Chicago Assault (9 page)

Until Megan Parnell came along. But because of some strange loyalty to a dead, young husband, she had made it damn plain that his attentions—or the attentions of any man—weren't welcome.

She had entombed herself in the nunnery of the Irish Republican Army cause.

Why? So she could die like Jimmy O'Neil and twenty-five generations of other freedom-loving Irishmen?

It all seemed like such a damned waste to Hawker. And, as he opened the front door, he decided he would do his best to convince her that she was traveling a long and lonely road, a road without victory or even thanks at the end.

The decision cheered him. Megan could turn him down but not before he had had his say.

Hawker's landlady, the widow Hudson, was making breakfast noises in the kitchen. Mrs. Hudson was a doughy, apple-cheeked woman with a Scottish brogue and a grandmother's instincts.

Because she had no children of her own, she seemed to take special delight in mothering him and clucking over him.

Hawker tolerated it because he liked her and because she didn't insist on doing all the little domestic duties that Hawker preferred to take care of by himself.

Except for the cooking. He let her handle the cooking, and twice a day when he was in town, she carried an excellent breakfast or supper on a tray upstairs, the whole of which was Hawker's apartment.

Also, she had never been the least bit inquisitive about his professional life. And, in Hawker's business, that was important.

His romantic life, though, was another story. She worried over the rapid exchange of women in his life. Secretaries, teachers, nurses, doctors, actresses, and singers. Hawker could go a month without seeing a woman. But when the mood was on him, the traffic into his Archer Avenue apartment was brisk.

Hawker strode into the kitchen and gave her an exaggerated slap on the rump. Her face showed mock outrage underlined by pleasure.

“Well, 'tis about time you came crawlin' home, Mr. James Hawker, with your face looking as much like that of a tomcat as it does your own.”

“Ha!” Hawker sniffed the air experimentally. “Are those bran muffins I smell?”

“They are,” she scolded. “And you'll not be touching a one until you've had a proper breakfast—and a shower. You look like you've been wrestling with half the hussies in Bridgeport.”

“Only half?”

She turned the lengths of bratwurst sizzling on the stove and shook a fork at him. “It's an outrage, if you be askin' me, Lieutenant Hawker—not that it's any of my business.”

“
‘Lieutenant'
is it?”

“Yes. Out all night with God knows what sleeping on the pillow beside you; drinking hard liquor, if I'm to be trusting my nose. Which I do. And that nice young Megan Parnell upstairs crying her dear eyes out this morning, waiting for you. Why I should concern myself, I don't know—”

“Ah?”

“Yes, and her a fine and proper lady if I've ever seen one.” Mrs. Hudson smacked the fork down on the counter and drew a deep breath. “Far be it from me to intrude in your private life, Lieutenant. If you want to end up a lonely old bachelor, it's your business. But you're of the age to be siring fine-looking man-children, and, if you choose to waste your seed on common floozies instead, it's none of my business.…”

Hawker was smiling. “It isn't?”

“No!” She wagged her finger at him. “But I saw the look in the eyes of that lovely young Megan when she came looking for you this morning, and I know that look, Mr. James Hawker. She cares for you, she does. Wandered in here like a lost little kitten—”

“We just met last night.” Hawker laughed.

“As if time makes any difference! I'd only known my own sweet Charlie—God rest his soul—five minutes, and I knew he was the man for me.” She set about piling bratwurst and poached eggs, toast, coffee, and cream on a tray, then placed it on the kitchen table. “Now you carry breakfast up to that sweet young thing and apologize properly to her.” She planted her fists on her hips. “Not that it's any of my concern, but to my way of thinking, Lieutenant Hawker, you've kept her waitin' like a … like a—well, I'll
say
it!—like a common whore!”

Hawker put his arm around the old woman and hugged her to him. “Such language, Mrs. Hudson!”

She blushed and sputtered. “Well, I'm mad, I am.”

“I can see that.”

She patted his arm affectionately. “The wee lass cares for you, James. I've seen many a lovely young woman climb those stairs but none that hold a candle to her. You must treat her better.”

“I'd love to. But I'm afraid you have it all backward, Mrs. Hudson. Megan told me we can't be anything but friends.” Hawker winked at the widow. “Go to work on her. Tell her what a great guy I am, would you?”

She sniffed. “Well, I try not to make a habit of prying into your affairs—”

“Oh, I know that. I know that.”

She winked back at him. “Well, maybe just this once.” A smile lit her handsome Scottish face. “But I have a feeling she already knows the kind of man you are.”

Hawker carried the tray up the stairs. He tapped on the door, then pushed it open with his foot.

In the small living room, the only sign of her presence was her clothes, neatly folded over Hawker's leather reading chair.

From the bedroom, a voice called, “Is that you, Mrs. Hudson?”

“No. But I'm carrying the breakfast she made for you.”

“James!” In a moment, she appeared in the bedroom doorway. She wore his high school football jersey as a nightgown, and she had tucked a blanket around her hips, saronglike. The delight in her face changed immediately to disapproval. “I've been worried about you!”

The morning light that came through the window brought out all the color of her blue eyes and the autumn subtleties of her hip-length auburn hair.

Hawker placed the tray on the table. “I didn't want any arguments about who was going to sleep in my bed. You needed sleep, so I decided to stay with a friend.”

Hawker hoped she would ask if his friend was a woman, then immediately cursed himself for thinking like a high school kid. It didn't matter, for she didn't ask.

“I could eat a horse,” she said, eyeing the breakfast. “James, would you be kind enough to toss me my clothes?” She made a helpless motion. “I'm not to be trustin' this blanket I'm wearing.”

Hawker shook his head as he got them. “I'm getting tired of all these tough decisions you make me wrestle with.”

She smiled as she returned to the bedroom. “You're a dear, James. Thank you.”

In a moment, she returned wearing the same blue blouse, sweater, and corduroy slacks she had worn during the long night before. Hawker watched as she tore into the breakfast, enjoying the childlike abandon with which she ate.

Megan stopped suddenly, a chunk of toast protruding from her mouth. “Aren't you going to be eating?”

“I don't know. Mrs. Hudson is pretty mad at me.”

“Mad? But why?”

“She thinks I've treated you badly. She says that you're a ‘true lady' if she's ever seen one, and she thinks it's scandalous that I made you wait in my apartment alone.”

Megan chewed the toast down, sly humor shining in her eyes. “She's an intelligent woman, that one.”

“Does that mean you agree?”

She laughed and flipped her hair. “It means whatever you care to make of it.” Megan grew suddenly serious. “Are you feeling better, James? I really was worried about you. About what you might do.”

Hawker poured himself a cup of coffee from the ceramic pot. “After I left you last night? After I left you, I let myself be seduced by a widow. Weird,” he said, “but I'm suddenly surrounded by women who have lost their men. Mrs. Hudson. You. And my recent bed partner.”

“Don't be cruel, James. We have no time for it. I'm glad you found someone to take your mind off things. It can help a man. I know.”

Hawker gulped his coffee. “Oh? I'm surprised. You really do have a good memory, don't you?”

Instead of looking offended, she smiled, which irritated Hawker even more. She stood and kissed him lightly on the cheek, then began gathering her empty dishes. “I'm sorry if I hurt you with what I said before we parted this morning, James. It's something you can't understand. Not now. Someday, perhaps. But not now.”

Hawker caught her wrist as she reached for the empty rasher. “Maybe I understand better than you know, Megan,” he said, startled by the intensity of his own voice. Even so, he held her wrist and went on. “I understand that you're a woman. A beautiful, healthy woman at what should be the prime of her life. But instead of allowing yourself to follow your own natural destiny, you've decided to tie yourself to a hopeless cause. And I'll tell you something else, Megan. It's going to wither you. It's going to dry you till you're like a badly stretched skin. Sacrificing all of your natural wants and needs and desires because you suffered a personal disaster eight years ago—”

She snapped her wrist away. Hawker expected her to be angry. He hoped she would be angry, angry enough to discuss her feelings with him.

But instead, she lifted her eyes toward his in a long, slow look of pain. Hawker felt the look in her eyes cut like a laser right through to his heart. He wished there was some way he could wash all of the pain from her, all of the hurt and horror that her life had brought her. He wished there was some way he could shoulder it himself; some way to wrestle the demons away from her so that she could be light and free and filled with fun—the way Hawker knew she had been, once.

He tried to tell her what he felt, but the words wouldn't come. Instead, all he could summon was a mumbled “I'm sorry, Megan.”

He made a show of studying his watch and yawning. “I'm going to get some sleep. I'm going to need it.”

“We're
going to need it,” she corrected.

“Okay,” he said. “We're going to need rest. Because tonight we go to work.”

She looked surprised. “We're going to attack Bas Gan Sagart already?”

Hawker shook his head as he walked toward the bedroom. “The preliminaries, Megan. I'm a thorough man. The preliminaries first. They take time. But they can keep you alive.”

ten

Hawker awoke ravenous.

He hadn't eaten breakfast, and he had slept through lunch.

Megan had left him a note:

I've got to do a bit of shopping. A woman needs more than one change of clothes.

Hawker smiled at the Elizabethan swirls of her penmanship. Even her damn handwriting was pretty.

He showered the sleep away and did the rugged list of calisthenics he should have done that morning but didn't. Seventy-five slow push-ups. A hundred sit-ups with a twenty-pound weight, cold on his chest. Stretching. Then thirty fast pull-ups on the wooden bar mounted in the corner of his room.

Then he pulled on nylon shorts, a sweat shirt, and Nikes. As he trotted down the steps, Mrs. Hudson's voice called out, “Will you be back in time for a proper supper?”

“I will! Make double orders of everything. I'm starved!”

“And no wonder,” he heard her retort. “What with being out all night and sleeping away the good part of the day.…”

Hawker was out the door before she finished.

He jogged down Archer, then south on Kedzie. He started slow as his leg muscles stretched and lubricated themselves. Then he picked up speed, running at a steady seven-minute-mile pace.

At Marquette Park, he cut across the golf course. In the brisk September air was the sweet smell of crushed grass beneath his feet. The leaves on the oaks and maples had turned to the warm colors of a Florida sunset.

Or Megan Parnell's hair.

He pushed the thoughts of her from his mind by concentrating on business. The business of life and death.

He knew very little about the pseudo-IRA terrorist organization, Bas Gan Sagart. He had to find out more before he could even set the groundwork for his assault.

Maybe Megan could add a few pieces to the puzzle. After all, she had supposedly been on their trail for the last month.

He would ask her. He would set her down and pick every bit of information she had out of her—with no more talk about love and future hopes.

It had been stupid to begin with. The more he thought about it, the sillier he felt.

He now lived the kind of life he wanted to live. He was aloof and alone. Free to come and go as he damn well pleased.

He had no woman to worry about or cater to. When he wanted to travel, he traveled. When he wanted to eat, he ate. As a bachelor, he lived his life without worry or guilt.

So why in the hell would he want to change that?

Hawker hacked and spit as the sweat beaded and began to pour down his face.

He wouldn't—didn't—want to change, damn it. Women were to be used and left behind.

And Megan Parnell was just one more woman. If she wanted to live like a nun, that was her business.

There were other women. Plenty of them.

And if Megan got in his way on this job, or slowed him down, he would tell her to get the hell out and go back to Ireland, to her precious cause.

Feeling better for the lies he'd told himself, Hawker circled back on Fifty-fifth Street as passenger jets, like aluminum frigates, rumbled over Midway Airport. With less than a mile to go, Hawker opened his stride, arms plunging in perfect rhythm as he powered home.

Above all other things, this was clear: Bas Gan Sagart had murdered Saul Beckerman, a man who'd probably wanted to hire Hawker for protection. Worse, they had murdered Jimmy O'Neil, the closest thing to a family member Hawker had left.

And now they would suffer for it.

As he sprinted toward Archer, Hawker vowed that they would pay—each and every one of them.

And the last thing they would hear before they drew their final breath would be Hawker's voice.