Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 130512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Zeke swayed on the couch. “Holy fuck,” he whispered, his head hanging down.
“Guess what he had to say?” Logan snarled. “Spoiler: it was about you.”
Zeke gulped, still swaying on the couch.
I cursed. He was about to keel over. “Logan.” Two steps and I caught Zeke just as he was about to go down.
“What?” Logan snapped. “This little fucking hacker. Kai Bennett is in the mafia.” He yelled the last word at Zeke, who clutched my hand before giving me a nod, assuring me he was okay to sit by himself again.
I waited another beat, but he gave one more nod, so I moved away.
“The fucking mafia, Zeke. You hacked into his brothers’s accounts. Into their partners’s accounts.”
My eyebrows rose. I’d not expected this from Logan. He’d been annoyed. I knew that much, but he was pissed about what Zeke had done to himself. I had no idea Logan cared for this guy this much.
“Tell him what he said to you. The other part.” Logan turned swiftly, glaring at me. “The part about what would’ve happened if he’d gotten into Kai Bennett’s accounts.”
Zeke had slumped over again, a hand on his stomach. He grimaced, trying to sit up straighter. “You can tell me.”
No.
Fuck.
No.
I shook my head. We’d done enough to him. It could wait.
“No! No, Mason. Fuck no.” Logan thrust a hand at me. “You fucking tell him.”
I hesitated, but Christ, Zeke looked about two more shouts away from passing out. I shook my head.
Logan growled. “Come on!”
I narrowed my eyes. “Look at him. He’s going to fall over. We still need to take him to the hospital.”
“Taylor looked at him.” He resumed his pacing, muttering, “He’s fine.”
“He’s not.”
“Uh…” Zeke tried lifting his hand.
“Taylor checked him out with the assumption we’d be taking him to the hospital,” I noted.
“No, she didn’t.”
“Logan!” I barked.
He stopped mid-pace.
“Look at him. Fucking really look at him,” I demanded. “He’s normally a smartass douchebag.”
“Hey.”
That proved my point, because that was weak coming from Zeke.
Logan stared at him, and some understanding finally dawned, some of the haze began clearing. “Goddammit.”
I grunted. “We need to shelve this.”
Logan glared at Zeke as I pulled out his phone, tossing it to the hacker.
“You will not breathe a word of this to anyone,” Logan warned. “In case you know anyone with telepathy, you won’t think a word of this to anyone. You won’t write a word of this. You won’t learn morse code. You won’t text a word of this. Use your computer—”
Zeke’s face was twisted in pain as I went over to help him stand. He put an arm around my shoulder, the other over his stomach. “I got it. I have selective amnesia for all of this. Got it. Fuck, Kade.”
Logan growled, but he didn’t reply. He also didn’t move to help us.
I’d expected to be the one laying into Zeke, and Logan would have to call me off. But he’d gotten so up his ass that there was no room for both of us. I was kinda pissed at Logan for that.
As we walked slowly outside, Zeke groaned. “I went a little crazy, huh? Did this to myself.”
He tried giving me a slight grin, but I didn’t respond. There was nothing to say.
We’d broken into his house. Assaulted him. Kidnapped him. Strung him up. Logan brought the knife out, and Zeke went into a frenzy. Then again, if he hadn’t been hacking into Kai Bennett’s family, none of this would’ve happened.
Zeke swallowed, his hand clenching my shirt.
I unlocked my Escalade and helped get him up in the backseat. “Go ahead and lie down.”
He didn’t, but he did lean his head against the headrest and close his eyes. Fresh sweat beaded on his forehead.
I didn’t think any of that was a good sign.
Logan was just coming out as I rounded to the driver’s side.
He’d locked up the warehouse. I held off before opening my door. “You lost it in there.”
He shrugged. “Just pissed about the whole thing. If he’d pushed harder and gotten through, he’d be dead. What then? His wife would be burying her husband. His kids would be without a dad.” He cursed again, savagely, looking away.
A heaviness came down over me. I reached up, resting my hand on his shoulder. “I need to get him in. I think maybe that knife wound is infected. I…” I hesitated, not knowing what to say. Get Zeke to the hospital, stick around and hope for a decent prognosis, and then collect Maddy. It was going to be a long night.
It had already been a long night.
“I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
“You sure?”
Logan nodded, his eyes shooting behind me again. “Yeah. I’m his lawyer. I’ll come up with a better lie than you will.”
He was right about that. I’d forgotten that we’d have to explain the knife wound when we dropped him off. The hospital might call the police. I looked over my shoulder to the hacker again, who seemed focused solely on breathing and sitting upright, still holding his stomach. “Let’s hope he took your warning to heart.”