Page 60 of Storm Warning

“You were asleep, and the dryer dinged. Now you have something to wear.”

Her smile was adorable. “Thank you. Give me a sec.”

She slipped into the bathroom and shut the door. Using his burner phone, he logged into an app and viewed the cameras he’d set up outside. Cole was nowhere to be seen. But the car he’d arrived in was parked at the far corner of the building. Hawk was surprised Cole had driven and parked. He had to know that Hawk would have cameras. But maybe he was getting desperate and running out of time. And his brother was probably already trying to make his way in. If he was working with a hacker, he could have already hacked into Hawk’s camera system and manipulated what he was seeing now. His special forces brother was highly skilled in a thousand ways.

“Remi,” he whispered.

The bathroom door cracked open, and she slipped out. “I’m ready.”

“Grab our coats. They’re on the bed.” He’d brought them when he’d come to wake her up.

He yanked the curtain wide and opened the sliding glass door. They slipped out onto the small balcony in the still-dark early morning. He sucked in a breath of the brisk air.

“Uh, what now? How do we get down?” She whispered the question.

“We shimmy down the tree.” He reached out and touched the needles of a lofty evergreen.

Her eyes grew wide. “You’re kidding.”

He smiled, then positioned a fire escape ladder over the rail.

She arched a brow.

“We need to hurry. I’ll go first.”

He climbed over the rail and then down a few rungs before dropping to the ground with athunk, then quickly glanced around. Seeing nothing, he watched Remi slowly crawl down the ladder.

On the ground, he took her hand and led her around the warehouse and over to the office complex next door, then down a stairwell that led into its underground parking garage. “Is this all part of your escape plan? I mean, if you ever needed one?”

He’d thought through it a number of times, and this wasn’t exactly ideal, but it worked. “I guess you could say that. This garage is not connected to the condo warehouse, and it could take Cole time to figure out our escape.”

“He’s your brother. He thinks like you. It won’t take him long.”

Unfortunately, she was probably right. He used the fob to lift the hatchback, reminding him where he’d parked the Chevy Blazer. When you had an assassin for a brother who might decide to come for you and you’d killed a terrorist and people threatened you, it made sense to have a trick or two up your sleeve. Park a car in a random garage. Honestly, he was surprised he had to use the Blazer and even more surprised that the battery hadn’t died and it was still there and waiting. He’d figure out how to return Gordo’s vehiclelater. Hawk was all about old vehicles, old helicopters, and apparently, condos in old warehouses.

Once inside, he started the Blazer and let it warm up. He pressed a button on his cell that was effectively a kill switch for the computer in the condo.

“I feel like I’m in a spy movie, Hawk. And I don’t like it. I’m just a farm girl turned Army photographer turned girl with amnesia on the run. Get me out of this nightmare. What is going on?”

“You know as much as I do. You might even know more. Did you remember anything else?” The tires squealed as he peeled out of the parking lot a little faster than he intended, and he took a side street.

“I’m going to need coffee before I talk. And I need you to talk about Cole if I tell you. Tell me about him.”

“You and your hard bargains. Okay, I’ll drive through a coffee kiosk. Grab food and a couple of Americano grandes to go. But I need to put some distance between us and the condo.” And Cole.

“Triple shot.”

“Triple shot it is. And then we’re heading to John’s.” Though Hawk had no idea if the man was at home or traveling. It was a start. He preferred seeing the man’s face and asking the questions in person. Not that he thought for a minute that John would lie to him but that he might have to keep secrets, and Hawk wanted answers. John had opened this proverbial can of worms when he sent Hawk to Cedar Trails, so he owed him an explanation. More than one.

At 4:30 a.m., after ordering breakfast and coffee at a drive-through coffee kiosk, he steered onto the freeway. “It’ll be a couple of hours before we make it there, which is fine. It’ll still be early morning. So, tell me what you remembered.”

“That Cole was there, which I told you. I also rememberedthat I wasn’t in the crash. I fell out of the helicopter, I remember falling. I remember an explosion and crashing. I don’t know who lived and who died. If the whole team made it out. Something had gone wrong. And Cole was the one to reach for me.”

That disturbed Hawk as much as anything. “And if Cole was on the bird, that mission, then he survived and not everyone is dead.”

“It was a special forces mission,” she said. “I don’t know what I was doing there.”

“You were taking pictures. What else?”

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