Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
“What’d you do to your arm?” he asked Garrett.
Garrett’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Deer?” Hawk asked.
“No. It’s nothing.”
Hawk looked at Garrett, waiting patiently. Garrett finally scoffed. “I don’t want to talk about it!” he snapped.
Hawk still waited.
“It’s not like you care!” Garrett bit out.
“Try me.”
Garrett shrugged, but he was more irritated than nonchalant. “It’s shit work,” he confided. “At the lumberyard. They work you death. Got no insurance. Miss any work, even for an injury, you’re fired.” His eyes flashed angrily. “Guess I’m grateful the good Christians at the yard don’t work on Sundays. Least I get one day off.”
Hawk nodded. “Left you high and dry, didn’t I?”
“Fuck yes,” Garrett muttered.
Hawk surveyed his cousin. “Don’t know how I let things get so bad between us,” he finally said. “Guess that’s on me.”
Garrett made a face at Hawk. He clearly agreed.
Hawk shut off the coffeemaker and took Garrett’s mug from him. “Let’s go,” he said.
Garrett frowned. “Go where?”
“To the garage,” Hawk replied, washing the mug in the sink.
Garrett paused. “For what?”
“Talk to my boss. Get you hired.”
Garrett’s face lit up, and he pushed his chair back, standing up. “You serious?”
Hawk nodded.
Garrett practically scrambled for the front door.
Hawk pulled his truck into the gravel lot, parked by the side door, and killed the engine. He and Garrett got out and walked to the door. Garrett looked around. “No one’s here,” he observed.
Hawk nodded, unlocking the door. Once inside, he punched the code for the alarm system, disabling it. “We get a late start on Sundays, and only then if we’re on a deadline for a custom order, but I can still show you around.”
Hawk led Garrett into the large bay area with its three workstations. Garrett eyed the Chevy hot rod that they were close to finishing for a client, running his hand over the custom fenders. “Sweet,” he proclaimed.
“What was the prison garage like?” Hawk asked.
Garrett nodded. “It was big, but not like this. No real body work. Just maintaining their own vehicles.”
“Guess you know your way around tools then.”
“Yeah, no problem. Brake lines, fuel lines, transmissions. They offer hands-on classes.”
Hawk nodded and picked up a wrench off the nearby workbench. “Guess I didn’t bother to check in with you while you were inside.”
Garrett’s smile diminished somewhat. “No. No one did. Just left me there.”
“I do know. I want you to understand that,” Hawk admitted.
Garrett turned to face him. “Know what?”
“That we’re here because of me.”
Garrett stared at him.
Hawk gripped the wrench in his hand and swung it at his cousin’s head.
Chapter 36
“Wake up.”
Hawk threw a bucket of cold water onto Garrett’s face. The man came to, struggling against the chains that held him to the chair.
“Wh-what the fuck?” he groaned.
Hawk set the bucket down and picked up the wrench again.
Garrett’s eyes focused, and he looked up at Hawk.
“Where is she?” Hawk asked quietly.
Garrett shook his head. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hawk flexed his fingers around the wrench and then sent it crashing down on Garrett’s knee. Garrett screamed.
“Don’t,” Hawk told him. “Don’t make this worse than it has to be. Just tell me where to find her.”
Garrett grinned, his teeth bloody from the blow that had knocked him out in the first place. “You’ve lost it.”
Hawk grabbed Garrett’s hair with his free hand and pulled his head back so he was looking right up at him. “How do you know she volunteers at the Community Center?” he demanded. “I never told you that.”
Garrett’s eyes widened for a moment, but he tried to shake his head underneath Hawk’s hand. “You must have,” he insisted.
Hawk’s hand tightened in his cousin’s hair, making him wince in pain. “I never did.”
Garrett’s eyes flashed, and his jaw set. “I don’t know where your white bitch is.”
Hawk let go of Garrett’s hair and turned to the portable work table next to the chair. He tossed the wrench onto it and picked up a pair of pliers. Some of Garrett’s bravado evaporated.
“You’re not going to do this!” Garrett protested. “We’re family! And I’m telling you-”
“You start telling me what I want to know, and this can end.”
“I don’t know!”
“You’re lying,” Hawk said calmly. “You’ve been a liar all your life, Garrett. I’ve known you long enough that I can tell.”
Hawk stepped closer with the pliers.
“If you do this, you’re choosing her over me!”
The rage that was threatening to boil over in Hawk finally did. “I will always choose her over you! She’s never done anything to hurt anyone! She’s clean and innocent, and fuck you for taking that from her! I knew you were a lot of things, Garrett, but I never thought you were this.”
Garrett laughed. “What does this make you?” he demanded. “That you would turn your back on your blood and then do this?”
“A better man than you are!”
Hawk had resolved himself to getting the answers he needed, no matter what had to be done to get them. For the first time since Tildy went missing, he had an objective, a way to do more than just sit on his hands. This was a thing that he knew, a thing he did not like, but that was so familiar he slid into it as easily as putting his uniform back on.