Chapter 5
Rebel
Iwake up hard. Heart beating between my ribs. Senses on high alert. It must have been some nightmare to wake me like this.
No. Not a nightmare. Someone is in the room. A hand clamps over my mouth and a familiar voice close to my ear says, “Quiet or you’ll wake her.”
Fists clenched by my sides, I nod.
I should have known West wouldn’t wait until morning to demand information about Dizzy’s whereabouts. He’s obsessed. Ignoring that—and thinking the polite thing to do was keep him in the dark until morning—was my mistake.
West withdraws his hand from my face and sits on the bed next to me. Stirring, Summer lets out a soft sleepy sound and turns over. His gaze drifts to the object in his hand. “Where is she?”
It’s too dark to see what he’s holding. With the way the hairs on the back of my arms stand up, I suspect it’s best if Summer doesn’t wake up while he’s in here. He might wear a face similar to my own, but that doesn’t mean I trust him fully.
“Where. Is. She?” There’s an edge to his voice despite the low tone.
This time I’m awake enough that it sinks in.
“With Rogue and Ivy.” My voice is thick, crusted with sleep. The screen of my phone on the bedside table tells me the time. They’re on a plane. “Did she not fill you in?”
“She’s not answering her phone.” West makes an unimpressed noise in his throat.
“Perhaps that’s something you should take up with her.” I turn onto my side, showing him my back. “You know… when it’s not the middle of the damn night.”
“Don’t test me,” he says in a way that makes my senses sharpen.
Fully awake now, I sit up. The rust falls from my voice. “We’ll need to go outside if you want to have this conversation.”
He pushes to his feet but makes no move to leave the room. I throw off the covers and stand. He waits for me to pull on a pair of jeans and follow him outside.
Brothers. Summer’s. Mine. They’re all a fucking pain in my ass.
I turn on a light before we walk out onto the porch.
That’s when I glimpse the blade jutting from his gloved hand.
The straight smooth blade curves into a point.
And on the other side, a serrated edge. No doubt both are wickedly sharp.
Sharp enough to cut through skin and muscle?
Did he kill the goat? He said he didn’t, but the way he holds the knife…
“What were you planning to do with that? Scare me?” Stab me? Slit my throat?
He is a Hawthorne after all. There’s no way our sick fuck of a father didn’t rub off on him to some degree.
“You’re paranoid.” He casually tosses it in the air like it’s a puffed kernel of corn. The black handle turns end over end with the steel blade before he catches it.
“With everything my family has been through I have a right to be.” I wait for him to correct me, but he doesn’t. All these months we’ve been attempting to build a bridge with him he has stayed aloof.
“If I wanted to screw with you, it would have already happened. And I would have come at you directly. Perhaps in that way we’re alike. You had no issue confronting our weakest brother.”
“Don’t call him that.” I will never acknowledge the DNA that ties us to that scum, Alec. It’s also the first time West has admitted we’re alike in any way. “Where did you get the knife?”
He puts the weapon down on a low table between two rocking chairs and peels off his gloves. “I found it.”
He’s made no effort to hide his belief we’re nothing alike.
It doesn’t make sense that he would follow that up by creeping around like a coward.
Still... he didn’t exactly answer the question.
He’s always so damn cagey. And the knife came from somewhere.
“You just found it? And happened to be wearing gloves?”
“You ask a lot of repetitive questions. Yes, I found the knife.” He tucks the gloves into his pocket. “And I carry gloves because you never know when you’ll have to deal with something that you don’t want to touch.”
What kind of person thinks that way? “That’s not normal.”
“No. It isn’t.” He looks at me like I’m stupid. “But I pride myself on not being ordinary.”
“I guess I wouldn’t be normal either if I were raised by a fucking psychopath.” And I’m starting to consider that the apple fell way too close to the tree.
“You wouldn’t have lasted.” He actually smiles at that. It doesn’t stick long. “Tell me where Dizzy is.”
I peer out into the darkness looking for any sign that we’re being watched. But everything is quiet and still. It’s like the whole world is asleep but us. “She’s on a plane.”
The whites of his eyes disappear when he moves into my space, and the blue, similar to my own, deepens into something cold and fathomless. “Did you do too many drugs in the past that you can’t work out what I’m asking? Or...”
He hunts for something in my gaze. I’ll tell him what he needs to know, but as for the rest of it.
.. how much do we really know about him?
How much can we trust him? We’ve based everything on his help when Dizzy took Ivy to trap Alec.
And West’s medical care of our mother. Perhaps it’s just the way he casually handled the knife, one that could have been used to kill the goat, but it’s starting to feel like we don’t know him well enough at all.
He tilts his head like an animal that has just caught a scent. “You’re keeping something back.”
So is he. “Where did you find the knife?”
His lip twists venomously for one illuminating second. There’s a cruelty in it that is honest and revealing. “You don’t trust me. That’s good. Stupid perhaps; to believe that where I found a knife actually matters. Especially when you’re keeping Dizzy from me.”
If anything, keeping Dizzy from him would be the perfect way to send him into a violent frenzy if he was going to.
If it was Summer we were talking about, and I was looking for a reason to lay the hurt on someone, her disappearing would be mine.
That’s the reason I find myself offering him more. “They’re flying to Vegas.”
His jaw slackens, but not for long before he grinds his teeth. “Vegas?”
“That’s what we decided on when they were run off the road tonight.” They might have gone anywhere, but I told them to keep their destination to themselves.
“Run off the road?” His tone is carefully controlled and in direct contrast to the engorged vein throbbing in his temple. “When? What happened? By whom? Why the fuck are you only telling me this now?”
“They were run off the road by another car. A couple hours ago. The car was wrecked, but everyone got out safely. And we don’t know for certain.”
“That means you do have an idea.”
I glance around the quiet darkness.
“Go on,” he says.
I close the distance until we’re standing next to each other and lower my voice further.
“Someone working with Nicole. Hopefully, by pretending they’ve gone to Vegas, it will flush out whoever is targeting the bride and groom on her behalf.
If they leave the ranch to follow them, we’ll know who it is. ”
“I’ll handle it from there,” West says darkly.
“Security and law enforcement will be able to handle them from there,” I tell him.
Which leaves the rest of us free to work out who killed Owen’s goat and why they did it.
While also keeping this wedding weekend on schedule.
After all, the show must go on, and as the best man it’s my job to make sure that happens.
“You should have told me.”
“They weren’t hurt.” I squeeze his shoulder. “And they’re going to be assessed by a private doctor when they land, just to be certain. I promise you, Dizzy is fine. You don’t need to worry.”
“Get your hand off me,” he speaks through clenched teeth. “You have no idea what I need to worry or not worry about when it comes to her.”
“Then tell me.” If it’s something I should warn Rogue about. “If it’s something we can help with—”
“Help me by telling me where they really are,” he demands. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t try to hide shit. I can tell when you do.”
“I don’t know.” I spread my hands wide, offering a semblance of what he wants to hear and grateful that we decided no one should know too much.
“That’s the truth. We decided it would be better to keep the information limited in case anyone was watching or listening in when we came up with our plan. ”
The corner of his eye closest to me flares. It’s followed by the minutest of nods. “You don’t believe their being run off the road tonight is connected to whoever killed the goat?”
“I don’t.” I fully believe the goat massacre was Duke or someone connected to his threat to Summer. Well, I did until West showed up in my bedroom with a knife. And yet, I don’t truly suspect that it’s him. I believed him when he said he would get straight to the point if he wanted to cause harm.
He seems to think he’s superior to us in every way, Arrogant prick.
“I must admit, I came to the same conclusion.” His gaze strays to the knife.
Why is he being cagey about it? Unless… it could implicate one of us. “Where did you find the knife, West?”
He swallows hard. Pauses with his lips pressed into a tight slit. Finally, he exhales. “Between the boxspring and the mattress in my room.”
No wonder he didn’t want to tell me.
“That’s some hiding place.” It’s almost as if whoever put it there wanted it to be found in that cabin. But then how many people would routinely look under their mattress for something like that. “How would you know to look there?”
“I’m a suspicious man. I saw signs someone had been in the room and tampered with the bed. I investigated.”
“They want to blame one of us?”
“Or convince us not to trust each other,” he says. “Perhaps they think we’re onto them. They might have hoped to throw us off by planting it on one of us.”
“You are the one we’re least likely to trust,” I muse. “Do you think it’s an attempt to frame you for the goat?”
He huffs an amused sound and his lips curve in the corner. “Perhaps.”
He has a damned dark sense of humor.