The Bride's Protector

by Gayle Wilson

  His hand was trembling now. Trembling with need. Trembling because he wanted to touch her. To put his fingers against the softness of her cheek. To touch her breasts. To pull her to him and explain. To tell her that for him last night had been...

  Something that had never happened before. Totally out of the range of his experience. With women. With relationships. Not that anything he had ever had with another woman could be called a relationship. There had been nothing remotely like this. Nothing that had ever involved his feelings. His emotions. His mind.

  But if he told her that, he knew, it would simply make what was about to happen worse. If it could possibly get any worse.

  Another betrayal. Because she had trusted him. With her life. Trusted him to protect her and to keep her safe. Trusted him with her body. Trusted him to love her.

  And in the end, Hawk had been no more worthy of that trust than her fiancé had. Or the agent she had told him about. Like them, he, too, had used her.

  Sleeve card. Ace in the hole. Those motives, which he had readily admitted to at the beginning of this, were not, of course, what he felt now. But telling her that wouldn’t make what he had to do any easier. Or what she had to do. After this meeting, she had to walk away from him. To walk away and never look back. For her sake. To keep her safe. And learning how he felt, knowing what last night had meant to him, would make none of that easier.

  “Hawk,” she said again, and finally he lifted his eyes from the contemplation of his hand. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said. “It doesn’t have to end this way. You said that once I’d testified, it would take the pressure off. That Amir would know I couldn’t really hurt him. After that’s over, why can’t we—”

  The knock on the glass of the window beside him interrupted her. Hawk turned his head to find Jordan Cross bending down to peer into the interior of the car. The sickening rush of fear in the pit of Hawk’s stomach eased with the sight of the familiar face.

  But it could have been anybody knocking on that window—al-Ahmad’s men, the company’s. Hawk hadn’t even been aware that someone was approaching the car, he’d been focused so intently on whatever she had been saying. Like an amateur, he realized.

  And that was why, of course, there had never been room in his life for a relationship like this. Because he couldn’t afford the distraction. Not in his line of work.

  He rolled down the window.

  “It’s time,” Cross said. He had already straightened again, no longer looking inside the car.

  Hawk knew that his eyes would be searching their surroundings, examining them for anything out of the ordinary. Anything suspicious. Just as Hawk should have been doing.

  “What are you doing here?” Hawk asked.

  “My operation,” Jordan said. “I don’t plan on making an appearance upstairs, but I wanted to make sure there was nobody waiting down here for you.”

  “Risky,” Hawk said. They had agreed Jordan shouldn’t be connected to him because of repercussions within the agency. Hawk still thought that was the best way to do this.

  “Somebody tell you that you were supposed to have all the fun?” Cross asked. And then he cleared the amusement from his deep voice. “Our esteemed colleagues aren’t down here. They came in the front. That’s what Heywood told them to do.”

  “How much does she know?”

  “I thought she should know it all. Makes it easier to play the hand if you’ve seen the cards. You ready?”

  As ready as I’ll ever be, Hawk thought He rolled up the window and then put his hand on the door handle. He was aware that Jordan had already stepped away from the car, allowing him room to open the door and climb out. He was also aware that Tyler was still watching him.

  This would be his last chance to say something to her, alone and without anyone else listening. Last chance to explain. Last chance to tell her how he felt.

  Instead of taking it, the man called Hawk opened the door of the car he had rented at an airport in Mississippi and stepped out into the heat and darkness of a private parking garage in Washington, D.C. The end of a journey.

  And his last chance, he thought again, standing up and closing the door behind him. This time he didn’t take it. At least, he thought, as he put his hand into the one Jordan Cross extended, he still had enough self-discipline left to accomplish that.

  “WE UNDERSTOOD YOU WANTED to talk to my client.”

  As she made the opening gambit, Claire Heywood’s voice was controlled and professional, sounding exactly like the high-priced attorney she was.

  “Your client?” the assistant deputy director of operations questioned.

  “For these purposes,” Claire said smoothly.

  Her long blond hair was arranged again in a neat chignon. Today there were no disordered strands floating around the pale oval of her face. No tears. No black dress. She was wearing a simple red suit that shouted money and power, but it was a nicely discreet shout, appropriate for the elegant office they were in. And her eyes were as dispassionate as her voice.

  They hadn’t been. Hawk knew from their reaction that she had recognized him from the cemetery. Her pupils had widened slightly when her secretary escorted them into the room. Claire Heywood’s gaze had met his, acknowledgment of that recognition in it, maybe acknowledgment of what he had done for Griff as well. Maybe even...gratitude? he thought, questioning the emotions he saw there. However, she had said nothing, gesturing them toward the two leather chairs that were aligned on her side of the wide conference table.

  The representatives of the government were already seated on the other side. There were three of them, but Hawk recognized only one man. The others were new or had been pulled in from some other division. It was even possible they were State Department and not CIA.

  That was probably the case, Hawk decided, considering the way their eyes examined him, as if he was something that disturbed their bureaucratic smugness. Or frightened them. Like he was some viper that had just come slithering out from under a rock and into their civilized little meeting.

  But it really didn’t matter what they thought about him. Hawk knew that the man in the middle was the one who counted. The one he would have to convince. The one Tyler would have to convince, he amended, if this was going to work.

  Hawk planned to offer no defense of what he had done in Baghdad. As far was he was concerned, that act didn’t need defending. He was prepared to offer them proof of the terrorist’s guilt, to make threats about going public if he had to, but he was not prepared to beg for their understanding. Not even Carl Steiner’s.

  Steiner had been a friend of Griff’s, and Hawk supposed he had been the logical one to take over the unit after the massacre. Hawk had no way of knowing how Steiner felt about the team or even whether he was the one who had insisted on its dissolution. He supposed he’d find out in the course of this meeting exactly where Steiner stood about a lot of things.

  “I think Mr. Hawkins is probably well aware of what we want to talk to him about,” Steiner said.

  “Why don’t we make certain of that?” Claire suggested. “We understand you believe Mr. Hawkins has some connection to the assassination of Sheikh Rashad al-Ahmad.”

  “Some connection?” Steiner questioned, his tone amused.

  “Maybe you’d like to characterize exactly what you believe Mr. Hawkins’ association to be,” Claire suggested.

  Hawk didn’t look at Tyler. He didn’t know if enough had already been said to make her start thinking. To make her start wondering why they were talking about him, instead of about what she believed they were here to discuss.

  “I saw the men who killed the sheikh,” Tyler said into the small silence that had fallen after Claire’s suggestion. “I believe I can identify them.”

  Steiner’s eyes moved to study her face for the first time, and then they flicked back to Hawk’s, questioning, before they returned to focus on the woman who had just spoken.

  “Ms. Stewart, I believe,” he said. “
Sheikh Amir al-Ahmad’s fiancée?”

  “I was,” Tyler said.

  “I’m sure Amir al-Ahmad would be very interested in learning what you saw,” Steiner suggested. “He’s trying very hard to track down the extremists who were involved in his father’s death, some of whom, he now believes, had infiltrated his own entourage. He is also, I’m told, interested in making public the pictures of the man who set off the fire alarms that day. A man whose actions were captured by the hotel security cameras. He wants those pictures made available to the nation’s law enforcement agencies as quickly as possible.” As Steiner uttered the last sentence, his eyes moved back to Hawk’s.

  And you will, you son of a bitch, Hawk thought, just as soon as you’re sure no one can trace the man in those pictures back to the company.

  “Amir is interested in finding out who pulled the fire alarm?” Tyler asked, obviously puzzled.

  However, her voice seemed as steady as Claire’s had been. As calm and unintimidated. Maybe, Hawk thought, because she still doesn’t understand what’s going on.

  “As he will certainly be interested in what you saw. I’m surprised you haven’t already communicated that information to him. Forgive me, Ms. Stewart, but I understood you were with al-Ahmad’s party. In seclusion, I believe, the sheikh said.”

  Hawk was aware that Tyler had turned to look at him. For direction, maybe, but he didn’t meet her eyes. He didn’t want to watch what would happen in them when she finally understood.

  “The man who pulled the fire alarm,” Tyler said, “had nothing to do with the assassination. That was... something else entirely.”

  “You seem certain of that,” Steiner said, his eyes finally leaving their contemplation of Hawk’s set face to find hers again. “But then, that is, of course, why Hawkins brought you here, isn’t it. To tell us what he didn’t do.”

  There was a pause before Tyler answered. “I came here to identify the assassins,” she said, her voice low. There was something in her tone that hadn’t been there before, however. Some hint of unease. She was disturbed, perhaps, by the direction this was taking.

  “Or to assure us that Lucas Hawkins wasn’t one of them?” Steiner suggested.

  The silence stretched again. Longer this time. The blinds were pulled against the glare outside, and the stripes of sunshine that escaped between them, thin, white and dazzling in the pleasant dimness, fell like bars across the mahogany table.

  “Hawk had nothing to do with Sheikh al-Ahmad’s death.”

  “Forgive me, Ms. Stewart, but I’m afraid given Hawkins’ past, and his rather remarkable credentials for doing exactly that, not many people are going to believe you. Even we found Hawkins’ presence in the hotel that day a little too...coincidental.”

  “Coincidental?” Tyler repeated.

  “A highly skilled...marksman just happened to be in the same hotel when an assassination occurs. A marksman who had that very day returned from the Middle East, where he had killed another man, in much the same manner in which Sheikh Rashad al-Ahmad was murdered. An assassin who was captured on video pulling hotel fire alarms, the effect of which was to empty that hotel of suspects, despite the fact that at the time it had been surrounded by police and FBI agents. Of course your fiancé is interested in this man. Especially considering, I suppose, that you are now traveling in his company.”

  There was complete silence around the table. It seemed that no one breathed.

  “Hawk?” Tyler Stewart said softly. Almost the same way she had whispered his name last night. Except then...

  “Would you like to deny for Ms. Stewart the validity of the things I’ve just said?” Steiner said. “If so, Hawkins, I assure you we’d all be interested in hearing those denials. I’m sure Ms. Stewart would be. Considering her situation.”

  Hawk had known this moment would come, but as he did with everything that didn’t bear thinking about, he had put it out of his mind. Like Griff’s death. The end of the team. Losing Tyler.

  That was almost a physical pain—the thought of turning her over to someone like Steiner. But Steiner, he reminded himself, was someone who could protect her, someone who could keep her safe.

  “I don’t deny them,” Hawk said quietly, his eyes resolutely on his locked hands, which rested, unmoving, on the mahogany table. “I don’t deny that I did any of those things.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “But I had nothing to do with Rashad al-Ahmad’s assassination, and you know it,” Hawk added softly.

  They did know it Steiner’s eyes left no doubt about what he knew. And, Hawk realized, they don’t care about the sheikh’s death. That isn’t why they’re here. That isn’t why they agreed to this meeting. He supposed he had known that all along.

  “How would we know that, Mr. Hawkins? Apparently you’ve become a man who chooses his own targets. Based solely on his own judgment. How could we know you weren’t responsible for the sheikh’s death?”

  “Because you know me,” Hawk said. He kept his voice low, but the bitterness was there. “You have more than twenty years worth of knowing exactly who and what I am.”

  Steiner pulled a file, which had been lying on the table beside him since the beginning of the meeting, toward him and opened it. Hawk recognized its type. He had seen others like it on Griff’s desk. He supposed all of them had dossiers like this.

  Most of the time they would be locked away, accessible only to those with a “need to know” about the aspect of national security Griff’s team had dealt with. Now Steiner was one of those with an official need to know.

  “Lucas Hawkins,” Steiner read aloud, his voice without inflection or emotion. “Code name: Hawk. Father: unknown. Mother: Lucille Hawkins. Mother’s occupation: prostitute.” The black eyes lifted to Hawk’s, as if for confirmation of those simple facts. “I believe she died of a heroin overdose when you were seven.”

  Hawk said nothing, his eyes still meeting Steiner’s, his features set. But in his mind’s eye was his mother’s thin, wasted face, her skin without color except for the brown stain in the sunken sockets around her eyes, which were open, glazed and staring. Just the way she had looked the day he’d come home from school and found her body.

  But Hawk wasn’t going to give this son of a bitch the satisfaction of knowing he remembered that. Or remembered any of what had come after her death. That long, dark nightmare of abuse and neglect at the hands of the state.

  After a moment the assistant deputy director’s eyes returned to the page before him, and he began to read again.

  “For the next ten years, Lucas Hawkins passed through a succession of over thirty foster homes and various juvenile detention facilities. His longest stay in any one of those was for seven months, when he was nine. He was eleven when he was arrested the first time. Not the last time he was arrested, of course,” Steiner added, glancing at the faces of the people aligned across the massive table from him.

  Hawk remembered that incident, too. He had run away again, not traveling very fast because his drunken foster father’s last beating had broken his arm and a couple of ribs. He had gotten caught stealing something to eat from a convenience store.

  The cops had fed him, he remembered, and were amazed at what he managed to shovel down. They kept buying, and he kept eating, trying to make up for the meals he’d missed. They had been kind in a rough way, but Hawk had put up such a fight when they’d tried to take him home that they had no choice but to turn him over to juvenile services. That was the first time he’d ended up in detention. But it hadn’t been the last.

  “Each criminal offense more serious than the one before,” Steiner intoned solemnly, like a master of ceremonies at some macabre awards dinner.

  Although his gaze hadn’t faltered from its contemplation of the assistant deputy director’s face, Hawk hadn’t realized Steiner’s eyes had returned to the record in front of him until he began to read aloud again. Hawk’s mind had been drifting instead, back to those events of almost thirty years ago.
>
  Whatever this bastard wants to tell them doesn’t matter, he assured himself. It was ancient history. Unimportant. What he had done for the last twenty years was his life. The important part of it, anyway. Griff had convinced him of that.

  “The last of those arrests occurred when Hawkins was seventeen. I won’t bore you with the details. It’s sufficient to say that the incident involved the infliction of, and I’m quoting the arresting officer here, ”grave bodily harm on another minor.” I believe all of this is correct so far, Hawkins,” Steiner said. He looked up from the file, his brows lifting, but again Hawk made no response.

  “Is this necessary?” Claire Heywood asked, her voice tight, revealing emotion for the first time. “I don’t think Mr. Hawkins’ personal history is relevant to our purposes.”

  “I had supposed Hawkins intended to make his history relevant. I thought that was the purpose behind this meeting.”

  “The purpose of this meeting is to clear Mr. Hawkins of any suspicion of the sheikh’s death. Surely the misfortunes he suffered as a child—”

  “I see,” Steiner interrupted. “Then you are more interested in current material, I suppose. Of course, the current material is the crux of this matter, isn’t it, Ms. Heywood. The real reason we’re all here.”

  “The reason we’re here is because you’re trying to set me up for something I didn’t do,” Hawk interjected, tired of listening to Steiner’s crap.

  None of this had anything to do with getting Tyler into protective custody. Apparently, however, Steiner was determined they were going to deal with the accusations against Hawk before they could move on to the other.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Rashad al-Ahmad’s death,” Hawk said very distinctly. “And I’m warning you. I don’t intend to go down for that.”

  “So you’ve brought us your personal witness to prove your innocence,” Steiner said, his voice amused.