Behind my sunglasses, I blinked furiously, refusing to reveal weakness before the flock of circling vultures. Hunt ran a soothing hand along my back, though his shoulder shuddered beneath my face, not much, but enough for me to understand he was breaking too.
What if Griffin, who meant everything to the four of us, was beyond our reach?
The five of us were an unbreakable crew.
A family bound by a link greater than blood.
We’d been tight since always.
We were never meant to be four. Five, always five. Only then were we complete.
Layla snarled.
I glanced up from Hunt’s chest, and sure enough, Magnum was angling our way, our fake parents behind him, a line starting to form around Orson, Griffin’s pretend dad, and us.
Anyone who’d ever seen us together knew we were Griff’s real family.
With Magnum twentysomething feet away from us and closing in fast, and his asshole nephew Rich drawing to his side, Ibarked urgently into our bond:
No more discussion was needed. However many of us remained, one thing didn’t change: We had one another’s backs.
Without explanation or so much as an apologetic grimace, the four of us spun and, arms threaded together, stalked rapidly to Brady’s Mustang, Bonnie. We were pulling out in a spatter of gravel before I looked back. As one, as if they were part of a single organism, every single person there was observing us making a getaway. Magnum stood at the head of them, a stark reminder that he was the master puppeteer, and potentially every person in Ridgemore his puppet.
Even us.
Hunt said, still speaking through our telepathic bond despite the presumed privacy of the car. We’d learned the hard way it was a luxury Magnum didn’t have the courtesy to offer us. And why would he? According to him, we were hisproperty, the results of lab experiments he’d funded.
Layla hissed, sounding perfectly vicious.
I said.
Brady glanced at me through the rearview mirror, eyebrows raised.
Not specifically.
Layla said.
My heart thudded.
she said in a high pitch that sounded a lot like panic.
I mumbled.
Hunt said.
Brady whipped his head toward him in the passenger seat.
Hunt’s eyes glittered with determination, drying up any weakness that had been threatening to leak out of me.
he said.
I found myself nodding along, leaning forward to be closer to the momentum that would lead us to Griffin.
Brady asked.
Hunt said with confidence I was gobbling up.
Layla said.
