by Layla Reyne
“Can’t say I’m not disappointed. You were one of the best, Jodie.”
“I am the best.”
She proved it the next second, catching the knife mid-spin and hurling it at him, the action practiced and deadly. His quick reflexes and slender frame saved him from a direct hit, the knife slicing through the gray silk of his suit sleeve and flying past his rotated shoulder. She didn’t wait to attack, following directly in the knife’s wake, aiming to take advantage of Hawes’s momentary distraction and open body position. He shot out his left hand, yanked the wires off the wall, and spun into her charging body, forcing her to try to wrap herself around him. He jammed his elbow into her side, and the slight bend in her stance was enough for Hawes to loop the wires over her head and around her neck. She flailed, limbs trying to land a strike, but she’d already used her best weapon for that. The knife was a good two feet away on the ground, and the gun in her other hand was too much of a risk given their close quarters. Cables still clutched in his hands—ignoring the sting of the wires digging into his palms—Hawes used the window bars to vault up onto the trunk of the car and jump back down behind Jodie, his legs tucked for maximum momentum on his way to the ground.
Jodie’s neck snapped, her gun clattered to the ground, and her body followed with a muffled thump.
“Madigan, get down!” came a shout from the far end of the alley.
Hostile or friendly, Hawes couldn’t say, but he didn’t think twice about heeding the warning. He snatched up Jodie’s knife, stepped back, and yanked open the rear door, crouching between it and the open driver’s door. A bullet whizzed overhead, and Hawes whipped around, staring through the frame of the broken window. An apparently recovered Ray was recovered no more. Blood bloomed from a bull’s-eye hit to his chest. He crumpled to the ground on the other side of the car door Hawes knelt behind.
Light flooded the alley from the direction the warning had come, and Hawes spun again. On the second-level porch of the house at the end of the alley, Dante stepped into the glow cast by the porch light. He was the last person Hawes expected to see again tonight, and gun in hand, stance professional, he looked as far from Mr. Rock God as possible. “This way!” he shouted, waving Hawes in his direction.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Dante’s eyes flickered to Jodie. “When she didn’t tail me past the corner, I knew something was off.”
“Have you been following us all night?”
“Most of it, yes. Now let’s fucking go!”
Go where? “It’s a dead end that way.”
“It’s not.” Dante raised his firing arm, and Hawes flipped the knife in his hand, ready to throw, but Dante’s next words made it clear he was gesturing toward the street. “But that way is. Between the car horns and the gunshot, SFPD will be here any minute.”
Hawes glanced at the two bodies on the ground. “I can’t just leave them here.” And he couldn’t leave with a stranger he hardly knew, no matter who vouched for him. But could he stay?
“You were last seen alone,” Dante said. “No one knows you met back up with them.” He gestured at Ray and Jodie. “When the cops come calling, claim it was a dispute between them, or with a third-party who got away.”
“My prints are all over the place.”
“On your car, that’s expected. Are you hurt? Bleeding?”
Hawes checked himself over. His back hurt like a bitch, but he hadn’t been shot or nicked. He flipped over his hands. The wires had left deep grooves in his palms. He didn’t think the skin was broken, but he couldn’t be sure, as red as they were. “Maybe these,” he said, holding up his hands. While they were lifted, he checked the area around him. No blood on the ground or elsewhere. “Would just be on the wires.”
“Use the knife to cut the portion—”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Hawes said, already hacking through the cables. He pocketed the cut portions and used his sleeve to wipe down the dangling ends and the wall, removing any fingerprints. “The bullet from your gun?”
“Won’t be traced.”
Car tires squealed close by, accompanied by sirens.
“Madigan!” Dante shouted. “We gotta go. Now!”
This was not the best idea, but as the sirens grew louder, Hawes was out of options. He jumped over Jodie’s body and sprinted for the stairs at the end of the alley, taking them two at a time. At the top, Dante grabbed his hand…and dragged him over the wooden stair rail.
The free fall didn’t last more than a couple of seconds, but it felt like the longest two seconds of Hawes’s life. He’d almost died in that alley—twice—but aside from his initial second of surprise, at no other time had the situation been out of his control. Falling through the dark night, Dante’s hand the only thing holding him to reality, was not being in control. It was further from control, and reality, than Hawes had been in a long time.
At three seconds, his back hit canvas. He dipped, then was flung back in the air, his hand ripped from Dante’s. A smaller fall followed, then another, before Hawes realized they’d landed on a trampoline.
“Let’s go!” Dante whisper-shouted as he scrambled off.
Hawes followed, hopping off the trampoline and onto the ground in what appeared to be a shared backyard. “You could have told me before we jumped that I wasn’t going to die.”
“Can’t make that promise yet.” Gun drawn, back pressed against the closest building, Dante peeked around the corner.
Blue lights flashed down the narrow exit walk, and sirens screamed by on the street as police cruisers sped to the alley on the opposite side of the yard. They had to move, now.
Hawes snatched up the knife he’d dropped mid-fall and followed Dante, the two of them creeping down the dark walkway. A few feet shy of the street, Dante paused and tucked his gun back into his waistband where Hawes had first noticed it earlier that night. Not more than two hours ago, and yet the world had turned upside down in that short amount of time.
And it kept turning. Dante rotated to face him and held out his hand expectantly. “The knife,” he demanded. “You can’t go running out into the street with it, and as attractive as that fitted suit is on you, there’s nowhere to hide that blade that won’t be obvious.”
Hawes hesitated, unwilling to give up his sole tactical weapon to the man with a gun and a good thirty pounds on him.
“I trusted you at the restaurant earlier,” Dante said, as if reading his thoughts. “And I gave you information that proved to be true. Now I need you to trust me.” Here in the shadows, his big dark eyes were bottomless black holes. Dangerous celestial objects with enough gravitational force to draw Hawes in and snuff him out for good. Hawes already felt the pull to this stranger who’d told him the truth and saved his life.
He handed over the knife. “I need to get to my brother and sister.”
Dante strapped the knife into an ankle holster under his pant leg next to another blade. “I can get you there.” He righted himself and led them out of the shadows and onto the sidewalk. “But there’s a catch.”
“What kind of catch?” Hawes asked, walking close at his side.
“How do you feel about riding tandem?”
Hawes followed the direction of Dante’s fond gaze to a rainbow parade of fiberglass crotch-rockets. Surely not. No—there, right at the end, pearlescent midnight-blue and gleaming chrome… “The Harley?”
Dante smirked. “The Harley.”
Hawes’s gut clenched, again. Damn, this was gonna be a thing.
Chapter Four
Hawes had grown up in San Francisco, had been born and bred in its hills and valleys. He’d learned at an early age how to turn a car’s wheels when parked on a slope and how to perfectly time the release of the clutch and the press of the gas so as not to roll the wrong way down Jones Street. He would never, however, get used to cruising his hometown’s hills on a motorcycle, not his sister’s and certainly not Dante Perry’s. And he most definitely would not get used t
o riding tandem, when one wrong bump could jostle him loose and send him flailing to his death.
By the time they rumbled onto the stone drive of the sage-green Victorian with its high-pitched roofs and bright-white trim, Hawes had mentally uttered more Hail Marys than he had the Sunday after he’d blown the homecoming king. He wished he could say he’d been holding tight to Dante as an excuse to map out every nook and cranny of his ripped torso, but regrettably, he hadn’t thought beyond a death grip for survival until after he’d climbed off the bike. At which point, managing to stand on his embarrassingly unsteady legs took precedence.
Assassinate people for a living, no problem. Run a multimillion-dollar company before age thirty, can do. Ride a motorcycle in San Francisco, fuck no.
He gingerly curled one hand into a fist and leaned with his knuckles against the knotted cypress next to the driveway. By contrast, Dante the Confident dismounted the bike with the same casual ease he’d displayed all night. Hawes admired and hated him. The latter was easier to speak too, sarcasm as good a weapon as any. “Did you really think a Hog was the best idea here?”
“It was my dad’s,” Dante said, stealing another of Hawes’s weapons. “He taught me to ride a bike on these hills long before I learned to drive a car on them.” He slid a hand over Hawes’s lower back, the weight more steadying than it had any right to be. “Never been on a bike?”
“I have,” Hawes answered. “Sister’s Ducati. Not my favorite thing.”
“You don’t say.” There was humor in Dante’s eyes, and also heat, same as in his touch. If Hawes didn’t know any better—
“Take your hand off him.”
Dante instantly dropped his hand. Hawes felt the loss almost as keenly as the earlier blow to his back, which was making itself known again now that fear and adrenaline were wearing off.
“You good?” Dante asked, not touching him but remaining close.
“Yes.” No, but it was better to lie than agitate the owner of the cool, crisp voice that had sliced through the darkness. “I’m fine, Hena,” Hawes called up toward the house. He didn’t need to look to know his sister was waiting on her perch, back to one of the porch columns, legs stretched out in front of her, tonight’s weapon of choice—Ka-Bar or Sig Sauer—resting on her thigh. Hawes hoped her fingers hadn’t twitched too much at the slip of her nickname.
“You can leave now,” she said to Dante.
“I’m not leaving until he’s home safely.”
“He is home.”
Hawes cleared his throat. “I don’t think that’s what—” His interjection was cut off by a flash of black leather, pale skin, and long blonde hair as Helena vaulted off the porch and landed in front of them.
“I know what he meant, Big H.” Barefoot, knees absorbing the minimal impact her petite frame made, Helena had landed quiet as a cat, barely making a sound. She rarely ever did. Silent and deadly was her specialty, and right then, her ice-blue eyes were glaring daggers at Dante. “And he’s not your concern.” She spun the knife in her hand, like Jodie had earlier, and a shiver raced up Hawes’s spine.
“Go,” he said to Dante, sensing Helena on a precipice. She’d obviously gotten wind of what had happened in the alley, no doubt also knew about the complication at the warehouse, and had gone into hyperprotective mode. “Go,” he repeated when Dante hesitated. Dark eyes swung to his, and Hawes held his gaze, projecting the confidence that tonight’s events had dulled. Now at home, or rather, the home he’d grown up in, he was determined to wrestle things back under his control. “I’ve got this, and I’ve got your number.”
“Use it.” Dante pivoted and swaggered back to his bike.
In the restaurant earlier, when Dante had walked away from his table, Hawes had been distracted by unknowns, debating whether the PI was friend or foe. He still wasn’t sure, but this time, it didn’t distract Hawes from checking out Dante’s ass. It filled out a pair of Levi’s nicely, no debate there. Dante threw a leg over the bike, straddling the seat, and Hawes cursed himself again for not enjoying the ride more.
“Nine out of ten,” Helena whispered at his side. “Grabbable for sure.” She bit her bottom lip, humming with approval, and made a squeezing motion with her free hand.
Hawes breathed easier. “What’s it take for a ten out of ten?”
“Need to see it out of the jeans.” She bumped his shoulder. “But I’m guessing you’re calling dibs on that.”
The Harley roared to life, and Dante shot him a parting smirk. He was sexier than he had any right to be in double denim, that rock-star hair streaming in the wind behind him. Yeah, Hawes called dibs.
And besides… “What happened to Danielle?” Hawes asked as they started up the steps.
Helena shrugged one shoulder.
“Or Eric?”
She shrugged the other.
No one was ever good enough for his little sister. Or maybe she didn’t think she was good enough for them. Though that would be ridiculous. She was gorgeous, a talented lawyer by day, and there was no one Hawes would rather have by his side in a fight at night. Anyone would be lucky to have her, but whoever that person was, they’d never have all of her.
Something Hawes understood all too well. Not everyone got lucky like their parents and grandparents, or like Holt and Amelia. His own bedmates had come and gone, frustrated that Hawes was holding back. For their protection, and his family’s. But there was always a red line that separated him from his lovers. He hadn’t bothered to toe that line recently, staying far away from it by sticking to one-night stands and club hookups. Dante, however, knew who he was, knew about their family and the business behind their business.
“Brax called,” Helena said, confirming the heads-up Hawes had suspected.
“And?” Hawes prompted.
“Told him you were already home.” She grinned over her shoulder as she pushed open the front door. “Better go get our stories straight before he gets here to see for himself.”
Hawes hissed through clenched teeth as the cold lidocaine cream tickled the abraded skin of his palms. The wires hadn’t broken the skin, just left deep, angry grooves, but professional examination, treatment, and bandaging by their very own surgical nurse was insisted upon. He grunted his displeasure all around.
“Oh, come on.” His sister-in-law’s green eyes twinkled. “I’ve patched you up from far worse injuries.”
“Like that knife wound to your left shoulder,” Helena said from where she sat across the table.
Hawes flinched in remembered pain, then flinched again as very real pain rippled out from his throbbing back. “The knife wound you gave me?”
Helena paused in her petting of the family’s giant Siberian cat to blow him a kiss. Amelia’s demeanor, however, was no longer joking. She rested a hip against the dining room table next to him. “Fess up, Big H. Where else are you injured?”
He contemplated lying, but this was the person who, when she wasn’t on duty at the hospital, tortured answers out of the organization’s targets. Who eight months ago had pushed a ten-pound baby out of her willowy, five-foot-eight frame. Amelia scared him almost as much as Helena did.
“Took a pistol whip to the back.” He held out his index finger, pretending it was his spine, and with his other fist, mimicked Ray bringing the gun down on it.
Cringing, Helena shifted in her chair, and Daisy skittered off her lap, joining the tabby, Tulip, in the corner to play.
“I’m going to need to check your back,” Amelia told him.
He nodded and tried to extricate himself from his jacket, cursing as he made his back ache worse.
“Easy,” Amelia said. “Let me help.”
Out of his jacket, Hawes unbuttoned his wrinkled dress shirt far enough to lower it to his elbows, exposing most of his back.
Amelia rotated him sideways on the chair and stepped fully behind him. “Ouch!” she rightly assessed. “That’s gonna hurt like a bitch tomorrow.” Again, spot on, Nurse Madigan.
As her f
ingertips gently probed the injured area, Hawes distracted himself with the purpose Helena had mentioned on their way up the steps outside. “Basics,” he said, holding up his bandaged hands. “How do I explain these to Kane?”
Helena reached into Amelia’s toolbox full of medical supplies and took out a roll of bandages. She tore off two strips and wrapped one around each of her hands, tucking the loose ends under her palms. “Combat practice.”
“Or you were amusing Lily,” Amelia said. “Baby girl got a cut on her hand today.”
Hawes whipped his head around. “She okay?”
“She’s fine. Just a scrape.” Amelia swatted his shoulder. “Stop being the overprotective uncle.”
Chuckling, he looked down again at his hands, then over at Helena’s. “As likely an excuse— Fuck!” Hawes cursed as Amelia prodded the exact right—or wrong—spot on his back. “I’d say you found it.”
“Stay,” Amelia ordered him, like she would her crawling daughter, and disappeared into the adjacent kitchen.
Left alone in the dining room with Helena, Hawes bore the full brunt of his sister’s icy-eyed glare. “I’m waiting for an explanation,” she said.
“I’d prefer to give it just once.”
“Fine. I’ll holler for Holt to come down.”
“No, you won’t,” Amelia said, reentering the room. “He’s in the zone.”
“Lily’s knocked out, then?” Hawes said.
“Like a light.” Amelia smiled the smile of a happy mother. It grew wider as she showed off her bounty—a Ziploc of ice and a baby sling. “We’ll go to them.”
Ten minutes later, the bag of ice strapped to his back with the bright pink sling, Hawes followed Helena and Amelia upstairs. At the second-floor landing, he noticed only one side of the floor was lit, the multicolored glass from Helena’s Tiffany lamps casting a kaleidoscope of color on the common area walls and luring the cats away from their feet. His grandparents’ master on the opposite end of the floor was dark.