He went over to the bay window and stood beside her until she looked up at him. "I'll give these to someone to clean," he said, showing her the fistful of clothing. "You know where to find the things I got from Sammy. Please get dressed as soon as I leave."
"Why?"
"Because you'll have to open the door to the guard in an hour and I think you'll feel better about it if you're wearing something else." He didn't mention that he'd feel better too. The last thing he wanted to think about was what would happen if the guard came and Angela didn't answer the door because she was in the shower.
Her eyes were fathomless pools of green and gold as she looked up at him. "Just one thing before you go, Hawk."
"What?"
"Did you kill Constantine's son deliberately, or was it an accident?"
"I killed Nico because he deserved to die." Before horror and revulsion overwhelmed her, he added, "I did it not two minutes after I'd watched Nico point a gun at my partner and blow his head off."
She blanched at the brutal description, but recovered quickly, her brow wrinkling in confusion. "What do you mean, your partner?"
"Jack and I were DEA agents assigned to infiltrate Constantine's organization. That night, I was hiding on the beach in order to get evidence on film. Jack was supposed to meet me afterward and get the video to our boss. Something went wrong. Now he's dead and I'm on the run."
"Constantine's organization," she said after a long hesitation. "He's in drugs?"
"Yes. He isn't the biggest trafficker on the coast, but he tops the vicious scale. I'll give you an example, if you like. A while back he caught up with one of his low-level couriers who was trying to go straight." Hawk took a deep breath, then gave it to her without holding anything back. "Constantine used a knife on the kid until there wasn't anywhere he wasn't bleeding, then had him staked in the middle of a public beach. When a young girl stumbled across him the next morning, he was still alive and begging for someone to kill him. He died before the ambulance came."
He saw the horrified expression on Angela's face and knew that if nothing else, she'd do her best to keep her distance from Constantine. "That was three years ago. Last I heard, the girl is still in therapy. The nightmares of what she saw won't go away."
He turned and had the front door pushed open when she called his name. He paused without looking back. "What now?"
"Why are you on the run if you're a cop?"
"Agent," he corrected her. He threw his bag and the clothes into a pile just outside the door, then turned and faced her because he couldn't stand leaving without knowing how she was reacting to it all. Surprise sizzled his nerves when Angela got up and came to stand just a few feet away, but he put her nearness down to her need to watch his face more than a desire to be close.
He stood with his back propping the door open and looked down into her fresh, shining face. "I'm running because everyone thinks I did it, that I killed Jack. There was another man there, who laughed when Constantine told his son to kill Jack. His name is Paul Marchand, and he'll make damned sure I don't live to tell anyone what happened mat night. If he doesn't get me, Constantine will."
"Who is Paul Marchand?"
"My boss at the DEA." Hawk cut across her shocked gasp and added, "That's why I can't let you go to the cops. Marchand will know everything Constantine knows about you, and he'll use you to get to me. It would be naive to imagine otherwise."
"You're saying all cops are dirty?" Plainly, she didn't buy that at all.
"No, but when Marchand tags you as Constantine's lover and says he intends to use you to get to Constantine, they'll turn you over to him without listening to a word you say. And believe me, Angel, he's senior enough to pull it off."
"He'd say that about me?"
"Or something like it. The point is you won't be safe until Marchand has been exposed, and I can't do that yet." Before she could ask any more questions, he said, "That should give you something to think about while I'm gone. So will this."
He reached out and closed his hands around her arms, then pulled her forward until the hem of her robe flapped around his calves. She gasped again, in protest this time, as he captured a fistful of hair and used it to lever her face upward. Her hands flew to his chest to push him away, but it was too late. His mouth had already settled on hers.
For a moment Angela was too stunned to react. It was the last thing she'd expected, a kiss from a man who'd slept beside her two nights running without even a hint at the passion he was capable of. And there was passion in his kiss, even though he did nothing more than rest his lips on hers. Passion, and a heat that simmered just beneath the surface of his control. Like a moth drawn to flame, she flirted with the urge to yield to his fire. Her body tingled with a sudden awareness that began in her lips and flared downward, singeing everything in its path until there was no part of her left untouched.
Her response was a fiery compulsion that would have overwhelmed her entirely had she not suddenly looked up and found him staring at her. He held her gaze without blinking, watching almost impassively until he was sure he had her complete attention.
Then his eyes darkened, and he kissed her in earnest.
It was wrong. Angela knew that, yet the flame of her response burned so hot and bright that it took an enormous effort of will to ignore it. Hawk must have felt the beginnings of her resistance, but it made no difference. His freshly shaven face felt smooth and cool against her own, but her focus was on his lips as they slanted hard and firm across her mouth and stole her breath. He kissed her and watched her as he did it, and there was something about it all that told her this was more than it appeared to be, but she couldn't think straight enough to figure out what.
Her only touchstone with reality was knowing Hawk was in control, of himself as well as her, but even that reassurance didn't stop her budding rage. He -was kissing her— kissing her and holding her and making her want things she wasn't supposed to want from a man she was supposed to fear. It wasn't right!
Angela felt a scream building deep inside, but there was nowhere for it to go, so thoroughly did his mouth possess hers. Her arms were imprisoned between their bodies, but still she squirmed and struggled. Her attempts to free herself only compelled him to tighten his steely embrace as he backed her against the doorjamb and stilled her thrashing legs with a heavy thigh.
When she was breathless and her vision was dotted with multicolored spots, he took his mouth away and rested his forehead against hers. It took a moment before she realized he was talking softly, almost so low she couldn't hear, even though his mouth was only a few inches from her ears.
"You'll ruin the effect if you scream, Angel," he said, then dropped another kiss on her lips, which felt swollen and hot. "I saw in your eyes that you knew I wasn't just kissing you for the hell of it."
"You—" she began, but he kissed her again, harder this time, though with the same underlying gentleness she'd sensed before.
It was over almost before it had begun, and he took advantage of her momentary speechlessness to say, "Whisper, don't yell."
She ground her teeth and glared at him, but she did whisper. "Get your hands off me."
"In time, when I've explained."
"You're the one who promised this wouldn't happen," she said furiously, thinking if he weren't so big and she wasn't squashed against the doorframe, she'd give him a good kick. Unfortunately, at the moment she could barely move her little finger.
"My promise," he said, "was with respect to something much more involved than a simple kiss. It stands. And that's all this was. A kiss. When Sammy gets the report of what just happened, he will assume that my interest in your safety is personal. That will be a strong factor in any decisions he needs to make about you." She started to argue, but Hawk added, "Sammy now understands he'll have more than an unhappy customer to deal with if anything happens to you."
Angela scowled at him even though what he'd said made a certain amount of sense. That wasn't the point, though. "Yo
u could have just told him."
"Actions speak louder than words."
"I wasn't exactly a willing partner," she pointed out, stealing a glance toward the lawn without seeing the audience she assumed was there.
"No one was close enough to see that." He looked at her for a while longer, then untangled his fist from her hair and eased his body off hers.
The sudden coolness of the morning air surprised her, and she gripped the doorframe at her back with hands that trembled. "You might have just asked instead of grabbing me like that."
"Somehow, Angel, I didn't think you would agree." A smile curved one corner of his mouth, then faded as his gaze centered on her lips. "Your response was exquisite. I didn't expect that."
"I didn't—"
"You did. Before you remembered you shouldn't, there was a moment when you responded to my kiss and took pleasure from it." He stroked a finger across her flushed cheek. "You may not think you're ready to trust me yet, but your instincts are trying to tell you otherwise."
"You're reading too much into it," she said evenly. "You took me by surprise, that's all."
"If that's the case, Angel, why have I awakened two nights running to find your hand covering my heart?"
Not waiting for her answer, he picked up the things he'd dropped by the door, then walked down the path to a blue sedan that someone had left in place of the Jeep. After tossing everything inside, he got behind the wheel and drove the hundred yards to Sammy's, where one of the guards waited at the edge of the drive.
Angela watched as Hawk handed their clothing out through the open window before continuing down the asphalt drive to be swallowed up by the thick screen of trees. Retreating slowly into the cottage, she remembered what he'd said about giving her something to think about.
She also remembered his warning to get dressed. Judging the latter as more critical, she went into the bedroom and got to it. The thinking she put aside for later when she had food on the inside, clothes on the outside, and the strength that would come from both.
EIGHT
Angela was tidying up the mess her mushroom, cheese, and green-pepper omelette had generated when the sound of men shouting reached her ears over the hiss of water in the sink. She shut off the tap and grabbed a dish towel on her way to the kitchen window to see what was going on.
For a moment all she saw was one of the guards running toward the big house while a pair of others sprinted into the forest. When she looked more carefully, she noticed a man standing on the steps leading to the big house's wraparound veranda. Although the distance was too great for her to be able to tell much, she could see he had black curly hair and was dressed in a light brown jacket and slacks. He appeared to be of medium height, was slender, and had a medium-dark complexion that she guessed could be anything from Mediterranean to American Indian—although the curly hair pretty much left out the Indian faction. She squinted in an attempt to get a better picture as the guard ran up to the man and stopped.
The contrast between the guard's dark clothing and the other man's quite different attire made her realize who she must be looking at. The man had to be Sammy, and she'd just done the one thing Hawk had cautioned her against: She'd seen too much.
Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle the gasp she knew he couldn't hear, and she backed away from the window. She didn't move fast enough, though, because she could still see out when the guard turned and began running toward the cottage. There was a chance, she thought frantically, that everything would be okay if she just pretended she hadn't looked outside. Flinging the dish towel onto the counter, she ran for the bookshelves and grabbed the first book she touched. Then she jumped into a chair with its back to the bay window, flipped the book open to a point just shy of the middle, and tried to still her racing heart. The charade wouldn't work if the guard noticed she was breathing too heavily for someone who was supposed to be reading.
Glancing up, she caught her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror centered between the bookshelves and bedroom door. The flustered, frightened woman she felt like wasn't the person who looked back at her. Dressed in soft, snug jeans and a full-sleeved V-neck white cotton sweater with her hair woven neatly into a French braid and her face clean of makeup, she looked amazingly composed and calm. Tucking one trembling hand under her thigh and holding the book with the other, she waited for the knock on the door and wondered for the first time what had happened to make Sammy come out of hiding.
A panic worse than the first one made her drop the book to the floor as she realized the shouting and Sammy's behavior must have something to do with Hawk. She scrambled to her feet and, heedless of the appalling risk, ran to the door and pulled it open, spooking the guard. He was only slightly taller than she, but his muscular build made him seem gigantic as he stood there blocking the light.
Disregarding yet another of Hawk's instructions, Angela stared into the shadowy area beneath his baseball cap and met his gaze. "What's going on?"
"The boss wants to see you up at the house," he said, ignoring her question. "Now, please."
"Why? Has something happened to Hawk?" He'd hardly been gone thirty minutes. How much trouble could he get into in such a short time? she wondered, then remembered it had taken less than a minute to pick up that gun in the garage.
"Sammy wants you to come now."
"Then tell me what's happened!" It terrified her, the thought that she might never see Hawk again, but she chalked her reaction up to the fear Hawk had instilled in her regarding Sammy. She wanted to be left here alone even less than she wanted to get away from Hawk. There was a sinking feeling in the vicinity of her stomach as she contemplated this new twist in the overall mess she was in. It wasn't, she realized, anything good.
The guard just shook his head and grabbed her arm, then noticed she was barefoot. "Get your shoes."
She shook off his hand, and the fact that he let her do it was a strange reassurance. Although she realized he'd probably done so to let her get her shoes, it gave her a sense of power to know she'd done it. Stepping behind the door, she found her pumps and slid her feet into them. When she came back around the door, she was three inches taller and determined not to let anyone see how horribly frightened she was.
This time the guard didn't grab her, just stood aside and waited for her to come on her own. She went, preceding him up the path to the big house at a pace that was obviously too slow, because they'd only gone a few steps when he asked her to speed it up. Angela was so busy imagining what was wrong that she bit back the retort that he should try running in nigh heels, and did her best.
The man she'd seen from the window came outside to meet them. This was not a good sign, she knew, but when she got up the nerve to meet his gaze, his expression was only mildly annoyed. That puzzled her.
"Please accept my apologies for interrupting your morning, Miss Ferguson," he said with an accent that was so slight, Angela couldn't place it.
An apology wasn't quite what she'd expected, but she took it in striae. "That's okay. I wasn't doing anything important."
A smile flickered across his expression. "A small problem has arisen regarding your visit."
"Problem?" The guard behind her said something she didn't catch, but when she turned to see what he wanted, she saw he wasn't speaking to her at all. As she watched he said something else, and she realized he must be communicating through the thing wrapped around his throat.
She turned back to the man she'd guessed was Sammy. "What kind of problem?"
"To put it simply, the bounty Constantine put on you was too much for one of my employees to resist."
"A bounty on me?" The sinking feeling in her stomach got worse as everything Hawk had told her firmed up into a singularly ugly scenario—a scenario she could no longer afford to doubt. Constantine was after Hawk and would stop at nothing to get him.
"You and Hawk both," Sammy said, "although I've been given to understand he'll settle for either one of you." He paused to clear his throat, and An
gela realized he was uncomfortable to the point of being embarrassed. "We were fortunate to discover the man's lapse in judgment, but the damage was already done."
She glanced around the compound and couldn't see anything to worry about. The only guard was the one standing a few feet away, and except for the fact that he appeared to be in constant communication with one or more people, he looked calm and unbothered. Just because he'd taken his gun from the sling across his back and now balanced it on one forearm with the butt firmly in his hand didn't necessarily mean he was getting ready for trouble. If things were really serious, she mused, his finger would be on the trigger and not outside the guard like it was.
She looked back at Sammy and said, "Would you mind getting to the point? I mean, I'd like to know now if you're going to hand me over or just shoot me and be done with it. It's not that I'm lobbying for either, mind you, but I've never liked not knowing what to expect."
"The point, Miss Ferguson, is that this compound will soon be under siege by Constantine's men. I have decided it would be prudent that you not remain here, as I can no longer guarantee your safety."
"So you're handing me over." She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. "Hawk will probably demand a refund."
"He will, of course, have one, but when I spoke to Hawk to apprise him of the situation, he seemed to think he would be getting his money's worth."
"You spoke to Hawk?"
"Mmm. He's got a phone in the car." He studied her carefully, then seemed to reach a decision. "I told him I had arranged to have you taken from the compound and to a place where he could resume responsibility for your safety. If he had agreed, you would already be gone from here."
She blinked a couple of times because the information coming in wasn't making any sense. "Are you saying there's another option that's less gruesome than the ones you mentioned?"
"Miss Ferguson—"
"Call me Angela, Sammy. Hawk does and he's only known me two days."
He bowed his head slightly. "Angela, then. It was not my intention to mislead you. Hawk paid me for a service which I am honor-bound to provide. Part of that service is to keep Constantine and certain law-enforcement agencies from getting their hands on you. While my men are perfectly capable of defending the compound, the attention that such a pitched battle would draw is counterproductive. The authorities would feel the necessity to intrude, and I would have failed to fulfill my part of the agreement."
Night of the Hawk (LS 767) Page 11
