I stepped back, my gaze on the bed where Hawk lay, motionless, as the machines around him shrieked.
Two people in scrubs rushed in, pushing a cart covered in machines and instruments I couldn’t identify.
My heart hammered in my chest as another person in scrubs — this time a younger man — entered the fray. Now I couldn’t even see Hawk through the people gathered around his bed.
I took another step back and felt strong hands grip my upper arms.
“Come on,” Bram said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Hawk…”
“We’re not doing him any good here,” Bram said. “We need to let them work.”
I made it into the hall before I crumpled.
8
BRAM
It was early,the sun just starting to warm everything up as I navigated the Humvee up the mountain. Any day now I’d wake up to find frost on the balcony, Maeve’s pumpkin muffins scenting the loft with all the spices she used to make her mouthwatering baked goods.
What a difference a year made.
A little over a year ago Maeve had tried to smuggle her gun into the Hunt. We’d chosen her as prey, thinking it would be fun to tame her, having no idea that we’d be wrapped around her finger less than twelve months later.
I shook my head as I turned onto an unmarked side road.
The fucking Hunt.
It had started as a game, a way to accommodate our basest of urges — to fuck, to kill — and I’d happily given it all up just to have Maeve in my bed every night.
Even more crazy? The Hunt had tamed the Hawks too.
No, not the Hunt: Cassie.
My baby sister.
And Cassie taming them was the only explanation for where we found ourselves now, because why else would the Hawks —the fuckingHawks— throw themselves on a fucking grenade for my sister?
I sighed with frustration as I followed the unmarked road to a little-known trailhead. I hadn’t wanted to leave Cassie at the hospital, but she wasn’t alone. Maeve was there, and Poe and Remy, following Cassie around.
She hated it, but I’d made it clear that 24/7 protection was nonnegotiable. Between the accident that had almost killed her two months earlier and the ambush at the paper mill with the Hawks, I wasn’t taking any chances.
Not until I figured out what the fuck was going on.
And Cassie wasn’t the only one under my protection. We’d stationed a couple of guys at each of the Hawks’ rooms too. I could hardly fucking believe it, but my job was Cassie’s happiness, and the last couple of days had made one thing crystal fucking clear: Cassie wasn’t going to be happy if something happened to even one of the Hawks.
Fuck.
I parked the car at the trailhead next to a familiar black Audi and got out, then started down the trail.
It wasn’t my favorite spot in the Blackwell Preserve — that was a secret I’d only shared with Maeve — but it was still nice. Birds sang in the trees, the leaves almost at peak fall color, and somewhere up ahead I heard the rush of the waterfall.
I followed the sound to a clearing where water fell over the side of a small ledge into an amber pool, its color unique to the Blackwell Preserve because of the minerals that laced the river water around Blackwell Falls.
It wasn’t the eponymous Blackwell Falls, just one of many smaller waterfalls that were hidden like jewels in the Blackwell Preserve, but it was peaceful, and even more important, isolated.
Adam Rourke was sitting on a boulder near the water, trying not to get his shoes muddy, a fresh fade shaved into his light brown hair.