Three to Fall (Saint View Slayers vs. Sinners #3)

1. Hayden

1

HAYDEN

A nger swirled in the air. One person’s hate and greed spread to the next like wildfire, until normally sensible people were dragged under by the tide of evil that Josiah’s podcast stirred up.

One hundred thousand dollars to the person who captured his wife and returned her to him. He’d painted a target on her back in bright-red paint, impossible for the underprivileged people in this town to ignore.

The crowd swarmed, engulfing me, an angry mob all shouting for Kara’s capture.

Or her blood.

Every cell in my body demanded I run toward her. Hurt these people who wanted to take her from me. Pull her into my arms and put my body between her and the very real danger surrounding us.

But then she’d signed Hayley Jade’s name.

And in the same sign language we’d been learning so we could communicate with her nonverbal daughter, Kara told me she loved me. Signed it with her fingers through the glass window of the security door, barely hanging on against the barrage of chairs and fists thrown at it.

She needed to run, but she wouldn’t while I was standing here.

Wouldn’t until she knew her daughter was safe.

I wanted to scream for how stubborn she was.

Just nights earlier, she’d made me promise I would always put Hayley Jade first.

Now I needed to hold up my end of the bargain. Trust that she was strong enough to save herself while I went for the daughter she’d die for.

With every muscle in my body screaming to protect her, I turned and ran in the opposite direction. Leaving Kara to save herself.

I burst out into the daylight, bellowing out my frustration and fear.

My shout faded away, and I muttered to myself, “Get it together.” If something happened to Hayley Jade because I was standing here falling apart over Kara, then I was no good to anyone.

The streets from the hospital to Hayley Jade’s school felt a million miles long, and yet they flew by outside the car windows. In a blur, I called nine-one-one, shouting down the line that the hospital needed help before gunning my truck toward the gates of Hayley Jade’s school.

They were wide open.

No security guard in sight.

No sign of Ice or one of the other prospects Hawk had assigned to stand guard every day Hayley Jade was there. Dark figures scattered throughout the schoolyards, fighting to make their way inside, shouts and cries breaking through the screaming siren of the school’s panic alarm.

The mob had made its way to the school. A bounty on Hayley Jade’s head, the same as the one on her mother’s.

My blood ran cold at the sight of the Slayers’ club van, abandoned a few feet away from the gate, engine still running.

No one inside it.

Suddenly, I wondered if Kara had sent me after Hayley Jade.

Or after Hawk.

“Dammit, Kara,” I swore beneath my breath, realizing it was probably a combination of both. The woman was too damn selfless for her own good, always putting others first.

Bile rose in my throat at the sight of three men at the office administration door.

“Where is she, bitch?” one shouted. He smashed his fist against the wood. “Open this fucking door and tell us, then we’ll be on our way!”

“We’ve called the police!” the terrified woman on the inside called back. “Just leave!”

That only pissed the men off more. One picked up a large terracotta potted plant and hurled it at the window. It hit the reinforced glass with a splintering crack.

The window didn’t break, but the pot did, falling to the concrete in shattered pieces. Despite the failure, the other men followed suit, the three of them trying to break through with anything they could find.

The women’s screams imprinted themselves on my brain, a trauma to process another time, because the thought of Hayley Jade in a classroom somewhere, screaming like that, was too much for me to bear to stop and try to help.

I stalked my way through the school, trying to think clearly, trying to calm my breath while knowing I probably only had minutes before the cops would arrive and that minutes might not be enough to get Hayley Jade away.

“Repent! Repent! Repent!” men shouted as the doors gave way and a cheer went up, a group storming into a long hallway.

Panic lit up inside me, and I twisted and turned, getting swept along with the pack, no idea which way to go or where Hayley Jade’s classroom was.

A hand grabbed me, slamming me up against the wall.

On instinct, I shoved the guy back before realizing it was Hawk.

In the next instant, he was putting something into my hand. “Where the fuck is Kara?”

I didn’t want to answer that. I didn’t even want to think about where she was or if she was okay. I couldn’t. If I let my brain go there, I’d lose it.

Instead, I stared down at the knife he’d given me, and then back up at him. “Are you fucking insane? Are you trying to terrify these kids?”

His fingers gripped his gun, mostly covered by the sleeve of his jacket. “They’re already terrified. Those Josiah-loving assholes are all carrying. You want to be the only one who’s not if it comes down to it?”

I didn’t want any of this. This was the life I’d tried to leave behind. The life of violence I didn’t want for me, or for Kara or even for Hawk. His chest heaved, his eyes alert, ears listening for danger.

He glanced at me as the panic alarm and warning sirens echoed back from somewhere outside. “There’s a lot more of them than there is of me. I don’t know where my guys are. Or how long it’s going to take the cops to do their goddamn fucking jobs, especially when we’d be lucky if there’s more than one car on their way. Fuck this town and their useless police force. Do you have my back or not?”

His green eyes stared into mine.

That was insulting. Of course I did. I took the knife, praying I wouldn’t need it, shoving the sheathed weapon into my pocket.

When Hawk took off, his run purposeful through the huge elementary school, I followed. It was three more turns before he stopped in front of a classroom door and tapped his gun against it.

I breathed hard, watching the hallway for any sign of life, covering his back.

“Miss Winters? If you’re in there, it’s Hawk. Hayley Jade’s…” He swallowed hard, glancing at me, but then a look of determination dropped over his expression. “Hayley Jade’s dad. We’ve met a few times when I’ve picked her up. Don’t come out. Just tap twice if she’s with you.”

There was a moment of pause, before two tiny taps came from the other side of the door.

“And once more if you’re all okay.”

There was another quick tap.

I slumped a little, relief kicking in. “They’re better off staying in there.” I kept my voice low so no one but Hawk would hear me. “We can’t get her out safely with these pricks still lingering around and all hopped up on the thrill of the hunt.”

“Agreed.” Hawk’s gaze flickered up and down the hallway, constantly assessing the situation. “Better off just standing guard until the cops get in here.” He closed his eyes for the tiniest of seconds, shoving the heels of his hands to rub at them. “I hate this so fucking much. Hate she can’t just go to school and be safe. Hate that Kara is…”

“Stop,” I ordered quietly. “Kara is just fucking fine.” I jerked my head toward the door. For all I knew, Hayley Jade was right on the other side of it listening to every word we were saying. She didn’t need to be scared for her life, as well as her mother’s.

Hawk swore softly and nodded.

A commotion from somewhere down the hallway had us freezing. A clatter of something being knocked over.

“What was that?” he murmured.

“Hopefully nothing.”

But both of us had our gazes trained on the end of the hallway.

When three men rounded it, the two of us groaned quietly.

I scraped a hand through my hair, every muscle tensing. “Damn. Not nothing.”

It was the same three guys I’d seen trying to break their way into the administration office.

“What’s doing, fellas?” The leader had a cocky saunter to his step, like he had all the time and right in the world to walk these hallways, terrifying children as he went. “You’re blocking that doorway, you know.” He leaned on the wall a few paces away. “I used to be a hallway monitor, and that, my friends, is a fire hazard. So we’re going to have to ask you to move on.”

“Over my dead fucking body.” I spoke more to Hawk, but clenched my fingers into fists.

“Play it cool,” Hawk murmured. “We’re just taking a break from the hunt. No need for them to pay us any attention.”

I shook my head, my hair falling in my eye. “Not gonna fly.” My gaze dropped to the papers clutched in the leader’s hands. “I’ll bet anything those are the classroom assignments. I saw them trying to break into the administration office.”

Hawk let out a huff of irritation and rolled his head to one side, loosening the tension in his neck. “Damn, I hate when people get smart. You remember how to fight?”

“Been awhile.”

“You gonna use that knife if it comes down to it?”

I answered honestly. “No. But it won’t come to that.”

Hawk glanced at me, then nodded.

He clearly didn’t want to leave a dead body on the floor of an elementary school either.

The leader’s eyes darkened. “You aren’t having that kid. I need that fucking money. So unless you want to die today, I suggest you move the fuck over and let us through.”

“Can’t do that, brother,” Hawk said casually, though the fighter’s stance he was slowly moving into said he was anything but relaxed. “That little girl you want is our daughter. So you can imagine why we aren’t too keen on letting you in there.”

I glanced at him in surprise.

So did the other guy. “Your daughter? Both of you? You two fags?” He spat on the floor at our feet. “That’s fucking disgusting.”

I cracked my knuckles, letting anger float its way to the surface of my emotions.

Hawk stiffened beside me, then shook his head, staring at the wad of spit on the floor. “I fucking hate germs.”

I continued the conversation between us, loud enough for the other guys to hear, but not speaking directly to them. “I remember.”

“You know how many germs are probably in the air right now ’cause this fucking moron has no manners?”

I shrugged. “A lot, I would think.” I glanced at the three men. “He’s into medicine. He finds germs personally offensive.”

The guys stared at us like they had no idea what was going on.

In unison, without a word, Hawk and I let punches fly. Hawk’s landed on the spitter, his head twisting sharply sideways beneath the force of Hawk’s swing.

My fist connected with the jaw of the skinny white guy with straggly hair and two missing front teeth. The third guy was shorter, and heavier, and reacted so fucking slow I was also able to deliver a punch to his gut before he even realized what was happening.

Hawk threw a blow that sent his guy spinning backward and flat onto his face. He didn’t get up.

Which left Hawk free to kick the knees out from the skinny guy, sending him to the floor too. My short guy took one look at his friends on the floor and held up his hands in surrender, walking backward down the hall, stumbling when his foot slipped on the admin papers these assholes had stolen.

Skinny followed after, crying out as he tried to put weight on his knees, and then crawling after his friend when he couldn’t get his legs to work fast enough.

Hawk and I instinctively moved back to guard the door, both of us eying the thug leader still on the floor.

He rolled to his side and groaned, spitting out blood. “Fucking faggots. Fuck you, goddamn queers.”

Hawk leaned back against the door, watching him. “Why don’t guys like him ever just learn to shut up? He’s literally just had his ass handed to him, and instead of just politely running away like his friends were smart enough to do, he has to run his mouth and piss me off all over again.”

I shrugged, watching the guy struggle to his feet. I allowed it, but only because he was zero threat by himself.

He touched his fingers to his face, the tips coming away with blood from the stream trickling out of his nose. He spat again, this time his saliva red. He smirked at Hawk. “There’s some more spit for you. Why don’t you use it to coat my dick? You want to suck my dick, cocksucker? Since you like it so much? You want it in your ass, you fucking pansy?”

A low growl rumbled from Hawk’s chest, anger flashing in his eyes, his fingers moving for his gun. Suddenly, I was really afraid that this guy’s homophobic slurs mixed with the danger Kara and Hayley Jade were in was going to be the thing that pushed Hawk over the edge.

I didn’t want a bunch of five-year-olds hearing gunshots outside their classroom or watching in horror as a pool of blood seeped beneath their door.

I stepped in front of Hawk, just a tiny bit, so my shoulder brushed against his. “He’s not worth it.”

The leader’s smirk turned on me. “You don’t want your boyfriend sucking my cock? What about your little girl then? Bet she—”

I threw my fist into his face so hard I barely had a chance to register his look of surprise. A red haze dropped down over my eyes, and I kept punching, slamming my knuckles into the piece-of-shit’s face, not feeling any pain, but knowing he was. His bones crunched beneath my fists and his blood spurted across my shirt.

Hawk didn’t try to stop me.

Soft cries from the other side of the door started up, and Miss Winters’s quiet voice tried to soothe the frightened kids. “Hawk,” she said quietly. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” Hawk answered, voice choked with emotion. “You all doing okay?”

“She’s crying,” she admitted. “They all are.”

It gave me a second of pause, but the leader laughed through the blood filling his mouth. “I like when they cry the best. Crying ’cause my dick is so big.”

Hawk glanced up and down the hallway. “No cameras.”

That was all I needed. I pulled the knife from my pocket, unsheathed it, and used it to cut through the leather of the man’s belt.

His eyes widened, and he tried to fight me off as I yanked his pants down, slicing through the fabric of his underwear. “Wait. No. What are you doing?”

Spotting a bathroom, and not wanting to do this when there were kids around, but knowing it needed to be done, I dragged him toward it, hissing in his ear, “You just told me you molest little kids, you piece of shit. You think I’m just going to let that go? You think I’m going to let you walk out of here with your dick intact?”

“I didn’t mean it!”

But a man didn’t say things like that as a joke.

Crying from inside the classroom got louder, as well as Miss Winters trying to shush them.

Hawk’s gaze met mine as he slid down the wall, sitting on the floor guarding Hayley Jade and the rest of the kids inside the classroom.

When he opened his mouth again, it was to sing the opening lines of “Hotel California” by the Eagles.

The same song I’d heard him singing to Hayley Jade at night through the walls of the clubhouse.

He nodded at me and raised his voice up loud enough to drown out the screams as I locked myself in the bathroom with a pedophile and did what needed to be fucking done.