Page 81 of Out for Blood
HAWK
I hadno idea where Bram was taking me, a thought that would have put the fear of god into me a few months ago.
It still made me nervous, but now I was reasonably certain I wasn’t going to end up as food for the animals in the Blackwell Preserve.
Not by Bram’s hand anyway.
Plus, he didn’t have his mask, and word was the Butchers always wore their masks when they killed.
“Not sure I’ve ever been here,” I said, when Bram pulled the Hummer into a small dirt road.
The car was slick, a matte black EV that was as silent as Bram himself.
“It’s by design.” His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, his big hands wrapped lazily around the bottom of the steering wheel.
I’d been surprised — and confused — when he’d called to tell me he was picking me up, especially after the break-in at the house the night before.
Cassie had called to tell him about it and they’d argued for a good twenty minutes, Bram ordering her to come stay with him at the loft where it was safe, Cassie insisting she was safe with us.
And she was. We’d made sure of that, taking turns staying up through the night, watching the doors and windows while Cassie slept even though it seemed pretty obvious the break-in had been a message.
Stop asking questions. Stop digging.
Rafe, Nolan, and Jude were at the house now, resetting the security system while contractors replaced the broken windows, Jagger and Vigo with Cassie every minute.
“Your security system needs an upgrade,” Bram said, pulling into a spot next to a black Audi at the trailhead.
“Already working on it,” I said. “But no upgrade is going to head off a smash job.”
I’d recognized the break-in for what it was because it was our specialty: the equivalent of a smash and grab minus the theft. An alarm only worked if the people breaking in cared about alerting the police.
If they cared about being caught.
Whoever had broken into the house the night before obviously felt invincible.
“I’m going to tear Kaprolov’s head off when we find him,” Bram muttered, climbing out of the car.
He wasn’t the only one. I was going to end that motherfucker for putting his goons on Cassie.
I stepped out of the car and walked around to meet Bram on the other side. “We?”
“You heard me,” Bram said. “Cassie’s my sister, my blood. I already let her down by not listening to her sooner. I’m not going to do it again, not going to rest until Kaprolov is in pieces so small his dog won’t recognize him. If that means working together, so be it.”
I followed him down an unmarked trail, my mind spinning. I wasn’t sure I even wanted Bram to help us with Kaprolov. He was Cassie’s brother, and his presence came with all kinds of baggage.
Then again, I had my own baggage, my own attachment to his little sister.
None of us were objective.
Plus, I wasn’t sure anyone had ever told Bram Montgomery no and lived to tell the tale.
I didn’t ask questions as we made our way down the trail. I was along for the ride, and like it or not, that meant trusting Bram even though he’d wanted to kill me — us — just a couple months earlier.
The trees were mostly bare of a leaves now, a few stragglers hanging on in the cool November light. Clouds hung like a lead blanket overhead, a harbinger of the winter to come.
We’d been walking for about fifteen minutes when I heard water rushing through the trees. We weren’t near the Blackwell River but there were thousands of creeks and streams that ran all through the preserve, and we emerged from the trees into a clearing, a narrow river tumbling over rocks.
I was surprised to see a man there, perched almost delicately on a large boulder near the water, his feet held at an uncomfortable angle as he tried to keep his shoes — expensive from the looks of it — from getting dirty.
