Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
The truth is I don’t want to see him.
At the nurses’ station on Eagle’s floor, a woman in soft blue scrubs looks up. I haven’t seen her before. She’s got a dimple on only one cheek. It’s unique. Attractive. Does nothing for me.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m just going in to see my brother.”
She types on her keyboard. “And your brother is?”
“Eagle Bellamy. I’ve been here before. Yesterday.”
She checks a chart. “He’s awake. He needs calm. No agitation.” She raises her eyebrows.
“Yeah, I get it. Like I said, I was here yesterday. And, also like I said, he’s my brother.”
She looks me up and down, her lips pursed slightly. “If his heart rate spikes, I come in and I end the visit. Understood?”
“Of course I understand.” I resist an eyeroll. “Is my mother with him?”
“Mrs. Bellamy hasn’t visited yet today.”
“Okay. See you.”
Eagle is propped up, pale against the sheets, eyes half-lidded. The monitor next to him ticks off his heartbeats.
“Hey, E,” I say.
“Hawk. You’re back.” His voice cracks a little.
I drag the chair closer. “It’s the next morning. You got overwhelmed last night. A nurse gave you the pharmaceutical equivalent of a brick to the head.”
He blinks slowly. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” I lean in. “You were trying to tell me something.”
He scrunches his forehead. “Was I?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure I’m the one who should be in this bed?” He attempts a smile. “You look like hell rolled up in a sleeping bag.”
I scoff. “Funny you should use the word sleep in that sentence. I haven’t gotten any.”
“It shows, brother.” He cranes his neck upward an inch. “What’s going on with you?”
Yeah. Not the time to clue Eagle in on everything. “I’m good. Just a lot going on. Nothing for you to worry about.” I pick up his water from the night table. “Drink?”
He nods. I hold the straw to his mouth. He sips.
When he settles back, I take a breath like I’m stepping onto thin ice. “I need to circle back to what you were trying to say before. Dad and the D—”
His heart rate ticks up. The monitor betrays him with beeps that come too close together.
Fuck. All I need is for Nurse Ratched to come bellowing in here and end my visit.
I lift a hand. “Easy. It’s just me. We go slow.”
He stares at the ceiling for a beat, then drags his gaze back to mine. “You know I couldn’t get over it,” he says softly. “Dad trying to…you know. And then he couldn’t even do that right.”
His mouth twists. I want to say Don’t. Don’t sugar coat it. Dad tried to off himself because of some terrible dark secret and he fucked it up.
But that’s for me.
Eagle still thinks Dad is an upstanding citizen.
“And I kept thinking,” he continues. “If he’s alive, and he’s awake, why isn’t he saying anything? Why can’t he tell us what happened?”
“He has brain damage, Eagle. His head isn’t working right.”
“I know. I get that. But if it’s so damned important, why didn’t he tell us before he tried to…do what he did?”
I have no answer for my brother.
But he keeps talking.
“So I broke into his office.”
I drop my jaw. The fuck? When?
“Eagle—”
He shrugs with only half his shoulders. “Mom hasn’t allowed anyone in there since he pulled that trigger. But she’s been so worried about Dad and spending most of the time here, so I found a window.”
“How’d you get in?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Picked the lock.”
“The fuck? Eagle…”
“Don’t look so surprised. You know me. I sold drugs back in the day, for God’s sake. Is it so outrageous that I might have learned how to pick locks? It’s fucking easy, by the way.”
I tamp down the urge to lay into my brother. Hell, I’m no paragon of virtue lately. Somehow my high moral standard has been compromised all to hell.
“Right.” I bite back a snide comment. “What’d you find?”
“At first, nothing. Files where you’d expect them to be. Contracts. Tax returns. Paper that makes lawyers rich. But then I started thinking like a guy who wants to hide something from other guys who want to find it.”
“Which you are,” I say.
He smirks. “Which I am. Second drawer down, right side. There’s a false bottom.” His gaze sharpens. “I nearly missed it. But I didn’t. Turns out it was cheap wood. I popped it with a knife.”
The monitor beeps a hair faster. I glance at it. “Take a deep breath and then keep going.”
“Old statements,” he says. “Way back. Bellamy Ranch got into some trouble when we were all little.”
“What kind of trouble?” I ask.
“I wasn’t able to figure that out from what I found. But I learned that Dad burned through most of Grandma’s Cooper Steel money.” He swallows. “All of it, Hawk. I don’t know how. It’s not in the statements. But it’s gone.”