Page 36 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)
A hot poker spears me in the gut. “I swear I didn’t mean to bite that hard or hurt you,” I say, my voice rising with alarm. Please don’t tell me I fucked everything up already .
“No, no, shh. I didn’t mean that.” With the tips of two fingers, she traces the indentations my teeth left in her flesh, the corners of her lips lifting as if she’s delighted by the texture and the bruising that is sure to follow.
“I only meant my feet are asleep, and my legs are going to be seriously sore tomorrow.”
“Good.” An understatement if I’ve ever heard one. My blood pressure returns to normal, my cock overly sensitive and already missing its home inside her when I help her sit between my thighs so she can straighten her legs.
“It’s a shame you didn’t stick around last night,” she says in her sing-songy voice, shaking one foot out, then the other, as feeling returns to her lower extremities. “We might have figured this position out sooner and had more time.”
“Trust me, I wanted to. But Layla…” I sniff, hooking my chin on her shoulder while I massage her upper thighs. “She made some good points.”
“I meant after that.” Birdie looks toward the trees when Storm barks again, a little closer this time. I’m surprised she’s traveled this far .
“After what?” I comb back her hair and kiss her cheek, thinking that now she’s chosen me, we won’t have to spend another night apart. We’ll have the time we need to explore anything and everything we want. At the cabin. Where we all belong.
“When you were hiding in the trees,” Birdie says with a fleeting smile. “I wanted to talk to you face-to-face about what happened in the bathroom.”
I go still as I process what she said, my mind not as sharp, slow and lazy in the afterglow of our intimacy. “I wasn’t hiding in the trees.”
She twists her head, frowning. “Yes, you were. Not very well, though. I saw you.”
“When?”
She huffs. “When we were texting.”
“You saw me when we were texting last night?” I ask slowly, my skin rapidly cooling. Casting my eyes to the surrounding trees that are merely a dark blob in the distance, I mentally kick myself for not giving in and ordering the old man glasses I’ve been too stubborn to believe I need just yet.
“Yes,” she says, growing frustrated. “But then the floodlights came on, and you took off when Goldie came outside. Drove away before I could catch up to you. You know this.”
Both of us tense when Storm’s barking grows louder, drawing ever closer, twigs snapping as she careens through the woods. It’s not her normal bark of exhilaration when she finds some vermin or another and chases it up a tree. It’s a warning, a call to arms—one that I heed.
“Why is Storm—” Birdie yelps when I lift her off the lounger and yank her skirt down to her ankles as soon as she’s standing.
I’ve barely zipped up my jeans before I grab her and run straight for the patio, then burst through the back door of the overly crowded mansion. I slam the door closed and lock it, pull my shotgun from inside my jacket, then point to Davis across the room. “Lock the front door!”
Davis immediately does so without argument.
Even though my brother has spent a fortune on special tinting for the windows and doors to prevent anyone from seeing inside at night, I hate how exposed it still feels to be surrounded by so much glass, like we’re sitting ducks, and I pull Birdie into the kitchen.
“Get away from her,” Russell bites out, charging over and trying to get in between me and my Birdie, plunging another knife in my back, and I shove him away.
“What’s happening?” Birdie asks, wringing her hands that have gone white with cold or fear or both. When Russell tries to get between us again, she balls her fists, her ribs flaring when she sucks in the breath needed to scream at Russell, “Leave him alone!”
Russell backs off with his hands up, and I pay him no mind when I shout, “Paul!”
My nephew is already standing guard with Mckinley at the side door that leads from the living room to the top of the driveway and garage, having flipped the lock before I finished saying his name.
Goldie moves swiftly to Birdie’s side. “What did he do to your neck?”
“What’s happening!” Birdie shouts instead of answering.
“You bit her?” Goldie screams at me, her face going fiery red with rage.
Ignoring Goldie, I search the living room and bark, “Where are the kids?”
“They’re all playing upstairs in the nursery with Layla and Cora,” Dolly says nervously, with Wyatt’s arm wrapped around her from behind to drag her away from the windows. “Why?”
I find Trace, his ridiculous, teal hat sticking out like a sore thumb, and point to the second floor. “Keep guard upstairs.” He doesn’t argue, either, his naturally goofy smile slipping off his face when he sprints up the stairs two at a time.
A deadly sort of calm rolls in like the tide, the explosion of static in my head forced out now that I know the kids are accounted for and safe.
And it’s only then that I can stoop and cup Birdie’s face, saying loud enough for the others to hear, “Whoever was watching you last night wasn’t me.
” It should have been me . If I hadn’t let Layla get in my head…
If I had listened to Birdie and gone back when she asked me to, I would have been there and caught whoever was lurking.
I could have dealt with them before Birdie ever knew they were there.
“Yes, it was!” Birdie blinks rapidly against the truth she’s confronted with.
“I was at home the entire time we were texting.” I flick my gaze to Goldie, whose whole demeanor has changed, no longer looking at me like the devil incarnate. She’s sharp-eyed and focused when she and Davis exchange a glance, having a silent conversation.
“Fu–udge,” my brother says under his breath, disappearing through the door behind the fireplace, where his gun safe is bolted to the floor of his bedroom closet.
“No, you weren’t! I saw you!” Birdie argues as I swipe my thumbs across her cheeks as the tears she wishes she could hide start to fall. “It was you!” she tries one more time, her voice faltering because she no longer believes it, though she hopelessly wants to.
But there’s no more denying it when Storm comes racing across the back yard at a breakneck speed and lunges at one of the doors, her nails scrabbling across the glass. Slobber foams at the sides of her muzzle, a bloody piece of ripped fabric hanging from her bottom right canine.
“No, no, no, no!” Birdie screams, and I yank her into my chest, holding her as she thrashes. “It’s Priscilla. She must have gotten away. She’s here!”
“It’s not her,” I say, having to let her go much too soon and push her toward Goldie so I can let Storm inside, who is close to collapsing, before I slam the door shut again.
Violet and Faye shriek at the sight of Storm, and Jared helps Violet scramble up onto the island beside Faye, both of them terrified of large dogs.
Birdie shakes her head. “You don’t know that!”
“Priscilla is dead.” I scoop Storm up and bring her into the kitchen to gently lay her on the cool floor, petting her heaving side even as I keep my head on a swivel.
I didn’t mean for Birdie to ever find out about Priscilla, and I hate that this is how I’m forced to tell her.
“So whoever was out there, it definitely wasn’t her. ”
“You killed her?” Birdie asks shrilly, her eyes wide and bloodshot. But then color returns to her cheeks, and she asks in a softer tone with hearts in her eyes, “For me?”
I shake my head but can’t bring myself to tell her what really happened. This is my burden to bear.
“What the eff, Teagan?” Goldie gapes at Birdie like there’s something inherently wrong or broken about her, and I hate that, too.
Russell leans out of his doorway with his shotgun raised, having set aside whatever issue he has with me when he asks, “What are we looking for, brother?”
“Someone with a death wish,” I tell him, and he nods once.
Harold kindly brings us a plastic bowl filled with water for Storm and sets it down beside her before scooting away quickly, and I gently work the mud and blood-streaked yellow fabric with gold stitching out of Storm’s mouth, studying it.
“Do you recognize it?” I ask Birdie, who has gone silent as she stares hard at the small piece of cloth.
When she doesn’t answer, I pass it to Davis.
“Think it could belong to Colton?” It’s a fleeting hope that this has nothing to do with Birdie.
That it could be Lily’s biological father since the lurker was on their property.
“It can’t be,” Goldie says, keeping her distance from Birdie. “He’s too much of a coward.”
“I’ll check our security cameras. Whoever it was, they’re dead,” Davis says, crumpling the fabric in his fist.
“Could it have been—” Layla clams up over a few names, leaning over the half-wall balcony with an open view of the living room, her doe eyes wide.
“They wouldn’t have gone back to Davis’s house after you left,” Russell says to Layla with a shake of his head. “But I’ll check our cameras, too. See if anyone passed by here.”
“I’ll do that,” I say, lifting my chin at Russell.
“Y’all were…out there?” he asks, tipping his head to the side of the house, and he rolls his eyes when I grunt.
“Maybe it’s time we call Sheriff,” Mckinley says, bringing her phone to her ear.
“No!” The word is shot out of Birdie’s mouth like a bullet, ringing in our ears and bouncing off the walls.
And because everyone immediately goes silent, we’re just able to hear Sheriff’s tinny voice through Mckinley’s speaker when he answers, “Hello? Hello?”