If he’d ever had frat boy tendencies, he’d strangled them, spat on the corpse and then set it ablaze.
He was what Mag and his boys would become in a few years.
He wasn’t all man.
He wasn’t all commando.
He might be an avenging angel.
There were no words to describe precisely what he was.
But what he was, he was that 100 percent.
“You doin’ all right?” Hawk asked me, his eyes assessing my person efficiently, and he did not hide his displeasure at seeing the sting in both my cheeks that was clearly visible.
“Y-yeah,” I replied, seeing as he was freaking me out by being a human-size force of nature, but also, I’d dropped the blanket in the dash to Mag and I was freezing.
Hawk turned his head to the man standing beside him, Hispanic, also intensely good-looking, and without a word said by Hawk, that guy jogged back to the blanket.
Hawk then shifted his attention to Snag, who Mag had stopped pounding, but the man was still on his knees, his body lax, held up by Mag’s fist in his shirt.
“Are you conscious?” Hawk asked.
“Fuck you,” Snag spat, and I was pretty sure a tooth came out along with spittle and blood at his words.
Yuck.
I noted tears were also running out of Snag’s eyes from the smoke, but that was currently the least of his worries.
“I see your situation has not impressed itself on you,” Hawk remarked.
At that, Snag just spat, his head lolling to do so, his aim to the ground by Hawk’s feet.
It was then Boone let me go, so Hawk’s man, who went to retrieve the blanket, could give me said blanket.
Boone helped pull it around me and I held it close to my front.
Hawk watched this as if my comfort was the most important component of this wild scenario, and I decided I liked Mag’s boss.
He then turned back to Snag.
“There are few in your line of work who do not know who I am,” Hawk noted.
“Everyone knows who you are, motherfucker,” Snag replied.
“So, I take it, you put your hands on Evie not knowing she has my protection.”
Aw.
That was sweet.
And it meant something to Snag. Even in the bloodied mess Mag had made of his face, he looked freaked.
He struggled to hide it, failed, but still managed to accuse, “She took somethin’ of mine.”
“You gave it to her, dumbfuck,” Hawk returned.
“To look after,” Snag retorted.
“All right,” Hawk said, putting both hands on his hips, and I imagined the sky lifted several inches, “I’m done with this. Outside the narcotics, what was in that bag?”
Snag blinked. Then it appeared he was trying to think.
Finally, he said, “Nothin’.”
Hawk’s gaze slid to Mag and he nodded.
Once.
Mag pulled an arm back.
Not the arm attached to his injured shoulder.
That one he was using constantly to hold on to Snag, dammit.
“Okay! Okay! Call off your asshole!” Snag shouted. “I’ll tell you.”
Mag’s arm dropped but this gave me occasion to look at his face and I saw his mouth was pinched with pain and he’d gone slightly pale.
However, I felt, regrettably in this scenario, that I should not rush to coddling the man I was living with, albeit platonically (for now, and that happy change in circumstances was indefinitely delayed, stupid Snag!), and instead stayed still and kept my mouth shut.
When several seconds ticked by in silence, Hawk prompted, “I’m not hearing you tell me.”
“It’s a gun,” Snag said then hastily added, “Not my gun.”
“We know it’s not your gun. We know one of your girls took it off a john. We know that girl is now dead. What we wanna know is, whose is it and why is it so fuckin’ important?”
“I tell you, will you let me go?”
Hawk heaved a beleaguered sigh.
“I see you haven’t come to grips with your situation. This isn’t a negotiation. You’re gonna tell me, and your choice is whether you tell me easy, or you tell me hard. And how you choose decides how we disappear you after. If we do that nice, or if we do that nasty.”
Oh man.
I looked to Mag, who was focused on the man in his hold.
“Now,” Hawk carried on, “I work hard, my boys work hard, downtime is scarce, we were all enjoying our Saturdays, and we find ourselves here, dealing with you. And the longer you make us stay here, the more my mood deteriorates. So let’s cut the dicking around and tell me about that gun.”