Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire

by Rachel Lee

  “Then those are some friends you have there. Cornering a lone woman like that, waving a knife at her so she doesn’t notice when they rip her off.”

  David’s head snapped up. Luke saw his eyes gleam for a moment in the dark.

  “At least you weren’t with them then. That would have broken her heart.”

  David lowered his gaze once more. “I wouldn’t hurt Amelia.”

  There was a strange, almost vibrating tension in David’s voice. It made Luke frown uneasily. And again he had to force himself to be tough. If had any influence left with his brother at all, he had to use it now.

  “Then why did you try and pass that check?”

  “They made me.”

  Luke gave a disbelieving snort. “Oh, please. That’s such a kid’s excuse. ‘They made me,’” he repeated, in a babyish voice.

  “They did!” David’s voice rose. “It wasn’t my fault. I wouldn’t hurt Amelia! But I couldn’t stop them. I tried, I really tried, but I couldn’t, and now they’re gonna do it, and it’ll be my fault!”

  Luke went very still. Something had changed here, something important. That slip of tense wasn’t an accident. David wasn’t just talking about the check anymore; Luke could feel it. “Going to do what?”

  David didn’t answer. Luke heard a ragged sniffle, knew the boy was fighting breaking down completely. He reached out and gripped his brother’s shoulders, turning him to face him. He saw then, in the dim glow of the building’s exterior lights, that what he’d thought was dirt were instead bruises. Fresh ones, if he was any judge, and he was.

  “David!” he snapped. “What are they going to do?”

  David swallowed. “I can’t tell you. They’ll beat me up.”

  “Looks like they already have.”

  “They’ll do it worse.”

  “I may help them along if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on.”

  David cringed, then said, “They’re…really mad at Amelia for that night you guys got in a fight. Snake doesn’t like it that a girl made them run.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t,” Luke said, suppressing a grin at the memory of Amelia’s flying kick. Then, abruptly, he made the connection. “You mean they want revenge? On Amelia?”

  David didn’t answer, but Luke knew. His stomach knotted.

  The thought of Amelia hurt, or worse, struck a terror into him that no raging torrent of a river ever had. And in that moment he knew just how deep his feelings for her ran. He had his answer; it was most definitely love.

  “And you claim them as your friends,” he said to David acidly.

  “I thought they were. But they were just using me.” David did sniff this time. “I found out they only let me hang out with them because of where I live. They wanted an excuse to hang out in that neighborhood.”

  “So they could rip off the houses,” Luke guessed, and David nodded miserably.

  “I thought they were my friends,” he whined. “I thought they were like you, and it would make my mom mad if I hung with them. She didn’t even care that my dad died, and I wanted to get back at her—”

  “Just shut up!” Luke found himself suddenly devoid of patience, compassion and gentleness. “Why don’t you grow up? At least you had a dad who loved you for fifteen years. But do you appreciate that? Do you try to honor his memory? No, you go out and find a bunch of dirty, stupid losers for friends, cowards who gang up on a woman.”

  David was shuddering now, his shoulders heaving as he gulped back sobs. Luke was merciless, both out of his rage that anyone would deliberately hurt Amelia and his certainty that only by hitting absolute bottom could David start over, as he had.

  “If they had any balls they’d come after me, not Amelia. And you’re turning into one of them, a sneaking, sniveling coward who lets guys who are just using him coerce him into stealing from the best friend he has left.”

  David broke, tears streaming down his bruised face. Luke felt a pang; having the brother you’d once idolized chew you to bits couldn’t be easy.

  “I didn’t mean it,” David hiccuped. “I just wanted her to care. I just wanted her to notice he was gone!”

  Luke knew who he meant, but right now his mother didn’t concern him. “What are they planning?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t give me any bull. What are they planning?”

  “I don’t know!” David insisted. “They wouldn’t tell me. I tried to get them to, but that’s when they started hitting me.”

  “They must have said something. You must have heard something.”

  David shook his head. “I don’t know anything! They beat me up and then told me to get lost, ’cuz Snake didn’t want me riding in his new car.”

  Luke stiffened. “He was getting a car?”

  David hiccuped again, then nodded. “He bought it with the cash he got from selling the VCRs and camcorders they ripped off from all our neighbors. It’s not new, but he was gettin’ a big stereo put in today, with a CD changer.”

  Luke felt a chill. A gang of thugs. Knives. A thirst for revenge. They dump the one kid who doesn’t want to play.

  And now they had wheels.

  “Why didn’t he want you in it?”

  “I dunno.” David wiped at his eyes. “He said something about tonight bein’ a special night, with the car, I guess, and I should just wait and be quiet.”

  A special night…

  Amelia.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Luke’s heart slammed into overdrive, and he leapt to his feet. David gaped at him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, a little timidly. Luke grabbed him by one arm and hauled him to his feet.

  “Don’t you get it, you idiot? They’re going after Amelia tonight! They’re going after her, and I left her there, all alone.”

  David swayed on his feet. Luke cut him no slack.

  “Your house is closer,” he snapped, and started dragging the boy at a run. But as the situation penetrated David’s emotionally battered mind, soon Luke didn’t have to drag him; David started running on his own.

  It was two blocks, mostly uphill, but Luke never let his pace falter. He had to get to Amelia, and this was the quickest way, even if it meant facing his mother again. Nothing mattered beside Amelia’s safety, and he was very much afraid he might already be too late.

  Amelia sat in the bed Luke had called deliciously wicked and wondered why he’d left her. She wrapped her arms around her knees, curling up against the pain. It didn’t help. She bit her lip, fighting tears. She tried not to look when the bedside clock clicked over another minute; she knew it was nearly one, knew it all too well.

  When she’d awakened alone, she’d hoped he was just somewhere else in the house. She could see he wasn’t in the bathroom off her bedroom, but she’d waited, certain he was here and would be back with her any moment. The kitchen, perhaps, getting a drink, or maybe needing something from the saddlebag on his bike. She’d even blushed then, thinking that if they kept this up, he was going to need a very large box of condoms.

  But he hadn’t come back. And his clothes, the clothes she’d helped him shed so eagerly, were gone. Even his shoes, which seemed somehow the most ominous thing of all.

  She’d looked for a note on his pillow, on the nightstand, the dresser, some sign, anything. She’d found nothing. And now she was just sitting here, an aching, ridiculous stereotype of a weeping, abandoned woman.

  Just how big a fool had she been? Now that he’d gotten what he’d wanted, had he just abandoned her? Was she already forgotten, nothing more than a memory among many memories? They’d never talked about that, about past lovers, fool that she was. She’d thought about it, but she’d wanted him no matter what the answer, so she cravenly hadn’t asked.

  I wonder where I rank on that list of memories?

  It didn’t seem possible. How could she doubt him, after the hours they’d just spent? He’d made love to her with a wild urgency she couldn’t believe was faked.
And then with a gentle tenderness that was even harder to believe wasn’t real.

  But she was admittedly naive, and Luke was undoubtedly gone.

  Okay, she told herself firmly, he’s gone. He could have a perfectly good reason. Something he forgot he had to do, or maybe he’d had an idea about David and hadn’t wanted to wake her while he checked it out.

  But he would have left a note, wouldn’t he? Or would he? She didn’t have enough experience in such things to judge. Was it asking too much to expect him to let her know? Was she hopelessly old-fashioned, or was Luke too much of a free spirit to be tied down by a woman who panicked when she woke up alone?

  It hit her then, belatedly. She’d awakened alone. Luke had already been gone. But she hadn’t heard a thing. She wasn’t surprised, after the night they’d spent, that she’d slept through him rising, getting dressed and leaving the house.

  But there was no way on earth she would have slept through the snarl of the Harley starting up.

  She leapt out of bed and fairly raced out of her bedroom, across the living room and into the kitchen, where a side window looked out onto the carport, where he’d parked the bike. She leaned over the sink, peering through the darkness.

  Just in front of her car’s bumper, she saw the faint gleam of a polished black fender, the slightly brighter gleam of a silver pipe lower down.

  Her heels hit the floor. Her eyes brimmed and overflowed. She bit her lip, and her fingers curled into fists.

  He had left her a message. The biggest one he could.

  He was coming back.

  She started to laugh at herself through the tears and nearly choked. Lord, if that wasn’t the perfect demonstration of her idiotic state. She was a fool, all right.

  But at least she wasn’t the kind of fool she’d thought she was.

  She went back to the bedroom with a considerably lighter step. Relief was singing through her veins, and she was a bit giddy with it. Her mind was racing wildly. What would they do now? He could never come back to Santiago Beach to live; she knew that. She couldn’t blame him; she wasn’t very happy herself with how he’d been treated here, so she could only imagine how he felt.

  And for the first time she asked herself just how attached she was to this town.

  The answer, when compared to how attached she was to Luke McGuire, was not very.

  Smothering a silly giggle, she resisted the urge to twirl on one foot. She couldn’t decide what to do next. She knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, not until he came back. Should she just get back into bed and wait there? Pretend she’d been asleep all along? She didn’t think she wanted to admit how she’d panicked. But she didn’t want to lie to him, either.

  Maybe she should get dressed. No, that would seem very odd, and besides, he might think she didn’t want them to climb right back into bed and begin again where they had left off, which she most certainly did want….

  A tremor swept through her as hot, erotic images rose in her mind: Luke naked and beautiful before her, his eyes hot with desire as he looked at her, making her feel beautiful, his body driving into her, pounding her flesh so gloriously with his own, his strangled cry of her name as he bucked hard in her arms. She wanted it all again. And again.

  She compromised. She pulled out a long, soft, yellow silk T-shirt trimmed with gold satin that she sometimes slept in. The color made the gold flecks in her eyes stand out, her mother had always said. She held it up to herself in front of the dresser mirror, hoping that, whatever her mother might have thought about the precipitousness of the relationship, she would be glad her daughter was, at the moment, deliriously happy.

  She pulled the shirt on, forgoing anything underneath. The thought of greeting him when he came back, covered from shoulders nearly to her knees, yet naked underneath, was amazingly arousing.

  She had no sooner tugged the shirt down than she heard him coming back. Her heart began to trip in anticipation. She gave a last swipe to her hair with a brush but didn’t try to smooth it completely; she hoped he would remember tangling it with his hands when she’d begun her lengthy, intimate exploration of his body. She glanced in the mirror once more, amazed at the reflection that greeted her, the reflection of a woman who had been completely, thoroughly loved. Tousled hair, kiss-swollen lips, even a reddish spot or two his emerging beard had rubbed on her skin.

  And, she guessed, a few other marks in some more intimate places. The heat of remembrance flooded her again, and she turned and headed for the door, her body already humming with eagerness.

  She broke into a trot as she crossed the living room. As she neared the door she noticed her keys were gone from the table. She smiled; Luke must have taken them, so he could lock the door for her safety, yet get back in when he came back to her.

  The noise came from the door again, a metallic sound. He seemed to be having trouble. He was probably having to try every key on there to find the right one; one of these days she would put the store keys on another ring. She smothered a laugh at how surprised he would be when the door swung open from inside. She reached for the deadbolt and flipped it, then the knob. She yanked the door open eagerly. Something fell to the ground, something that looked like a pair of locking pliers. Amelia eyes instinctively tracked the movement, then shot back up to the startled face before her.

  It was Snake.

  And his friends were with him.

  Jackie Hiller stood in her doorway, staring in shock at her two sons.

  “I need your car,” Luke said abruptly.

  “How dare you!” She seemed torn, not knowing who to focus on. She turned on David. “And you! I’ve already reported you to the police.”

  “I don’t care. Give him the car.”

  “How dare you speak to me like tha—” She gasped as Luke pushed past her into the house. “I’m calling the police right back here!”

  “Yes, do that. The sooner the better.” He ignored his mother’s puzzled look. “Where are the keys?” Luke asked his brother.

  “She keeps them in the drawer. There,” David supplied, pointing at a table in the elegantly appointed foyer. She’d changed the furnishings, Luke noticed as he strode across the huge entry. All the glitter and fake gold she’d always wanted. He yanked the drawer open.

  “If you so much as touch my car I’ll have you put in jail and the key thrown away!”

  He grabbed the keys. And then he faced his mother. Somehow, in the face of possible danger to Amelia, she seemed smaller, less intimidating, a shrewish, selfish woman not worth the energy it took to hate her.

  “For once in your self-centered, mean-spirited life, shut up. You have nothing to say that either of us wants to hear.” She gaped at him, stunned, for once, into silence. Luke turned to his brother. “Can I trust you?”

  David drew himself up. In the light of the house his face was a sight, tearstained and bruised. Bruises his mother hadn’t even asked about, Luke realized.

  “Yes,” David said firmly. “She doesn’t matter.”

  His mother gasped. Luke nodded; his little brother had come a long way tonight. “No, she doesn’t. Call the police. Send them to Amelia’s. Fast.”

  “Can’t I go with you? I want to help.”

  “I need you to do this,” Luke said.

  David hesitated, then did the last little bit of growing up. “All right. Go. Hurry.”

  Luke ran for the door. The last thing he heard as he hit the front steps was David’s voice.

  “Get out of the way, Mom. Now. I’m calling the police.”

  His brother might just make it, he thought as he raced around to where his mother’s big new boat of a sedan was parked. Thing probably drives like a tank, he thought as he hit the alarm release on her key chain and the car unlocked and beeped. But it didn’t matter, as long as it got him to Amelia.

  In time.

  Chapter 17

  Amelia had never been so terrified in her life. What had minutes before been arousing was now a huge mistake; she felt even
more vulnerable dressed only in the silk shirt. She was cornered, nearly naked, barefoot, without a weapon in sight. Snake was between her and the door, one of the others between her and the phone.

  And bearing down on her, a malicious expression on a face that seemed decades older than his actual years, was the boy she’d hit the night of the fight.

  His knife was much bigger than Snake’s butterfly knife. It was also shiny new, and she wondered if he’d bought—or stolen—it just for the occasion.

  Amelia suppressed a shiver, knowing she didn’t dare show them how scared she was. And prayed that Luke would come back. Now.

  “We saw your tough-guy boyfriend leave,” Snake said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “We were waiting down the street. Isn’t he going to be surprised when he comes back and finds you like we’re going to leave you?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what they were going to do, but she bit it back. She knew her voice would shake and betray her fear. She also sensed it would somehow acknowledge their complete control of the situation. And besides, she didn’t really want to know; her guesses were bad enough.

  “Do you like Fargo’s knife?” Snake asked, as if he’d read her earlier thoughts. “It’s just for you. You’ll be its first blood.”

  She had to do something, say something, not let them think she was cowed into total silence. She concentrated on keeping her voice steady. “Fargo? From the place or the movie?”

  The boy with the blade looked startled. Snake frowned. And it was Snake who said, “The movie. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Amazingly, that steadied her. They were armed; they were mean; they were dangerous. But they were also kids. Kids who took nicknames out of movies. There had to be something she could do, even if she was afraid.

  You’ve got something more important than nerve, you’ve got brains. That’ll outdo brawn and nerve most times.

  Luke’s words rang in her head. She remembered the tenderness in his voice when he’d said them, and she tried to draw strength from that. Surely she could stall them until he got here?