Chapter 1 #2
Layla said. My body stiffened so abruptly that Magnum may have noticed.
Brady corrected.
she snapped into our chat.
Some of the tension drained from my body, leaving behind that constant anger, and a bone-deep weariness I wouldn’t succumb to. If I did, it would feel too much like surrendering.
I’d give up on Griff over my dead body.
I said.
Brady snarled.
Yes. I could absolutely get behind the Get Griffin Back Tonight Plan. There was just one huge, major problem.
I asked. I chuffed darkly, brazenly, uncaring that several of our pretend parents joined Magnum in studying us, all while keeping their faces poised in careful masks that said We care. We’re heartbroken too.
We were glaringly outmatched. We’d actually stashed defibrillator paddles in Clyde’s trunk, laboring under the illusion that they’d make a difference, that we had a backup plan.
What we’d had was fuck all. You can’t exactly defibrillate lumps of flesh—even if the paddles had survived the explosion, which they surely hadn’t. Nothing had survived.
Just Griffin, I reminded myself urgently, forcefully. He survived, dammit. He did!
Before my friends could encourage me with a hitherto unthought-of yet sensible course of action to retrieve Griffin’s body—which surely wasn’t in the coffin despite appearances, since Magnum and team would never give up all that coveted biological material that they could perform tests on—the priest finally shut his yap.
A heavy hush blanketed our gathering as the coffin, gleaming in the sunshine, was lowered into the hole that was intended to hold Griffin’s body for eternity.
Despite my unwavering assurance that the man I loved lived—he’s alive, he is—my shoulders trembled as the shiny wood inched below ground level.
Hunt wrapped an arm around me, tugging me against him. Brady hugged Layla, who for the first time in years didn’t shrug off her twin’s touch, slumping into him. Brady shuffled them closer to Hunt and me.
When the coffin settled with a muffled thud, my shoulders shuddered another time. Suddenly, all the tears I hadn’t shed crowded against the back of my eyeballs, like a torrent rushing a dam too weak to hold back the storm.
Hunt pulled me closer, held me tighter. My face burrowed against his chest, though it wouldn’t be shield enough from all the busybodies here to watch the show of our hearts breaking—courtesy of Magnum fucking Chase, yet again.
Behind my sunglasses, I blinked furiously, refusing to reveal weakness before the flock of circling vultures. Hunt ran a soothing hand along my back, though his shoulder shuddered beneath my face, not much, but enough for me to understand he was breaking too.
What if Griffin, who meant everything to the four of us, was beyond our reach?
The five of us were an unbreakable crew.
A family bound by a link greater than blood.
We’d been tight since always.
We were never meant to be four. Five, always five. Only then were we complete.
Layla snarled.
I glanced up from Hunt’s chest, and sure enough, Magnum was angling our way, our fake parents behind him, a line starting to form around Orson, Griffin’s pretend dad, and us.
Anyone who’d ever seen us together knew we were Griff’s real family.
With Magnum twentysomething feet away from us and closing in fast, and his asshole nephew Rich drawing to his side, I barked urgently into our bond:
No more discussion was needed. However many of us remained, one thing didn’t change: We had one another’s backs.
Without explanation or so much as an apologetic grimace, the four of us spun and, arms threaded together, stalked rapidly to Brady’s Mustang, Bonnie.
We were pulling out in a spatter of gravel before I looked back.
As one, as if they were part of a single organism, every single person there was observing us making a getaway.
Magnum stood at the head of them, a stark reminder that he was the master puppeteer, and potentially every person in Ridgemore his puppet.
Even us.
Hunt said, still speaking through our telepathic bond despite the presumed privacy of the car.
We’d learned the hard way it was a luxury Magnum didn’t have the courtesy to offer us.
And why would he? According to him, we were his property, the results of lab experiments he’d funded.
Layla hissed, sounding perfectly vicious.
I said.
Brady glanced at me through the rearview mirror, eyebrows raised.
Not specifically.
Layla said.
My heart thudded.
she said in a high pitch that sounded a lot like panic.
I mumbled.
Hunt said.
Brady whipped his head toward him in the passenger seat.
Hunt’s eyes glittered with determination, drying up any weakness that had been threatening to leak out of me.
he said.
I found myself nodding along, leaning forward to be closer to the momentum that would lead us to Griffin.
Brady asked.
Hunt said with confidence I was gobbling up.
Layla said.
I didn’t know how we’d do it, only that we had to. So we would.
I pushed my sunglasses onto my head and leaned back in my seat, rolling my neck, saying aloud for the invisible audience that constantly trailed our every move, “I’m in the mood to beat shit.”
“The treehouse it is, then,” Brady said, and he gunned Bonnie. The sleek blue Shelby surged forward.
We’re coming for you, Griff. Just hang on a little longer.