Page 4 of Going Home

The girl swallows, and she narrows her eyes before finally answering. "I'm Hailey Lawerence. This is my brother, Lucas."

"How old are you?" Colt asks, putting the gun in its place.

"How old are you?" Hailey snaps back.

Lucas tugs on her shirt. "Be nice, Hailey. They can still call the cops. I'm fourteen, and Hailey's seventeen."

Lex looks amused. "Where do your parents think you are?"

"They don't care where we are. They prefer it when we're gone," he says.

The greasy hair tells Colt Lucas hasn't washed it in a few days, and considering they shut the water off to the house, he's probably limited where he can go to clean himself fully. He learned at a young age that girls tend to prefer guys who shower daily, and he feels a little pity for the boy.

"Who are your parents?" Colt asks, trying to figure out what kind of parents would prefer their kids didn't come home. If Noah or Calla wound up out all night without telling them, he'd have a fucking search party out looking for them.

"We'll go," Hailey says. "We'll clean up everything. Just don't all the cops."

Standing, Lex and Colt exchange a look. "What do you want to do? I have to take off soon," she says.

"I gotta take you guys home," he says.

"No, please," Lucas says, standing and pressing his palms together, begging. "Don't make us go home."

"Look, we're not your kids, and you're definitely not our parents," Hailey says, climbing to her feet and cocking out a hip. "We'll get out of your hair, and you'll never see us again."

Amused, Lex lifts an eyebrow and glances back to Colt. "She's got sass."

"She's made of sass," Lucas mutters, earning him a slap to his arm.

"Come on now. You're going to tell me where you live, and I'm bringing you home," Colt says. "And if it's not the right house, we’ll drive around until we find it. Or the police station. Whichever we find first."

He's bluffing, but they don't know that. The last place Colt would ever voluntarily step foot into is the Griffin's Beach Police Department.

"You can't make us—"

Her sentence falls when she realizes who she's talking to. His leather makes her eyes widen, and Lex snickers and says, "I'll take a quick look around before I take off."

"We didn't steal anything, I swear!" Lucas says, his voice shaking.

Her hand gently reaches out to touch his shoulder, but Hailey pushes it away. "I'm not worried about that, sweetheart. I need to know what we need to clean before we can unpack our stuff when it arrives."

"Come on, kids," Colt says, forcing them out the door. "I'll be here after you're done doing whatever you're doing, babe. Send me a list of what you think I can do to your satisfaction, and I'll work on it while I wait for the truck to come."

She kisses him, and he walks outside, making sure the kids get in the car before driving to the address Lucas gives him. Based on the look on Hailey's face when Colt glances over to the passenger seat, it's not a fake address. She is not happy at all about it, either.

When he pulls into the driveway, the kids jump out, and he steps out, too. He takes in the sight of the decrepit house that has gray wood he believes was once painted white. Most of the windows are broken and boarded up, and the front lawn is more weeds and dirt than anything resembling grass. It looks more abandoned than his house was.

"No, it looks like a drug house," Colt mutters to himself.

"You don't need to walk us to the door," Hailey says, turning to stop him. "We can take it from here."

"You realize you're not exactly on the list of trustworthy people at the moment, right? I’m walking you to the door to make sure this is where you actually live."

"You don't have to," Lucas says, and the pleading tone has Colt looking into his deep brown eyes. Something in the terror on Lucas's face sets something off in Colt. A fatherly instinct, perhaps. Something isn't right here. "We're sorry we broke into your house. We just needed some place to sleep."

Shaking his head, Colt walks up to the door with them. "Yes, I do need to do this."

If nothing else, I need to see what you were running away and hiding from.

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