Page 221 of Wild Like Us

I put the phone to my ear. “Hey—”

“Xander is in trouble,” Thatcher cuts me off, his voice like a cement block. “He locked himself in his room.”

I barely hear him say,you need to go.I don’t think—I just react, a shot of adrenaline thrusting me towards the Hale mansion. I shove off.

Can’t grab car keys.

No time.

Can’t turn around.

No time.

I sprint through thick snow down the half-shoveled driveway. Pain recedes in my body, silent behind urgency, and I reach the mailbox. Where a bike is resting.

I grab it.

I climb on.

Comms buzz in my ear.

The rich neighborhood is ploweddaily, and so the streets are clear. I pedal fast, standing up and hearing the chains creak under my weight and height.

Cold air chills my face and cracks my lips, my eyes burning from the freezing wind, and I keep pedaling. Even as snow begins to fall. Even as my pulse thumps hard and deep.

I pedal until the chain breaks.

And then I run.

I’m too laser-focused for jumbled thoughts. I’m on a single track that says,help Xander.Help the kid you love.

The one you’re tasked to protect.

I storm past the fir tree in the yard and up the porch steps. And I put a hand to the knob.Mother of Christ, be unlocked.

It’s open.

And in my peripheral, a car is already parked in the driveway. Rose Calloway, plus Daisy and Ryke Meadows are already headed to the front door too.

Not stopping to greet them, I rush inside the house, through the foyer, and instinct guides me up the stairs. I hear a strange noise likehackingand Kinney’s distressed sobs.

My pulse pounds.

“Kinney, I’m coming!” I yell. “Back away!”

She shouldn’t be the one to break down her brother’s door. She shouldn’t see Xander if he’s…

Stop stop stop.

One track mind.

One goal.

I never slow, not even as I reach the second floor. I run harder and come up to the scene. Kinney Hale fists a kitchen knife and has crumpled to her knees, crying. She tried to carve out pieces of Xander’s door.

Rose has somehow caught up to me, but I run past her. Straight for my client’s room, and Ryke is right next to me when I slam my boot against the wood.

He does the same.