It had been exactly a week since Hawk almost drowned and something kept gnawing at me. I don't usually dwell on things, that's Axel's gig, but I couldn't get it off my mind. Sam said it was an accident, but Hawk had refused to give his side of the story. Of course, Hawk did tend to have a temper and I had seen him act on it before with Bogey, but it wasn't the same. Hawk had let it drop. That might not sound like anything big to some people, but it was highly unusual behavior for the Hawkster. Normally if something like that happened to Hawk he would be bitching about it not to mention never letting any of us forget how close he had come to dying. The fact that Hawk hadn't mentioned it once since the incident really didn't sit right with me.

I had to find out what was going on. I didn't always feel like Hawk thought much of our friendship, but to me he was growing to be one of my closest friends. The fact that something was going on with him that he felt he couldn't tell me just didn't sit right. He was facing whatever Sam was up to alone and I'd never leave one of my pals to face anything alone.

From what Sam had said to me I guessed that part of whatever was going on had to do with the family. Hawk never really talked about his family much to begin with and the fact that he didn't tell us he had siblings was proof that there was something in that general area of his life that he wanted to keep in the dark. Unfortunately for him, I wanted to shed some light on it.

That would be easier said than done. In order to find out what was going on with his family we would have to look into his past and that required computer skills. Considering my pretty poor reputation with anything that didn't come with controllers I knew I wouldn't be able to find anything. Fortunately for me I knew someone who did.

"Hey King, you got a few minutes, dude?"

"I always have time for my friends," King said, leaning back in his seat. He was already busy in front of his computer and I felt kinda bad for interrupting him, but he didn't seem upset.

I looked around once more just to make sure neither Sam nor Hawk were anywhere nearby. "What do you make of Sam?"

"I think he's a lying snake and he's up to something," King replied matter-of-factly. "I've seen the looks he gives Hawk when he thinks no one is looking. And I don't like how he's using you to hurt Hawk."

"Well, if it makes it any better I'm using him to find out what he's up to," I replied. "I just keep wondering why Hawk hasn't blown the whistle on Sam."

"I think Sam is holding something over his head that Hawk doesn't want to be common knowledge," King mused. For a moment he was lost in his thoughts, obviously thinking about the same thing that had been gnawing at my mind for a week. He snapped out of his thoughts and smiled sheepishly at me. "Or maybe Hawk knows his brother is up to something and is letting him play his game to find out what."

"Or it could be a combination," I suggested. "Either way, I think we need to know the full story so we can help Hawk."

"Is that how you're going to justify snooping into his personal life?" King asked me with a bit of a smirk.

"Is that you refusing to help?" I shot back.

"Nope, just wanted to make sure you realized Hawk'll be upset is all. You're closer to him than the rest of us, do you think he's gonna forgive you for this?"

That made me pause. Was it going to be worth possibly losing Hawk's friendship in order to help him? Could I really call myself a friend if I didn't do everything in my power to help him? Would a real friend snoop in his personal life? Whatever the answers were I knew in my heart I'd never forgive myself if I didn't help him.

"He may not, but…but as long as I help him get through this thing with Sam I'll live with the consequences."

King seemed to accept that answer and turned his attention to his computer. I saw him save and close a few files before he started his search. I pulled up a chair nearby and leaned back, putting my feet up on the counter in front of me. King shot me a disgruntled look, but I smiled innocently at him and waited. For a few moments the only sound in the room was King's lightning fast typing. I found myself beginning to drift off, my eyelids slowly slipping shut.

BANG! I jumped and my chair tipped back. With a startled squeal I fell backwards and hit the ground hard. Sprawled across the floor I shot a glare up at King who gave me a very satisfied smirk. Grumbling about maniacal hackers I picked myself up off the floor, righted my chair, and sat down again. King was still smirking to himself as he went back to typing. I wisely did not lean back in my chair again. A few minutes later King sat back with an unreadable look on his face.

"I don't believe it," he muttered. "Look at this."

I leaned over to see what had his shorts in a twist. As I read through I felt surprised and a little hurt. Hawk had been keeping quite a secret alright. And I knew once we told Lioness and Axel that Hawk was going to have a lot of questions to answer. And we all deserved to know the truth because Hawk had been lying to us.

xxxx

It's impossible to sneak into someplace when the occupants are waiting for your arrival. I found that out the hard way when I came home from my short shopping trip. Everyone including Sam was waiting in the living room and as soon as I saw them I knew something had gotten out that I didn't want them to know. Sam looked to be trying very hard to keep a smug look off his face. It made me wonder if the bastard had revealed something just to see how I would talk myself out of it.

"Hey Hawk, or should I say Zachary Hawkes Landon?"

Oh boy, here we go…I sighed and set my bags on the floor. I knew I wasn't getting away without an explanation. "How much has Sam told you?"

"Sam didn't tell us anything," Axel replied. "Shark and King came up with that bit of information. We just want to know why you lied about your last name."

"Wait, you mean my sneak of a brother didn't tell you anything?" I asked. My worry was quickly transforming into indignant anger. "You mean to tell me you went snooping into my personal life?"

"We needed answers," King replied.

Shark had the good grace to look ashamed. "I just wanted to help."

"Help by digging up painful details of my past? Gee, thanks a lot," I snapped. "With friends like you who needs enemies."

"Hey, there's no need to get hateful," Lioness objected.

I growled as my temper flared. "I have one pathetic mom, I don't need another."

"Don't snap at Lioness she didn't do anything," Axel barked in reply.

"And I really don't need another father," I snatched up my bags and shot Sam a dark look. He wasn't even bothering to hide the smug grin on his face. "If you want to know stuff so badly just ask Mr. Smug Ass Grin here. He'll be glad to ruin my life for me."

With that I stomped off. I couldn't believe the nerve they had. What gave them the right to snoop around in my personal life? Help me my ass and I thought Shark was on my side. How dumb could I be? One thing was for sure I was quickly realizing just how little my teammates respected me. Shark and King had any respect for me they would have asked me before they went tearing in my past. I knew I was losing them to Sam, but it really hurt with how quickly it had happened.

Once in my room I pulled one of the duffle bags from my closet and began throwing clothes in there. I needed to get away. I had to clear my head or I was going to say or do more things that I was going to regret. I was already regretting snapping at Lioness and Axel the way I did. At least they didn't go prying where I didn't want them. A few days somewhere else would probably do me some good.

"Hawk wait," Shark called out, but I didn't stop.

I headed straight for the garage and hopped on my bike. Before I could start the bike a hand fell on my shoulder. I jumped and twisted around to see who it was. I was expecting it to be Shark. I was not at all happy to see it was Sam.

"You're just making this too easy for me, Zach," Sam taunted. "I expected you to at least put up a little bit of a fight for your friends."

"Gloating bastard," I snapped. "You've got my friends wrapped around your fingers and my crush totally into you. What more do you want?"

"You really don't want to know the answer to that," Sam replied.

"Why are you really here, Sam? I know you're up to something and you can't play the innocent card with me. I've seen you at your worst."

Sam's eyes darkened with a wicked gleam. "Oh no, you haven't even begun to see me at my worst. When the time's right you'll see what I'm really capable of doing."

"Stop avoiding my question, damn it. Tormenting me isn't the only reason you're here. Father wouldn't let you be in my presence unless he's getting something from it."

"Why do you bother asking? Do you really think I'm going to tell you?" Sam retorted.

I shrugged. "It's worth a shot."

"And while you run around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to figure out what's going on, I'm going to have a blast showing you what real suffering is."

I rolled my eyes and slammed my helmet on my head. "You sound just like one of those villains from a cheap comic book who gloats before he's won and then has all his plans thwarted."

"Oh please, I expect the next thing to come out of your mouth to be "you'll never get away with this" or some equally cheesy shit like that."

"Y'know what, I'm not going to sit here and let you have the benefit of riling me up."

"That's right just run away like you always do."

I ignored his triumphant laughter as I started my bike. He said something that I didn't hear, but I knew it wasn't nice. Without giving him another chance to rag on me I sped away in a squeal of angry tires. I knew it was giving him exactly what he wanted, but if I stayed and continued bickering with him I knew things would escalate and I hadn't been doing a good job of winning fights.

I quickly came to regret my timing. Five o'clock traffic jam was not a good time to try to get around the city. At least, not on the ground. I gave a whoop of excitement as I pushed the button to flying function. I always got an adrenaline rush when I did that. It never really mattered how many times I did it the rush was always there.

Five minutes later I landed and pulled into the secure underground parking lot of Sanctuary. It was the apartment complex where my older brother Drew stayed whenever he came to visit. It was also the apartment I had been living in before Mr. Lee came along. Drew paid for it since I didn't have the money to. The best part was that neither Sam nor my father knew about it.

After parking my bike in the designated garage I shut the door and locked it. I was halfway to the elevator leading up when I heard someone call my name. I wasn't really all that surprised that I was followed, but the fact that of all people it had to be Shark really annoyed me. He was definitely one of the last people I wanted to see.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded.

The surfer looked slightly startled, but quickly shook it off. "I had to talk to you."

"I think you've done enough," I snapped.

"Dude, take a freaking chill pill," Shark retorted.

"Take a--You have the nerve to tell me to calm down? You invaded my personal life," I snarled. "I think I have a right to be pissed off at you."

"Yeah? Then we should have a right to be pissed off for lying to us and deceiving us," Shark shot back. He then visibly forced himself to calm down. "Dude, I just want to know the truth. Is that too much to ask? You're my friend and I know you're trying to face everything by yourself, but you don't have to. I want to help you."

"Yeah by sucking face with my twin," I retorted, but the anger had started leaching out of me with every word he said.

A guilty look crossed Shark's face. "Yeah well, I thought getting in close with him would be the best way to find out what he's up to."

"You--what? You mean you don't like my brother?"

"He's a little too deceitful to be my type," Shark replied. A tentative smile began to grow on his face. "I picked up on the fact that he was up to no good shortly after he got here. I've been trying to find out what."

"Oh, so you're not really into guys then? You're just pretending to deceive Sam?" I asked, dreading the answer.

Shark's smile grew to be slightly mischievous. "If I answer that question will you answer mine?"

"You drive a hard bargain," I mused.

"I promise I won't push you to answer anything you don't want to," Shark added.

"Fine, but let's go to the apartment. I'd really like to have a drink and sit down while I spill the details of my past."

I led the way to the elevator where I chose the button marked with Landon scrawled on a tag beside it. If Shark was surprised he didn't show it. He remained silent the whole ride up which I found to be extremely unusual. Then I realized he was probably just staying quiet so he wouldn't say anything to piss me off. That made me feel a little bad. Since the arrival of my brother I had gotten more and more temperamental and it really wasn't fair to my friends.

The elevator came to a stop and the door slid open. I led the way to the door closest to the elevator and pulled my wallet from my back pocket. From inside it I took a keycard and swiped it through the scanner. With an affirmative beep the lock clicked and I pushed the door open and let Shark walk in before me. I watched him closely as his face went from curious to amazement with each step he took.

The apartment could have almost been a penthouse suite if it had been much bigger. Drew liked to have someplace nice to stay and he still had his portion of the family fortune to do what he wanted with. The apartment was lavishly decorated and consisted of a huge bedroom, full sized kitchen with a pantry, two bathrooms, a huge living room with a sweet entertainment system, and plenty of storage space. The only reason I wanted to leave the apartment was because it wasn't mine and I didn't want to continue living off of Drew's charity.

"Dude, you've been holding out," Shark said in awe.

I snorted. "This is Drew's pad, not mine. I couldn't afford the TV in this place let alone the whole apartment."

"But you can just come here whenever you want?"

"Drew doesn't mind, but it's his place and I hate living off his charity," I replied. I motioned to one of the big luxury couches. "Take a seat. Do you want anything to drink?"

"Water's cool," Shark replied.

I went to the kitchen where I got him a glass of water and picked out a wine cooler for myself. Being underage I usually didn't drink even though a ton of guys my age did and I really couldn't stand the taste of most alcoholic drinks. But I knew I was going to need a little something to relax me if I was going to start spilling the sordid details of my past. Shark raised an eyebrow at my choice of drink, but didn't comment. We sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes as I drank a little of my mild liquid courage.

"Sam and I used to be close. We were typical twin brothers. He was my best friend. As cliché as it is we could finish each other's sentences and communicate without words," I said finally. I swirled the liquid around in the bottle. "We planned to get away from our parents together. We were going to use our parts of the fortune to start our own adventure sports park."

"What changed?" Shark asked.

I hesitated to answer, but decided it was time to be truthful and see what kind of friend he really was. "Sam caught me making out with a boy. He hospitalized the poor guy and beat me all the way home where he revealed his discovery to my father."

"And that didn't go over well."

"He gave me a verbal dressing down that was more painful than the beating Sam had given me. Things just started getting worse from that day on. I sucked it up and dealt with it for a while," I paused to consider just how much I wanted to tell him. I made the decision not to hide anything anymore. "Then, one night Sam tried to slice my throat while I was sleeping. I don't know what made me wake up, but I woke up to find Sam standing over me. We wrestled with the knife for what seemed like hours before Drew came in and split us up."

"Sam tried to kill you?" Shark repeated in shock. "Your own twin?"

"He said that such a disgusting creature didn't deserve to live. My parents didn't punish him for it. Soon after that my father threw me out and cut all ties. He had Drew take up legal guardianship of me. When I turned 17 I joined the Air Force with Drew's permission. You know what happened there. Bogey ruined everything, " I took a quick swig from the bottle. "After that I stayed here until everything happened with Mr. Lee."

Shark was silent for a long time. I could see in his eyes that he was taking his time digesting everything I had told him. I swallowed down the rest of my drink and went to the kitchen to throw away the bottle. I grabbed a can of soda and returned to the living room. Shark's eyes were on me the whole time, a thoughtful look on his face. After a few more minutes of silence Shark finally spoke.

"Why did you feel like you had to hide all this from us?"

I snorted. "Yeah right. Obviously it went so well for me the last time someone I thought cared found out I like sucking face with boys. No thanks."

"But why the act? You're obviously not as arrogant and stuck up as you've acted all these months."

"That should be obvious. I wanted to keep you at a safe distance," I answered. "I figured if I treated you all poorly enough you'd just tolerate me being around and not get overly friendly."

"You don't want friends?" Shark asked and I could hear just a hint of sadness with a touch of disappointment.

"I didn't want anyone prying into my personal life. I thought if I treated everyone so poorly they'd think I was nothing but a shallow jerk with nothing deep to me," I replied. "But I have to admit despite my better judgment I've…well I've become attached to you guys. Which is why it became so important to hide the truth. I couldn't stand losing people I cared about again."

Shark was silent again for just a moment long enough to make me nervous. "You really think so little of us that we'd turn on you for something like that?"

"What? No, I--"

"That's what it sounds like to me," Shark cut me off. There was a distinct edge of hurt in his voice.

I sighed in frustration. Obviously he wasn't getting the big picture. "Ollie, listen to me. My own twin brother turned against me when he found out I was gay. That was after fifteen years of being my other half and best friend. How was I supposed to know how you guys would react after only knowing you for a few months?"

"Okay, I can accept that," Shark finally consented. "Why didn't you reveal what Sam is really like? Why let him have so much power over you?"

"Because I knew if I revealed Sam for what he is there would be too many questions and I was afraid of the reaction to my answers."

Shark nodded as if he had expected that answer. Again there was silence as he digested everything he had learned. I drank my soda and let him compose his thoughts. I knew he had more questions. I knew I had opened up a can of worms by revealing everything I had to him. I was no longer worried about him turning on me as he had convinced me I could trust him.

"I heard you and Sam," Shark finally said.

My heart thumped painfully and I swallowed the soda in my mouth before saying anything. "When?

"Tonight."

I paled and set the soda down before I dropped it. "You heard--you were eavesdropping?"

"I followed you down to the garage. I wanted to catch you before you left, but Sam got to you first," Shark replied. "I didn't mean to listen in, but well, I couldn't make myself leave once I saw my suspicions were correct and Sam was really a lying bastard."

"So you heard--you know--?"

"That you have a crush on me? Dude, I didn't need Sam to know that," Shark replied with his eyes sparkling with amusement. "You may be good at playing an arrogant jerk, but hiding your crushes, not so much."

I had to have been scarlet red by then. I could feel my face burning as my eyes dropped to the floor. That kind of hurt my pride a little. I looked up when Shark touched my shoulder. I never even heard him move from the couch across from me.

"The only way I could get through playing nice with Sam was by pretending he was you," Shark told me with a little smile that was almost shy. "I kept reminding myself that I was doing it for you."

"I--You--what?"

Shark's smile grew. "I like you too, dude."

"Really?" I could have kicked myself for sounding so hopeful, but Shark simply continued to smile and nodded.

"But I think we have more important things to focus on before we do anything about this," Shark said, popping my bubble of happiness. "If we get distracted in our feelings for each other Sam might get away with whatever he's up to."

"Wow, you make for a really good voice of reason," I mused, half amused by the whole new side of Shark I was seeing. "I'm not the only actor."

"Yeah, well, I really am a laid-back surfer dude, but most people immediately assume that means I'm also stupid. They tend to relax and talk more."

"You're one smart cookie."

After that we talked about Sam and what I thought he was up to and more importantly what we were going to do. We agreed that in order to keep Sam believing he was safe the others couldn't know the truth. He also convinced me, despite my vehement disagreements, that he would keep playing his little game with Sam. I thought it was a very bad idea. Sam was not to underestimated and he was a lot smarter than he ever let on. I also told Shark about Renegade and his obsession with Project Onyx. Shark suggested we let King in on that bit and see if our computer whiz teammate could find something out. After about an hour of talking and a lot of persuasion Shark talked me into going back to the Aquatics Center. Eventually I agreed. As we headed back I realized I felt a lot more confident in the situation than I had since Sam showed up. I had Shark on my side and I knew together we could foil whatever plans Sam had.

Watch out Sam. Things are about to get a whole lot more complicated for you.