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And with that, the call ended and Hawke handed htened in his seat and started the truck But instead of putting the car in gear, he just sat there He didn’t look at me when he said, “Thank you, Tate” Then he put the car into drive and that was it

We didn’t speak again until we passed the sign welco

Chapter Thirteen

Hawke

The anticipation I should have felt as we rolled into Lulling was surprisingly non-existent and I knehy Because of the s he’d started to stir in me

And with those feelings came a bone-deep fear that I hadn’t felt in ten years Not since those final h the smoke and flames of as left of our house and I’d knoouldn’t be able to make it to the front door But back then there’d been half a dozen firemen who had been able to pull us out of the wall of fla that stood between Tate and whether or not he would get to go home to his son was me It was a burden I wasn’t sure I could carry…or that I even wanted to

“Turn in here,” I heard Tate say, though he sounded far away I glanced at Tate as sitting stiffly in the passenger seat At sorabbed the arertips digging into the s up and down his thigh I was teainst it I needed to be on full alert I kept my eyes on the road as I reached behind nored Tate’s sharply indrawn breath as I settled it in my lap

The driveway Tate had pointed to wasn’t really a driveway at all With the overgrown trees and brush, it barely counted as a road Tree lied over the truck as I tried to avoid soer ruts in theoverup as the overgrown vegetation blocked out ht as we reenery wasn’t a good sign that we’d find ere looking for and that fact was confir and saw a doublewideall around it Junk and trash littered the entire front yard and there was a rusted out older one

I stopped the truck near the door and turned to face Tate “Stay behind et down and stay there till I tell you it’s okay, got it?”

Tate sed hard and nodded We both got out and h the place had clearly been deserted soun in my hand as I placed Tate behind me and headed towards the front door

It was easy to get into the trailer since it wasn’t locked Several s of the trailer had been broken at some point so the smell inside wasn’t as rancid as it probably could have been, but it also ed to find their way into the structure and the second we stepped inside, I saw several rats scurry for cover The inside didn’t look much better than the outside and whenever Buck and Denny had left, it didn’t appear they’d taken much with the roo with an older model TV