by Gayle Wilson
She didn’t make it. Her right leg folded under her suddenly, and unable to regain her equilibrium, she pitched forward to the ground. She got her hands out to break her fall, but she was down. And despite how much she wanted to live, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to get up again. Not in time to keep them from reaching her.
She was still looking toward the crowd, and from where she lay on the ground, she stretched one imploring arm out to them. Appealing for someone to help her. Surely someone would see what was happening. Surely now they knew what Amir was doing.
Instead they began to run away from her, scattering in a panicked flurry, like doves in the middle of a hunt. Running from something. She turned her head to see what was happening behind her. Both Amir and the doctor had been coming toward her, just as she had known they would.
But for some reason their forward motion had checked. Amir shouted something, and the doctor started forward again. As he did, a spray of fragments kicked up from the tarmac in front of his feet. He had stopped again, jumping backward, before Tyler heard the crack of the rifle.
Rifle, she thought, her dazed brain beginning to understand why everyone was running. Rifle, she thought again, turning her head, eyes searching the roofs of the terminal and the towers. Someone was shooting at Amir and his men. Someone...
ANOTHER JOB, Hawk thought, the crosshairs of his sight holding a second on the doctor before they lifted to Amir. Al-Ahmad’s handsome face was suffused with color. He was clearly furious. Hawk watched as he gestured to someone behind him.
“The one on the steps of the plane,” Jordan warned. “He’s got a weapon.”
Obediently Hawk lifted the scope, finding the figure in the doorway of the plane. He was pointing a Uzi toward the woman on the ground, hesitating to fire only because Amir and the doctor were in his way. And as soon as they realized that, Hawk knew, the man at the top of the stairs would spray the runway.
That man was shouting something now. Through the scope, Hawk watched his mouth moving, opening and closing on the words. Telling the others to get out of the way? Surely Amir wouldn’t be stupid enough to order them to kill Tyler in front of all these people.
But maybe he thought he could get away with that. After all, he had gotten away with killing his own father. All he had to do was shoot her and get on that plane and fly away. He could worry about a story to explain it all later. Tie her to the plot somehow. Only this time, Hawk thought...
The man he was watching brought the gun into firing position, and in response Hawk squeezed the trigger. Same slow squeeze as always. He was surprised that his hand wasn’t trembling. It had trembled that day in the parking garage, but now it was as steady as it had always been.
Another job. Another target. Danger passed. Threat resolved . Lives saved. Or in this case, Hawk thought, life saved. One solitary life. That of the woman he loved.
He watched as the man he had shot tumbled off the metal platform that had been rolled up to the door of the plane. Hawk took his eye off the scope and looked down on the scene unfolding below, the characters in the drama slightly distorted by the heat waves shimmering up from the tarmac.
The Uzi bounced down the steps as the robed figure rolled bonelessly behind it Hawk’s gaze moved back to Tyler, struggling to get up. Someone will come to help her, he thought. Someone out of that crowd will realize what’s wrong. He had, simply by watching her walk beside Amir from the limousine to the foot of the steps.
They had drugged her to make her carry out this farce. A performance for the press. For whoever Amir believed might still care about his role in his father’s death. He apparently hadn’t realized that no one cared. Just as no one cared enough to come to the aid of the woman who had finally managed to push herself up to her hands and knees.
There was movement to Tyler’s left, and Hawk pulled his eyes away from her figure. He couldn’t think about her as a person. Not about what she was feeling. Not about going down to her. His job was here. The important job. At least for now.
What he had seen peripherally was Amir, bending to pick up the Uzi that had fallen almost at his feet. He had stooped, lifting the weapon and then turning toward the barriers that had been created to keep the media at a distance.
Hawk put his eye again on the scope, lining up his target in the crosshairs. Even as he did it, he couldn’t conceive that Amir would be foolish enough to shoot. He had nothing to gain by this and everything to lose. Nothing to gain...
Apparently Amir al-Ahmad didn’t realize that. Or he no longer cared. In Hawk’s sights, the sheikh’s face was a distorted mask of fury as he aimed the weapon. Aimed it right at the fallen woman. A woman who had defied him by running away from him in front of all those people. Spoiling the picture he had wanted to create for the media.
Hawk’s finger tightened against the trigger, steady and unhurried, and suddenly a small, dark circle appeared in the forehead of the man in the crosshairs. The Uzi continued to fire as Amir fell forward, squeezing the trigger in a reflex motion as he died. Bullets hit the tarmac, sending up sprays of dust and debris wherever they struck.
Hawk forgot to breathe as he watched them, praying to a God he didn’t know for a miracle he didn’t deserve. Still praying when he pulled back from the scope, and his eyes, unaided by artificial magnification, found the woman they had sought.
On her feet. Moving again in a slow stagger toward the terminal. Still alive.
“Give me that,” Jordan said, taking the rifle from Hawk’s hands.
Now they were trembling, Hawk realized, shaking with fear. Shaking with the need to touch her. To hold her. To verify what his eyes were telling him.
“I’ll take it from here,” Cross said.
Hawk turned to look at his friend, and watched the gray eyes lighten and the well-shaped lips curve into a smile at what was in his face.
“You know what will happen if you do this,” Hawk said.
“I’ll tell them Steiner sent me,” Jordan said, his smile widening. “Go on. Get her out of here. I’ll handle the rest.”
“I can’t let you,” Hawk said. He knew what it would do to Jordan’s career. They had already destroyed his life, but so far he had managed to keep Cross almost in the clear.
“I told you. It just speeds up the inevitable,” Jordan said. “Besides, Griff was my friend, too.”
He was looking down at the runway, rifle held at the ready. Perhaps his aim wasn’t as deadly as Hawk’s, but then no one else on the tarmac below was attempting to move toward the weapon lying beside Amir’s body. And if they somehow found the guts to try, a bullet in the ground nearby would probably put an end to that bravado.
After all, the sheikh was dead. There was no one to give them further orders. Without Amir to urge them on, neither the doctor nor the bodyguards by the huge black car seemed particularly eager to challenge the skill of the unseen shooter.
“Go on,” Jordan said again, his voice soft. “And Hawk?”
Hawk had already begun to move, but he stopped, his eyes shifting to the man who had been beside him almost all the way.
“Godspeed, my friend. And good luck,” Jordan added.
The man called Hawk nodded, the movement small. Contained. Both acknowledgment and thanks. Unspoken. As always.
Then Jordan Cross’s gaze fell again to the runway. Crouching low, Hawk began to move, across the rooftop and toward the door that would lead to the service stairs they had climbed to this vantage point. There were debts to be paid, he thought, no matter what Jordan said. Debts to Cross for taking the blame for this. To Jake for tracking down the flight plans Amir’s pilot had been required to file. Hawk wouldn’t forget what he owed to either of them. He never forgot those things.
Hawk heard feet pounding across the roof behind him. Airport security had finally arrived. He also heard Jordan’s shout of identification. “Jordan Cross. This is a CIA operation.” Jordan was CIA, of course, and more importantly, he could still prove it. Hawk couldn’t have. Not anymo
re. That was why Cross had taken the rifle from him.
Imagining Steiner’s reaction to the uproar this shoot-out would cause, a small satisfied smile flickered at the corners of Hawk’s lips as he began to descend the concrete stairs.
EVERY TIME SHE OPENED her eyes, he was there. Watching her. Or holding her. Through the bouts of nausea, she held on to what was in his eyes. To something he had never allowed her to see in them before. And he cared for her through the long dark hours with the same tenderness with which he had once made love to her. The slow time. She smiled, remembering.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, his voice soft and intimate.
That shouldn’t be surprising, she supposed, since he was lying beside her on the bed. They were in a motel, she guessed, allowing her gaze to move around the room. She remembered the beige-tiled bathroom. Typical motel. He had carried her there a few times. Literally carried her. And she supposed she should be embarrassed to have him take care of her in those very intimate ways. But she wasn’t. She wanted him here. She wanted Hawk beside her. Whatever the situation.
“Not very much,” she said softly, cupping his cheek with her hand. His skin was unshaven, and she liked the brush of the golden whiskers against her fingers. Evocative of that night.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
He was lying on his side, one arm under his head. She had to turn her own head to see him, but at least she could do that now without setting off the nausea.
“Like a couple of Mac trucks ran over me, and then rolled back and forth over the dying body a few times.”
He reached out and touched her bare arm. She flinched a little. That was one of the bruises she’d gotten fighting Amir’s guards, she supposed, looking down at the place his fingers had found. She was wearing only her underwear, she realized, but she couldn’t remember undressing. Or remember Hawk undressing her. She thought she might like to be able to remember that.
Of course, she didn’t remember much of anything after the injection. And all of what she could remember was hazy, like something that had happened a long time ago. Or had happened to someone else.
But she remembered Hawk finding her, appearing out of the crowd at the airport like a miracle. She remembered him picking her up and carrying her in his arms through the terminal building and outside. He had told someone he was a doctor. Since they couldn’t possibly believe what he really was, that was probably as good a lie as any.
She didn’t remember much of anything else until she woke up in this room, and Hawk was taking care of her. Caring for her as her mother might have long ago. His hands, long, dark and so strong, had been as gentle as hers.
“Thank you,” Tyler said softly, fighting tears that she recognized, due to the lingering effects of the drug, were too close to the surface.
“For what?” he asked, his voice amused.
“For everything,” she whispered. “For coming to my rescue again. For this. For...being here.”
“Go back to sleep,” he said, dismissing her gratitude.
“You’ll still be here when I wake up?” she asked, her eyes searching his. He had never lied to her. He hadn’t told her everything, but what he had told her had always been the truth.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. “Not without you.”
The tears threatened again, but they were different tears. Happy crying, her mother used to say.
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” Hawk said softly. “I’ll be right here beside you until you tell me to go away.”
She smiled at that, but she didn’t tell him why. She’d tell him later, she decided, holding the blue eyes until her heavy lids drifted downward. Once or twice she forced them up again, just to be sure he was still there. To be sure he wasn’t a dream. And she would find that same surety in the steady blue gaze. Finally, trusting in what he had promised, she slept.
“I WAS PLANNING to make new curtains for in here,” Tyler said, watching Hawk’s face. He seemed so out of place here. Alien to this rural peacefulness. To this little house. His life had been so different.
Of course, she admitted, for the last twenty years, so had hers. But this would always be home to her, and so she felt as if she belonged. She had wondered, even when she suggested they come here, if it would ever feel like that to Hawk. Like home.
“And I want to paint the walls,” she added, when he didn’t respond. “And the ones in the bedrooms, too.”
She knew she was talking about things that couldn’t possibly mean anything to a man like Hawk. Domestic trivia. They hadn’t even discussed what came next, if anything, but still she couldn’t seem to do anything about the hope that had been growing in her heart. A hope that Hawk would want to stay, now that it was over.
“It is over, isn’t it?” she asked, needing his reassurance. “I mean...Steiner won’t expect you to go back? He won’t try to make you, will he?”
“We had a deal. Which I honored until Steiner broke it. He’s got to know from what happened at the airport yesterday that he didn’t fulfill his part. I don’t think they’ll come after me, but...if they want to, Tyler, they can find me anywhere I go. I don’t intend to run from them. Or to hide.”
“But you think Steiner will leave you alone.”
“I think even Steiner should have trouble sleeping at night when he thinks about what he almost let Amir do to you,” he said, his voice bitter.
She nodded, remembering what had happened. And thinking about what would have happened if it hadn’t been for Hawk. She thought about expressing her gratitude again, but he wouldn’t want to hear that.
She took a breath, her eyes finding the mark the bullet had made on the door frame. She wanted every bit of evidence of the nightmare they had lived erased. Even the scars, if possible.
“And I want to do something about the damage to the wall in the bedroom,” she said.
“Are you expecting me to offer to fix that?” Hawk asked, his lips touched with the small smile she had seen there too seldom.
Exactly what had she been expecting, she wondered, when she suggested they come here? “Do you know how to fix it?” she asked, smiling back at him.
“I don’t know anything about taking care of a house. About paint. Or fixing walls.”
She nodded, but she didn’t say anything. This was up to him. His decision. His choice. And whatever he decided, she would learn to live with it. On her own two feet.
“If there’s a hardware store in town,” he said, his eyes still on her face, “maybe somebody there could tell me what to do.”
She nodded again. “Probably,” she agreed.
The silence stretched.
“You haven’t even asked about the other,” he said finally.
“The other what?”
“Why I didn’t tell you the truth,” he said.
“I guess you had a good reason. And...I didn’t tell you the truth, either. Not at the beginning.”
“I was afraid you’d think I was like him.”
“Like Amir?” she asked, her voice puzzled. “Why would I think you were like Amir?”
Hawk hesitated, and his lips tightened a little before he answered. “I thought you’d think I’d just been using you.”
“Were you?” she asked.
“At first.”
She nodded again. “Well, at first I was using you, too. That’s how you got involved in all this. I guess I can’t blame you for doing that. I got you into it, and I was the only one who could get you out. It just made sense that I do that”
He said nothing for a long time, so long that she wondered if she’d said something wrong.
“And the other?” he asked softly.
“The other?”
“Making love to you.”
“Were you just...using me then?”
“No,” he said. “That was never what that was about.”
“What was it about?” she asked, and held her breath.
“What I said, I guess. Making love to you.�
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“No ulterior motives,” she said, remembering to breathe.
“A couple, but not any you need to worry about.”
She laughed, and watched his eyes lighten. The corners of his hard mouth moved. Fractionally.
“And I want a wallpaper border,” she said. “They probably have those at the hardware store, too.”
“With instructions?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But it can’t be too hard. If everybody else can figure it out, surely the two of us together...” She hesitated, wondering if she had overstepped some invisible boundary. No commitments had been made. Not about anything. Not even about wallpaper.
“I think the two of us together can probably handle most things,” he said. “Even wallpaper. If you want to try.”
“If I want to try?” she asked.
“You heard what Steiner said. I don’t have a lot of experience at... families. Or homes. I guess I’m not... a very good risk at any of those.”
She nodded again, her throat closing at his unemotional dismissal of all that pain. She conquered the tears he wouldn’t want to see. Hawk wouldn’t want her to cry for him, ever. But for a man like Hawk to make a commitment of this kind, a commitment to build a home—and a family—together, would take an enormous amount of courage.
“Are you saying you want to have a home? And a family?” she asked. She needed to be sure she understood before the dream got totally out of control.
“I’m saying I want you,” he said. “No ulterior motives. But...no restrictions either, I guess. I figured you’d want both of those.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I want it all. All of the above. And I think we probably better hurry about at least one of them.”
His eyes changed, darkening a little, and his head tilted. “The wallpaper?” he asked innocently.