Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
He widens his eyes. “Me? Are you serious? You think I did this?”
I sigh. “I don’t want to think it, Eagle. But I’m the only one who knows everything that’s happened to you during the past eight years. I’ve kept it from Mom and everyone else for their own good. Hell, I’m the one who’s cleaned up your messes. And there might’ve been one mess you didn’t come to me about.” I take a step toward him, glowering. “So if anyone should suspect you, it would be me.”
“I suppose I could see that point,” Eagle says, “if I didn’t just spend hours blistering my hands digging up what’s apparently nothing.”
Yeah, he has a point there.
Damn.
Eagle has never been one to get his hands dirty for no reason. He let his own brother go to prison for his crimes.
“All right. Who else knows?”
“Vinnie does,” Eagle says. “And Raven.”
“No way Ray had anything to do with this,” I say. “But we really don’t know Vinnie very well.”
“We know Savannah,” Eagle says. “And we trust her and Falcon.”
“Right, Savannah.” I rub at my forehead. “She knows, too…”
My mind races.
How well do we know Vinnie and Savannah? We know they come from the Bianchi family. But Vinnie had most of them effectively taken out. His grandfather has disappeared, and his rival, Declan McAllister, is dead.
Vinnie was gone for seventeen years, though. Raven loves him, and so does Savannah.
What do we really know about him?
Fuck. I’ve got to give Vinnie the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was as surprised as we were that the EPA was already on this.
The EPA contact. Maybe she would know something. I’ll get Vinnie to check that out.
“Then there were the other two,” Eagle says.
“What other two?”
“You know. The two goons that brought Vega. The ones who escaped to the border. Who were never heard from again.”
“Right.”
This doesn’t sit well with me. None of it does.
As I look at my brother once more, I’m not so sure it wasn’t him.
I grab his shoulders, shake him. “It had to be you, E. There’s nobody else. You’ve been fucking with me all night. That way I wouldn’t think it was you. Who did you sell out? What for? A quick hit? One of those times I bailed you out?”
He tries to wiggle out of my grasp. “Let go of me, Hawk.”
“I’ll let go of you when you tell me the fucking truth,” I grit out.
“I swear to God it wasn’t me. I’ve been clean since my last stint in rehab. I swear to God.” He swallows. “But I could sure use a fucking hit right now.”
“Stop lying to me,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I’m not lying.”
I let him go and push him to the ground.
He’s not lying.
And the reason I know he’s not lying?
It’s because if he had done it, he would’ve gone straight for the drugs. Certainly he wouldn’t have dug up a body and then left the drugs if he was looking for a hit.
No.
Eagle kept his promise.
He stayed far away from this place.
Even when he was gunning for a hit and he knew where a huge-ass stash was.
It wasn’t my brother. It wasn’t Falcon, and I don’t think it was Vinnie.
So who the fuck did this?
Whoever did it wanted to remove the evidence of the fake Diego Vega, but not the evidence of drugs being planted here on Bellamy property.
“Sorry,” I say to Eagle. “It wasn’t you.”
He rolls his eyes. “You think? Did it occur to you that if I wanted a hit that badly I would’ve just unburied the drugs and not the body?”
I nod. “Yeah, I know.”
He scratches his arm. “I’ve got to tell you. Looking at those bags right there. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted a hit more.”
“These are going down the toilet,” I say.
He kicks at the dirt. “I know.”
My cellphone vibrates in my back pocket.
I pull it out.
It’s Daniela.
I haven’t heard from her since the dinner at our house the other night.
Despite the situation Eagle and I are in at the moment, my heart races.
“Hello,” I say into the phone.
“Hawk, hi, it’s Daniela.” Her voice is breathy.
“Yeah? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” she says, “but I just didn’t know where else to turn. I mean, I suppose I could’ve gone to Vinnie. I’m not sure he’s home yet. But he and Raven are so happy right now. I don’t want to—”
“What’s wrong?” I interrupt.
She gulps audibly. “When I got home after cooking school tonight, there was an envelope taped to the door.”
“The front door?” I ask.
“No. To the door to my private entrance. Vinnie calls it the mother-in-law suite. It’s actually at the back of the house. You get there by this little cobblestone path.”
I’m not familiar with Vinnie’s house. It was his parents’ house until his father got sent to prison for life for killing Miles McAllister and his mother died of a heart attack several months ago.