Chapter 41 Hawk
HAWK
I screech into the hospital parking lot and toss my key fob to the valet attendant with nothing more than a nod. He can get my license plate number. Right now I have to get to Eagle.
I make my way to the fifth floor.
Falcon stands outside Eagle’s room, hands in his pockets, shoulders tight. Savannah is next to him.
“How is he?” My voice comes out rough.
“Better.” Falcon’s jaw ticks. “Stable. Docs think he’s going to make it.”
I breathe. It doesn’t help much.
“Anybody else know?” I ask.
“No.” He shakes his head. “He asked to see you first. After that, I’ll call Mom. Then everyone else.”
“You called me before Mom?” I shake my head. “She’ll never forgive you for that.”
“I did what Eagle asked.” Falcon sighs. “It felt all wrong, but he was adamant.”
Savannah touches Falcon’s arm. “Give them some time,” she says, her voice soft.
Falcon looks back at me. “I think he wants to apologize to you.”
I stare at the little window in the door. The silhouette in the bed. Tubes. Lines. Too still. “I need to apologize to him,” I say.
Falcon cocks his head. “To him? Why?”
“Later.” I push the door open and step into the room.
Eagle looks the same except that his eyes are now open. That’s new.
Bruises bloom at the crook of his elbow. There’s a dressing on his forearm, fresh, the edges clean. Another bit of tape on his shoulder.
I stand there and let the guilt choke me for a second. It’s easier than walking forward. Then I do the thing I came to do.
“Hey.” I keep my voice low. “Eagle.”
His eyelids open wider. Not all the way.
“Hey,” I say again. I stop closer, my hand on the rail. “It’s me.”
He grimaces. It could be a smile if you squint. “Hawk.” His voice is dry as the desert.
“Yeah.” I reach for the cup on the tray, the one with the stupid bendy straw. “You want water?”
He nods. I lift the straw to his mouth.
When he’s done, he lets his head roll back. The monitor bumps up but then settles.
“The docs say you’re stable,” I say. “You scared the shit out of me, Eagle. Out of everyone.”
He breathes slow, eyes half-closed. “I hate hospitals.”
“Me too.”
He tries to talk. I lift a hand. “Me first.”
He shuts his mouth. Waits.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out fast, low, like I’m afraid they’ll run away if I don’t catch them quick.
“I’m sorry I didn’t pick up the phone that night.
You called me. You were going through something and I wasn’t there.
And then—” I look at the bandage on his arm.
The IV in the back of his hand. “And I didn’t answer the door.
Then all that coke was sitting right there in my car.
Like a dare. Like I set the table and walked away.
I set you up to fail. That’s on me. I’m sorry. ”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Yeah,” I push. “You chose to relapse. I get that. That’s yours. But I should’ve been there to keep you from making that choice in the first place. I should’ve answered. I should’ve—”
“Hawk.” He opens his eyes fully now. They’re bloodshot. “No.”
Silence presses in. The machines keep humming.
He works his jaw. Swallows. It looks like it hurts. “You don’t…understand.”
“Then help me.” I tighten my hand on the rail. “Tell me.”
He looks to the ceiling and back to me. “I didn’t take it.”
He didn’t take it? Didn’t take what? “What?” I finally say.
“The coke.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I didn’t take it.”
“Eagle—”
“I didn’t even know the coke was in your truck still.”
My mind whirls. What the hell is my brother saying? Of course he took it. He was relapsing, and I should have been there for him. Been there to stop him.
“I was injected.” He licks cracked lips. “By force.”
For a beat, I don’t move. Don’t breathe. The room tilts a fraction, the way a plane does when it hits a crosswind. Then everything inside me goes very, very still.
Injected.
By force.
I look at the tape on his forearm again.
I never looked too closely before—it was just a reminder of my failure as his older brother.
But now that I’m investigating closely, there’s bruising there.
Not the neat kind you get when a nurse says, “little poke.” The kind that blooms when someone doesn’t care how much it hurts.
There’s another mark near his shoulder under the edge of the gown.
Finger-shaped shadows at his bicep. Old?
New? It doesn’t matter. My stomach drops.
“Who?” I finally ask. “Who did this to you?”
He closes his eyes. Opens them again. “Don’t…know.” He breathes. Winces. “Two. Maybe three. Black van. A garage, I think. Thought I heard…music. They put a hood on me. Tied me. Quick.” He swallows. “Then a sting. Then…nothing.”
My hand is on the rail so hard my knuckles ache. For a flash of a second I see Reyes’s face. Then I push past it. Haynes. Dead. The chocolate. The note. The grenade. The flowers. A long chain of men who like to work in shadows. It all tries to crowd in. I hold it back with my teeth.
“When?” I ask.
“Same night.” He breathes out. “I called you first. Left you a…message.” A ghost of a smile twitches at his mouth. “You didn’t pick up.”
The knife inside me twists into my gut.
“I know.” I make the words steady by force. “That one’s mine.”
“Then I came by.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He looks past me for a second, at something I can’t see. “I don’t want Mom to see me like this.” His mouth tightens. “I didn’t want you to, either.”
“You don’t get to protect me,” I say. “That’s my job.”
He huffs something that could be a laugh, and the monitor bumps again. I ease back.
He shifts a little. The movement pulls at his IV, and he flinches. I hate everything in the room at once—tubes, tape, the stupid beige blanket that doesn’t cover enough.
“Tell me more,” I say. “Everything.”
“Dark.” He stares at the ceiling. “Smelled like oil. Rubber. Someone wore…aftershave. Cheap shit, like Aqua Velva or something.” A breath. “They were quiet. No talking. Just…work.” He swallows. “Needle. Then…like drowning.”
The anger comes hot and clean. Not the kind that makes you sloppy.
The kind that makes you precise. My vision gets very focused.
The edges go away. It’s just me and my brother and the fact that someone put poison in him.
And why? What the hell motive could there possibly be after all this time? With Diego Vega dead and—
Except the body… It’s gone.
Eagle looks at me, and for the first time in a while, I see the little brother he was before the drugs. “I’m sorry, Hawk. I fucked up. I needed to talk to you, and I thought about drugs. I did. But I swear to God I didn’t take any. Not voluntarily.”
“I know.” I lean in. “Listen to me. This is not on you. Not one inch. You didn’t choose this.”
He nods, and that says everything.
I believe him. Not because he’s my brother, and not because I trust him. He used up his trust with me long ago.
But because I see truth in his eyes.
“I’m here now,” I say. It feels inadequate, but it’s all I have.
We sit in silence for a moment.
“You’re going to be okay,” I tell him. “The docs say so. Falcon says so. Mom will say so until it’s true.”
At the mention of Mom, his eyes sadden. “She knows?”
“Not yet.” I swallow. “Falcon’s telling her after we’re done.”
He nods. Relief and dread twist together in his expression. “I don’t want her to see me like this,” he says again. “She’ll cry.”
“Yeah.” I exhale. “She will.” I don’t bother telling him she’s been crying nonstop since we found out about his OD.
He licks his lips. “It wasn’t me this time. I know I’ve relapsed a million times, and you always took care of me. Kept it from the family.”
And I always resented it. But no longer. “I did what I could.”
“Are you mad?” he asks.
“No.” I don’t let myself think about all the reasons I could be. “I’m mad at them.”
“Them.” His eyes go darker. “You think it was…”
“I think someone wanted to send us a message,” I say. “I just wish I knew who. It’s a wild goose chase so far.”
He swallows. “I know you won’t do anything stupid. You’re the one we can count on to keep a level head and do…what’s right.”
His words hit like a punch to my fucking balls.
Right. The family fixer.
Not any more.
Too late, I almost say. Reyes is tied up in a barn. My knuckles split open on a safe. Some sex offender is dead, and then there’s Daniela…
“I’ll do what needs to be done,” I say. “I’ll keep it clean.”
Does he see the lie in my eyes? Or does he see Hawk the family fixer? The one who has cleaned up all his messes?
“Okay,” he says finally.
He’s fading again. I see it in the way his eyes go unfocused and the lines around his mouth soften.
“Rest.” I adjust the blanket. It’s a stupid gesture, but it makes me feel like I’m doing something. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Liar,” he mumbles. The smallest smile. “You always…go somewhere.”
I huff out a breath that might be a laugh. “I’ll be just outside.”
He tries to nod. Doesn’t quite make it. His eyes close.
Injected.
By force.
The words ricochet around my skull and hit everything they should. Haynes. Dead days before the card with his DNA. Reyes. A safe that won’t open. The chocolate. The grenade. Someone who wants us to feel helpless. Someone who likes control.
I want a name. I want a face. I want a throat under my hand and I want to squeeze the fucking life out of it.
But I sit. I breathe. I make myself look at my brother instead of the space past him where rage gathers like a storm inside me.
The door opens without a knock. Falcon steps in. He stops when he sees Eagle sleeping. Looks at me. A question without words.
“He talked,” I say. “He wanted me first.”
Falcon’s mouth does that thing like he’s swallowing a handful of nails. “He good?”
“Better.” I glance at the IV. The dressing. “He didn’t relapse.”
Falcon blinks. “What?”
“It wasn’t voluntary,” I say. The words taste like poison on my tongue. “Someone injected him.”
“Who?” Falcon grits out.
“He doesn’t know. Two, maybe three guys in a black van. He couldn’t tell me much else except it was after he left my place. A garage. All he remembers is the smell of cheap aftershave.”
Falcon’s eyes go dark. “You think—”
“I think I’m going to find them.” I look back at Eagle. He’s sleeping. He’s breathing. He’s here. “And I think I’m going to make them regret touching our brother.”
“Hawk,” Falcon says, “I don’t like what this is doing to you. You’re the good son.”
I shake my head. Why is this damned family so caught up in labels?
“You be careful.”
“I will,” I lie.
Falcon exhales hard. “I’ll call Mom.”
“Tell her he wants her,” I say. “He does. He can’t help it. But he also doesn’t want her to see him like this.”
He scrunches his eyebrows. “She’s already seen him like this.”
“I know. But give him a minute to rest.” I sigh. “Let him think what he needs to think. He needs that much, at least.”
“Yeah.”
Falcon steps back into the hall to make the call.
I turn back to my brother. He twitches in his sleep, and the line on the monitor bumps and then smooths.
Injected. By force.
The words keep rolling over and over in my mind, whirling every which way as I try to make sense of them.
Reyes can wait. The safe can wait. Everything can wait because this changes the game. This isn’t a relapse. This is an attack. On my little brother, the one I strove for years to keep safe.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I don’t pull it out. Not yet. Not while he’s asleep and I’m finally exactly where I should have been two nights ago.
I settle deeper in the chair and let the hate simmer under my ribs where it belongs, low and controlled. Plenty of time to let it boil.
For now, I count each breath Eagle takes.
One. Two. Three.
I’m here, little brother.
I’m here.