Anthony laid a finger over the photo, caressing his mother’s cheek. Their father had killed her and then he’d disappeared.
The son of a bitch was back.
Hawk wasn’t a talkative man, but she’d never seen him so still and quiet. Something was wrong, something beyond the loss of the file. Sheryl suggested that they sit on the porch, and he followed her without argument. Only Baby came with them; the other kiddies stayed in the house. Baby placed herself beside Hawk’s rocking chair. Her sharp eyes swept the street once, and then she put her head down and closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep.
“I’m sorry,” Sheryl said again. How many times had she apologized? “I really did think the kitchen door was locked.”
“Nothing to be done for it now,” Hawk said without emotion.
“At least you found the treatment for your sister,” she said, trying to put a note of cheer into her voice. “That’s something, right?”
He didn’t answer. His chair began to rock, and he watched the street as suspiciously as Baby had. Sheryl wanted to climb onto his lap and stroke his hair and cry for him, since he refused to cry for himself. Every feminine instinct she possessed told her he didn’t want that comfort. But dammit, he needed it. He needed her.
Finally he spoke. “I didn’t tell you everything about me.”
She wasn’t surprised. Hawk wasn’t the kind of man who shared himself easily. Sexually, sure. But in his heart? No. “There hasn’t been time.”
He quit rocking and turned his head to look her in the eye. The sun was setting, but there was plenty of light left to illuminate his hard face, the unforgiving eyes. “I grew up on a horse ranch, so it’s only natural that when I was a kid, I got involved in the rodeo. Calf roping at first, then when I was older and bigger I got into bull riding.”
It wasn’t much, but it was personal. Hawk was voluntarily sharing a part of his past with her. That had to be a good sign. Right? “Do you still ride?”
“Not since I was nineteen.” A strange stillness hung in the air for a few moments, and then he continued. “That night I drew the toughest, meanest bull in the competition. The bull no one wanted. The one that assured me either an exciting win or a nasty loss.”
That night, he said. Not one night, but that night.
“When it was time, I got on his back, grabbed the rope good and tight, and nodded my head to signal that I was ready. The gate opened, and the bull leaped into the ring and bucked hard.” His eyes went dark.
“Everything faded. There was no crowd in the arena with us. No cheering, no judges. Just pounding hooves and rage.” His voice was low, but deep and clear. “I felt it, Sheryl. I felt that rage as if it were my own. I knew that bull’s fear and anger, I felt the heat of his blood and the beat of his heart.”
“Hawk—”
“Let me finish,” he said sharply. “I’ve never told this to anyone before, so I’m not quite sure how to do it. If I stop I might not finish.”
She nodded silently.
“It hurt,” he said softly. “I was inside that damn bull for what seemed like forever, and it freakin’ hurt. Turns out my forever was fifteen seconds. More than long enough for a win, more than long enough to change my life. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the rodeo clowns were there trying to help me off and out of the ring, once my eight seconds were up. Later on they said it was like I was in another world, like I didn’t see or hear them or hear the buzzer when it sounded. And I didn’t.”
He laughed harshly. “Okay, no more beating around the bush. No more subtle hints. I can— Crap, if I tell you I can talk to animals, you’ll start calling me Dr. Dolittle. If I tell you I can read their thoughts, you’ll think I’m some wacko pet psychic who belongs in a loony bin. You don’t have to tell me that it doesn’t make any sense,” he said before she could respond. “I already know that.”
“Can I talk now?” Sheryl asked when he’d been silent for a few moments.
“Sure.” The way his jaw was set and his eyes narrowed, she imagined he was expecting her to tell him she thought he was nuts. She didn’t.
“I can’t explain what you’ve just told me, but I’m not going to call you a liar or a nutcase. You experienced something that’s tough to explain, but…”
“But what?” he snapped.
“You can’t just toss this at me and expect me to accept it without question. There has to be a logical explanation. I can’t deny that you have a very special gift with animals, but to ask me to believe that you’re a—a—” She found no proper word. “I need fact, Hawk. I need something concrete before I can wrap my mind around what you’re telling me.”
“I think I can make better sense of it now,” he said softly. “Finally. It’s been nine years since that night in the ring, and I never ran across anything even resembling an explanation. After looking at those files…” He shook his head and looked out to the deserted street again. “You have to understand, it’s more than me. Cassie has always had dreams that, well, they were more than dreams. Sometimes they came true. Now that she’s pregnant, she’s been having seizures.”
“I know.”
“What you don’t know is that she’s been seeing into the immediate future right after she has a seizure. Just a few minutes, but—” A wry smile twisted his lips, and the sound that burst from between those lips might’ve been a kind of humorless laughter followed by one of Bruce’s favorite words. “Of course. Why didn’t I see it? She knew. She must’ve known.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My name is Hawk, and I can connect to animals in a way that is, as far as I know, unheard of. Cassie’s name is actually Cassandra, like the mythological psychic no one would listen to. That can’t be coincidence. When she named us, our mother must’ve known what our special talents would be.”
Psychics. Talking to pets. It was definitely a leap of faith for Sheryl to believe what she was hearing. And yet, she didn’t believe Hawk would lie to her. Not about this; not about anything.
“There’s something else,” he said, his voice so low Sheryl had to strain to hear. “Something you really need to know.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for more,” she said just as softly.
He hesitated, but then he continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. “Yesterday, in the old house—”
Baby woke suddenly and began to growl, her eyes trained on the side yard.
“What is it, girl?” Hawk laid his hand on Baby’s head, and almost immediately his expression changed. “Someone’s here.”
At the same moment Hawk’s cell phone began to ring. He ignored it, then snagged the phone from his belt and checked out the caller ID. “It’s Cassie,” he said. He tossed the phone to Sheryl. “Take a message for me. I’ll be right back.”
Baby and Hawk leaped off the porch together, and that was when Sheryl saw the man racing across her neighbor’s backyard.
She answered the call, “Hello?”
Benedict ran. Hawk was giving chase and gaining. That damn dog who’d given him away was at Hawk’s side.
If running wasn’t such hard work, he’d smile. He’d gone to the house to collect a DNA sample—a strand of hair with a follicle or a toothbrush, most likely—but he’d come away with so much more. He’d overheard everything.
Cassie was the one he wanted. Cassie and her baby.
Benedict ran hard, but Hawk drew closer with each step. He didn’t have any use for Dr. Dolittle at the present time, and he wasn’t capable of taking the big fella on his own. Not without shooting him. The supple branch of an overgrown bush brushed across his face, and something with thorns grabbed at his trousers and then tore free.
He’d really rather not shoot Hawk. If he killed the boy, what a waste that would be. And if he only wounded him, he might be like a wounded bear, angrier and more determined. The knee—maybe that would stop him. But Benedict’s shooting skills were not particularly sharp, though he did engage in target practice on occasion and he was cert
ainly a better shot than most. He needed a slightly bigger target than a moving knee, though.
Benedict had men to do the dirty work for him; he rarely pulled the trigger himself.
Besides, he wanted the boy healthy and whole. Undamaged. Now that he knew where and who Hawk was, and what he could do, Benedict could have him collected at any time.
But not if the boy caught him.
Benedict left the overgrown yard and leaped onto a side street. Out of breath and excited about the days to come, he stopped in the middle of the pavement. His car was another block over; he couldn’t allow Hawk to see his car and report a description to the authorities. He had the boy’s license plate number, so getting a full name and address and then tracking down Cassandra would not be a problem. All he had to do was make a clean escape.
That might not be easy. Hawk and the dog were close, and now not too far behind them the Eldanis woman frantically shouted Hawk’s name. She wasn’t able to catch him, though.
The boy moved fast, he’d give him that.
Benedict caught his breath and smiled. No, not a boy anymore. A man. Not a squalling baby, but the fully grown evidence that his experiments had been a success.
Suddenly he knew how to win this round; he knew how to stop Hawk. He drew his gun and spun on the man and dog who burst into view, skirting overgrown shrubs and a pecan tree in the corner lot. With cold determination, he took aim and fired.
Hawk heard the shot, felt the sting, felt his heart drop out from under him. His feet stuttered to a stop on the pavement as the man he’d been chasing turned away and cut through yet another heavily wooded yard.
He turned back, moving in slow motion. His muscles wanted to freeze, his breath wouldn’t come.
“Baby?”
The dog Hawk had found years ago on the side of the road, frightened and starving and abused, was lying on the street, whimpering and twitching and bleeding. He dropped to his knees as the man who’d been prowling around Sheryl’s house, the man who had surely stolen the file on Deanna Payne and then returned to look for more, made his escape.
Hawk didn’t feel the pain of the bullet, not anymore. The bullet hadn’t come anywhere near him. The man he’d been chasing had deliberately taken aim at Baby.
He heard Sheryl calling his name, heard her fighting against the same overgrown brush he and Baby had run through. She burst onto the street, white-faced and holding his cell phone in her hand.
She dropped down and examined Baby’s wound. “Your sister said this would happen,” she whispered. “She was so frantic I didn’t understand her at first, and she didn’t want to talk to me at all. She wanted you. But she kept saying, ‘Baby. Baby,’ and finally I got the message. I tried to call you back to warn you, but it was too late.” Sheryl handed him the phone, freeing both her hands for Baby. “She’s going to be okay,” she said firmly. “Give me your shirt.”
Hawk whipped his shirt over his head and handed it to Sheryl. She quickly and efficiently bound Baby’s flank with the shirt to slow the bleeding. Baby, not understanding what had happened, whimpered and shook.
“Let’s get her to the clinic,” Sheryl said in a calm voice that trembled just a little.
Hawk very gently lifted Baby from the ground, being careful of her injury. He was angry and worried, shaking deep down and almost shell-shocked by the suddenness of the attack. What kind of a man would shoot a dog? He would’ve understood if the man had taken aim at him, but to deliberately shoot Baby… It was wrong. All wrong.
He had promised Baby that no one would ever hurt her again.
They walked toward the corner, Baby in Hawk’s arms, Sheryl leading the way. The sound of the gunshot had called out all the neighbors, but no one could help them. He would carry Baby to the truck, and they’d drive to the clinic. No one but Sheryl could help him now.
“He should’ve shot me.”
“Don’t say that,” Sheryl said.
It was the truth. It would have made more sense. How had the man known that shooting Baby would stop Hawk in his tracks?
Holding Baby close, he felt her confusion, her pain. But he also felt her strong heart and her will to live. With Sheryl’s help, he told himself, she’d heal.
Hawk had seen the shooter well, and he committed the man’s face to memory. If he ever saw that man again, the bastard would wish for someone to shoot him and put him out of his misery.
“Oh my God!” Sheryl moaned as she turned on the light in the clinic waiting room.
Everything had been turned over. Everything! There were huge holes in the walls, the phone was off the hook and making that awful off-the-hook noise, and her plants had been upended. Dirt had been kicked all over the floor.
It was a shock she could do without, considering the circumstances, but Sheryl knew she’d have to deal with this mess later, after she’d removed the bullet from Baby’s flank and dressed the wound properly. She could only hope the examining rooms were in better shape.
They were, but not by much. She quickly prepared the least demolished of the rooms, and when she was ready, Hawk very gingerly placed Baby on the examining table.
There was blood on his arm and his torso, and the deepest pain she’d ever seen in his eyes. If she knew nothing else, she knew there was no way she could take care of Baby with Hawk standing over her.
“You should go to the waiting room,” she said.
“No.” There was no room for argument in that answer, but she argued anyway.
“You can trust me.”
“It’s not a matter of trust, Sheryl.”
“Yes, it is.”
When he didn’t move, she told him the whole truth. “I can’t do this with you watching. Right now I’m as worried about you as I am about Baby, and she needs my full attention. Please, go sit down in the other room so I can take care of her.”
“I won’t get in your way.”
“Please,” she said one last time.
Reluctantly he headed for the door.
Hawk would be okay, Sheryl thought as she stroked Baby’s fur and whispered encouraging words. He would be fine in the lobby, out of sight if not out of mind. He wouldn’t be completely out of the loop during the surgery. She had a feeling he would know immediately if anything went wrong.
Benedict stood over a sweating, trembling Ricky Driggs. The man was such a disgusting specimen. Addiction would do that to a man.
It had been a mere twelve hours since he’d received his initial injection, and yet Ricky’s once-careful appearance had already suffered. His hair was mussed, and his blue jeans had a small tear in one knee where he’d fallen while making his way to the RV. His T-shirt was stained and wrinkled, and he didn’t seem to notice, much less care.
It was disgusting and yet somehow entertaining.
“I’m going to leave you here in Wyatt for a few more days,” Benedict said, as if he were talking to a child.
Ricky nodded, his head jerking. “And you’ll leave me with a sufficient supply of the drug, right?”
“Of course I will,” Benedict said with a smile. “But you must pay very careful attention to my instructions. If you don’t do as I ask, there will be no more of the drug for you.”
Again that sweating head bobbed.
“The man, the big fellow you’ve seen in Dr. Eldanis’s company, he is not to be harmed,” Benedict explained. “Eldanis you may do with as you please, but I want Hawk left alive.”
“Hawk?”
“The big fellow,” Benedict said slowly.
“Of course.” Ricky nodded his head quickly.
“I doubt he’ll be leaving Wyatt anytime soon. I shot his dog.”
Ricky jerked a little, and a pained expression flitted across his face. As if the Englishman had any scruples! He’d killed a number of men, in his time with Benedict and before, and his plans for the Eldanis woman were certainly not benevolent. And yet he flinched because a flea-bitten mutt had been shot.
“If it looks as if the big fellow is plannin
g to leave town, I want you to stop him.” The last thing Benedict needed was Hawk getting in the way of Cassandra’s capture. Cassandra was the one he wanted, the one he’d been searching for. She and the child she carried would be his salvation.
“How can I stop him?” Ricky laughed nervously. “I mean, if he wants to leave town he’s going to—”
“Stop him,” Benedict said sharply. “Do I have to do your thinking for you? Hawk’s departure will be likely delayed for several days at the very least, thanks to the death or injury to his dog. I imagine he would also be delayed by the death or injury of his girlfriend. Remember, she is expendable. He is not.”
And if Hawk caught and disposed of Driggs in a violent fashion, as he was likely to do if the Brit had his fun with the girl, all the better. He wasn’t worried about Ricky talking before he died; the lackey knew nothing of importance and would likely be a drooling moron before Hawk ever laid hands on him.
Ricky nodded. “I got it. Kill the girl and he’ll stay, right? Can I have my shot now? I don’t feel so good.”
Benedict nodded to Janet, who opened a small leather case and withdrew one filled syringe. There were nine others in the case, most of them filled with the drug Ricky needed. A few were nothing more than colored sugar water.
Ricky’s need for the drug would likely escalate quickly, so his supply of the drug would only last a few days. Perhaps a week. A week should be sufficient time to grab Cassandra and get a head start. Janet could, of course, concoct and administer an antidote, but why waste the time and effort on this poor specimen when there were so many other wonderful possibilities on her agenda?
Janet administered the shot to an offered vein in a trembling arm, and the reaction was immediate. Ricky relaxed, his breathing slowed and a touch of color came back to his pasty cheeks.
“From now on, I want you to limit yourself to one injection a day,” she said, using the same slow, careful voice Benedict himself had chosen to use with the damaged Englishman.
A Touch of the Beast Page 17
