Page 39 of Caged Bird

Smoke seeped out from beneath the front door, and flames burned through the windows. A smoke alarm pierced through the quiet suburban neighborhood.

Someone would have called 911 by now. By the time the fire department showed up, the place would be well alight.

I clenched my fingers around the steering wheel, remembering the way Spider had just fucking left me for dead.

It wasn’t even surprising. This was what happened when you ran with weasels. These guys didn’t have my back. They weren’t my friends or my family, the way Eddie had tried to make out they would be. They weren’t loyal to me.

Fuck, I doubted they were even loyal to Eddie. Which was why he was smart enough not to trust them. He’d called me in because he knew all too well these assholes would turn on him the first chance they got.

Flashing lights passed as we drove back through town. Fire engines flying by in a blur of red-and-blue lights and wailing noise. The police station came into view again, just up ahead, cop cars peeling out of the station, all turning in our direction.

The first whizzed by, and I let out a breath of disappointment.

I didn’t care if I went to jail. If someone had reported the truck outside a now-burning house, maybe I’d be taken in.Questioned. Given an opportunity to tell someone what was happening with Fawn and my mom. The police could coordinate something between branches, surely? Get both of them to safety.

The idea settled in my head.

But the second police car whizzed by as well, no attention given to a truck full of men, all their sole aim getting to the fire.

My heart sank.

They clearly weren’t looking for us.

“Holy fuck,” Santos murmured, twisting as another truck hurtled by. “That fire must have gotten big quick for them to send so many.”

I didn’t give a fuck about the fire.

That didn’t matter to me anymore.

All that mattered was their distraction.

And while they were too busy watching the fire trucks race toward the scene of the crime, I put my foot down on the gas just a little harder.

And drove the truck straight into the third police car pulling out from the driveway.

12

FAWN

He knew. Zane knew I wasn’t really Eddie’s happily married wife, just living a peaceful life in the country. Eddie had told me I had to pretend, to make him believe I wanted this. That I loved Eddie and that I was here of my own free will.

But when Zane had come into my room in the middle of the night, when he’d touched me gently for the first time in so long, I’d lost all ability to act.

I’d lost the ability to do anything other than feel.

His hands sliding up my legs. Grasping my thighs. Opening me up to him and burying his face in my pussy until I’d fallen apart, gasping and sobbing into a pillow in realization I wasn’t as broken as I’d thought.

I’d just needed the right person to touch me.

He’d made me feel things last night I hadn’t felt in so long.

And then he’d gone off with Eddie’s crew this morning, leading the way just like his older brother did. Reminding me once again they were cut from the same cloth.

Hours later, when the sun was high in the midday sky, shouts from the front of the house had me abandoning the laundry and hurrying to the door to see what was going on.

Eddie had left his now favorite position in the recliner and had hobbled out on one crutch. I lingered in the shadows of the porch, peering out through the screen at the commotion. Zane and Eddie’s crew faced off, all of them shouting about something I couldn’t make out with them all talking over the top of each other. Something about money and repairs.

Eddie let out a short, sharp whistle that cut through the argument. “Does someone want to tell me what the fuck happened?”

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