by Cole, Cassie
“Sorry for waking you,” I told Hawk when I hung up. “Dad said they finally finished up at the station. Eastland is officially free of cops.”
“Good,” Hawk said, throwing himself out of bed. His naked butt was tight and sexy. “That means I can show you.”
“Show me what!” I said while dressing quickly. I’d forgotten all about it.
Once he was dressed, he grabbed a backpack from his workshop and handed it to me. I followed him outside.
“What’s in this?” I asked. The contents were heavy and shifted around inside.
“Stuff we need.” Hawk bent down and ran his hand on the underside of his bike.
“Think there’s another grenade under there?”
“No,” he said with a chuckle. “But I’ll go to my grave checking for one every time I get on.”
I swung a leg over the bike behind him. “Better safe than sorry.”
There was something about being on the bike with Hawk that made me feel more free than any other point in my life. The cool night wind in our hair, the endless road rising up to meet the wheel of the bike. I could feel Hawk’s muscles rippling underneath his shirt as he led us down the deserted Georgia road. It was just the two of us out here. Like we owned this small slice of the world and nobody else was allowed in.
I pressed my cheek to his back and savored the feeling, wishing it would last forever.
We drove south for a while. Hawk’s phone was mounted on the top of the bike, and after almost half an hour he turned it on and opened up an app with numbers on it:
32.04, -82.35
The right number remained stationary, but the left number was slowly ticking down. 31.03, 31.02, 31.01…
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Something we need.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“Does it annoy you when I ask so many questions?”
“It does.” He reached down to pat my thigh. “It’s a good thing you’re hot as fuck.”
We drove and drove until we came to a section of road raised 20 feet above a marshy area. Hawk slowed down gradually, until finally pulling across the other lane of traffic and parking on the left shoulder. A cement divider was all that separated us from the ground below. Up ahead was a sign that said Altamaha River.
I looked at Hawk expectantly. “Well?”
Wordlessly, he pulled his phone off the mount and handed it to me. I stared at the numbers.
31.94, -82.35
“Is this supposed to mean something to me?”
Hawk stared at me with a knowing smile. He crossed his muscular arms over his chest, which made the tattoos bulge out.
And then it hit me.
The tattoo on his right arm was 3194.
The tattoo on the left was 8233.
His app was a compass.
These were coordinates.
“Holy fuck.”
“Damn, Peaches,” Hawk said as he took the phone back from me. “Watch your mouth.”
I followed him to a service ladder and we climbed down to the ground. I expected it to be muddy, but it was a dry forest floor. Hawk took the backpack from me, pulled two flashlights from within, and then shouldered it.
We walked along a thin trail that ran directly away from the road. Our two flashlight cones scanned the path ahead and to either side, which set a ghastly scene for our night hike. If I was alone, I would have been terrified.
With Hawk leading me, I was fearless.
He held his phone out as we walked. Even though the second coordinate number was just two digits off, it took a long time for -81.35 to change to -81.34. By the time it finally hit -81.33 we had been walking at least 15 minutes.
Hawk stopped and scanned the area with the flashlight. Within moments he stopped on a tree to the left. It looked like any other to my eyes, but as we approached I realized there was something carved into the bark:
T A H
“Theresa Alexandra Hawkins,” I said. “TAH.”
Hawk pulled a shovel from the backpack. “Yep.”
Digging took just as much time as walking out here had. Hawk worked tirelessly, pausing to take off his shirt when he got too sweaty. I kept the flashlight on his glistening body and made no effort to conceal my admiring stares.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, throwing a shovel-full of dirt over his shoulder.
“Mmm hmm.”
He smiled over at me. “You could help.”
“And deny myself this beautiful sight?”
He laughed, stuck the shovel in the ground, and planted a boot on the blade to drive it into the ground.
It hit something wooden.
It took several more minutes before he’d dug out the top. It was a crate like the one outside his barn, but larger. At least two feet to a side.
“How did you get this all the way out here?” I asked.
“It was a huge pain in the ass.” He retrieved a crowbar from the backpack, holding it up to the flashlight. After a second I recognized it as Sid’s.
“Seemed poetic to use it for something like this,” he said, then wedged it between the crate lid and heaved. Wood creaked as he worked it into the gap, then stepped on it for leverage. When enough of it came away he used his hands to pull it all the way off.
I shined the flashlight into the hole.
Inside were gallon-sized ziplock bags identical to the ones in the other crate. Dozens of them. Maybe even a hundred. And just like the other bags, they were filled with rolls of money.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed.
“There’s that mouth again.”
“I save my curses for the right moment. And this is definitely the right moment!” I grabbed a bag and opened it, feeling the money between my fingers. “Hawk! There must be a million dollars here!”
“Just shy, Peaches,” he said sadly. “It’s only about $900,000.”
“Only,” I gasped. I was struggling to accept what I was seeing. “Only.”
“I guess technically it’s $880,000, since I kept the other $20,000 outside my barn.”
“Stop saying really big numbers! You’re breaking my brain!”
He grinned in the indirect light from the flashlight reflecting off the bags. “Sorry, Peaches.”
“So let me get this straight.” I dropped the bag back inside the hole. “You stole this money and dragged it out into the middle of nowhere. And then, to remember where you put it, you tattooed the coordinates onto your arms?”
He spread his hands. “Brilliant, right? Hiding in plain sight.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of sticky notes!”
“I’m an ink guy.” Hawk lifted one of the bags and held it in both hands. But his eyes remained locked onto me.
“Do you know what we can do with this?”
“What?”
“Whatever we want, Peaches.” A smile spread across his gorgeous face. “Whatever the hell we want.”
I kissed him, and not just because the ruggedly handsome man I’d fallen in love with was also suddenly rich.
Okay, maybe a little bit because of that. Money solved a lot of life’s little bullshit problems.
“So, yeah,” he said, still holding me in his arms. “That road trip I want to take? Money’s not gonna be a problem.”
“Where will we go?” I asked.
He arched an eyebrow. “We?”
“You’re darn right, we,” I said, glaring at him. “I’m not done with you yet, and you’d better not be done with me. So again: where will we go?”
He smiled. It was the smile of someone who wasn’t able to not smile while looking at the woman he loved.
I gave him the same smile back.
“North,” he said. “Or south. Wherever the hell we want.” He cupped my chin. “Wherever we go, I want you there. You make this shitty world better than it would be without you, Peaches.”
As he stared into my eyes, into my soul, it was impossible not to kiss him. Our bodies m
elted together and for a few seconds it felt like I was weightless.
We took two bags of cash, covered the crate of money, and made the walk back to his bike. We climbed on, I wrapped my arms around him, and he turned toward me.
“But first, let’s go back to Eastland,” he said. “I want to have breakfast with your parents before we go on our road trip.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, I think your mom has the hots for me.”
I smacked him on the arm, and he roared with laughter. Then he gunned the motor, and we shot away north with reckless, exhilarating speed.
As long I had Hawk, I would always feel safe.
I clung to his body while the Georgia sunrise spread across the sky above.