Dream Chaser (Dream Team #2) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,60
flour that I was relieved to see was mostly sucked up by the years of grease and muck that had made the carpet a veritable sponge.
I didn’t go on to realize how extremely gross this was mostly because there was a dead man with his eyes open on my back deck.
“Babe,” Boone called.
The threat has been neutralized.
“Ryn.”
Okay.
All right.
Nefarious people tried to break into a house during the day.
People worked during the day. It was a good chance some random bad guy had targeted my house thinking I was in some office somewhere, slaving away for the man, so my pad was open to take what he wished.
But that man dead on my back deck was not some random bad guy who had targeted my house.
Which meant he probably knew I was there.
I started shivering.
“Kathryn!” Boone clipped, squeezing my hand hard and cupping my jaw, turning my face up to his.
“Do you know that guy?” I asked.
“No,” Boone answered.
“Who was that guy?” I asked.
“He didn’t have ID on him,” Boone answered.
“Why was he here?” I asked.
“I don’t know, baby,” he said.
“I don’t have anything to do with any of this,” I told Boone something he knew.
His lips thinned.
That wasn’t a great response.
“Boone,” I whispered.
“They’re moving the body and clearing out.”
I had not been around him much, but I knew that was Hawk Delgado’s voice.
I had a sense my freak-out could no longer be held back, and it was alarming to understand even at its start that it was going to have multiple layers.
“Hang around. Think Ryn has a few things to say,” Boone said low.
I turned.
The brigade was there. Mo, Mag, Auggie and Axl.
As well as Hawk.
It was a lot for a girl to take in.
I barely noticed it.
“Ryn.”
Hawk said this in his deep voice. It was short. Curt. Authoritative.
My eyes went direct to his.
“You’re safe and you’re going to stay safe.”
A thousand years ago, knights embarking on quests made vows in voices that sounded like that.
Leaders of revolutions made speeches in voices that sounded like that.
Star-crossed lovers made promises in voices that sounded like that.
I relaxed.
“Get her some water, would you?” Boone asked the brigade at large, and Axl and Auggie nearly bumped into each other, they both moved so fast to get me a glass of water.
Okay, I knew by nature of the fact that these were Lottie’s boys, and Mo was the salt of the earth and treated Lottie like gold, and she’d set up Mag with my girl Evie and they were solid as a rock, that these guys were good guys.
But now, all of them descending in a time of tribulation, sticking to me like glue and bumping into each other to get me a glass of water, I was seeing that these guys were really, really good guys.
Boone and I had stopped in my dining room.
He led me to the living room where he pushed me down on my couch.
Hawk and Boone then peeled off to deal with the last of the police leaving while Mo and Mag hung with me and then Mo, Mag, Axl and Auggie hung with me like I needed moral support while I sipped water.
And they were not wrong.
Boone and Hawk came back and Boone sat next to me, wrapping an arm around me and tucking me into his side.
The rest of the boys (and Hawk, who no one in their right mind would refer to as a “boy”) waited until he did this before Boone urged, “Right, what didn’t you tell the cops?”
Part of my multilayer freak-out was shifting places, rising to the surface.
“I should have told them,” I said to Boone.
“Tell us,” Boone said to me.
“I think you were kind of right about Brett.”
Boone’s eyes darted very briefly up to who I suspected was Hawk before they came back to me.
“Why do you say that?”
“He called me.” I swallowed. “After the gunshots.”
“Shit,” I heard, the voice was Mag’s.
“And he said the threat had been neutralized,” I finished.
“Fuck,” I heard, and that was Auggie.
But Boone was up from the couch, demanding of me, “Where’s your phone?”
I got up too, saying, “Boone, maybe we should just—”
“Where’s your fucking phone, Ryn?” he bit out.
“Boone,” Hawk said quietly.
“Fuck that,” Boone said to Hawk.
Axl’s brows shot up in a way I sensed that it was not often that anyone talked back to Hawk.
Like, never.
I felt my phone sliding out of my back pocket, where somewhere along the line, I’d stowed it.