Devil's Bargain
Page 21
32
Hawk
I’m walking back to the house from the cliffs beneath a heavy sky. The air is cool and damp. How I’d forgotten this. Vegas couldn’t be more different and every moment I pass here the farther my life there feels. The emptier.
At that, I think of Melissa.
She’s become important to me. A part of me. And it has nothing to do with our arrangement.
My brother signed all the papers last night.
I got everything I wanted.
The house is mine as it should always have been. But even the text from Axel telling me they’ve finally picked up Boyd doesn’t help.
I’m not in the mood for celebrating.
A sound breaks into the perfect silence. I stop, turn my face to the wind and listen. It’s coming from some distance, but it’s there. And I know where it’s coming from.
Without consciously deciding, I begin to walk toward the source of the noise.
The music grows louder and mixed in with it is the sound of a hammer pounding against wood.
As I near the peak of the hill, the broken-down mews comes into view. I haven’t seen it since the day I left. Growing up, this was a source of pride for my father. For my entire family.
Falconry has always been a part of our lives. It’s the reason for my name. My father’s name. His father’s name and so forth going back to the very beginning of our lineage.
Strange to think that I know every detail about every member of my family going back centuries and Melissa doesn’t even know who gave birth to her.
I give a shake of my head and look at the wooden structure. It’s smaller than I remember it being but maybe that’s because the roof’s caved in on the far end.
The music grows more distinct, and the hammering begins again.
I walk toward it, trying to place the song. AC/DC. I used to listen to them when I was growing up. I haven’t heard this music in years.
Declan walks out, oblivious to my presence, hammer in hand, two nails sticking out of his mouth. He heads to his toolbox which is resting on a boulder and swaps out the nails.
“You should turn down the music. Anyone can sneak up on you,” I say.
He turns his head like he wasn’t caught off guard at all. “What makes you think you snuck up on me, brother?”
Brother.
I look at him, at the man he’s become. Dark eyes, dark hair, built like me. A Scotsman. A Highlander. Nothing left of the friend I remember.
I think about James and what Declan said about the boy’s mother and wonder what his life’s been like.
“It’s early for this, isn’t it?” I ask, gesturing to the mews.
“Not too early.” He drops the hammer and nails into his toolbox and wipes his hands on his jeans. “We’ll be out of your house by the end of the day if that’s what you’re here for.”
Fuck.
“And if you’re just here to gloat, then you can go fuck yourself,” he adds on, hauling a plank of wood up over his shoulder and carrying it into the mews.
I follow him, take up the back half of it.
Declan glances at me, surprised, I guess.
“How long has it been like this?” I ask.
“Broken down?”
I nod.
We set the plank down and he crouches down to measure and mark the wood.
“More than ten years.”
I don’t speak, just watch him as he straightens, turns to me.
“He didn’t set foot in here but to release the hawks the day you left.”
My father loved the sport. He was a born falconer. And I was following in his footsteps. Another part of my legacy gone.
“You shouldn’t have left like you did,” Declan says as if he just read my mind.
“I had no choice.”
“Yeah, you had a choice. Stay and fight. Or just stay.”
“My father chose.”
He snorts. “You know, after all those years, those last days, he thought I was you. Kept calling me Hawk. My boy.” Something flashes in Declan’s eyes. It’s not anger or taunting or anything like that. It’s hurt. “I didn’t correct him or tell him it was me. Figured it didn’t matter anymore. And you’re right in that my mother had a grip on him that none of us could match, but he loved you. He would have forgiven you.”
“Forgiven me? I’m the one who told him the truth.”
“You always have to be right, don’t you? Let me ask you something. You think he didn’t know the truth?” Declan asks, stepping closer and cocking his head to the side. “You think our father was that stupid that he didn’t know his wife who was twenty-five years younger than him had lovers?”
“If he’d known, why did he let her get away with it?”
“What would you let Melissa get away with?” he asks, gesturing toward the house.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You don’t even know how lucky you are, do you? Life is short, brother, and you’ve wasted enough of it, haven’t you?” He turns back to the wooden plank. “Get the other end.”
I pick it up, help him line it up and slide it into the slot. I walk out to pick up the hammer and a couple of nails.
He watches me as I secure the plank of wood.
“Are you staying?” he asks.
I don’t look at him. “Don’t know. I’ll repair the house. Make it like it was before.”
“So you can sell it. More money for the man who has enough to burn,” Declan says, stepping outside and watching the sun peek around a dark cloud.
I follow him. “Just as I don’t know you, you don’t know me.”
“And isn’t that a shame.”
We look on in silence and I don’t want to walk away but I’m not sure how to continue.
“You’re not the only one who lost when you left, you know,” Declan says. “And neither was he. I lost, too. I lost my brother.”
And I mine.
I look down at the glen, remember the stories grandfather would tell about fairies and the like.
“You tell James the stories?” I ask.
Declan follows my gaze, smiles. “He loves them. I’ve promised to take him camping down there when he’s older and big enough that the wee people don’t snatch him up.”
“You scare the boy.”
“He’s not so easy to scare.” He walks back to the mews.
“You don’t have to go,” I call out, my voice sounding strange. Thick.
“I won’t live on your charity.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll run the distillery like you’ve been. You’ll more than earn your keep. Even if I stay, the house is big enough.”
When I turn, I find him watching me. “What about all that talk of murdering me?”
“I didn’t think I would care when he died. Didn’t think I cared about anything. Being back here has shown me how untrue that is. You’re right about wasting life. Wasting time. I’ve lost too many years. Lost my father. Never got to meet my nephew’s mother. I don’t know the man you’ve become. I don’t know my nephew. And I’d like to.”
He studies me, doesn’t answer just yet.
“I may still want to kill you, though,” I add, my lips trying for a smile.
He smiles back. “Same goes for me, brother.”
We stand like that for a minute in that perfect sunshine just before the clouds come and obscure the light again, dumping rain onto our heads.
“Uncle Hawk! Uncle Hawk!”
We both turn to find James running madly toward us, Alice trailing so far behind she’s a dot in the distance.
“What is it?” I call out, and Declan and I go running toward him. He’s out of breath and wet from the icy rain when Declan reaches him, wrapping his arms around his boy.
“What is it, James?” he asks.
James looks up at me. “Melissa,” he says, tears welling in his eyes as he casts a guilty look to his father. “She fell on one of my toys and she must have really hurt herself—”
“Melissa!”
No answer. I run to the steps, call out.
“Melissa!”
“She’s gone, sir,” Alice says from the door. “She took the car you came in and left.”
“What? Did she say where she was going? Why?”
“She dropped this,” Alice says, handing me Melissa’s passport.
Fuck.
She found the printouts.
“Poor James thinks it’s his fault,” she starts. “He’s very upset.”
Why did I put those papers in there? I shouldn’t have even brought them with me. I should have destroyed them.
Declan walks inside, looks at me.
“How long ago did she leave?”
“Maybe an hour. Not long,” Alice says. “James wanted to come get you sooner, but I told him to wait until—”
“Go,” Declan says, cutting her off.
He picks up his keys from the table beside the door and tosses them at me.
I catch them, look at them stupidly.
What must she think?
“Go get her. The roads will be slick and she’s not used to driving here.”
I nod and as I walk out, I hear James softly cry.
“It’s not your fault, James,” Declan says.
No, not his fault. My fault.
“I’m sure Melissa will explain.”
Once outside, I get into Declan’s Range Rover and start it up. I switch on the tracker, glad I had the chip put on her bracelet when I’d had the clasp repaired. She’s got a head start, but I can make that up.
33
Melissa
My phone keeps losing reception and I’m lost. It doesn’t help that the rain’s picked up again and it’s cold enough that the roads are slippery.
It’s been ages since I’ve driven a stick shift and never with my left hand.
The gears scream as I shift to drive up the next hill, trying to load the map on my phone again, my attention split.
It happens so fast, the turn coming out of nowhere, the rain at its heaviest, the boulder on the side of the road. I look up and it’s too late, I know it even as my foot instinctively slams the brakes.
The tires screech, the car slips and swerves.
I scream, clutching the steering wheel, realizing I’d never put on my seatbelt as the SUV collides with the boulder, the sound of metal crushing and my own screaming all I hear as something pops and my forehead collides against the windshield, the pain sharp and instant just before I lose consciousness.
34
Hawk
The car’s stopped moving.
She’s not much farther, but I’m stuck, cursing as I wait for the shepherd to clear the herd of sheep across the road. It’s a fucking eternity before he does and gives me a friendly wave I’m unable to return.
I hit the gas, the Rover lurches forward and I take the turns faster than I should, but I don’t care. She’s still not moving and I have a bad feeling.
A car honks its horn as I narrowly miss sideswiping him when I take the turn off to where, according to the tracker, Melissa should be. As soon as I’m over the hill, I see it.
“Melissa!”
I stop the Rover, pull up the parking brake and leap from it. I don’t even close the door. Rain pelts me as I run to the smashed SUV, and I don’t see her. Not until I get to the driver’s side.
There’s blood on the cracked windshield and she’s slumped over the steering wheel, passed out.
“Melissa!” I call out, but she can’t hear me.
The door’s locked, they all are. I run back to the Rover and open the trunk. Inside, I find a toolbox—this Rover is so old I imagine Declan has to stop often to make repairs. From inside it, I take the biggest wrench I can find and when I’m back at the rental, I check on Melissa once more. She’s still out.
I walk to the back seat opposite where she is, raise the wrench over my head and smash the window in. It shatters on the first hit, but it takes another to clear the glass enough to unlock the door. I ignore the cutting shards as I reach around to unlock all the doors then run back to the driver’s side.
“Melissa?”
She groans and relief floods me as I gently draw her upright.
Blood streaks her forehead and she’s going to have a hell of a bump, but she looks at me, blinking, lifting her hand to touch her forehead. She looks at the blood on her fingers like she’s not quite registering what it is.
“Hawk?”
“Are you okay?” I ask her, looking her over.
She blinks. “What happened?”
“You crashed.” I pat her arms, her legs. I don’t think anything’s broken.
“My head,” she starts as I slide my arms underneath her and lift her out. “It hurts.”
“I’ll get you home. We’ll get a doctor out there.”
At that, she seems to remember what she was doing. Why she’d left.
“No,” she starts, trying to get free of me. “I need to go.”
“Where are you going to go?”
She looks up at me and I see into the cabin of the car at her tote on the floor of the passenger side. The papers there.
“Melissa?” I ask her.
But her eyes roll back and her head lolls into my chest as she passes out again.
35
Melissa
I’m lying on a bed when I open my eyes. I don’t know exactly where right away, though.
But then I see him.
Hawk.
He must have been standing nearby because he’s coming over now. His hair is disheveled, and he looks tired.
I look at his shirt, at the blood on it. And I remember. I remember the papers I found. I remember the messages on my phone.
“I need to go,” I start, but as soon as I try to sit up, pain like nothing I’ve felt before has me on my back again.
“You put a crack in the windshield with your head,” he says. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Most of the day.”
I shift my gaze to the far window, realize it’s dark out.
“Deirdre,” I say.
“Deirdre?”
“Sean…” How will I explain? “I need to get to the shop.”
I try to sit up and Hawk comes to my side. “Lie back, Melissa. You’re not going anywhere.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than you know.”
“Deirdre’s in trouble.”
“Who’s Deirdre?”
“The woman who works with me. Sean…He said if I didn’t meet him…He said he’d hurt her.”
“Sean Boyd won’t be hurting anyone. Axel picked him up the other night.”
“What?”
“He went looking for you. I’ve had a man on the shop.”
“Because of those pictures you found. The reports.”
He knows. God, he knows all of it. Shame fills me as tears blur my vision.
Hawk studies me and before he can answer, there’s a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Hawk say. James pushes the door open and peers around the door. “Come inside, James.”
He’s wearing striped pajamas and is barefoot. In his arms is a worn teddy bear. His eyes grow huge as he looks at the bandage on my forehead and I think he’s going to cry.
“It’s all right,” Hawk say, going to him, taking his hand. “Melissa’s fine. And she’ll tell you herself you’re not the reason she left. Melissa?”
I look up at him. “What?” Why would you think that?” I ask him as Hawk lifts him up to sit on the bed.
“You hurt yourself because of me and then you had to lie to protect me.” He sniffles.
“Oh, sweetheart,” I reach out to touch his face, wipe away a tear. “No, that’s not why I left. Not at all.”
“And she shouldn’t have left like she did, should you have, Melissa?” Hawk adds.
I look up at him and I see a firmness in his eyes, hear it in his voice. I turn back to James.
“No, I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry you thought it was your fault, James. It wasn’t, not even close.”
James smiles and a moment later, he throws himself into me and I feel every bruise as he hugs me hard and I hug him back, loving this little boy already.
“Go on to bed now, James. If your father finds out you’re out wandering the halls at night, you know he won’t be pleased with you.”
“All right, Uncle Hawk.”
“Shall I take you back?” Hawk asks.
“No, that’s all right,” he says, sliding off the bed. “You stay with Melissa.” He turns to me. “I’m glad you’re home, Melissa.”
His words strike me and all I can do is watch him walk away in his striped pajamas and little bare feet.
The door closes and Hawk returns to my side, looming over him, hands folded across his chest.
“You and I need to talk.”
36
Hawk
I give her that night and the next few days to rest. And all I can think about any time I look at her is what I’d thought, what I’d felt, when I’d seen her slumped over the steering wheel.
It’s five days later when I decide it’s time we had this talk.
“How long have you known what’s on that drive,” she asks when I enter the bedroom.
She’s sitting up and Alice has just cleared the tray of food she’d brought up. Melissa’s on bedrest. My orders.
“Long enough. You shouldn’t have left like you did. You should have waited for me. Talked to me.”
“I thought Deirdre was in trouble. I thought—”
“You should have talked to me!” I slam my fist into one of the bedposts.
Melissa jumps.
I hold up my hand, mutter a curse under my breath. I don’t mean to frighten her, but I do because she gets that look in her eyes, that one from the first night.