36. Hawk
HAWK
I had no 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.
“I’m sending you my dry cleaning bill,” he said as we approached.
“You can send it.” Bram’s tone made it clear the bill would go in the trash.
The guy stood and the first thing I thought was… who the fuck is this joker?
He had some kind of product in his styled brown hair and the smooth skin of a dude who got regular facials.
His navy pants looked like they’d been tailored for his slim build and a dark green button-down under an argyle sweater vest (a fucking sweater vest, in argyle), plus a scarf that looked like cashmere under an expensive-looking suede jacket.
The guy’s expression turned wary when he realized Bram wasn’t alone. “Who’s this?”
“A guy.”
The other guy frowned. “A guy? That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Bram said. “If you trust me you trust him, and you can trust him because he knows I’ll cut off his balls and feed them to him in front of my little sister if he talks.”
The other guy grimaced. “Jesus. I don’t even want to know.”
“Seems like we’ve been dating long enough that you should take me someplace nicer,” the guy said, pacing to the river. “It’s cold as fuck out here.”
“I bring all my best girls here,” Bram said, deadpan.
“Haha,” the guy said. “You going to tell me what was so urgent that I had to cancel my manicure?”
“I literally could have asked you to change the oil in the Hummer and it would have been more important than your fucking manicure,” Bram said.
I had no idea what I’d walked into, but it was fucking weird. I wanted to ask the other guy’s name, but I had a feeling this wasn’t that kind of hang, had a feeling it was better to keep my mouth shut.
“Did you? Ask me to come to change the oil on the Hummer?”
“Fuck no. If someone’s going to work on my car, I want someone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground.” Bram turned to me. “Give him the cigarette.”
I hesitated, then pulled a baggie out of my jacket pocket.
Inside was a cigarette butt I’d found when I’d walked the tree line after we’d secured the house the night before.
It had shaken something loose in my memory: the flash of light in the woods outside Anna’s house, the chase through the trees, the cigarette butt I’d found on the ground.
I’d set it aside when we’d returned from England, just in case.
It was a match to the one I’d found last night.
I handed the baggie to the guy in the suede jacket.
“Know what kind of cigarette that might be?” Bram asked.
The other guy opened the baggie and inhaled. “Can I take it out?”
“It’s not official evidence if that’s what you’re asking,” Bram said.
Suede Jacket removed the cigarette and held it to his nose. He inhaled deeply, then held it up to the weak light making its way through the cloud layer.
“Only one brand has a this kind of gold filter, and you can see a little of the black paper above it… here.” He held it out for us to inspect. “See? Sobranie.”
“What’s Sobranie?” I asked.
Suede Jacket looked at me. “He speaks.”
I shrugged. “Only when I have something worth saying.”
“Sobranie’s a luxury brand,” Suede Jacket said. “This one’s a Black Russian.”
“So it’s a Russian brand,” Bram said.
“An expensive one,” Suede Jacket confirmed. “Where’d you find it?”
Bram shook his head. “Not important. Are these sold anywhere around here?”
“Only one place that I know of.”
“You going to make me guess?” Bram asked.
“Just making the most of the anticipation,” the other guy said. “Atmosphere is part of the fun.”
“We’re not looking to have fun,” I said.
“What a buzz kill,” Suede Jacket handed the baggie back to me. “Cigar lounge at the Carlton airport. They get a lot of PJs flying in on their way to and from the city. Less crowded out here, no paparazzi looking for a celebrity shot, easier to go unnoticed.”
Bram nodded, his expression thoughtful. “Cool. Thanks.”
“Your tab is getting out of hand,” Suede Jacket called out as I fell in behind Bram.
Bram lifted a hand without looking back and raised his middle finger.
We didn’t talk on our way back to the car, but my mind was churning: the cigarettes were Russian.
And they were sold at the municipal airport in Carlton.
It was always possible whoever had broken into the house — whoever had killed Anna — had purchased the cigarettes somewhere else on their way into town.
But it was also possible they’d flown into Carlton, made a pit stop at the cigar lounge on their way out of the airport.
“We got it,” I said, when Bram and I were back in the Hummer.
“What if I said we got it?” Bram asked.
“Then I’d say this is closer to our specialty than yours.”
Bram was a killer.
We know how to get into secure places, knew how to steal things.
“You’re not exactly stealthy,” Bram said.
“We get the job done.”
Bram’s jaw tightened. “Any chance you’re willing to tell Cass to leave the house? Come stay at the loft while we sort all this out?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. “Not a chance in hell.”
He got quiet, then pounded on the dash with his giant fist.
The car shook like it had been mauled by a bear.
I waited for Bram to get it out of his system, half expecting him to tear my head from my body, chuck it out the driver’s side window on his way off the mountain.
Then he cursed and started the car.
I didn’t know how we’d get into the Carlton Municipal Airport, didn’t know if it would require us to be stealthy or treat it like a smash and grab, go in with guns blazing (so to speak).
What I did know was that we’d do whatever it took to end this for Cassie.
That we would be anything she needed us to be.