Heart of the Hawk

by Justine Davis, Justine Dare

  “Easy,” he said again, instinctively reverting to the low, soothing tone that had once calmed the girl who had once been his sister Ruthie. “It’s all right. It’s over, Kate. No one will ever hurt you like that again.”

  Her breathing slowed, and some of the panic left her eyes. He kept talking.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just wanted you to stop talking like that about yourself.”

  She took a deep breath, and he saw her steady herself with a visible effort.

  “You’ve had a hard time, Kate. But your father was heartless and your husband just plain evil. There’s no reason for you to believe a word they ever said about you.”

  “He . . . hated me. My father. He’s hated me since I was eight years old.”

  “Kate—”

  “No. I mean it. He hated me ever since I told a lady who asked where we were from that we’d left Virginia when I was a little girl so Pa wouldn’t have to fight in the war.”

  Josh winced. “Was it true?”

  She nodded. “I know it was. I heard them talking about it when they thought I was asleep.”

  “When did . . . this happen?”

  “The year after the war ended. We were in Kansas.”

  He winced again. In Kansas, a year after the war, blood and emotions had still been running high. He could guess what had happened—a man with obvious Southern speech, who had abandoned his home rather than fight for it, probably amid men who had lost the war but had never surrendered. . . .

  “He’s lucky he survived,” Josh said.

  “He ran again. That’s why he wanted to get rid of me. My sisters were too little to understand, so they couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Where was your mother?”

  Kate smiled, a twisted, dreadful little smile. “Where she always was. In my father’s shadow, hiding, hoping he wouldn’t come after her.”

  She was talking again, at least, and not staring at him in that awful, panicked way. That was something, he supposed, even if what she was saying wasn’t very pretty. Again it struck him as so very odd, that of the three of them, himself, Luke, and Kate, he was the one who had had the best life.

  “I’m sorry, Kate,” he said softly.

  She seemed to come out of it then, coming back to herself with a suddenness that was visible in the widening of her eyes and the embarrassment in her expression.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what made me go on like that, wasting your time with my sorry past.”

  “How old are you, Kate?”

  A hint of color touched her cheekbones. “I . . . twenty. I know I look older—”

  He shook his head. “That’s not why I asked. I just wondered how long you’d survived such a life.”

  She lowered her eyes. “Oh.”

  “You’re a strong woman.”

  She shook her head wearily, without looking at him. “I’m not. If I had been, I’d have found a way to get away from Arly long ago.”

  “You tried,” he said. Her head came up sharply. “Luke told me,” he explained. “He also told me what Arly did to you. No wonder you gave up.”

  “I didn’t!” Her chin was up, her eyes alive again. Josh let out a silent breath of relief; she was going to be all right. “I never gave up. Never. I started saving again, planning again, as soon as I could.”

  “Like I said, you’re a strong woman.”

  “I’m going to be,” she said, determination echoing in her voice, “now. I won’t be like my mother, I won’t. No one will ever treat me like I’m nothing again.”

  As if impelled by her own words, she drew herself up straight. “I have work to finish,” she said firmly.

  He grinned at her, glad beyond what he ever would have expected to be to see the tough, practical Kate back again. “So do I.”

  She gave him a businesslike nod and retreated to the storeroom. Josh walked over to the broom that had lain forgotten on the floor during the recent encounter. He frowned to himself as he picked it up. Had he really been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even heard Luke talking to him? True, he’d been preoccupied, but that kind of preoccupation got a man in his line of work killed.

  He heard a slight thump from the storeroom, but no call for help came. He’d discovered Kate was a little touchy about him assuming she needed help when she hadn’t asked for it, so he stayed where he was.

  This time he finished the sweeping quickly, receiving another sign of how round the bend he’d been by how little he’d gotten swept today. If he kept this up, he’d be dead inside a week, shot while woolgathering, by some other do-gooder thinking to rescue the Widow Dixon. He wondered what would happen to the book when the inevitable came and the Hawk line finally did die out.

  He jerked his mind out of the rut it had worn long and deep since he’d found his name written on that otherwise empty page last night, impossibly appearing where nothing had been before. Think about something else, he ordered himself. Anything else. Like maybe just how sweet that young lawyer was on Kate.

  That, he thought suddenly, stopping his sweeping, just might solve his problem here. If the lawyer was genuinely sweet on the widow, and could be persuaded to proceed along that path . . .

  Of course. Another husband. A decent one this time, like Alexander Hall, lawyer. That’s all that was needed here. Kate would be settled, taken care of, and he could be on his way. Of course, there’d have to be a seemly period of mourning, even for a miscreant like Arly Dixon, but once he was certain the lawyer was going to do the right thing, he could at last shed himself of this town.

  Kate and the lawyer. It would work. He knew the townsfolk liked her, had felt sorry for her life with Arly—although not, he thought with more than a little rancor, sorry enough to help her, except for Luke—and would welcome her staying. Not, he amended, that she had anywhere else to go; she certainly couldn’t go home to her father.

  The question was, would she agree? Did she feel anything in turn for Alex Hall? True, she’d blushed when Luke had said the lawyer was sweet on her, but she could have simply been embarrassed; it didn’t seem to take much to make that lovely color rise in her face. He liked that about her. It gave him a clue about what she was thinking.

  He’d ask her, he thought. That was the simplest way. He’d simply ask her how she felt, and if he got the right answer, then he’d go have a talk with Lawyer Alexander Hall. Even if he didn’t get the right answer, he might have a talk with the man. Surely a man clever enough to become a lawyer could manage to convince Kate she wanted him, now that she was free of the merciless Arly.

  He leaned the broom against the shelves behind him and walked toward the storeroom, only now realizing that she’d been in there without making a sound for some time. He hoped that thump he’d heard hadn’t been more ominous than he’d realized, and began to hurry. He stopped in the doorway, relaxing slightly when he saw her upright and seemingly intact.

  She was standing beside the small side window, intent on something in her hands.

  “Kate,” he began, stepping inside.

  She gave a little start, half turning toward him. He thought he’d frightened her again, almost to tears, since her eyes looked moist, but her expression wasn’t one of fear. Oddly, it seemed almost guilty, as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have, although what it could be here in her own storeroom he couldn’t guess.

  And then he saw what was open in her hands, and he knew.

  It was the book.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “but it was on the floor, and I accidentally kicked it. It opened when I picked it up, and I saw . . .”

  Her words trailed away. He got an idea of what his face must look like by the way she quickly turned away and closed the book. It was a moment before she looked at him. When she d
id, her eyes were still moist, and in them was an emotion he couldn’t put a name to.

  “I apologize, Josh. I had no right.”

  She held the book out to him. For a moment he studied her face, wondering what had put that odd softness in her expression. Then, at last, he reached out and took the book from her. He felt it again, that odd sense of warmth, of companionship he’d never known before. He glanced down at the cover, wondering how much she’d read. Had she seen the pages with Jenna and Kane’s story, that mythical tale of sorcerers and magic? Was she convinced he had descended from a line of nothing less than lunatics?

  “I’m sorry about your family,” she said quietly.

  His gaze shot back to her face. So it was sympathy he’d seen in her eyes. Or pity. She’d begun reading at the end, and seen all the dates of death so painfully close together. His jaw tightened as he looked away. He’d never been able to talk about it, and didn’t see himself starting now.

  “How awful for you, to find them like that.”

  His head snapped up. “What?”

  “And you were only ten, Josh. Younger than Luke, even. How could you blame yourself?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “And your sister . . . how horrible. Seeing it all happen, and being helpless to stop it. No wonder she couldn’t live with it any longer. The river must have promised peace to her.”

  No one, absolutely no one other than he and his grandfather, had known Ruthie had drowned herself. No one.

  “And just how,” he said, very slowly and carefully, “do you know that?”

  She looked puzzled. “I read it. I know I shouldn’t have, because it’s private. But the book just fell open to that page when I picked it up, and I saw your name, and the story, and . . .”

  Again her voice faded away. He didn’t have to see her expression this time to guess what his face looked like. And he was sure his voice matched it.

  “What story?”

  She looked apprehensive, but she answered him. “The one about you.” She paused. Then she nervously rushed on. “Are you writing it? Are all the dates listed there, after the story, things you’re going to put in it?”

  “There is no story about me in this book.”

  Her brows furrowed. “Of course there is. You know there is.” Her chin came up as if he’d insulted her. “I don’t read as well as I should, but I could read this.” As if to prove her point, she gestured toward the book. “It’s right at the end there. I mean, it’s in the middle of the book, because of all the empty pages, but at the end of the writing.”

  He shifted the book in his hand to open it. He didn’t know what she’d seen, but she was obviously confused. He remembered what Luke had said about her not reading that well, and she’d said it now herself. He wondered if that was what had happened, if she’d been confused somehow. But if she read well enough to teach Luke, who had managed to get through Jenna’s story without stumbling too badly, then she—

  His thoughts came to an abrupt halt as the book fell open in his hand, as if to a page often turned to. But he’d only looked at that page once, last night, and it had sent him into a dizzying whirl of confused thoughts that lasted until Kate had shaken him out of it this afternoon. And his questioning of Luke hadn’t helped; the boy’s positive statements had only proven what he’d already known—his name had not been there the night before.

  But that somehow seemed minor compared to what he was seeing now. Insignificant next to the fact that where last night there had been merely a blank page beneath that graceful script entry of his name, there was now a page full of the elegant writing, spelling out in grim detail the destruction of the Hawks. Grim details that no one else alive could know. Grim details he’d even managed to forget himself. And following it were dates, dates that were engraved in his mind, dates that marked things in his life he would never, ever forget.

  He didn’t know which was more impossible, that the story was here, or how it had appeared. Or that it seemed bent on continuing, with that list of dates sitting there like some omen of things to come. It was crazy. He would have thought himself hallucinating had not she seen it as well.

  “Josh, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a—” She broke off as he looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly, “that was an awful thing to say.”

  A ghost? Josh nearly laughed; he could deal with that more easily than he could deal with the impossibility of what he was holding in his hands. At least some people believed in ghosts; the only thing anyone would believe about this was that he’d been up in the mountains too long.

  “Of course it’s awful, reliving all that horror. But perhaps it helped, to write it down?”

  “I didn’t—”

  He stopped before the damning words were out. Let her think he’d written it. It would be easier to explain. Now if someone would just explain it to him. . . .

  He slapped the book shut. With sharp, determined movements, he strode across the small room to his saddlebag and stuffed the book inside, thinking perhaps he should go out and stuff it in the stove at the back of the store instead. Isn’t that what they did with things connected to witchcraft and sorcery and wizards? Burn them?

  He might do it yet, he thought.

  When he straightened up, he found Kate watching him with an odd expression. He waited, unable to think of a single thing to say to her.

  After a moment, she said only, “I’m sorry I pried,” and walked out of the storeroom. Josh looked after her for a while, wondering what she would have said if he’d told her the truth.

  He nearly laughed aloud. The truth? He wished somebody had told him the truth long ago. But nobody had. Not his father, not his mother, not his uncle. They’d told him the legends; they’d told him of century after century of Hawk history; and they’d told him all the things to be proud of.

  But never once had they told him the damned Hawks were haunted.

  Chapter 9

  “COME IN, MRS. Dixon.”

  Kate winced as she stepped into the marshal’s office. “Thank you. But, please, call me Kate.”

  Caleb Pike looked at her as if he knew exactly why she’d offered him the familiarity of her first name, as if he knew that being called by Arly’s name made her cringe inside.

  “Of course . . . Miss Kate,” he said, much as Luke did, which made her smile.

  Pike smiled back. He really was a nice-seeming man. With his long, curling mustache, and his slight paunch hanging over his belt, he hardly looked like a man who could quell a fight among drunken cowboys without drawing a weapon, but she’d heard he’d done it more than once.

  “Sit down,” Pike suggested.

  Kate hesitated. She had hesitated outside as well, not at all certain she wanted to do this. She’d barely spoken to Caleb Pike in all the time he’d been here as town marshal, and most of that under Arly’s watchful eye when the man had come into the mercantile.

  Once, after Arly had left her face particularly bruised, Pike had threatened to talk to Arly. She’d been terrified this would only earn her a worse beating, and Pike had backed off. And once Deborah had sent for him, that time after Arly had caught her trying to run away. Pike had talked to Arly then, and whatever he’d said had made an impression; Arly had never hurt her that badly again.

  It was that that decided her; she sat down in the chair he’d indicated. It felt odd to be here. She still wasn’t quite used to the fact that she could come and go as she pleased now. She had to remind herself that if she wished to take a walk, she could; if she wished to talk to someone, she could.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Kate laced her fingers together in her lap. She had been formulating the question in her mind all the way here, trying to decide how to say it. But now that she was here, all she could manage was to blur
t it out.

  “You can tell me about Joshua Hawk.”

  Pike looked thoughtful. He tugged at his luxuriant mustache. At last, he sat on the edge of his desk, a few feet away from her.

  “Well, now,” he said slowly, “seems everybody already knows all there is to know about The Hawk.”

  “You mean his reputation. The legend.”

  Pike smiled. “Sounds like something outta one of them dime magazines, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. It does. That’s why I’m asking. Most legends are made of half-truths and imagination.”

  “And you want the truth, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think I know it?”

  “I think you know more of the truth than anyone else in town.”

  Pike smiled again. “I may know a thing or two,” he conceded. “Exactly what is it you want to hear?”

  I want to know just how awful a thing I’ve done, she thought. But she said only, “Is he a killer?”

  Pike leaned back. “Well, now, that depends. Lots of men have killed. That doesn’t necessarily make them killers.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Way I look at it, there are those who kill because they’re forced to. Given a choice, they walk away. And there are those who, given that choice, kill anyway. Who kill not because it’s unavoidable, but because they like it. They take pleasure in it. They’re born that way.” Pike shrugged. “You ask me, that’s a real killer.”

  “And . . . The Hawk? Which is he?”

  “I’m not sure, yet. From what I’ve heard, he’s never been the first to start a fight.”

  Kate wasn’t sure that was a recommendation; she’d seen Arly drive people to making the first move more than once, just so he’d be able to claim later he hadn’t started it.

  “But he has killed people. Lots of people.”

  “So they say. I know he’s carrying a lot of fame around with him, but . . .” Pike lifted his hands in a gesture expressing indecision.