Chapter 27
CALLIE
I didn’t sleep. At all. I needed to, but ever since Diesel held up that memory card a couple days ago, sleep went right out the fucking window.
When Cody asked, I told him it was the house. I told him I hadn’t gotten used to the way sound traveled different here from our place. It was kind of true. The floorboards creaked here, and the constant pad of footsteps throughout the house kept snapping my eyes open every time they dared to close.
But the real reason was sitting on Hawk’s laptop.
I didn’t bother asking how he’d pulled the additional footage, only that he had to let me see it, and if he tried to say no, I’d burn all his shit, take his computer, and to hell with all of them. It might not have been realistic or calm, but it held his attention.
Diesel dragged a second chair around to Hawk’s side of the desk. I stood behind them with my arms crossed and my coffee going cold on the table beside me.
Hawk’s office was as I remembered. Dark walls. No pictures. A wide desk that held his laptop and a few files. If it got any more impersonal it might remind me of my own office at the shop before Cody was born.
The first image flickered, the frame going still with a shot of me standing on the porch in a similar position as now.
Arms crossed. Scowl firmly in place. In the image, I stared across the yard.
Then Hawk pressed a key and the video started.
I moved from the top step to the sidewalk, my steps angling me toward the shop bay where I was no longer welcome.
I remembered that day. I’d planned on trying to convince Hawk to let me work on something. I needed to get my hands dirty, but I’d been waylaid by Cody.
Cody rolled into frame on his tricycle, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor.
It made no sense, but my feet stopped working, my brain screamed at me to move, to grab him.
Anything to put my body between my son and the lens holding him in the crosshairs.
Even though it was just a video of him, that protective instinct refused to lessen.
He was grinning, that wide, unguarded, full-face grin he wore when he thought no one important was watching.
He pedaled hard down the slight grade of the driveway, hair flying.
He’d been wearing his dinosaur shirt, the green one with the faded T-rex on the chest that he’d refused to let me wash because he was convinced washing it would make the dinosaur disappear.
He wasn’t wrong. The shirt was so old it almost fell apart every time he wore it.
The camera angle gave us a clear view of Cody…all the way down to the pattern on the shirt and close enough for me to spot a dirt stain on Cody’s forearm from where he’d tripped on his way out of the house that morning.
Whoever built the camera rig used powerful equipment. We hadn’t known they were anywhere around.
“Pause it.” My voice grated up the back of my throat. I couldn’t breathe. They were watching us. They’d been watching Cody. Go. I had to go. I had to leave. Take Cody and run as far and as fast as we could. Until what?
Diesel tapped a button and the video froze with Cody mid-pedal, mid-grin, the frame tight enough for me to count the cracks in the vinyl on his T-rex shirt.
“How long?” My jaw locked so hard my teeth ached. My vision blurred but I’d be damned if I let my frustration and fear lead to tears.
“This feed goes back three weeks.” Hawk didn’t look at me when he said it. He studied the frame, his eyes narrowed and attention riveted on what he might learn.
I appreciated that. It was the only reason I stayed in the room.
“The camera that pulled this was in a fixed position. Whoever set it up knew your patterns. They expected to find you and Cody outside and right there.” Hawk pointed at the screen.
“They knew your schedule.” Diesel met my gaze, his cold and hard. Not directed at me but at the problem none of them knew how to fix.
Hawk clicked forward to the next feed. “They knew everything.”
I made myself watch every single second. Nausea built, and I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth until it passed. Seven clips across four days. Me and Cody. Cody running out of the house.
Colt pulling in at the gate and coming around the tailgate with his shoulders set and moving toward Cody like a compass pointing north.
Diesel marked the time in his notebook and kept watching. A thick, heavy blanket of silence permeated the room and raised the hair on the back of my neck.
Hawk made three phone calls in the next hour. He didn’t put them on speaker, and I didn’t ask him to. I didn’t need to hear to understand he was pulling every string, calling in every favor, to fix this.
I took his chair when he paced the far side of the room. He paused every now and then to lean over me, his stomach almost touching my shoulder. All I’d have to do was turn my head and his arm would be right there, close enough to touch, to lean on. Close enough to comfort me if I let him.
This was not Wade’s doing. Wade was blunt-force stupid with a mean streak and no patience. He’d throw a Molotov and be done with it. He didn’t have the discipline for strategy that took weeks. He didn’t have the money for commercial grade cameras or the contacts to do any of this.
Wade was a tool, and someone told him where to work.
And whoever held that tool was disciplined enough to spend time watching before they moved.
They were not running on anger or desperation the way Wade did…
the way we had been. The Molotov might’ve come from Wade, but it was a message that scared me worse than Wade ever did because I knew how to deal with mean and stupid.
I’d never dealt with this kind of controlled terrorizing.
Colt came in at nine, holding a fresh cup of coffee that he set next to my hand. “How’d Cody feel about school this morning?”
“He was excited.” I picked up the cup and took a sip. We’d gone back and forth about this for a while. Cody needed normalcy. I couldn’t keep him out of school indefinitely, even with Hawk insisting he could talk to the principal and make him understand the situation.
Colt stood behind me, looking down at the computer screen. His hand came down on my shoulder, and he squeezed. Just once, but it was enough to convey everything we never said. We were in this together. All the way to the end.
Hawk ended his call and sat across from me, lacing his hands together on top of the desk. “We need to talk about the ledger.”
The coffee soured in my stomach. “There’s nothing to talk about. I told you what happened.”
“You told us part of the story. You’re holding something back, and I need to know what.” Hawk didn’t move.
Diesel stared at me and Cody, his unblinking gaze tight and his lips drawn into a frown.
I’d tried to deflect from this very situation, but maybe Hawk was right. “It wasn’t just Wade’s leverage. But it is true that I burned it.” I let that sit long enough that Colt shifted his weight. Diesel still didn’t blink. I took a breath and held it. “But I took pictures.”
Hawk’s expression shifted a fraction, just enough that I couldn’t tell if it was concern or relief that made his eyes turn molten.
Now that I’d started, the rest poured out.
“I had an old phone, a prepaid one that wasn’t good for much.
I took pictures of what looked most important.
I mean, Hellhound business written in code had to be some important shit.
So I took precautions. I still have the phone.
Stopped using it years ago. I don’t know if it even turns on. ”
“Where is it?” Hawk stayed still, too still.
I knew that pose. I employed it on more than one occasion. Fury threatening to break sent Hawk into this kind of poised control. I examined his face, all the way down to the way his nostrils fluttered with every breath. Angry at me or the situation?
“None of this is your fault, Callie.” He pushed to his feet and leaned over the desk until we were eye to eye. Colt’s hand remained steady on my shoulder, and Hawk rested his thumb on my chin, his fingers curling underneath as he stroked my jawline. “None of this is your fault.”
I blinked against the sting of tears. I knew that. I knew that. So why the hell did his words heal some part of me that had been broken?
I didn’t want them to. I’d spent too long being the only person responsible for my own damage and creating my own armor.
I stopped waiting for people to acknowledge the weight I carried, stopped needing them to see it.
I hated him a little bit for healing that broken part of me when I couldn’t do it for myself.
“I hid the phone.” I swallowed hard enough to feel air gulp down my throat. “It’s in a safe location.”
“Let’s go.” I needed the motion and the chance to do something proactive with a clear direction and defined end point, because the alternative of staying here staring at images of Cody while the walls closed in was out of the question.
I stood. Hawk moved with me, his body straightening.
My phone buzzed from my back pocket. I winced at the sound.
How long would it be before it no longer brought a rush of panic?
I tugged it from my jeans and turned it over to check the screen.
Cody’s School appeared. Fuck. I sucked air, my hand trembling around the phone.
They never called this early. Unless Cody was sick.
That had to be it. An upset stomach, maybe, from all the changes and stress.
I swiped my thumb over the screen and held it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Miss Jameson?”
“Yes.”
“This is Sandra from the front office. I’m calling about Cody.”
The room went quiet around me, a quiet so deep the sound of my pulse hammered in my ears. “Is he okay?”
“There’s been a bit of a mixup with our sign-out sheet this morning, and we wanted to confirm that you sent someone out. Cody’s been picked up, and whoever it was didn’t sign the sheet like they were supposed to.”
I stopped hearing anything past that. It didn’t matter. Cody had been picked up, and the only people in my life who had my complete trust stood in the room with me.