19. Kara
19
KARA
I jumped at the slam of Hawk’s bedroom door and then quickly glanced over at Queenie.
She smoothed her hand down the back of Hayley Jade’s head and gave Hawk’s door a dirty look. “There’s babies asleep here! I’m going to kill that boy if he doesn’t learn some manners.” She cringed in my direction. “Sorry, honey. That was insensitive.”
I didn’t answer, just stared at my daughter, who’d been curled up on Queenie’s ample lap, her head resting on the older woman’s chest since I’d come to.
I didn’t even have space inside me to be upset that another woman was yet again doing a better job of soothing my child than I could. All I could think about was my sister. Someone hurting her. The pain and fear she must have felt that grew until it felt like my own. Panic threatened to overwhelm me, and I had to gaze around the room, at the familiar faces, and remind myself that for right now at least, we were safe.
But Alice …
I focused on Hayley Jade harder, taking in the curve of her back and the golden blond of her hair. “You used to hold her like that when she was a baby,” I said to Queenie.
She paused for a second and then nodded. “I guess I did. Held a lot of babies this way over the years. Yours. Bliss’s. Rebel’s.”
“But not your own?”
She shook her head. “Naw. I’m happy to be the honorary Mamaw, but having any of my own wasn’t in the cards for me.”
There was a slightly wistful tone in her voice, and I felt bad for asking.
I knew all too well what it felt like to be reminded you didn’t have the family you’d hoped for.
Hawk came out of his room, a cream hoodie beneath his Slayers’ club jacket. He had his boots on and his helmet in his hand.
His gaze met mine, and I quickly turned away.
Despite everything that had happened since, his bedroom was a reminder of me standing there, obeying his commands to watch him come.
I wanted the earth to swallow me up whole.
It was hard to tell with the scruff along his jaw and cheeks, but for a second, I thought maybe Hawk was blushing too.
But then he turned to Fang and acted like I wasn’t even in the room. “Cops want Rebel and her sister down at the morgue for a viewing of the Jane Doe they found. War wants you, me, Ice, and Aloha to escort them.”
Rebel glanced up, her eyes filled with tears. “I can do it. Kara doesn’t need to be the one to go. ”
Except I already knew I did. There was a slow churning nausea in my belly, and it wouldn’t ease until I’d seen for myself. “No. I want to go too. I’m sorry about fainting. I’m fine now. I can do it.”
Rebel grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “We don’t know it’s her. It might not be. She could be waiting at home for us right now.”
But we both knew she wasn’t. Vaughn and Kian had taken their four kids home about fifteen minutes earlier. They would have called if Kyle and Alice had been sitting in their living room watching movies and chowing down on snacks from Rebel’s pantry.
I took my feet off of Hawk’s pillows, still astonished the man had let me use them like that when it was so terribly disrespectful. But he didn’t seem to care at all.
Fang put his arm around Rebel’s shoulders and pulled her tight, her tiny frame dwarfed by his near six and a half feet. “I don’t want you doing this. Your morning sickness always gets worse in the night, and we don’t know what we’re going to find down there. I can ID the body with Kara.”
She stared up at him, adoration in her eyes. “I love you so much, but if you don’t already know what my answer will be after five years, then I’m going to question our whole relationship.”
He sighed heavily and guided her to the door. “It was worth a shot.” He glanced back over his shoulder at me, and then beyond to where Hawk walked with Ice and Aloha. “We’ll take the van. No one on bikes, especially not the women. Just in case.”
I looked up. “Just in case of what?”
“Nothin’,” Hawk answered quickly from behind me. “ Just safer if we’re all in the one vehicle. Too fucking cold to ride bikes tonight anyway.”
Which wasn’t really true because I knew they rode bikes in all sorts of weather.
Which told me they were expecting danger.
My fingers trembled, and I tucked them into the pockets of my thick, woolen skirt so nobody would notice.
Hawk grumbled when Fang lifted Rebel into the front seat like she was a tiny porcelain doll and then kissed her lips before moving around to the driver’s side. Ice slid open the back door of the unmarked van and held a hand out to me.
“Need a hand getting in, Kara?” he asked politely. “It’s a bit of a step.”
Holding his hand was the last thing I wanted. Ice had been nothing but polite, but I didn’t want any man touching me.
Hawk made a weird noise behind me.
I glanced back at him. “Sorry? I didn’t catch that.”
He coughed and cleared his throat. “What? I didn’t say anything. Go on. Get in.”
But he glared at Ice like he’d committed a mortal sin.
Ice screwed up his face, a silent question of “what did I do?” written all over his expression.
Hawk shouldered him out of the way and got in after me.
I took the seat in the very back row of the van, farthest from the sliding door and from the driver’s seat. I put my seat belt on but then made myself as small as I could, hunching in on myself and staring out the window into the darkness beyond while the others took their seats and the van rumbled to life.
Every mile that passed beneath the van’s tires increased the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It spread up my throat and across my tongue until the bitter tang of fear was all I could taste.
It was almost a relief when Fang pulled the van into the empty parking lot, the two cop cars turning in behind us. I stared at the squat, rectangular building, a shiver running down my spine at the thought my sister’s lifeless body could be inside.
I pushed my palms together and doubled over, pressing them to my forehead and mumbling the Lord’s Prayer beneath my breath, the words barely legible above the squeak of my seat as I rocked on it.
“Please Lord, don’t let it be Alice. Please Lord, keep her in your embrace and return her safely to me. Please Lord, forgive me my sins. Don’t punish my sister for the mistakes I’ve made.”
The van was silent.
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me but I didn’t care.
Aloha whispered something, but all I heard was Hawk snap and tell him to shut up. With the addition of his favorite expletive, that was.
It was clear to me Hawk didn’t want to be here. That War had forced him to be my chauffeur, and for that I was sorry. He’d already done enough for me tonight. He didn’t need to witness my breakdowns as well.
But nobody said anything more until I was done with my prayers. I dredged up the strength to stand, and Hawk held the door open for me .
He didn’t try to touch me again, the way he had earlier.
But of course, now there was no reason for him to check my pulse.
I got out, and Rebel linked her arm through mine, Fang flanking her left, while Hawk flanked my right. The two men moved like they were in an action movie, heads swiveling side to side, searching for danger. Talking with their eyes above our heads, communicating with each other in a way only men who’d worked together for a long time could.
Ice was positioned ahead of us, Aloha behind.
The four men should have made me feel safe, and yet my trembling grew worse with every step. I didn’t hear the cops talking with the medical examiner. I stood numbly, walking only when told to walk, my brain desperately trying to check out from reality.
But none of it stopped the shaking.
The medical examiner gave us a small smile and then led us down a short hall and stopped at the doorway to a room marked “viewing.” “I just want to prepare you for what you’ll see on the other side of this door. It’s a very simple room, with a metal table in the middle. The body has already been placed there and is currently covered. When we go in, we’ll need to uncover the body so you, the family, can make an ID. Do you understand?”
I twisted my fingers around themselves, trying to get the shaking to stop. Rebel looked at me. I nodded. I just needed to get this over with. I couldn’t stand not knowing a minute longer.
But taking those steps into that room was the hardest thing I’d ever forced my feet to do. Everything inside me screamed to turn and run, to pretend this wasn’t happening.
To go back to the commune and beg for forgiveness.
Nothing good happened inside the commune walls.
But nothing good happened outside them either. There was evil everywhere, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t hide from it. This just proved it.
The mortician tucked his fingers into the white sheet and pulled it back, exposing just the face of the dead woman beneath.
Beside me, Rebel froze. “Oh God. I’m going to be sick.”
She spun on her heel and pushed her way out of the room, the sounds of her gagging filtering back until the door swung closed behind her.
The medical examiner grimaced at Rebel’s departure and then reached out a hand to touch mine in comfort I didn’t want.
Hawk stepped between us. “Don’t touch her. Don’t lay a single fucking finger on her.”
I flinched at his sharp tone.
The medical examiner did, too. “I…um. I’m sorry. Kara, is that your sister?”
I stared at Alice’s face. At the lack of color in her cheeks. At the vaguely blue tinge of her lips. It was her.
But at the same time, it wasn’t. Everything that had made her Alice was gone. The mischievous spark in her eyes. The sassy tilt of her smile. The warmth of her touch.
But the medical examiner didn’t care about those things.
“Yes,” I croaked out.
“You’re one-hundred-percent sure?” the man asked .
Hawk glared at him. “She said it’s her, all right? Don’t make her say it more than once.”
The medical examiner backed off quickly, apologizing profusely. “Of course. Of course. I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ll leave you, give you some time alone.”
The door swung closed behind him, and silence fell in the tiny room.
Hawk cleared his throat. “I’ll leave too. Fang went after Rebel, and Aloha and Ice are keeping guard outside. But I’ll be right outside the door. I won’t go any farther.”
My hand shot out to grab his before I could even contemplate what I was doing.
Hawk stopped and stared at me, and then down at my grip on his fingers.
I let go of him quickly, like his skin had burned me.
“What do you need, Kara?” he asked more softly than I’d ever heard him before.
I didn’t know anything other than I didn’t want to be alone in this tiny room with a dead body cold on a table.
But my lips wouldn’t form those words.
Hawk didn’t seem to need them. “I’ll stay here, then. Right here. Just behind you.”
A tear fell from my eye, and then more, silent streams creating waterfalls down my cheeks that burned across my skin. I tried to suck in air, but it was so cold it hurt my lungs, which only increased the panic inside me. I tried to breathe faster, sucking in shallow gasps that did little to relieve the ache inside my chest. The trembling increased, shaking me from head to toe until my teeth chattered and my muscles hurt. My heart ached, and a low, keening wail started up somewhere deep inside me, a noise I hadn’t made since the day Josiah had taken Hayley Jade away from me.
“No,” I cried, slumping forward. “Nooo!”
The second was more of a scream of agony.
I was so cold everything hurt. It seeped through my skin like icy needles of pain.
“Make it stop,” I moaned pitifully. “Make it stop!”
Warm arms came around me, and I lashed out, hitting at him, scratching and pushing him away. “No!”
There was only the briefest of hesitation in his embrace, and then he tightened it, turning me around so we were chest to chest, my face buried in the warm, clean material of his hoodie that also held the vague leather scent of his jacket.
“Stop,” he said quietly into my ear, his voice low and deep as his grip on me tightened to a point that would have been painful if I hadn’t been falling apart. “Just stop fighting me, Kara.”
His heat chased away the cold. His words soothed the ragged edges torn open inside me.
I stood in his arms, him holding me up.
Holding me together.
Time passed, but neither of us spoke again. My tears slowly subsided, and the incessant shaking reverted into trembles. My breathing evened out, matching his slow, deep breaths that filled my lungs with a scent I now associated solely with him.
In his arms, I could breathe.
He let go before I wanted him to.
I slowly lifted my gaze to meet his and opened my mouth.
He cut me off with a sharp shake of his head. “If you hate me for touching you, I don’t fucking care. You needed me.”
I nodded quietly. “I know.”
He groaned like my words had hurt him. Embarrassment coursed through me. His hoodie was soaked with my tears and probably my snot. My face was likely red and blotchy. I was a weak mess and I knew it.
Josiah would have been disgusted with me. It didn’t surprise me that Hawk was too.
I bet Amber didn’t cry all over him.
I bit my lip. “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t say that.”
“But I am.”
“Your sister was murdered, Kara. Fucking hell. If you didn’t cry, I’d be questioning if you were the one who did it.”
I gasped. “How could you say that?”
Murder was the greatest sin of them all. Was I that obviously bad? That he would assume I could do something like that? Josiah always preached that our sins were visible.
It was why he’d forced me to wear a veil. So everyone else in the commune wouldn’t see how bad I truly was, inside and out.
Hawk shrugged carelessly. “Family is always the first suspect.”
I stared at him, wondering how he could be so kind in one minute, only to be so cruel in the next.