by Layla Reyne
“Alpha team, converge on the service stairwell exit,” Wheeler ordered. “Possible targets—”
The service door, in sight of the ATM camera and over half a dozen tactical helmet cams, banged open. Out of the billowing smoke walked two men, each with a child in his arms. Two men Chris had never been so happy to see in his life.
“Stand down!” he forced out around his hammering heart, which had rocketed from his feet up into his throat. “Stand down!”
Wheeler gasped. “That’s Madigan.”
“And Kane,” Chris shot back. “Carrying two kids rescued from a burning building, so for once in your goddamn life, stand the fuck down!”
Quelled, Wheeler raised one hand and lifted the radio in his other, relaying the order to stand down. “I just want to talk to Madigan,” he said, once temperatures in the room had cooled.
“So do I, but he’s not going anywhere.” Chris nodded at the surveillance feeds, which showed Hawes and Kane across the street from the building now, being mobbed by relieved parents and residents, while EMS and law-enforcement officers waited at the edge of the crowd. They were hemmed in. And if that weren’t enough, at either end of the block were press vans. “You’ll get your chance. But Hawes Madigan just saved two kids, and together with Kane, who knows how many other agents, officers, and residents.”
Wheeler jabbed an accusing finger at the other monitor, at the top floor of the building that continued to blaze. “While he let the buyers burn.”
Chapter Ten
As bad as it initially looked, the explosion had been relatively contained. Newly constructed, the building was equipped with all the latest fire-suppression equipment, and SFFD had been close by and on alert for operation support. Only the top-floor penthouses occupied by the buyers had been materially damaged.
Just enough to cover the evidence. Exactly as the clever auction organizer had intended. With a few hours’ distance from the event now, Chris had worked out the math. Adding together the too still buyers he’d glimpsed on-screen just before the explosion, plus the charred remains of the bodies they’d found in the penthouses, plus what he’d learned of the way this new generation of Madigans viewed their role in dispensing justice, the sum of the equation was obvious.
It had been a fucking job. Either orchestrated by the Madigans, or neatly taken advantage of when the opportunity had presented itself. Regardless, Chris was fucking pissed. He’d been left out of the fucking loop, his and Kane’s people had been recklessly endangered, and worst of all, he’d had to watch Hawes walk into a trap, think him caught, and for two harrowing minutes, believe him dead. He’d made Chris doubt his mission, his purpose, his burgeoning plan to stay here and make a home. Made him forget about being the uncle Mia and Marco needed, the brother Celia could rely on, and the son Gloria deserved. Hawes had sent his insides on a roller coaster and almost made him run.
And for what? A goddamn power trip. A war that, while seemingly connected to Izzy’s death, wasn’t going to stop if Chris solved the latter. A battle Hawes and his siblings clearly intended to fight on their own. Granted, Chris being on the outside looking in was in no small part due to his own betrayal, but this was about more than just him. Holt had sat there in Kane’s office, looked them in the eye, and given no indication that this was anything but the op they were planning. And that order had no doubt come from Hawes, who’d risked more than just his own life.
But Chris couldn’t be angry with him, literally. The target of his rage had dodged him in the hours since the blast, all while being treated like a fucking hero. Local news channels ran a loop of the footage of Hawes and Kane emerging from the building with those kids, and even the agents and officers were handling Hawes with kid gloves.
Everyone except Wheeler, who didn’t buy that Hawes just happened to be in the building this evening to view one of the penthouse units. Didn’t buy that Hawes hadn’t reached his destination before the explosion. The property’s sales manager had vouched for Hawes, of course. Had that been the person who’d stayed in the “seller’s room” while Hawes ran back and forth to the buyers? Chris wondered how much Hawes had paid the guy to risk his life and jail time.
Wheeler didn’t believe Hawes or the property manager, but he’d let it go, temporarily. He’d been too busy cleaning up the almost mess he’d made sending agents into a hot zone. Kane had likewise been busy dealing with SFPD’s role in the situation, while also fielding media requests and stifling his own boiling anger. Chris wasn’t sure which of them was more irate. Kane had also been left out of the loop, inadvertently endangered his officers, and run into a wired-to-blow building to “save” a friend’s life. Chris was sure Hawes and company would hear about it from the chief, if they survived Chris’s wrath first. As angry as he was, he might earn that King Slayer title Wheeler was so damn eager to pin on him. The risks Hawes had taken today, if Chris was right, were too fucking high.
He was so mad, so distracted running scenarios in his head of what he’d do to Hawes Madigan if he could only fucking find him, that Chris almost fell on his ass when he walked into his condo and found his target standing next to the kitchen island, drinking a beer. Free of soot and suit, dressed in jeans and a Giants pullover, Hawes looked like he’d just returned from the ballpark, not like he’d barely escaped an explosion.
“Mr. Perri.”
Standing in the foyer, Chris was battered by the emotional dissonance. Relief, surprise, desire, and the heated anger that had simmered all evening, rising to a rolling boil and burning away the other emotions. But he’d be damned if he let Hawes see that. Not until he got his fucking answers.
Chris shrugged off his coat and hung it on the rack by the door. Small, everyday motions to keep the rage banked. Innocent, conversational questions to lead into the big ones. “You adding breaking and entering to your rap sheet?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Chris measured his steps down the hallway, forcing his gait to remain casual as he passed Hawes on the way to his bedroom. “You found where I lived,” Chris said as he moved around the room. He opened his closet and secured his sidearm in the safe with the other empty holster.
Hawes rattled around in the kitchen. “Once I had the name right, it wasn’t too hard.”
Chris checked to make sure the locked door to the room between his bedroom and the study was secure and untampered with, then headed back out to deal with his intruder. “I’m sure it wasn’t hard for Holt,” he said, coming to stand beside Hawes at the kitchen island.
Hawes handed him an open bottle, then took a long drag from the fresh one he’d helped himself to. “He’s good at what he does.”
“Which I’m guessing isn’t being a messenger.”
“Oh, he’s good at that too. ‘Eyes only.’ I heard you. I just didn’t listen.”
“Or you set it up to start with.”
Hawes grinned around the mouth of his bottle, and it took every bit of restraint Chris had to wait until Hawes lowered the bottle from his lips before snatching it out of his hand and slamming it on the tiled countertop.
So much for playing it cool. At least he hadn’t broken the bottle. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
Hawes, by contrast, was the epitome of cool. Of controlled. Hip to the island, he rotated to face Chris. “Why should I tell you anything? I don’t trust you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“You think I want to be?”
Chris scoffed. “Please, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to be.”
“I shouldn’t be here.” A flash of fire in those eyes, a crack in the ice of that cool exterior. “I don’t trust you. But after today, you’re the only one who—” He cut himself off and turned his face away, made to move away too, but Chris grabbed his wrist and held his hand to the bar.
A sharp inhale. More cracks.
Chris wanted the rest of that sentence. Wanted to swallow that inhale. Desperately, on both counts. But he still needed fucking answ
ers. Needed to make clear that today couldn’t happen again, for everyone’s sakes.
“You left me and Kane out of the loop.” A little of his previous anger crept back in, and he forced it down, leveling his voice, same as he’d done with Mia last night. He wanted to drive home his point, not drive Hawes away. “You put my people and Kane’s in danger today. You put Kane in danger. Because you didn’t tell us the whole story. I want it now. I might not deserve your trust, but I deserve that much.”
Hawes inhaled deeply, as if centering himself, then effortlessly freed his hand. Chris’s control had been sheer illusion in that regard. But Hawes didn’t move away. “You’re a fed.”
“Whatever you say stays between us. I’m not gonna turn you in.”
Hawes held his gaze an agonizingly long minute, assessing, before he reclaimed his beer and took a long swig. “I was thinking I was tired of playing defense,” he said as he lowered the bottle. “That I wanted to go on offense.”
“You were trying to lure them out?” Like Hawes had done with Papa Cal’s funeral last week. He’d been tired of waiting then too.
“Trying being the operative word. I also needed to test the outside influencer theory.”
“The other buyers.” Chris had wondered the same thing. “And?”
“Those three weren’t involved, which gives me some comfort.”
“I saw two enter—cartel and neo-Nazi. Who was the third?”
“Arms dealer who had a unit in the building.”
“So you killed the three of them?”
Hawes shrugged. “That gives me comfort too.”
“Jesus, Madigan.” Chris held his own beer to his forehead, praying for patience and futilely hoping the cold bottle would stem the cresting wave of anger.
“I had contracts on them too.”
“Isn’t that convenient?”
Hawes cocked a brow. “Are you actually arguing on behalf of a human trafficker, a white supremacist, and an arms dealer, all of whom have threatened our city and escaped justice multiple times?”
Chris drank from his bottle.
One corner of Hawes’s sinful mouth quirked up. “Didn’t think so.” He set his bottle aside, pried Chris’s free from his clenched fingers, then stepped closer, only a few inches between them. “I needed to show whoever is behind this grab for power that I know the game they’re playing, that I can play it too, and that I’m not afraid to do what it takes to win. That I’ll fight for what’s mine and for the way I do things.” Gone was the ice. His eyes were energized, brimming over with a king’s confidence. And heated, the look in them a magnified version of the fire Chris had seen in them yesterday at the BART station. Right after the takedown, right before the too brief kiss.
Chris lifted a hand, wanting desperately to touch, to wallow for a spell in the desire that was pushing away his anger and in the relief that Hawes was safe. And here with him. But what right did he have? Yes, Hawes had initiated the kiss yesterday, but after all that had transpired between them, after Chris’s betrayal, he didn’t have a right to anything more from Hawes than what he’d given him already. Especially when more was the last thing Chris should be doing.
Hawes didn’t give him a choice. He captured Chris’s flailing hand and placed it on his waist, encouraging the touch, reestablishing the connection. “I wanted to know who was selling the explosives,” he said. “This was the quickest way to getting a shot at that info.”
Gliding his hand under the pullover’s hem, Chris curled his fingers into warm skin and rubbed his thumb over the jut of Hawes’s hip. “You said you weren’t using the explosives anymore.”
“I didn’t.”
Chris dropped his hand, forgetting all about Hawes’s sharp angles. “Come again?”
“I didn’t set those explosives.” Righteous indignation flashed across Hawes’s face. “I wouldn’t risk all those innocent residents, or the property manager in the control room, or you, or Brax, or your people. You were wrong about that part.” Umbrage gave way to a sly, satisfied smile. “But my plan worked.”
“Because the real seller had been there to set those explosives.”
Nodding, Hawes erased the inches between them and ran a hand up Chris’s chest. “We can figure out the timeline. Maybe their identity. You do your work, and we’ll do ours.”
“Why’d you tell us about the auction but not the whole story?”
“I took a risk that I could get in and out in time. If the seller had been there when I was, then I would have delivered them to you. I needed law enforcement on-site for that, and in case anything went sideways.”
“Did you factor in that they—or we—could’ve turned the trap on you?”
“I did. Remember that ‘I don’t trust you’ bit…” Hawes cast his gaze aside and stepped back. The magnetic pull between them tugged at Chris’s insides, making the absence painful after being close again. Even more so when Hawes turned on his heel and ambled toward the reading nook. He braced an arm over his head, propped against the window casing. “That’s why it was only me there.”
Chris feared that was the answer, recalling the surveillance footage of Hawes approaching the building alone. Holt had surely been in his ear, but he’d had no on-site backup.
“You would have sacrificed yourself,” Chris said as he stopped next to the end of the chaise.
“You wouldn’t make that promise, to not sacrifice yourself. And I won’t either. If that’s what it takes to keep my family and city—you—safe.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to argue that, Madigan?”
Hawes rotated and rested against the window. He raised his chin and his eyes, both defiant. “Don’t.”
Too much confidence and too dark a death wish. Then and now.
Chris closed the distance between them and braced his hands on either side of the window, caging Hawes in. Keeping him close, avoiding the loss that had almost struck today. “Don’t keep me in the dark. And don’t make me watch you almost die.”
Hawes pushed off the window and brought their bodies flush, their lips a breath apart. “I’m just a mark.”
“Don’t fucking lie either.”
Chris made sure he didn’t tell any more fibs, crushing their mouths together in a kiss that made words, thoughts, breath impossible. Every bit of desire, relief, frustration, and fear that he’d banked the past four hours, the past four days, was unleashed, driving him to press Hawes back against the window, to run his hands over every sharp angle, to plunge his tongue between Hawes’s lips and into his mouth, tasting all that confidence. Tasting the submission when Hawes lifted his arms above his head and clutched either side of the window frame. Open and spread out like he’d been on his condo ladder last week. Hawes needed relief too—from the tightly wound control he’d so expertly wielded today—and Chris wanted to give it to him, wanted that trust back, maybe more than he’d ever wanted anything.
But Chris hesitated, their earlier exchange drifting back into his mind, a tendril of remorse coiling like Hawes’s beloved fog through his veins. Guilt over the lies he’d told. He curled his fingers around Hawes’s wrists in a loose grip and leaned their foreheads together. Before he could say anything, though, Hawes rolled his hips and pressed his hard cock against Chris’s groin. Chris failed to bite back a groan, and Hawes blinked up at him with lust-darkened eyes.
Eyes that wanted to surrender, but did Hawes understand to whom? Reminded again of his remorse, his guilt, the trust he needed to win back, Chris dragged his hips away and released one of Hawes’s wrists. He lowered his hand and cupped Hawes’s cheek. Hawes nuzzled his palm, and Chris nearly lost his resolve for good. All that softness under all those sharp angles was like a lasso around every tender part of Chris, hopelessly ensnaring him.
The satisfying snap of a puzzle piece into place.
He rubbed his thumb over Hawes’s lovely, sharp jawline, waiting for Hawes to lift his eyes again. “Are you sure about this?” He squeezed Hawes’s wrist still in his hand a
gainst the glass. There was no mistaking his question. “Before, you gave this to someone I wasn’t, and I’m sorry for that.”
Hawes snaked his free hand around Chris’s neck and into the hair at his nape. Fingers splayed, he combed outward and forced the tie out of Chris’s hair, freeing his topknot. “You said I could trust you.” He raked his fingers through the long strands, making Chris shiver. “It wasn’t all a lie, was it?”
“You can, and it wasn’t.” Chris sighed softly, helplessly. “Fuck, Hawes, most of it was true, but I’m sorry, so very sorry, for the parts that weren’t.”
Conflicting emotions, too many to dissect, raced across Hawes’s face, flowed out to his fingers that clenched in Chris’s hair, then combusted. Hawes melted under him, and Chris held him up with his body, pressed between him and the glass again. “I’m sorry too,” Hawes whispered hoarsely. “For not telling you the truth.”
“You had your reasons.”
He cleared his throat. “I knew the risks today, owned them, did what I had to do for my family, my city.” He untangled his fingers from Chris’s hair and lifted his arm back into position, mirroring the other. “Now I need to let go, for me. That’s why I’m here. I want to do that with you. I need to.”
Leaving Hawes’s arms raised, Chris ran his hands down their toned length, across Hawes’s broad chest that led to a tapered waist, then under his pullover and thin T-shirt. He splayed his hands across Hawes’s cool skin and ribbed abs, then skirted them over his hips and down inside the waistband of his jeans. His ass cheeks were cool from the window and gloriously firm and round, filling Chris’s hands. He hauled Hawes forward with a grunt and ground their cocks together. “How the fuck am I supposed to argue that?” Argue any of it.
White-knuckling the window frame, Hawes used his abs, like he did when he’d lifted his lower body off the bed on Friday, to do that again now, circling Chris’s waist with his legs, capturing him, locking them together. “Same answer. Don’t.”
