Page 9 of Lucky Boys
I shook my head. No point getting caught up in that right now. It made no difference. I had Mom and Pops, and I was fucking lucky. Whatever had happened to my birth parents, there was nothing I could do about it now.
“As awful as this all is, why did it come to a head now?” Skye asked reasonably. He moved away from the monitors and was back to the coffee machine. He was seriously getting more coffee? “This was a while ago, and they seemed to have it all worked out. It’s odd to hire Brooks and risk, well, getting a hit put out on you after all this time.”
No one had any insight about that. Sure, it was scandalous, but why now?
“Oh, shit on a stick.” I snorted, and even Luca looked amused at Diego’s outburst. That was, until he finally looked up and we all saw the panic on his face.
“Matthew isn’t enrolled at the boarding school. He hasn’t been in over a year and a half. In fact, there has been no sign of him anywhere in that time.”
What the hell? The knot in my stomach that I’d had since I’d found Marshall’s body grew. This . . . Something was very, very wrong.
“Is he maybe with his mom? His birth mom? Maybe he found out and chose to go live with her in Germany?” Maverick asked hopefully. That would be best-case scenario, but nothing about this entire shitshow was best case.
“Possibly . . . ” Diego muttered.
There was an uneasy silence that overcame all of us as Diego busied himself. The rest of us had nothing to do but wait tensely. I paced away from the computers and started to wander the room again, but there wasn’t much to see here. I really needed to do . . . something. I was crawling out of my skin.
Suddenly, an alarm went off on Diego’s side of things. We all froze, our attention on him and the fear that flashed across his face.
“D?” I asked, my hand on my knife like I could fucking do something from here.
“Someone just breached the perimeter alarm on the house.”
D and I lived in a small place right on the outskirts of the city. But despite only being about 20 minutes from the hustle and bustle, our home was fairly isolated, with only a few neighbors, who had all been vetted very thoroughly by Diego before we’d bought it, and a mile long driveway that kept them away.
While it was possible for one of them to inadvertently trip the perimeter alarms, it happened so rarely, we always took it seriously when it went off.
Another alarm rang out. “Fuck, fuck. Someone is here, and they’re messing with my systems. How? They shouldn’t be able to get in. I can’t see the cameras, Brooks.”
There was a loud bang like someone pounding on the door. Diego jumped.
“Diego, I need you to breathe.” Luca stood directly in front of the monitor, so he could essentially look my brother in the eye. “That’s it. Good. In and out. Good.” Luca breathed deep, giving Diego a rhythm to follow. I found myself breathing with him too.
“There we go.” Another deafening pound had both D and me jumping. “How likely is it that they can get in?” Luca asked so fucking calmly, I didn’t know if I wanted to punch him or hug him. How could he sound so calm?
“I, uh—” Diego sucked in another breath. “Since they seem to be hacking the system, pretty likely. I-I don’t know how. They shouldn’t be able to . . .”
“It’s okay, Diego. We can worry about that later. For now, I need to know, do you have a place you can go hide?”
Diego didn’t answer, so I did for him. “Yeah, we have a panic room. He’s also a killer shot.”
Luca nodded again. “That’s great. I need you to listen to me, okay, Diego?” He didn’t continue until D nodded. The rattling and banging got louder. I wasn’t sure if they were just trying to freak Diego out or what, but it was fucking working for both of us. It was taking every bit of my control not to run out of here and back home, even if I’d never make it.
“Get your gun, make sure it’s loaded and safety off. Then go and hide. Stay there. We’re coming.”
Diego swallowed but still didn’t move. “I’m also going to call my friend Wes. Do you remember Wes?”
Diego shook his head. “He’s a former SEAL,” Luca continued calmly, like he was having a conversation over afternoon tea. “He’s now a PMC, but he lives much closer to you than we do. He’ll get there first.”
This got Diego into action. “I don’t know him. He sounds familiar, but . . .”
I interrupted, understanding where this new panic was coming from. “I’ll send a picture, okay, D? I know it sucks, butLuca trusts him, and he might be a fuckhead, but we trust Luca in this situation, right?”
Skye laughed and I could feel Luca’s eyes on me, but I continued, “He wouldn’t send someone into your space you couldn’t trust. Just—just hang on. We’re coming, okay? We’ll get you out.”
That just got Diego more afraid. He looked toward the door, where they were still trying to break in. “I-I don’t know if I can leave.”
I swallowed, wishing I were there with him. “Don’t worry about that right now. That’s a problem for future Diego, okay? For now, just do what Luca said. Get your gun and go fucking hide.”
