“How long have you known Brick?”
She raises her brows as though she’s confused by my question. “What happened between you two?”
I suck in a deep breath, letting it out slowly as I lay the chicken out on the grill.
She’s talking like she’s entitled, likeI owe hersomething, like she didn’t just roll up onmydoorstep, asking formyhelp. My pulse speeds, and heat flushes through me as my muscles tense. I’m done with this shit. She’s remembering more than she’s letting on.
“You want to know what Brick did?” I ask, closing the top to the grill and turning toward her, my fists clenched, my jaw tight. “He took my baby sister… my twenty-one-year-old sist—”
“Hey buddy,” Hawk says with a pause, pulling open the patio door. “Everything okay?”
My lips flatten and curl. “No! Fuck no. Everything is really fucking jacked, actually. This girl obviously came from Brick’s boat. She knows him. Fuck, she probably had something to do with Julie’s—” I bite back the words before they swallow me and notice everyone has gone silent.
I could turn around and apologize. I could act like I didn’t mean what I said, except I do.
“If Brick did something bad to your sister,” Lexi says, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t—”
My brows raise and my fists clench. The mere mention of my sister from her lips is making my blood boil.
“Enjoy your dinner,” I growl, stalking back into the house.
Hawk tries to stop me, but I slide the patio door closed before he finishes his sentence.
“Fuck, sounds pretty bad out there,” Kane says, tipping back a beer. He’s on his laptop again.
“Yeah, well… I may have just hit my breaking point.”
He looks up. “It’s about time. You’ve been holding this shit in for too long. You think the girl deserves it though?”
My stare hardens toward Kane as I crack open a cold one myself.
He throws up his hands and straightens his face as though I’m holding a gun, “Sorry… just saying.”
We’ve been friends since boot camp, he knows better than to poke me right now. Maybe I am losing it. Fuck! This week was supposed to be a reprieve from all this shit.
As silence fills the room, I tip back the bottle and suck down the cool, amber liquid. Maybe this is what I need, some time to get my head on straight, think this whole fucking thing through. Maybe Lexi really is a victim. Maybe she was taken and she’s trying to get free. I mean, really… what would a girl like Lexi be doing with Brick? Then again, what was my sister doing with him? In the end, she was moving drugs for him, and I’m pretty sure she’d have done whatever was asked of her. We came from a good neighborhood, she had an education, she was an emergency room nurse for fuck’s sake. She had a future. That’s how deep this fucking asshole got her.
The thought tightens my throat.
“I’m thinking we should head back to the mainland after this storm,” Kane says, not realizing I’m in the middle of a meltdown. “Lexi is scared and we could use the support of the MC if Brick is still lurking around. Besides, who do you think she is? I mean, if she knows Brick, you don’t think she’s his girl, do you? That’ll make things a hell of a lot more complicated.”
I shake my head. “Your guess is as good as mine, man. You’re right though, we should head back to the mainland at first sight of a pressure build again.” I look toward the meter on the back wall of the cabin and notice it’s dropped dramatically in the last hour, which doesn’t fare well for the cool twenty-four-hour storm I was hoping for. It is hurricane season, but usually we don’t see a storm like this early.
“We should radio into the mainland and see what’s out there. We don’t want to be caught off guard,” I say, standing from the stool to make my way toward the transceiver.
As I do, the patio door slides open behind me, and I hear two sets of feet patter in as a rumble of thunder rolls over the cabin.
Fuck, I really don’t want to be stuck here with this girl for days while a storm blows through.
“Guys,” Hawk says, his tone ominous. “Lexi just remembered something, and I think you’re going to want to sit down for this.”
I don’t bother to sit, instead I busy myself with the call to the mainland, watching from the corner of my eye as Hawk guides Lexi to the couch, his hand on her back comfortingly as they sit. Of course he’d buy this act. One bat of her lashes, and I knew he was a goner.
I dial into the station for the coast guard, ask for a weather update, and wait for a response as I listen to Lexi’s next memory spill from her lips like a vintage Hollywood star on the scene of her first big movie.
“Look,” she says, glancing up toward the guys, then away again. “I know you’re having trouble trusting me, and you should. You don’t know me and this Brick guy… he sounds like he’s done a lot of bad things. But I was talking to Hawk, and he mentioned his dog, Tortoise. He was going on and on about how the dog had been sick last year and I remembered I work with animals.”
It’s a good thing I’m way over here, because I have some real shit things to say right now. One of them being how that’s not a meeting worthy memory.