A Touch of the Beast

by Linda Winstead Jones

  Hawk was more than uneasy as he drove through Wyatt, headed for the interstate and Texas and the life he’d left behind. A nasty knot had settled into the pit of his stomach.

  In the past few days there hadn’t been any talk about visits to Texas or Tennessee, about how a long-distance relationship might work. Sheryl deserved to have a normal man in her life, a husband who would love her without restraint, babies who wouldn’t have to be hidden from the world to protect them from men like the one who had killed Deanna Payne.

  He couldn’t give her that, and he loved Sheryl enough to want the best for her.

  What a kick in the pants that was, to finally fall head over heels for a woman after all this time. And he was.

  Head over heels in love.

  For all the good it would do him. He had definitely been better off before he’d met Sheryl. He didn’t need this indecision, this nagging doubt that he shouldn’t be leaving her behind.

  Hawk slammed on the brakes and swerved in the street before pulling the truck onto the shoulder of the road and coming to a jerking stop.

  Something was wrong.

  His heart started beating too fast; his lungs constricted; his hands shook. He’d never sensed anything so strongly over a distance; he usually had to concentrate in order to get any sensation at all without touching an animal.

  As he sat behind the steering wheel, shaking and breathless, Hawk realized what was happening to him. He wasn’t sensing fear and danger from an animal, but from Sheryl. It was like she was inside him…calling him…reaching for him…. In the back seat, a resting Baby lifted up slowly and growled.

  “Yeah, I know,” Hawk said as he made a U-turn in the street and hit the gas.

  Even as he drove, he saw more than the street before him. He saw a man’s face, a gun….

  And then he smelled the smoke as if a fire had started in the cab of his truck. Smoke dimmed his view of the road; it filled his nose and his lungs and all but blinded him. The smoke was here…and it was suffocating him. He drove fast, even though smoke stung his eyes and clouded his vision. He steered the truck down the middle of the street, taking corners sharply, squealing the tires as he made his way to Sheryl’s house on instinct and fear.

  He didn’t pull his truck to the curb but drove into Sheryl’s front yard, stopping with a jerk near the porch. “Stay!” he ordered when Baby made a move toward the door.

  Hawk leaped onto the porch. The front door was in place but was almost off its hinges. Someone had kicked the door in, probably right after Hawk had driven away.

  Someone had been watching, waiting for him to leave.

  He pushed the door open and stepped inside, and the smell of smoke hit him. The same smoke he had smelled in the truck.

  The farther into the house he moved, the denser the smoke became. The yapping and meowing of Sheryl’s pets came to him from down the hall, and Bruce was cussing up a blue streak, but Hawk didn’t hear Sheryl at all.

  He felt her, though. He felt her to his bones. She was alive and afraid.

  Hawk didn’t know who had Sheryl, but he did know none of this was her fault. He was the one who had brought danger to her, and he was the only one who could take it away.

  “Let her go!” he shouted as he moved into the smoky hallway. Thick smoke drifted from the spare bedroom.

  “No!” a strange voice answered. “What are you doing here?” The man spoke with a decided British accent. “It’s much too soon for you to come back. You’re not supposed to come back until she’s dead. Go away. You don’t have long to wait, I promise.”

  “Sheryl!” Hawk shouted as he inched toward the open door.

  “Get out of here. He has a gun!”

  Hawk leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. He’d seen Baby shot and it had damn near killed him. What if Sheryl got hurt? What if she was murdered, all because of him? He couldn’t live with that. He couldn’t bear it.

  He didn’t want to lose her.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly. Then in a louder voice, “I’m coming in!”

  The sight that greeted him as he burst into the spare room was enough to stop his heart on the spot, no bullet required. A slender, pale man sat on the narrow bed, a gun in one hand, a can of lighter fluid in the other. Sheryl reclined at an odd angle beside him. Duct tape not only bound her ankles and wrists, but lashed her to the bed itself. The files from the fertility clinic, the ones from the box Hawk had left here, were spread around them, on the floor and on the bed. The files Hawk and Sheryl had arranged so carefully had been negligently tossed about and many were on fire, small flames licking here and there, growing in intensity, giving off smoke and heat. There was a growing fire on the floor, in the center of the room, fed by old documents and lighter fluid and matches. The fire was inching closer to the curtains on one side, the bookcase on the other. There wasn’t a lot of time before the flames spread out of control.

  The man pointed his gun at Sheryl, as if he knew that would stop Hawk much more effectively than a bullet headed his way. “Come in and join us, if you’d like. There’s plenty of room.” He didn’t move the gun away from Sheryl, but he did lift a sheet of paper and read a section. “Such a lot of fuss for such a lot of nothing.”

  Hawk stepped into the room as the fire spread, catching the curtains at the back of the room and spreading upward. Flames licked at the bookcase, caught an old book and climbed upward.

  “Hawk, get out of here!” Sheryl ordered.

  “Not without you.”

  Her eyes were wide and frantic, unlike those of her captor. He was calm amongst the flames.

  “I figured you’d come back when you heard about the tragedy,” the blond man said as he dropped a fiery sheet of paper onto the floor. “But I certainly didn’t expect you so soon. You can go now.” He shooed Hawk away with his hand. “Titan doesn’t want you dead. Not yet, at least.”

  “Why not?” Hawk said as he took another step closer.

  “I don’t know. I don’t particularly care, either. To be honest, I don’t care about much of anything anymore.”

  “We can all walk out of here, Ricky,” Sheryl said, her voice calm but her eyes frantic. “All of us.”

  Ricky shook his head. “No, I’m afraid it’s too late for that. He can go,” he nodded his head to Hawk. “If he hurries. But you’re mine. You were promised to me. I will admit, this isn’t the fun I had intended, but it’s all I can offer. I had such plans for us…but Titan and Janet have turned me into a worthless pile of shuddering flesh. I’m no good to any woman.” He laughed harshly. “I’m not good for much of anything anymore.”

  Hawk looked Sheryl in the eye while the man on the bed continued to ramble. He couldn’t possibly leave her here.

  Go. She mouthed the word. The fire moved closer to the bed, licking and growing slowly. Heading unerringly toward Sheryl.

  Hawk moved fast; he had to, in order to get the gun before the Englishman fired. His hand manacled Ricky’s wrist, and he forced the weapon away from Sheryl and out of the intruder’s hand. Ricky was weak. Surprisingly so. Or else he didn’t care to win this struggle. Hawk maintained his grip on the man’s wrist and stuck the weapon in his waistband, then he reached into his pocket and drew out a knife. Ricky didn’t kick; he didn’t fight. He seemed, in fact, resigned to his fate.

  Hawk opened his knife with one flick of his thumb and began to cut the tape that bound Sheryl to the bed, then the tape at her ankles and wrists. A few quick swipes of the sharp knife and she was free.

  Sheryl leaped from the bed, escaping the heat and the flames and her captor to stand with Hawk. Her hands rested on his shoulder and his back, as if she needed that connection to chase away the fear that continued to course through her.

  And she was afraid. Deeply, completely afraid.

  “Go,” Hawk said.

  “You’d better be right behind me.” She dropped her arms slowly, and then she ran, heading not to the front door but down the hallway to collect her fr
antic pets.

  Still, the man on the bed didn’t struggle. “Who is Titan?” Hawk asked.

  “As if you don’t know,” the Englishman replied with disdain.

  “I don’t.”

  The man stared up at Hawk with the oddest, palest eyes he’d ever seen. And still he didn’t fight. “Everyone knows Titan. He knows you, so you must know him, as well.”

  Hawk heard Sheryl and the pets leaving by the front door, and that was when he hauled Ricky to his feet. “Dammit, you will tell me everything!” Flames licked toward the ceiling, climbing the curtains and the books in the bookcase. The smoke was getting thick.

  He pulled Ricky toward the hallway. “But not here.” Breathing in too much smoke, he coughed once, and that was when his prisoner pulled away with a burst of strength. Hawk turned around to see that the man held another gun, a smaller and yet equally deadly weapon, much like the one that had already been confiscated.

  “Backup weapon,” the Englishman explained as Hawk stared into the barrel. “You should have expected that.” The comment sounded very much like a reprimand.

  “So, are you going to shoot me now?”

  Sheryl and her kiddies were all safe. Either she or a neighbor had called the fire department and police by now, of that he was certain. The intruder with the gun wasn’t walking out of this house a free man, and surely he knew that. There would be no escape. The flames that were fed by the fertility clinic files grew and flickered and moved into the hallway following a trail of lighter fluid that had been poured into the carpet.

  Time was running out.

  Hawk drew the pistol from his waistband and took steady aim at the man who had tried to kill Sheryl, threatening the intruder with his own weapon.

  “Titan really doesn’t want you dead,” the man said softly.

  “Then maybe we should talk. Who is this Titan? Why is he so interested in me?”

  The blond man grinned. “The boss doesn’t tell me anything of importance. I do know that he shot your dog. I was a bit stunned when he told me; for some reason it seemed very cold and unnaturally cruel. But it was a stroke of brilliance, really. He decided that if something so simple as a bleeding pup would bring you to your knees, killing the woman you were shagging would really stop you in your tracks.”

  In the distance, he heard sirens. So did the Englishman.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Hawk said. “You’re sick. I’ll get you some medicine and then you can tell me all about Titan.”

  The Englishman aimed his weapon at Hawk’s chest, and while his hand shook, his aim remained certain. “I don’t think so.”

  “You said this Titan wants me alive.”

  The man with the gun shrugged. “Titan has screwed me over in the worst possible way. I’m a dead man, don’t you see that? I’m dead! Why should I give a damn what the boss wants now?”

  They moved, sharply and simultaneously, and one shot rang out.

  Chapter 16

  Sheryl stood in the center of the hotel room, still unable to believe what had happened this afternoon: that awful man breaking into her home; hearing the gunshot; watching her house burn.

  Her house wasn’t a complete loss, but it was too badly damaged for her to live in for quite some time. Only the spare bedroom and a part of the hallway had been completely destroyed by the fire, but there was water and smoke damage throughout the house. She didn’t like to think that everything she owned had been ruined in one afternoon, but it appeared that was the case.

  She should be more upset, and maybe later she would be.

  The door to the hotel room opened and Hawk walked in, his stride easy, his face as dispassionate and hard as it had been the first time she’d seen it.

  “How are the kiddies?” she asked, doing her best to put on a happy face. It wasn’t easy, since she continued to tremble so deeply her teeth practically chattered.

  “Fine,” he said. “They’re perfectly happy with Cory.”

  “Even Baby and Laverne?”

  “Baby’s fine. So is Laverne.” She could read no emotion in his voice or on his face. It was as if he’d locked everything down so deep no one could ever reach it. Not even her.

  When they’d checked into the hotel, Hawk had tried to get adjoining rooms. One for them, another for the animals. But the hotel manager—who had allowed Baby to stay in Hawk’s room earlier in the week—had balked at the idea of three cats, three dogs and a parrot. By the time they’d finished dealing with the fire department and the police, there hadn’t been time to make other arrangements for the night. So Cory, Sheryl’s part-time employee, had taken all the animals into his own home. His mother was less than thrilled, since they already had a collection of their own, but in light of the circumstances she had agreed.

  In a way Sheryl was glad they had this one night alone. She wanted Hawk all to herself for a while. No animals who could see a part of him she could not. No distractions.

  He didn’t move toward her, but stood near the door. Away from her. Always away. “I understand how you feel,” she said softly.

  “You have no idea—”

  “I do now,” she said. “When I heard that gunshot, my blood ran cold. Literally cold. I ran toward the house, but Debbie stopped me. She wouldn’t let me go in and make sure you hadn’t been—” The words stuck in her throat. “I was so scared that you might be hurt,” she said softly. “I was terrified that you might be dead.

  “And then I looked around and realized that all the animals, all of them, were calmly watching the front door, waiting for you to come out. They knew you were all right,” she said, still amazed. “I didn’t know. I didn’t see what they saw, I didn’t feel whatever it is they feel. And I was jealous. I envied them that extraordinary connection you’ve hidden from the world all these years. At that moment I wanted it for myself.”

  Hawk had soon come out of the house on his own, coughing but unhurt. Ricky had turned his gun on himself and had fired one bullet into his own brain and ended his life.

  Hawk crossed the room with that graceful, sleek step that had captivated her from the beginning. Had he looked her in the eye once since he’d cut her loose and set her free? Had he uttered one kind word? No.

  He was looking her in the eye now. She wondered if he would kiss her when he reached her, but he didn’t. Instead he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist. He was so tall, and she was so short, that in this position his head almost reached her shoulder. He closed his eyes and rested his head there.

  Sheryl threaded her fingers through his hair. No, she wasn’t terribly upset about the damage to her things. She and Hawk were both unhurt, as were all the animals. Everything else could be replaced.

  “I saw his face,” Hawk said gruffly. “I smelled the smoke. Through your senses, I knew you were in trouble.”

  She stroked his hair. “And that’s why you came back?”

  “Yeah.” He stayed in place, holding on, pressing his large hands against her back.

  In a way it broke her heart all over again. Hawk hadn’t turned around because he realized he loved her. He’d come back because he felt responsible for her safety.

  “I have money,” he said.

  Her eyebrows raised. She wasn’t sure what was coming, but she was pretty sure she was about to be insulted. And still, she didn’t release her hold on Hawk. “So?”

  “I can fix your house, take care of anything the insurance doesn’t cover. I can build you a better one if you’d like.”

  “Hawk—”

  “I can rebuild your clinic, I can pay Cory and you while you’re both out of work.”

  “Hawk!”

  “I don’t want you to be hurt because I came here,” he said, his voice gruff and deep.

  “I told you before, I don’t want your money.”

  “I’m not finished,” he grumbled.

  “Fine.” As if she wanted to hear him try to buy her off! “Finish.”

  “I can take care of everything here
,” he said. “Your business, your house, everything. Or you can come home with me.”

  She blinked twice. “What?”

  “Texas needs veterinarians, too. And Baby likes you. She doesn’t like the vet at home.”

  “So I should uproot myself because Baby likes me.”

  His hands worked up and down her back, barely touching her. “I like you, too,” he said softly. “I’m not ready for this to end. I won’t ever be ready for this to end.”

  She’d wanted more, she’d ached for more…and now here he was offering more and she was terrified.

  “Why should I move to Texas?” she asked, more than a little defensive. “Why don’t you move here?”

  He didn’t hesitate for more than a split second. “Okay.”

  It was not the response she’d expected. “Okay? What are you thinking, Hawk? You have a business. You have a horse ranch and a home and a pregnant sister and—”

  “And I love you,” he said. “That changes everything.”

  She stroked Hawk’s head and pulled him closer. She let go of every fear. Not fear of fire and bullets; that had already faded. But her fear of giving all of herself to a man, heart and soul; that had been hard to let go of.

  “Love does change things, doesn’t it?” she whispered.

  Hawk began to unbutton her blouse without haste, his lips brushing against the skin he revealed as he folded the fabric back. He didn’t wait for her to declare her love, as he had. But then, he knew, didn’t he? He’d known all along.

  Sheryl closed her eyes, unable to think about the future at the moment. They were both alive and unharmed, and they were together. Nothing else mattered.

  There had been frenzy in their lovemaking in the past, but not tonight. They undressed each other slowly, kissing and touching as they shed their clothes, stopping now and then for long, deep kisses that made her head swim and her knees weak. When they were naked, Hawk picked her up and carried her to the bed.

  “Can you…” Heaven above, she didn’t know how to ask this question! “Now?”

  Even though her question was awkward and incomplete, he knew what she meant. “No. The other times might’ve been aberrations. In the farmhouse, maybe I was so wound up over everything else I just imagined what I felt. And this afternoon, it’s possible that I was seeing the intruder’s face and smelling the fire through the animals, and I just misinterpreted. That’s probably what happened.”