Page 19 of Hide and Seek

He should terrify me, but he doesn’t.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, his voice deep and a bit raspy.

Half dazed, I touch my fingers to my throat. My neck is tender, but other than that and a sore shoulder, I think I’m okay.

Dropping my hand, I nod, not trusting that I can talk without my voice cracking like a preteen right now.

He extends his hand toward me. “You were never here, understand?”

I nod again and slip my trembling hand into his. His grip is strong, and his skin is warm as he pulls me to my feet with way more care than I expected. He even holds on to me for a few beats once I’m upright to give me a chance to get my balance.

“Go,” he orders when I stand there like a statue.

Something about the tone of his command breaks through my shock, and I sprint away from the carnage. I must look insane as I race down the paths to my dorm, but I just dodge the few students I pass and don’t slow down until I’m through the wide-open front gate of Boone House.

When I’m safely in my room with the door locked, the reality of everything that just happened hits at once, and I walk over to my bed and sink down on it, my head spinning with thoughts and questions.

Were those guys going to kill me? Or were they just trying to scare the piss out of me before giving me their message? They had to be working with the Kings. There’s no way I’d have two different groups after me. Right?

Was the guy who saved me the same one who’s been following me? Is he who I saw in the woods the other day?

If it was the same person, what the hell is his endgame? Why did he stop those guys and beat them to a pulp? Why didn’t he just let them finish the job? And if those guys were Kings, does that mean the hooded guy isn’t?

Blowing out a long breath, I fall back on my bed as all the energy seems to drain out of me at once.

I was attacked tonight, possibly almost killed. But instead of ending up in the school morgue, a guy in a hood saved me and told me I was never there.

That’s fucked up enough, but the part that I can’t wrap my head around is how I was half hard when he helped me stand up—and how my dick still hasn’t gone all the way back down.

What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with me?

5

JAX

Silently,I slip into Myles’s room and gently close the door behind me.

Breaking into the building was laughably easy, and so was sneaking up to his room. The building has cameras, but not enough of them, and there are massive blind spots that can be easily exploited to avoid detection.

The maintenance and operating costs of each house are covered by dorm fees and alumni donations, so most of the dorms get extensive renovations and security upgrades as new tech becomes available.

Boone House is the exception, and it has everything to do with the dorm being for first-gen students. Unlike the other houses that were built by the families of their founding members, the school built Boone House when they started accepting first-gen students thirty years ago, and the alumni base hasn’t done much to level up anything in the building, including the security, over the years.

That’s bad news for Myles, but good news for whoever is after him.

“Are you in?” Jace asks, his voice coming through my earpiece.

“Yup,” I say in a low voice and look around, taking in every detail around me and committing it to memory. It’s exactly how I pictured the room based on the floor plans and what I’ve been able to see through his window.

“I’d say good job, but that feels condescending considering how easy it was for you to get in there,” he says, and I don’t need to see his face to know he’s grinning. “It’s like they want the first gens to get murdered in their beds.”

“Pretty sure the only thing they’d shed a tear over is the lost tuition checks if that did happen,” I agree and head over to Myles’s computer.

Thanks to our lifelong sibling rivalry and our pathological need to either one-up each other or at least learn everything the other does, I’m good with computers, but I’m nowhere near my brother’s level, and certainly not anywhere near Myles’s. If it was anyone else, I’d snoop around myself to get answers, but with Myles’s skills, I need my brother’s help to make sure I get in and out without fucking things up and getting caught.

“Do you have the drive?” he asks.

“Obviously.” I pull it out of my pocket and slide the USB connector out of the protective metal casing.