The Bride's Protector

by Gayle Wilson

  Despite everything that had happened, Tyler almost smiled as she moved out into the mob in the street. The same thing must be happening with the people in the lobby. They, too, it seemed, were flooding out of the hotel, their determination overpowering the flustered cops.

  It had all been as easy as the blue-eyed man had promised. Everything had gone exactly as he had said it would. She resisted the impulse to look for him, keeping her head up and her eyes straight ahead, exactly as he’d told her. There was no challenge. No rifle shot. There was nothing except the normal flow of traffic and the crowds.

  It took her only minutes to walk the six blocks she had decided on. Only an additional minute to hail a cab. When she was safely inside, she couldn’t resist the urge to look back.

  She didn’t know what she had been looking for, but whatever it was, she didn’t find it. There was no one following her. Not the men she had seen. No one from the wedding party. Certainly not the man with the cold blue eyes.

  Chapter Four

  Although Hawk had been conscious of a bone-deep fatigue throughout the short flight from New York to Virginia, he had refused to think about it. Or the reasons behind it. There was, after all, one more thing he had to do—one last step on this journey he had willingly begun more than six months ago. Then and only then would it be over.

  He had concentrated so long on his quest for revenge, blocking everything else from his mind, that it was difficult to give himself permission to remember the other. To focus on Griff’s life, rather than on the senseless brutality of his death. And as he walked across the tree-shaded tranquillity of the vast cemetery, its quietness crosshatched by miles and miles of simple markers, Hawk thought that maybe, in some strange way, this would be the proper place to finally do that.

  Griff Cabot had known all the dark and dirty secrets the powerful of the world hide. A cold-war warrior, he had been left behind on the empty battlefield of a war that supposedly had already been won.

  “We seem to be the only ones left who understand the world is still a dangerous place for freedom,” Griff would say, smiling a little to lessen the reality of all he asked of the team through the years. “Think of what you’re doing as sentry duty. Standing guard over the things you love.” Standing guard. And now, for Hawk, and for the rest of them as well, that duty, that sacred responsibility, was over.

  He topped the slight rise that looked down on the area of the cemetery he sought. From where he stood, he could see a figure standing beside the small granite stone that marked Griff Cabot’s grave. A woman, slender and blond, wearing a sleeveless black dress. Her hair had been gathered in a chignon low on the back of her neck, but the breeze whipped strands of it free. As he watched, she raised her hand and, turning her head, pushed an errant tendril away. Turning enough that he could see her face.

  Claire Heywood, Hawk realized. Although he had never met her, there was no doubt in his mind of the identification. And no doubt that her being here was the last thing Griff would have wanted. Cabot had taken a lot of precautions to insure that there was nothing about his relationship with Claire that was open or known, nothing that could possibly expose her to his enemies.

  Hawk stopped beside one of the massive trees that shaded the rise, still far enough away that he could be sure she would remain unaware of his presence. He didn’t want to intrude on her grief. His own could wait. It had waited, his emotions carefully controlled, for over six months. Another few minutes wouldn’t make any difference in what he had come here to do.

  He watched as the woman Griff Cabot had loved reached out to touch the top of the granite marker. Using it for balance, she stooped down beside the grave and placed something on the grass. Then her hand lifted to the stone, fingers slowly tracing over the letters that had been cut into it.

  Touching Griff’s name, Hawk realized. His throat closed suddenly, painfully hard and tight. His lips flattened, fighting the emotional pull. He didn’t want to be a witness to this. Griff Cabot had been his friend. He and the team had been the only family Hawk had ever known, sharing a bond of brotherhood stronger than that of blood, perhaps because it had been forged in secrecy and death. In their dependence on one another.

  The woman at the grave bowed her head, fingers still touching the stone marker. At least, Hawk thought, watching her, at least I don’t have to live with regret.

  Claire Heywood had chosen to break all ties with Cabot only a few months before his death. No one on the team had talked much about it, of course, especially not Griff, but Hawk imagined most of them had come to their own conclusion about what had happened. Hawk had. He believed that two people with very differing views of the world had fallen deeply in love. And because of those differences, the relationship had been impossible.

  Finally Claire’s hand fell away from the face of the stone, and then she stood, looking down a long moment on the grave. She turned away and began to walk toward Hawk, another mourner in a place that had, through the years, seen millions come and go. She did not look back at the grave of the man who was, here at least, only another soldier, fallen in his country’s wars.

  Her eyes met Hawk’s as she climbed the slope. She nodded slightly as she passed by, but they didn’t speak. After all, they were strangers, and she could have no idea that he was here for the same reasons that had drawn her to this place.

  Hawk waited a long time before he finally walked down to the grave. As he approached, he realized there was a blotch of what appeared to be blood on the smooth green lawn. When he reached the marker, however, Hawk saw that the spot of crimson was a rose, widely opened in the oppressive heat of the Virginia summer. A few of the petals had dropped and scattered, maybe as Claire Heywood placed it on the ground.

  Hawk’s lips tilted. No one would have been more amused by the romantic absurdity than Griff, he thought. And then Hawk’s smile faded because he knew that wasn’t true. Not true simply because the rose had been left by the woman Griff loved.

  Hawk looked down at the wilted flower, again fighting the release of emotions he had so long controlled. Losing that battle, he finally allowed his blurring eyes to move upward to the letters Claire Heywood had traced in the face of the stone. Brutally new. Too sharp. Like his grief.

  Below Griff’s name, engraved in Latin, was a single sentence: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. A strange inscription for someone as coldly rational as Cabot. Sweet and proper to die for your country? Again his lips tilted as Hawk remembered Griff’s hardheaded pragmatism.

  He wondered who had chosen that epitaph. Someone at the agency? It sounded like them. Of course, it didn’t matter what they put on the stone. Griff Cabot’s memorial had been written in the lives he had touched. Including Hawk’s. And in the continued strength of the country he had loved and protected.

  Standing guard, Hawk thought again. And then the long brown fingers that had closed unerringly around the trigger of that rifle in Baghdad closed again over what he had brought to lay on Griff’s grave. He bent, placing the casing of the bullet with which he had taken revenge for Cabot’s murder beside the wilting rose. The pairing was as incongruous maybe as Claire and Griff’s had been. But even so, they belonged together. Here, at least.

  “Rest in peace, my friend,” Hawk said, the same words he had whispered in Baghdad. And finally, it was truly over.

  QUITE A CONTRAST to where he’d spent last night, Hawk thought, pitching the black bag onto the narrow bed. It bounced a little as it hit the sagging mattress, and his mind flashed back to the scene in the hotel room this morning. To the image of this same bag on another bed. To a woman reaching for it, the lapels of the robe she wore falling open, exposing the beginning swell of ivory breasts and the shadowed valley between.

  The tightening in his groin caused Hawk to destroy the image, to wipe it out of his mind with that practiced control. Despite the length of his sexual abstinence, he still wasn’t sure why he had reacted so strongly to that woman. The same way he was reacting now, simply to the memory of
her.

  He wasn’t an adolescent. He had gone for longer periods without sex, his mind too absorbed by a mission to think about his physical needs. And after all, she was nothing like his normal taste in women. Nothing like any woman he’d ever known, he admitted. Out of his realm of experience, which, he acknowledged without any pride or arrogance, was extensive.

  Hawk’s mouth tightened, remembering the way she had reacted to his insultingly prolonged appraisal of her body. Remembering his own reaction, that powerful surge of sexual hunger. And remembering the kiss.

  That had been intended to exorcise the demons she’d created. The decision to kiss her had probably been as insulting as his deliberate examination of her body. But it had become something else. Maybe because her response had been totally unexpected.

  He could still feel her fingers resting against his cheek, expressing a tenderness that was light-years away from his usual encounters with women. About as far as this dingy apartment was removed from the luxury of the hotel where he had slept last night, he thought, taking a deep breath.

  This was his reality. And it was past time for him to get back to it, he decided, pushing the memory of the woman out of his head. He punched the button on his answering machine to play the single message left during the long weeks he’d been gone.

  Hawk didn’t have the kind of friends who left messages. It was a pastime too dangerous in their line of work. The one on the machine was short and impersonal.

  “This is Mike down at Ken’s Electronics. Just calling to tell you your VCR’s ready.” That was followed by a phone number, and then the computer voice of Hawk’s answering machine gave a date and time. The message had been left a couple of days before. About the same time he had been boarding a plane in Athens to fly back to the States, Hawk realized.

  He hadn’t left a VCR for repair, of course, although there was a Ken’s Electronics in this small Virginia town. And if anyone bothered to check, the repair shop would probably even have a VCR, held in the same name Hawk had used to rent this apartment. If anyone bothered to check.

  He took another breath, trying to think. He was aware again of his fatigue—too extreme to be explained by his activities the last few days. Despite jet lag, he had even slept last night, thanks to the help of half a bottle of pretty good bourbon. That wasn’t his normal remedy for insomnia, but at the time it had seemed an appropriate ending to the success of the mission he’d undertaken. Celebrating alone, in a place Griff had loved.

  At least the whiskey had kept him from having to think about what came next, and eventually it had let him sleep, so he shouldn’t be feeling this exhaustion. This...mental lethargy. This letdown. However, the only plan he’d been able to formulate on the flight home was to report in, take a long, hot shower and then sleep for a couple of days.

  He needed the shower. It seemed years since this morning’s, and a lot had happened in the meantime. His mind had insisted on replaying all of it during the plane ride. He still didn’t know what had occurred to cause the excitement at the hotel. There hadn’t been enough time for the papers at the airport to have gotten the story out. Besides, Hawk hadn’t really cared, not beyond an idle curiosity.

  The woman he had helped wasn’t his responsibility. The fact that he had taken the trouble to get her out of the situation was still surprising to him, because he was not by nature given to playing Good Samaritan. The hard lips tilted at that thought Very few people would classify Hawk as a Good Samaritan. At least not those who knew him professionally. And there weren’t any who knew him any other way. The man called Hawk was a loner, by inclination and preference.

  The image of the woman’s face reappeared in his mind’s eye, her voice sincere, almost apologetic, violet eyes pleading. “I didn’t have anything to do with what happened out there,” she had said. “I want you to know that. But...I saw them.”

  Well, good for you, Hawk thought cynically, denying the pull of that appeal, just as he had when she’d made it. Whatever you saw sure as hell is nothing to me. Nothing to do with me. You just keep running. sweetheart, and maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll even get away.

  Hawk turned from the answering machine, denying the strength of those memories: the length of long, shapely legs, the shadowed cleavage between the high breasts, even the remembrance of the way her lips had felt moving against his. There was no room in his life for those. Someone had left him a message, left it in such a way that he understood it meant trouble. Probably official trouble for him. That was nothing he hadn’t been expecting.

  Reluctantly Hawk left the stifling apartment where, during his brief stay, he hadn’t even bothered to turn on the air-conditioning, and walked a few blocks. He picked the middle phone booth out of a row that stood on an isolated corner.

  There wasn’t much traffic, but his blue eyes continued to scan both it and the streets around him as he punched in a number. He wondered briefly who would answer, which of them would have gone to the trouble to call.

  Not Griff, he thought, his throat tightening. Never again would Griff Cabot issue an order or debrief him after a mission. Compliment him on a job well done. Talk to him as a friend. Or issue a warning, he thought, listening to the distant ringing.

  “Hawk,” he said as soon as he heard someone pick up. His eyes were still searching the street around him.

  “Don’t even think about coming in.”

  Hawk recognized the deep voice. He supposed he should have known who it would be. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “They know about Baghdad,” Jordan Cross said.

  There had been no doubt in Hawk’s mind they would figure that out. His skill was its own signature, and given the target, they wouldn’t have needed much help to finger him as the shooter.

  “Okay,” he said simply. He would have to take that heat. It had been an unsanctioned hit. Diplomatically, his target had been off-limits, and the State Department would be in an uproar.

  Hawk had never even hesitated over the possible repercussions—political or personal. Not once he had been certain in his own mind that his victim had been responsible for Griff’s death. And for the deaths of the others who had died in that senseless massacre. Secretaries and clerks. People who had nothing to do with the clandestine work of the CIA. A lot of innocent people who had died so those bastards could make some kind of political statement.

  If it came down to it, Hawk could prove that the man he had taken out had been responsible for those deaths. He had made sure he had that proof. He thought it might buy him a little forgiveness, despite the current climate in the government about the team and its mission.

  “And they’ve tied you to what happened at the hotel in New York this morning,” Jordan continued. “Maybe just their way of justifying the knives that were already out.”

  There was a question implied by the last, but Hawk said nothing in response, thinking instead about the import of that. “What happened at the hotel in New York this morning.” He still didn’t know, and up to this point he hadn’t cared.

  His decision to help the woman had been quixotic and unplanned. He had the skills, so he had used them. But if he were going to get the blame for something, he figured he ought to take the trouble to find out exactly what it was he was supposed to have done.

  “You do that one?” Cross asked.

  A friend’s voice, Hawk reminded himself. A friend’s question. No blame involved. Simply a request for the truth.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said. He knew, of course, what “that one” implied, so the situation he hadn’t cared enough to find out about suddenly became a little clearer.

  “They’re putting you in the hotel. Right in the middle of the thing. They even have pictures. Watch yourself. They’re dead serious about this.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” Hawk acknowledged his debt, while ignoring the unintended irony of the adjective Jordan had used.

  “We owe you,” the disembodied voice responded.

  “Nobody owes me anyt
hing,” Hawk declared harshly. “It was personal. Just for Griff,” he added softly, trying to modify the unintended sharpness of his voice.

  That was true. He probably couldn’t explain to anyone what Griff Cabot’s friendship had meant to him. Maybe he didn’t have to, he thought. Not to this man, at least.

  “I just thought you should know you’re not alone. You can call in a lot of favors for what you did. If you need them.”

  Hawk had been a loner too long to believe he would ever need anyone’s help. The corners of his lips inched upward fractionally, but his voice when he spoke reflected none of that amusement. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. Then, without saying goodbye, he placed the receiver back on the hook.

  They’ve tied you to what happened in New York this morning. He still didn’t have any idea to what—or rather to whom—they had tied him. Obviously something they believed they could use to get rid of him, without having to admit he had been justified in what he’d done in Iraq.

  The blue eyes searched the area around the phones. Then the man called Hawk stepped away from the one he had chosen and crossed the street to the neighborhood newsstand. Once there, it wasn’t hard to figure out what they had fingered him for. All the afternoon editions carried the story, even the locals.

  The man called Hawk didn’t make many mistakes. In his line of work, one was usually the total allotment. That first mistake was very often the last an operative got a chance to make. And he had made his, Hawk thought in disgust, scanning the long columns of text. A hell of one, apparently.

  Sheer fluke? Accident? A simple case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Except Hawk didn’t believe much in coincidences. Not even violet-eyed ones who begged for his help. Maybe especially not that kind.

  He had been so damn sure no one could know he was in New York, absolutely certain no one could have traced his movements from Baghdad. And maybe they hadn’t. It was always possible someone had recognized him when he checked in and decided to make the most of the opportunity. He couldn’t be sure at this point how it had come about, but someone had played him for a fool.