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“Are you serious?” Ha. Ha fucking ha.
Storm and Rook start cursing.
Lopez gazes back at me steadily.
Fuck, he is serious.
Rook grabs my shoulder. “Hawk, no.”
“What the fuck? Listen,” I say, both to him and to the cop. “Thank you so fucking much, but I’m not doing this again. Why don’t you volunteer to be Sandivar’s punching bag? To be blindfolded, and starved, and left thirsty and bloody and without a damn way out, to get those few names I got you.” I stand up and am shocked to find my hands curling into fists and my heart booming. “Christ.”
Three pairs of eyes are boring into me, and I should sit back down and take a deep breath, but I can’t. What the hell is wrong with me?
Turning on my heel, I walk out. Need to cool the fuck down.
The plan was mine. This cop had nothing to do with it. He’s being honest, telling us the only way he can think of bringing Sandivar in.
What happened—to me, to Layla—isn’t his fault. Rationally, I can see that clearly. But my body isn’t interested in rational. My body is reacting as if I’m back in that basement, without options, without an escape route, and it’s bracing for pain and fight.
“Hawk. Dude.” Storm is coming after me. As expected. “Wait up.”
He catches up with me in the room with my photographs. I’ve stopped in front of the portrait of a man. He’s younger than me, and he’s holding a coil of rope. I wonder why Storm chose it, what he saw in it.
I took that picture on one of my trips to Ecuador. The man had looked so… alone on the beach that day, beside his fishing boat.
He’d looked bound by the rope, although he was the one holding it.
This whole mess with the Organization has me bound just like that rope. My hands may not seem tied, but they are.
Because what I told Layla is true, and I believe it: I am responsible. My parents were part of this, and even if they weren’t, I’m still responsible.
Everyone who knows and does nothing is guilty. Everyone is responsible.
“Don’t,” Storm says, standing beside me.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t do it. Don’t put yourself in danger again.”
“I said I won’t.”
But now, speaking the words again, I’m not so sure anymore. Maybe that’s why my body’s reacting as if I’m back in the basement.
Maybe my body knows what my mind is trying to wrap itself around.
I’m going to do it. Because if I don’t, who will?
“Seriously, man, no.” Storm grabs my arm and shakes me, coming face to face with me. “You’re not going back. You’re not putting yourself in that psycho’s arms again, you crazy son of a bitch.”
“And who will do it? Rook? You? You think I’d let that happen?”
Storm’s mouth flattens.
Of course he’d do it. Talk about the pot calling the fucking kettle black. Storm is batshit. It’s why I love the guy, but he also drives me nuts sometimes.
Okay, lots of times.
“What makes you think you can put yourself in danger to do what you think is right but Rook and I can’t?” he asks.
