed and tired as he was, the weak attempt at humor fell flat. He cut to the chase. “How’s Scotty?”
“Sleeping, which is better than him being awake and in a world of hurt.”
Chris was afraid of that. Wheeler had looked like hell on the scene, and it had only gone to shit from there. “How bad?”
“Broken ribs, punctured lung, head trauma. And there’s risk of sepsis and gangrene from the GSW he was still recovering from.”
“And his finger?” Chris asked, a phantom pain making his pinkie finger tingle in sympathy.
“Still missing.”
Chris picked up Hawes’s left hand, held it in his, thumb running over the knuckles of all five fingers. “At least it wasn’t his dominant hand.”
“He shouldn’t have been injured at all.” Sighing, she collapsed into the chair on the other side of the bed. “That’s on me. I should have trusted you.”
“Not me. Amelia. She’s the one you should have trusted. She came through for us, multiple times.”
“You’re right.” She drove a hand into her hair, grabbing a huge hunk of it and tugging. “Fuck, this could have been worse than Izzy’s murder. That was the last thing I wanted.”
Her voice vibrated with frustration, resignation, and anger, more than enough directed at herself. She didn’t need Chris’s piled on top of it—she knew she’d fucked up, she admitted it—and that was enough to cool Chris’s bubbling fury. “You wanted justice for your wife,” he said. “Things got tangled up. You didn’t want to chance that.”
Her dark eyes rose to meet his. “You didn’t get tangled up.”
“Oh yeah, I did,” Chris said. “You just missed that part.”
The corners of her mouth tipped up, but only for a moment, before her expression turned inward again. “How’d you find your way out of it?”
He closed his hand more firmly around Hawes’s. “I chose to trust him and that what I felt for him was real. The rest flowed from there.”
Her gaze drifted to the window while her fingers toyed absently with the chain around her neck. Chris wondered if she realized she was doing it, if she realized she was this far from her usual locked-down self.
“You’ll find it again too,” he said. “Someday.”
She let the chain go and gathered up her hair, all of it this time, and secured it in a bun at the base of her neck. Putting herself back together. “Your instincts were right, Perri,” she said as she stood. “About Hawes, about Amelia, about this entire operation. Which is why I’ll be recommending you to a field leader position. You earned it.”
Chris didn’t hesitate to tell her, “I’m out.”
She froze mid-zip of her leather jacket. “You’re out?”
“Of the agency,” he clarified, even though her response indicated she’d understood him just fine. “Once we tie up all the back-end work on this case, I’ll be resigning, officially
.”
Her gaze darted to Hawes, then back to him. “They’re out of the explosives business. They’re no longer the ATF’s concern. It’s not a conflict of interest, as far as I’m concerned.”
“It is for me, with what I want for my life. I want to be here, in our city.” He glanced out the window, then at Hawes. “With him, his family, my family, and maybe our family in the future.”
“You’re a damn fine agent, Perri.”
He stood and met her at the end of the bed. “And I was a damn fine private investigator too. Think I might give that a try again.”
“You know…” The hint of a smile from earlier returned, growing wider this time. “Izzy once told me you were wasting your talents at the ATF, but she liked working with you too much to tell you that.”
He chuckled. “Sounds like her.”
Tran placed a hand on his forearm, and his laughter died. “She’d want you to be happy. I hope the PI gig—all of it—works out for you.” She removed her hand, the personal connection fleeting, then vanishing completely as she held the same hand out to him, purely professional. “If you ever want to come back, I’ll make it happen.”
He shook her hand. “Thank you.”
Help her, Izzy pleaded as Tran turned to leave.
“Vivienne,” Chris said, startling her to a stop. “She’d want you to be happy too.”
Tran rotated back to him, expression bleak as she tumbled the wedding rings in her palm. “Moving on from the love of your life is harder than the books and movies make it seem. I hope you never have to.”
She left him with that painful thought, with the memory of the pinches of it he’d felt twice now—after the apartment explosion when he thought Hawes dead, and after Hawes had been shot today, even though he’d known the latter hadn’t been fatal. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have Hawes ripped away for good, his heart torn out from his chest.
“I hope so too,” came a scratchy voice from behind him.
Chris spun, finding Hawes awake, finally. Blue eyes tracked him all the way to the side of the bed. “Is this for real?” Hawes asked.
“Yeah, baby.” Chris leaned down and dropped a kiss on Hawes’s cool lips, so very relieved to feel them moving beneath his again. “This is for real.”
Hawes had drifted in and out of consciousness most of the afternoon. Familiar voices and the drugs in his system had kept him in a comfortable state of mostly asleep, until Tran’s relatively unfamiliar tone had caught and held, dragging him out of the fog. But he’d kept his eyes closed, pretending to sleep. He didn’t want to interrupt. Chris and Tran’s conversation had seemed important, for both of them, and for Hawes. He’d almost ruined the ruse and gasped aloud at Chris’s verbal resignation. Granted, Chris had mentioned he was out when this was over, but telling it to friends and family was one thing, to his boss was another.
Staring at him now, Chris’s dark eyes full of love, conviction, and relief, Hawes knew he meant it. No question. This was for real.
Chris gave him another too brief kiss, then handed him a glass of water. “How you feeling?”
Hawes sipped through the straw and swirled the cool water in his mouth, coating the parched surfaces. “Better than Scotty, sounds like.”
“You were listening?”
Hawes took a longer swallow, then handed the glass back to Chris. “In and out.”
“His recovery is going to be tough,” Chris said, lowering himself into the chair next to the bed. “But he’ll make it. How about you?”
Hawes tried to move his immobilized right arm and winced, pain like an arrow through his shoulder. Fuck, that hurt. “Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve been shot.”
“I believe it.” Chris smiled, sly and heated. “No scars anywhere else I’ve seen, except the knife one here.” He pushed up Hawes’s sleeve, running his finger along the jagged, raised scar on his left shoulder. Goose bumps rose all over Hawes’s skin.
“Helena,” Hawes told him.
Chris chuckled, the sound warm and more comforting than the drugs. “That I also believe. But you still didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s sore,” he admitted. “And I won’t believe you if you say yours isn’t still.” He fiddled with the matching strap across Chris’s chest. “I think maybe we should both take some time off to recover.”
“Agreed.” The smile that had teased Chris’s lips faded, the lighter mood too ephemeral to hold on to.
Hawes coasted his fingers farther up the strap of Chris’s sling, close to the spot where Hawes had shot him three days ago. “I can’t relive this again.” He dropped his hand. “And we still need to talk about the first time I lived it, with Izzy. You need to know what happened, see it for yourself, before you upend your life more than you already have.”
“The future means more to me than the past. It’s not going to change—”
Hawes stilled Chris’s shaking head with a hand on his cheek. “I hope it won’t.” Correction. “I’m trusting it won’t.” Chris calmed, though his eyes remained wary. “But as we go on from here, if you’re the only one without the full story, that’s not fair. That’ll breed resentment, feelings of exclusion, and that’s the last thing I want between us.”
“You’re talking about the video from the night Izzy died.”
He had been, but that wasn’t the only problem they had to tackle. “So it was a video on the other flash drive Amelia left?”
Chris nodded.
“We need to watch that too, then. I need to know how deep my grandmother’s treachery ran. And Izzy deserves justice. So do we.”
Chris averted his gaze as he picked up Hawes’s hand and entwined their fingers. “We can wait—”
Hawes squeezed his fingers. “Now, please. I don’t want this hanging over us any longer.”
“All right.” Chris stood, untangled their fingers, and fished a flash drive out of the coat hanging on the back of his chair. “Holt consolidated and made backups,” he explained, plugging the chip end of the drive into his phone. “Screen’s not ideal.”
“It’ll do.” Hawes pushed himself up and over, making room on the bed for Chris to sit next to him. The warm body pressed alongside his was another comfort, one Hawes desperately hoped would remain there after they watched these videos.
He had to trust… But it was hard once Chris clicked on the file labeled the day before Hawes’s thirtieth birthday. Harder still as a picture appeared of that dark, rain-slicked street, as the phone speaker emitted the squeal of tires, the shouts between him and Zander Rowe, then the gunfire. The hardest when, after those few awful seconds of quiet, the truck door banged open and gunfire erupted again.
Chris’s body jerked, and Hawes held his breath through his own recorded cries, the argument with Helena, and the fading roar of her Ducati. He hadn’t even realized he’d closed his eyes and turned away until Chris’s “Look at me” rumbled into the present silence. Like thunder, it was dark and ominous, and Hawes feared the accompanying lightning, what it might strike and destroy, how it might blind if he obeyed that order and looked at the man he loved. Did that man still love him? Hawes wanted to trust that promise so badly, but…
Rough fingers grasped his chin, no longer giving him an option. Hawes wasn’t surprised by the tears on Chris’s face or the anger in his eyes. But the words he spoke, “You didn’t murder her,” made Hawes inhale sharply.
“I pulled—”
“In self-defense.”
“She was beaten and tortured, like Scotty.” Hawes would never forget the marks around her wrists and the bruises on her face. He’d noticed them too late. Because he’d noticed the gun pointing at him instead. “She was just trying to escape.”
“Maybe,” Chris said. “But in order to do so, she had to kill you. Same as Scotty was set up to do today.”
“Chris, what—”
The fingers gripping his chin eased, becoming a caress along Hawes’s jaw, soothing him, soothing them both. �
�She was my partner, Hawes. We weren’t in the field a lot together, but it was enough that I know what she looks like when she’s frightened versus when she knows exactly what she’s doing. She was more composed than Scotty was today.”
Hawes’s pulse raced, reflected in the rapid beeps of the heart monitor. “Are you saying this is the latter? Like Scotty?” He had never considered this scenario. The evidence to the contrary had seemed so cut-and-dried. But none of them knew Isabella like Chris did.
“I have no reason to lie. I’d already forgiven you, when you thought you’d murdered her. And I don’t need to protect her either.”
Hawes lifted a hand and brushed away the tears at the corners of Chris’s eyes. The wetness was cool, but the eyes themselves were burning with fury. Despite Chris’s gentle touches, that fire in his eyes had only mounted as they’d talked, as they’d analyzed with fresh eyes what they’d seen on that video. “Then why are you so angry?”
“Because my partner was going to kill you, then and today, because of something Rose held over them.”
Hawes took Chris’s hand in his, some instinct telling him to hold on tight. “You didn’t know me then.”
“If she had succeeded with Izzy, I wouldn’t know you now. And Izzy would have never forgiven herself.” Chris squeezed his hand so tight Hawes thought his fingers might break. “Rose would have taken you both away from me.”
It was everything Chris could do not to bolt out of that hospital room and go straight to the station where Rose had been taken after her arrest. Only Hawes’s hand wrapped in his and the investigator side of his brain kept him on that bed. Kept him wanting to know what was on that video dated the day before the one they’d just watched. It had to be the reason Izzy set out that night to kill Hawes. And Chris was sure that’s what she’d meant to do. Her hold on the pistol, despite her injuries. The sharp angle of her clenched jaw. The desperation and determination in her eyes. In only a few seconds, Chris had recognized the danger, as had Hawes, who’d instinctively reacted to defend himself.