Hell, she’d just been inside talking to her dad. It wasn’t the end of the world. It was actually the beginning of something beautiful…
But this wasit.The moment she’d tell her whole family she messed up… and it was leading her down a path to have everything she ever wanted. Either that, or to the biggest heartbreak of her life. But Jessie trusted Hawk, and after the way he’d been so open with her, she had to move forward with her heart wide open too. It was the only fair thing to do.
And she was happy. Her hand ran over the anti-nausea bracelet on her wrist. A constant reminder of Hawk’s determination to take care of her, and the baby.
“Mom?” Jessie called out as she made her way into the living room. Even with heading into town earlier, Jessie knewher mom should have been home by then. Whatever she was cooking in the slow cooker smelled absolutely divine.
Why wasn’t she answering?
Jessie started towards the kitchen. The plan was to tell her family all together, but Jessie was just chicken enough that she might blurt it right out to her mama if she had the chance to before everyone else joined them. Footsteps overhead stopped her in her tracks.
Who the hell was in her room? If Beau thought for one minute he could go in and steal her shit from her bathroom…
Jessie turned, heading upstairs. Her room was overhead of the small hallway that connected the kitchen to the living room. Maybe her mom was tucking something away in there for her? But it hadn’t sounded like her mother’s footsteps. They’d sounded clunky.
If one of her brothers wore their disgusting horse barn work boots into her room, they were going six feet under. She didn’t care. Turning the corner, Jessie stopped in the doorway, her breath rushing out of her lungs.
Her room.
It was a mess.
Her brothers wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t destroy her things. Jessie’s hands shook as she pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. Oh god. Her mattress was off the frame. All her clothes were pulled from their drawers. Her laptop was laying on the floor by the window.
Her fingers trembled as she pulled up her phone app and called the one person who she knew could calm her down.
Hawk answered the phone on the second ring.
“Hey, mama. I’m almost ready to head out the door. Everything okay?”
“Someone was in my room,” she whispered. “I-I don’t know where my mom is. She should be here, and my dad isout on the ranch somewhere and I think I’m alone at the house. My room is trashed.”
“You’re there alone right now?”His voice had shifted in an instant. Silky softness had become a steel-hardened bark that made her erratic heartbeat pick up.
“I’m standing in the doorway. Someone rifled through everything. My s-stuff is everywhere.” Her eyes went to the floor where the small cloud lamp she’d had since she was a kid sat broken, shattered pieces spread across the hardwood flooring. She’d wanted to put that in the baby’s room.
Tears stung her eyes.
“Jessie, go to another room and lock the door. Another bedroom. A bathroom. I’m on my way. Don’t open the fucking door until I get there.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Hawk.”
“Baby. Go, now. Whoever did that could still be in the house.”
Her heart dropped into her stomach.
The door to her bathroom opened and a tall, masked figure stood, blinking back at her. A blood curdling scream filled the air around her, but she wasn’t sure where it had come from. How could she possibly make a noise when her whole body was frozen in place? The intruder raced to her window, grabbing her laptop off the ground and hauling it out onto the back roof with him.
Before Jessie could think, she was throwing her cell phone after the masked man, a satisfied smile growing wide across her face as she nailed the asshole right in the back of the head, his hand coming up to rub the spot the phone grazed as he disappeared over the ledge onto the roof of the back porch.
She made her way to the window, trying to find anything memorable about the man as he disappeared into the woods that surrounded the ranch. Fuck. There wasn’t anything.Except for the overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke left in his wake.
And that had her running for the bathroom.
“I was talking to Nash about that simulation we ran a few weeks ago with all that smoke.” Hawk sat down in the chair across from Nash’s desk. His buddy sat back in his chair, arms going behind his head as he nodded and stretched.
“Oh yeah, the one where the machines couldn’t keep up.”
“Yeah, exactly. I was thinking that for Trident II, there should be a different setup, but I’m not sure how to go about it. It makes sense to have the machines mounted on the ceiling, but I like the option to have them floor mounted too for when we force the guys to the ground with physical obstacles. It seems shitty to lose that option just to avoid a different issue.”
