CASSIE
My nerves had calmedby the time we left my apartment. It had felt weird leading them into my private space. No man but Bram — and Otis when he’d snuck in to see Daisy back when she’d stayed with me — had ever been inside my apartment.
But nothing terrible had happened. Hawk had stood still as a stone in my kitchen, taking it all in from afar like… well, like a hawk surveying the forest from a nest high in the trees.
Jagger had walked around my apartment, carefully picking things up, studying the spines of my books, his expression concentrated, while the one named Vigo had wandered through the place like a gremlin on meth, opening closet doors, laying on my couch (checking to see if it was a good nap couch?), even opening leftover containers in the fridge for god’s sake.
Still, I’d been relieved to get them out of there, dogged by the feeling that if we stayed too long, some deep dark secret would be revealed even though I didn’t have any deep dark secrets, unless you counted the fact that I wanted someone dead, which the Hawks already knew.
Back in the orange G-Wagon, we headed down Main, but instead of turning for one of the residential streets that circled the town in a grid, we kept going toward the mountain.
Then I got nervous again.
Because I’d lost the Hunt fair and square and was prepared to do my time, but being alone with the Hawks in the tunnels in town or in my apartment somehow felt a lot safer than driving off in a car with them to god knew where.
And I still hadn’t texted Daisy — or anyone — to tell them where I was.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Jagger looked over from his spot next to me in the back seat. “Home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Just outside of town. Don’t worry, you’re safe.” He reached over and squeezed my knee and a jolt of electricity traveled between my thighs.
I wondered if this was part of being a virgin, if being deprived of sexual touch made every brush of someone’s hand, every bump of their knee, feel sexual.
Maybe it would pass after I had sex. I hoped so, because it was more than a little uncomfortable to be in a state of heightened sexual tension at a time when I was also terrified.
Because let’s face it, it was going to take a lot more than Jagger’s reassurances to make me feel safe.
I thought maybe we were headed up the mountain. Daisy lived there with Jace, Otis, Wolf, and the baby in the old house she’d inherited from her mom, but we passed Old Mountain Road and kept going, toward the outskirts of Blackwell Falls.
Now we were in the wooded area around town, before the landscape changed from forest to fields, thick stands of trees giving way to farms and wide-open spaces, the craggy cliffs of the Blackwell Preserve rising all around like granite sentries.
We were about ten minutes outside of town when Vigo eased off the gas to turn into a wooded, tree-lined driveway.
I resisted the urge to make a comment about serial killers and the woods. I was feeling superstitious, like if I voiced my deepest fears I might will them into existence.
We drove for another minute and emerged into a paved clearing in front of a huge Craftsman-style house, nestled into the trees so carefully, it looked like it had been there as long as the trees.
“This is your house?”
Vigo laughed. “You’re going to have to stop doing that or I’m going to get a complex.”
“Doing what?”
He caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Sounding surprised.”
I couldn’t help it. The house was huge but in the subtle way of well-designed things, something I’d learned from Daisy, who was super into that kind of stuff.
Surrounded on all sides by leafy trees, the house was painted a deep blue, so dark it almost looked black. The warm wooden trim gave it an earthy feel, but the architecture was what Daisy would have called Craftsman, the roofline more subtly varied than her Victorian mansion with its sharp peaks and soaring fireplaces.
It was… interesting. It made me want to look more closely, see how it all fit together, and I realized it was perfect for the men who called themselves the Hawks.
Jagger opened the door and stepped out of the car. “I can’t fucking wait to take a shower.”
“Same,” Vigo said.
