Wild Hawk (17 page)

She’d begun to cry, there beside the grave with its newly rolled sod. But after a few minutes she could almost hear Aaron’s gruff voice berating her.

Knock off that foolishness, girl. Tears accomplish nothing. Get moving.

“Fine,” she had muttered, “what do you suggest I do?”

You don’t quit until you’ve fired your last round.

She’d always called that his circle-the-wagons mentality, but for the first time she began to see the point. She didn’t have much left in the arsenal, but it wasn’t quite empty yet. She’d picked up what little remained this morning. She didn’t think showing it to Jason would make a difference, but at least she would know she had tried everything. And she couldn’t give up until she had.

She had scrambled to her feet then, determined to make one last try to convince Jason.

If, she thought now, glancing apprehensively to her rearview mirror again, squinting as sunlight glared off the windshield of the sedan that was far too close, she ever got off this road alive.

The man was crazy. That had to be the explanation for this guy. He was so close he was practically knocking bumpers with her.

And then he was, she felt the small tap, and her heart leapt into her throat. It came again, harder. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. They were coming up on the big, sweeping curve that was the last before the road dropped down to the valley floor again. The big curve that had claimed two young lives just last summer. The big curve delineated by the metal guardrail that didn’t seem nearly as substantial to her now as it once had.

The big brown car edged up once more, this time to her left side. She saw the grill on the brown car, gleaming like the silver teeth of some monstrous, mythic creature, as the vehicle swung out from behind her. Surely he wasn’t going to try to pass on this curve? On this road?

He was. He was pulling up even now, driving on the wrong side, in the oncoming lane, his front bumper even with her left rear wheel. She took her foot off the gas, and made herself not hit the brakes in this precarious place. The brown sedan gained on her.

And then it hit her.

In her mirror she’d seen the sharp movement of the driver’s hands in the instant before the impact. She’d seen the intent in the set of his shoulders, his head.

Then she saw nothing but a spinning mosaic of colors as she skidded toward the drop.

Chapter Thirteen

HE WAS PACING AGAIN.

Jason shook his head in disgust. He didn’t even know why he was here, why he just hadn’t gone straight back to the airport and caught a plane for home. It was over, all his plans useless, all his years of preparation for nothing. The old man was dead, and beyond his reach.

But instead he was here, in the parking lot of this motel, waiting for the woman who had already taken up far too much of his time and energy. He resented the fact even as he admitted the reason he hadn’t taken that plane: he wanted to see her again. Just, he assured himself, to see how far she was willing to take this.

His pacing steps faltered as hot, vivid memories of that kiss hit him with the force of a blow to the gut, followed by images of pursuing the heat that had exploded between them to its natural conclusion. Would she go that far to sell him her bill of goods?

Reaction shivered through him, an odd combination of heat and chill that seemed as confused as he felt. He’d always kept sex a simple thing, a straightforward approach to easing a basic need. He’d likened it to a craving for a particular food; once it was satisfied, the craving went away for a while. But this, this was different. Mixed up. Complex.

“Only because you’re making it that way,” he muttered as he turned and began to pace back the other way.

Where the hell was she? After catching a cab back here to get the car, he’d gone by Hawk Manufacturing, thinking she might be there; a sign informed him they were closed due to Aaron’s death. He’d even driven by the big house, thinking it would explain much if she was there, meeting with her cohorts in this scam. But there had been no sign of her car, only a large white limousine in front of the grand entry, parked across the curving driveway that led in from the street. He supposed her car could be in the garage, out of sight, but not if that limo had been there when she’d arrived; it effectively blocked any car trying to get past it.

So he’d come back here, figuring she’d show up eventually. Perhaps she was out looking for a place to live, although why anyone would stay in this town after being fired by the Hawks was beyond him.

If, indeed, she really had been fired.

He stopped his pacing to lean against the fender of his rental car. He hadn’t had the time or the inclination to shave since he’d arrived, and now he rubbed a hand over his stubbled face wearily. He didn’t know what he believed anymore. His brain was telling him her entire story was a load of crap, but he kept catching himself thinking and reacting as if it were true.

There were so many possibilities, and combinations from those possibilities, that his head was spinning. He knew he hadn’t had enough sleep, but it was more than that. Something else, or a combination of things, was at work here, and it was draining him. It was that feeling he couldn’t shake that someone was watching. It was the mystery of the book, and how she was managing the changes in it. And it was that unsettling and peculiar feeling he got when he touched the thing, that feeling of comfort when he should have been shaken, or anxious, or scared.

Or angry.

Yes, that’s what he should be feeling. Angry at this whole thing, at whatever scheming plot was at the center of all this, because whatever it was, it was obviously aimed at him. And they thought him stupid enough to buy it. So where was the anger that had overtaken him in the library? Where was all that righteous fury?

His hand slipped up and around the back of his neck, massaging tight, knotted muscles. He let his head loll back, closed his eyes, and reluctantly admitted he was too damned tired and distracted to maintain anything as focused as anger right now.

Maybe he’d get a room here again and just sleep for a few hours. Kendall would turn up sooner or later. She had to, all her stuff was here. And if he just waited, she would come to him. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, or why he was so certain she wasn’t through with him yet. He just knew, on some instinctive level he’d learned over the years not to question, that there was no quit in this woman. She’d said she’d haunt him, and she meant it.

Too bad all that drive and energy and determination was aimed in the wrong direction, he thought, smothering a yawn. She could be hell on wheels under the right circumstances. Maybe she really had been the old man’s right hand. She sure had the nerve for it. Maybe she—

The sound of a car approaching made him open his eyes. When he saw it was a police car pulling into the parking lot, he straightened up slowly. When he saw it was headed toward him, he pushed away from his car and stood ready on the balls of his feet. It was an old reaction, one he thought he was long past, but nothing that had happened here was quite ordinary, and he was more than a little edgy.

It was only when the black and white unit drove past him and pulled to a halt on the other side of his car, in front of Kendall’s room, that he realized there was a passenger. In the front seat, not the caged rear used for prisoners.

Kendall.

He walked around the front of his car, toward the marked unit, his gaze fastened on her through the windshield. Her head was bowed, her dark hair loose now and falling forward, masking her face from him. She didn’t look up as he approached. The officer who was driving got out, gave him that curious, speculative look that cops everywhere seemed to give everyone unknown to them, glanced at Jason’s car, then walked around to the other side of the unit and opened the door. He leaned over and offered his passenger his arm.

How gallant, Jason thought dryly.

No, he thought again, it wasn’t gallant. It was necessary. Kendall was moving stiffly, gingerly, as if every motion hurt. Or as if she expected to be thrown down at any moment.

As she straightened beside the police car, the thick mass of her hair slid back from her face. Jason’s eyes narrowed as he saw the thick bandage on her forehead midway above her right eye and temple.

She is in danger.

The book’s words came back at him like a slap.

“What happened?” he asked sharply.

Kendall didn’t react, but the officer’s head snapped around. He eyed Jason warily as he crossed the four feet between them in one stride.

“Traffic accident,” the smartly uniformed young man said, then turned back to Kendall, clearly indicating that any more information was none of this apparent stranger’s business.

“Give me your room key, Kendall. Then I’ll get the things we retrieved inside for you,” the officer said with courtly politeness. “You just lie down and rest.”

“How badly is she hurt?”

The officer looked at him again, obviously reassessing his initial dismissal of Jason as merely a curious bystander. Jason returned his gaze levelly, noticing the small gold name tag above his right breast pocket. S. Browning. He looked young, Jason thought, maybe twenty-five. Or maybe
that was just because he was so tired he was feeling damned old right now.

“Excuse me, sir,” the officer said, “but I’m afraid that’s really not your business.”

The politeness was still there, but there was no sign of the gentle concern that had marked his words to Kendall. Jason’s gaze flicked to her face. She was frighteningly pale, her skin almost translucent beside the darkness of her hair. There was another smaller, unbandaged cut on her cheek, and a third on her chin. As if sensing his scrutiny, she lifted her head to look back at him, then looked tiredly away, as if she didn’t have the strength to deal with him right now. And Jason knew with gut-level certainty that this was no act.

“Kendall,” he began, but she ignored him, looking down and searching in her purse with hands that were shaking. He shifted his gaze to the officer. “I’ll take care of her.”

Jason froze as he heard his own words, wondering what had possessed him to say them.

“I don’t need taking care of.”

The tremor in her voice belied her words, and Jason suppressed the urge to reach for her. That he even had to do it irritated him, and he purposely drew back, as if distance could alleviate whatever was making him react this way.

“Is this a friend of yours?” Browning asked her, his gaze flicking from Kendall to Jason suspiciously.

“No,” Kendall said, pulling out her room key at last.

“No?” Jason said, recovered enough to assume a mockingly hurt tone. “How can you say that, after the night we spent together?”

Her head came up, but she said nothing. She barely reacted at all. Jason had figured she’d come up fighting at that one, and the fact that she didn’t worried him. What the hell had happened to shake her so? She didn’t seem the type to be so upset by a simple traffic accident.

So maybe it hadn’t been a simple one.

She is in danger.

“Kendall,” he said softly, “what happened?”

She ignored him, looking at the officer. “I’d like to go inside, please. I need to sit down.”

Browning nodded, and gently took the key from her. He opened the door for her and held it while she stepped inside. Jason started to follow, but found his way blocked by the man in uniform.

“I don’t believe the lady wants company.”

“That’s for her to say, isn’t it?”

“I think she just did.”

He looked over the man’s shoulder to where Kendall was now sitting on the edge of the bed. She didn’t look up.

Browning motioned him away from the door. Jason backed up, and the officer kept an eye on him as he went back to the police car and opened the back door.

“What happened?” Jason asked again.

For a moment Browning ignored him as he leaned inside the police car and picked up a small box that appeared to contain some papers and envelopes, then straightened and gave Jason an assessing look. After a moment, as if he’d reached a decision, he said, “Some reckless driver almost ran her off Laurel Road.”

Jason drew back, tension spiking through him. “The cemetery road? The big curve?”

The officer’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that? Do you know something about this?”

God, how many times as a kid had he looked up into the face of a man wearing a badge and tried to answer that same question without seeming too scared, when inside he’d been scared to death they were going to somehow know he was a runaway. The panic response was instinctive, the knotting of his stomach, the sudden sweat, the tension of muscles getting ready to run.

If not for the shock of what the man had said, he would have laughed out loud at himself; he had four inches and ten years on this kid, yet he was reacting as if he were sixteen again, and on the run, when in reality he was farther from that scared kid than he’d ever dared hope to be.

“No,” he said, “I don’t know anything about it. Did you catch him?”

“Not yet.” Browning shifted the box he held to his left hip, not coincidentally, Jason knew, freeing his gun hand. “But we will. She gave us a good description of the car.”

“What kind of car?”

The officer shook his head. “Sorry. That would be compromising an ongoing investigation, to give that out before it was okayed for public release.”

Jason’s lips tightened. “What about the driver?”

Browning’s eyes narrowed again. “How long have you been here?”

Jason smiled slightly despite his unease. “A couple of hours. Want to check my car?”

Browning returned the slight smile. “I already did.”

“Good,” Jason said, meaning it.

Something flickered in the officer’s eyes, and Jason sensed he was once more being reassessed. “May I ask your name?”

Jason wondered if the politeness was ingrained, or if they were training them in it these days. “Jason West.”

“And your business here in Sunridge?”

Jason didn’t bother to question the man’s assumption that he was only visiting; there didn’t seem to be any point. But neither did he see any point in announcing he’d been here for Aaron Hawk’s funeral, because the old man had been his father.

“It’s personal.” He could see his answer hadn’t satisfied the man, so he added, “I used to live here, a long time ago. That’s how I know about the road.”

After a moment Browning nodded, as if in acceptance. Jason looked over his shoulder once more, to where Kendall still sat, unmoving.

“She looks pretty shaken,” he said. “She shouldn’t be alone.”

“She didn’t seem to want you around,” Browning said.

“I know. She’s . . . angry with me. Maybe with reason. But I wouldn’t . . . I’m not . . .”

He stopped and took a breath, wondering what the hell he was doing and why it was so difficult. What did he care if Kendall Chase just sat there, dazed? She’d tried to con him, for God’s sake, tried to manipulate him, and thought he was stupid enough to fail for some crazy tale about an ancient magician and a magic book. And a prediction about his future that would set her up for life.

“Never mind,” he said. “Just forget it.”

He turned on his heel, and walked back toward his car. He heard Browning, who had set the box down on the table just inside the door, ask Kendall if she needed anything more. Jason couldn’t hear her answer, but Browning came out and pulled the room door shut behind him.

“You leaving town?” he called out.

Jason’s patience snapped; he was tired, his nerves were drawn wire-tight, and he was feeling a little ragged around the edges. And right now he wanted nothing more than to do exactly that; get out of this place.

“You have a problem with that?”

The officer lifted a brow at him. “Not as long as I can find you if I need to.”