Knox shoots him a murderous look for leaving Hope alone at all.
“Your brother has something to do with the website,” she whispers, finally meeting his eyes.
Jaxon pales. “What?”
She tells us about their run-in at the apartment, the things Gauge said. Every word is precise and damning. Hope shakesher head. “I know you didn’t keep him from telling, Jax. I know you didn’t. You tried to take care of me until my dad commented on it. You talked to me. I know.”
Jaxon settles a bit. “The scar was half-accidental. It was after Daisy… and…”
“How are you sure he’s involved in the website?” Knox redirects.
“He knew what my dad was doing to me. He said he always knew it was going to go there, but he knew that you guys…”
“I didn’t tell him,” Jaxon fills in for Hope. “I didn’t tell him or let it get to him. And I’m not sure to whom Coach showed…”
“Either he got to see it through my… dad, or…” She takes a breath as she fidgets with her fingers. “On the website. He’s one of the viewers. He says everyone knows.”
“He’s involved, and with how he’s trying to mess with our heads…” I fill in.
She nods slowly. “At minimum, he knew a whole lot about Coach, more than you guys even did maybe. But…”
“We have to be sure,” Knox murmurs. “The reason me and Dimitri were late… The website has been dark…”
“It’s online again,” I fill in. “Ben has been helping. But…”
Knox clears his throat. “Someone keeps re-uploading the videos that Dimitri took down.”
“We finally got an address…” I trail off. “We have to go back to town. We might have to go back to the ca—”
“Absolutely not!” Jaxon stands. “Hope’s never going back there again. Never.”
Twenty-four
KNOX
“Idon’t want to go back either,” she says, little more than a whisper. “If Gauge is part of this all, we can’t just—”
“We’ll handle it,” Jax cuts in. His hands are fists on the table, knuckles white. “You’re not setting foot near that place, Hope. If I have to tie you to the bed, I’ll—”
Dimitri laughs. “You think she’d stay put if you tied her? Even when she was half-dead, she clawed her way out of the crawlspace. Just fucking listen, Jax.”
“You don’t get it,” Jax snaps. “If she dies because of something I did—”
“Stop,” Hope says, and the word is tiny, but everyone freezes.
“I don’t want to die,” she says, looking at the floor. “And honestly, I don’t want to go back. But I can’t let you do it alone. I’m not… weak. I can handle it.”
Jax stares, jaw set and helpless. I can see the war inside him, he wants to protect her, but he’s not the one who gets to decide. He never was.
Dimitri leans forward, voice softer: “We’ll need a plan cause this all feels like a trap. They are luring us in. I never found anything, and now we found a ping from their whereabouts?”
“Then what, just wait here for one of Gauge’s little presents to show up? What if it’s not a hand next time, but a head?” I ask and take the bag of food off the table. “We never got any closer, and now that Gauge is trying to break us apart, we find where the server of the website is. It’s fake, I know.”
“But we’re still going,” Hope says.
Dimitri looks uncertain, but he nods once.
Jax sits, deflated, then grabs Hope’s hand and holds it to his mouth like a prayer. “You stay right next to me. You never leave my sight.”
