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)
Funny.
I’m not afraid of dying.
Only of leaving Hawk having to live without knowing why I left.
31
HAWK
I wake to sunlight slicing across the bed
Mmm. Dani…
I turn, reach for her.
And then I jerk upward.
Dani.
She’s gone.
“Baby?” I rise and walk to the bathroom.
She’s not there.
I walk around the house, stark naked, my pulse pounding. Where the hell is she? I head back to the bedroom to put some clothes on so I can go outside.
That’s when I see it.
The note. I grab it and sit down on the bed.
The handwriting is small, hurried. Three lines. The ink is smeared where a tear fell.
God. Her tears break me.
Don’t worry about me.
I will be fine.
I meant it when I said I love you.
The room tilts. My pulse stutters. I fold the note into my fist until the paper creases. I don’t read it again. I don’t need to. Those three sentences are burned into my brain for life.
God, what have you done, Dani?
I grab my phone and call her. The line goes straight to voicemail.
I try a text.
No dots.
My hands jitter as if I’ve been holding a rattlesnake, and I dial Vinnie before I can think better of it.
He answers on the second ring. “Yeah? Where’s Dani? She’s with you, right?” His voice is hurried.
“No,” I say frantically. “I mean, she was. We were together last night. We fell asleep…” I stop to inhale, inhale, inhale…
“Stop it,” he says. “You’re hyperventilating.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I try to calm myself. Right. Like that’s possible.
“Check your security feeds,” Vinnie says. “I’ll check mine.”
I nod, knowing full well he can’t see me.
“Okay.”
“In a minute,” Vinnie says. “Slow the hell down. Sit down. Don’t drive anywhere yet.” He inhales. “Fuck. She wouldn’t have…”
“Wouldn’t have what?” I demand. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She promised she wouldn’t go…”
“Go where?” I clamp my hands into fists. “Go where, Vinnie?”
“I don’t know.” He gulps audibly. “Yesterday we found another message on Belinda’s computer. It said, ‘If you want your starter back, give me dessert.’”
I close my eyes. The words fall into place so quickly my head reels. Starter means Belinda. Dessert means Dani. It’s clear as fucking day. My throat goes dry. “No,” I say. “That can’t be right. She wouldn’t…”
Vinnie sighs. “She would. She’d do anything for Belinda. Damn it!” I hear his fist crack through something. “I told her. No trades. No fucking trades!”
Silence on the phone. Until—
“We have to stay calm,” Vinnie says. “Otherwise we’ll be no good to her.”
My mouth is dry. I picture Dani, the way she looked at me last night as if I was her world, the way she curled into me and said she loved me. I imagine that same woman walking into a trap. My hands close into fists until the knuckles whiten.
“Where is she?” I ask again, and now the demand swallows the fear.
“Check your footage,” he says again. “I’ll check ours. Get over here. This will be command central. I’ve got access to the dark web. Download everything you’ve got and get over here. Now.”
I end the call without saying goodbye and race, still naked, into my office where I fire up my system and check all the security footage, beginning at midnight last night.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then—
Out the front door around three a.m.
My Dani.
My sweet Daniela.
She walks west, toward the dirt road until she disappears from view.
My heart nearly stops.
“Why, Dani? Why?” I slam my fists down on the keyboard. “We would have protected you. We would have gotten Belinda back and protected you too. I swear it!”
My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It’s fraught with fear and anguish.
And it hits me.
I’ve never been this scared in my life.
Not when my father shot me. Not when he killed Ted.
Not in the barn eight years ago when Eagle shot Diego Vega.
Not when I thought Eagle OD’d because of my negligence.
And not when I woke up in Reyes’s house tied to a fucking chair.
Never.
Because the thing I fear the most in my life is losing the woman who’s come to mean so much to me. The woman I love.
Daniela Agudelo.
I download the footage and send it to Vinnie. Then I throw on my jeans, shirt, and boots, lurch out of the house, grab my keys, climb into my truck, hands on the wheel so tight they ache.
“I will not lose her,” I say out loud. “I will not.”
When I arrive at Vinnie’s, Raven is in tears and Vinnie’s camped out in his office, typing on his keyboard like a maniac.
“Anything?” I ask.
He shakes his head slowly, his eyelids twitching. “She came home last night after she left your place. She must have had her gate clicker in her purse because I didn’t get a security call. A rideshare dropped her off, and she came in through her private entrance out back. Then she took her Mustang.”