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Why did I do that tonight? Why did Hawken Trent help me? Twice? And why did I help him? I should’ve let them have him.

I lower my eyes, dazed as my head swims. An array of shit lies all over the desk, and I slowly take it in.

A couple of fake IDs with his picture on them. Newspaper clippings of his dad and uncles, his beautiful family smiling at the opening of some speedway or dining at some restaurant or golfing. A stack of college brochures and so much computer and electronic equipment, books and manuals, information and ambition and possibilities pouring off every shelf and out of every drawer.

He’s smart. Educated. Rich. Connected.

He didn’t need my help. In a couple of weeks, he’ll be starting college, and I’ll only be worth the money Hugo and Reeves can make off of me. I’ll be dead in five years, and he’ll be skiing.

A sound, like singing, breaks through my thoughts, and I look up, seeing movement on the monitors. Two bodies close in around the door on the roof, two more climbing up over the ledge from the fire escapes and coming this way. My heart rate speeds up.

They all stop, looking at something, and I take the mouse, zooming in on one of the faces.

“You know you can’t leave now, right, Rebel?” he says, and I notice it’s Kade Caruthers.

He smiles, and one by one they all disappear through the hole in the top of the roof, entering the hideout.

Can’t leave? What? The door in the roof closes, and I suck in a breath, realizing they’re inside, and then…

Two clicks reverberate inside the walls, echoing all around me, and I dart my eyes back to the screen, seeing the word LOCKDOWN in a red box at the bottom of the center monitor.

I run, back up the stairs, to the left, and down the hallway to the mirror, knowing I’ll run into them if I go the other way. I grab the latch at the top and press it, but nothing moves. Not the latch. Not the mirror.

I press it again. Nothing.

Laughter echoes behind me, no less than five Pirates somewhere in the hideout locked in with me.

I fall back against the cold, cement wall.

I should’ve left when I had the chance.

Hawke

“Whose phone are you calling from?” my dad asks.

“Mine.”

“You have a phone I don’t know about?”

I keep my smile to myself, drying the sweat on the back of my neck with a towel and toss it into a bin. “Of course, I have a phone you don’t know about,” I reply.

Jaxon Trent doesn’t raise idiots.

“I can trace it,” he tells me.

“You can, but you won’t find me.”

I hear an exhale over the phone and can just picture my father shaking his head like he does when he realizes the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I wouldn’t say I’m smarter than him, not by a long shot, but any solution to a problem I come up with will have the least number of variables. My father is different. He likes variables. Loves surprises. I don’t.

“Get home,” he says, his voice harder and more urgent. “Goddammit, Hawke. You hit a cop.”

“I can explain.”

“It’s online!” he barks. “People are making up their own explanations. It’s too late.”

I know. And I know he’s right. The longer I hide, the worse it looks. But I don’t tell him that getting myself out of trouble isn’t all I’m interested in. I have cousins in this town. Little ones who will have to go to school with the shit Reeves is quietly pumping into every pool party, skate park, and soccer mom. My dad and Madoc can help, and I might let them, but I’m not ready to make that decision yet. Not until I know what I’m doing.

“I’m okay,” I assure him. “I’m safe.”

“Your mom is frantic.”

They’re probably home from Chicago by now. I’m sure they rushed out of there as soon as they got wind of what happened.

A pang of guilt that I probably should’ve felt with my dad finally eats away at me when he mentions my mom. She never really did anything to make me feel like I needed to protect her, but I always do.

“I’m in Shelburne Falls,” I tell him, knowing he’ll tell her, “and I’m not leaving. But I’m not coming home. Not until after Grudge Night. I need time. I’ll turn myself in then.”

In eight days.

He’s quiet for a moment, and voices echo from down the hall. I turn toward it, watching the door to the gym.

“One decision can change your life, Hawke,” my dad says in my ear.

He’s done nothing but raise me with that thought in mind in everything I do.

“What do I tell the police when they come looking for you?” he asks, just as Dylan, Kade, Stoli, and Dirk burst through the door.