Page 3 of Lucky Boys
I honestly had no idea how I made it home without crashing my bike. It was total muscle memory and luck.
When I managed to enter the correct code and got inside, Diego was waiting for me.
The door was barely locked, the security system reactivated, before Diego’s arms were around me, squeezing me in a tight hug.
Then I fucking lost it.
D didn’t hug. Or touch. He just didn’t. I was the only one who sometimes got away with it, mainly because I was tactile as fuck and had been hanging on him since I was seven years old, when our parents had first taken him in. He never initiated it though. I couldn’t think of one time Diego willingly ever touched me first, let alone a full fucking hug.
I had to look worse than I felt for him to do it without hesitation.
“Shhh . . . ” he replied stiffly as he awkwardly patted my back. “Shit. Brooks. Please don’t cry. You know I love you, but I can’t do tears.” He patted again but didn’t push me away, even if I was probably ruining his shirt and making him uncomfortable as hell.
Diego was an inch or two shorter than me, but much stockier and jacked, which made his arms a really sturdy place to fall apart, even if it wasn’t natural for him.
He didn’t look like a guy who hacked computers for a living and rarely left his home, but there was a reason we shared a pull-out couch in the living room rather than use the two bedrooms in our small house. Bedroom 1 was the office and filled to the brim with all kinds of equipment that used most of our monthly budget, and the other room was a home gym. If Diego wasn’t in there on his computers, he was working out.
When the deep, hiccupping sobs became more silent tears, I finally forced myself to push back, and I could practically feel the relief pour off Diego when I was no longer touching him. It almost made me cry again, knowing he made himself souncomfortable just for me, but I managed to keep it together. I finally looked at him. He hadn’t been crying, but his deep brown eyes were bloodshot, like he was pretty close, and I could see the fear in them. The dark circles that always marred his tan skin somehow seemed darker than a few hours ago, like the stress had made him even more tired. His midnight-black hair was halfway out of the hair tie that kept it in a short stub by the nape of his neck and covered half his face.
“I’m okay,” I finally managed, though the baleful look D gave me told me it wasn’t that convincing.
“It’s fine if you aren’t. I-I saw his body. I can’t imagine what that was like in person.” I shuddered and squeezed my eyes shut for a second, willing the image burrowed into my skull away.
“What’re we gonna do, D?”
He sighed heavily and ran his hands through his hair, pulling even more out of the hair tie.
“I scrubbed all the cameras. There’s no sign of you being anywhere near the building today or anytime in the last week. I also hacked into his computer and deleted any evidence that he hired you. Not that the cops would be able to trace it back to us.”
I breathed a little easier. That was good, but only half the problem. Which reminded me. I pulled out the flash drive. “What about this?”
Diego reached for it automatically and then froze like he’d thought better of it. “Chances are whatever is on there has to do with why he was killed.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.
“Maybe we should just drop it off at the police station, anonymously of course. I don’t know if we should be involved in this.”
Diego shook his head and started pacing again. “No. The timing is too conspicuous for me. Whoever killed him likelyknew he was close or already got whatever information is on there. They may not know exactly who stole it, but still.”
I frowned. “Then why was the security in the house such shit?”
Diego shrugged. “I don’t know, unless it was a trap.”
My stomach bottomed out and I wanted nothing more than to just burn the flash drive and run far away. But that wasn’t possible, so I tried to keep my shit together.
“So you think if we give it to the cops, we’re just giving them more motive to find me?”
Diego’s shoulders sagged. “Yeah. Plus, who knows who we can trust. With our luck, the cops will probably find a way to frame it all on you.”
Yeah . . . neither one of us had the best history with cops, so I low-key agreed with him. I just didn’t know what else to do.
“Should we look at it?” I finally asked.
Diego heaved out a deep breath. “You know I want to so fucking badly, but I . . . don’t know. Did you notice anything on the files before you transferred them?”
“Nah, not really. They were encrypted, and I was more worried about getting the hell out of there.”
D’s full lips pursed and he tilted his head to the ceiling like it would give him all the answers. I looked too, but it was just our boring white ceiling and outdated fan staring at me. We were still in deep shit.
“I . . . don’t know what to do.”
