by Jill Shalvis
There was some scrambling, whether to join her or stop her she didn’t know because she didn’t look back as she opened the door to the van.
LOGAN BOLTED ACROSS THE ROOF of the barn, dodging the icy spots and the shadow he’d seen. Not Gaines, but one of his paid goons, coming back from where he’d last spotted Hawk.
He sped up, high-tailing his way toward Hawk, because that’s what they did, they backed each other up. They’d been doing so for years in far tighter jams than this one. And in all that time, he’d never once felt anything but utterly invincible.
But at this moment, all he felt was terror.
Hawk was down.
Rounding a corner of the roof, Logan headed toward a vent. As he crouched down behind it to survey the situation, the air stirred, and he felt a blinding pain in the back of his neck. As he whipped around to fight, he was hit again, by a two-by-four, or so it felt, and then he was flying off the roof toward the ground.
Shit. Now both he and Hawk were down….
THIS WAS RIDICULOUS, ABBY TOLD herself as the cold, icy night slapped her face. She’d taken herself out of the field. She’d vowed that nothing could get her back to it. And yet here she was, off and running at the first sign of trouble because she couldn’t stand the thought of an agent down.
Ken caught up with her, both of them gasping in the shockingly bitter wind. They took the long, winding dirt path up toward the ranch. The place sat on a set of rolling hills that looked deceptively mild and beautiful by day. But by night the area turned almost sinister, steep, rugged and dangerously isolated. Fallen pine needles crunched beneath their feet. The patches of ice were lethal spots of menace that could send them flying, but still they ran.
The wind didn’t help. It was picking up, if that was possible, slicing through to the very bone, kicking up a dusty haze that nothing could cut through, not even the night vision goggles.
When they reached the dark farmhouse, they stopped to draw air into their burning lungs.
“Around the back,” Ken said. “The barn’s around the back.”
She was already moving that way but came to a stop at the corner of the farmhouse, where she had the vantage point of what should have been a woodsy clearing, but with the dark and the driving winds, seemed more like the wilds of Siberia.
She knew the barn lay beyond the trees, but in between there were no lights, no sign of human life. Abby went left, Ken right, both skirting the edges of the clearing, using the trees as cover.
Where was everyone?
As she came through the woods, the barn loomed up ahead, nothing but a black outline against a black sky. And then she saw him.
Hawk.
He was standing, holding his gun pointed at someone standing in the door of the barn.
Abby watched in horror as the gun flashed, and she caught a glimpse of the man he’d aimed at flying backward like a rag doll.
Gaines? Elliot Gaines? What the hell? Why was he here? Everything within her went cold. Had Hawk just shot Gaines?
3
WINNING WAS EVERYTHING. Knowing it, Gaines pushed down harder on Hawk’s windpipe, barely feeling the blood running down his arm. He’d been nicked before, a year and a half ago in Seattle as a matter of fact, while wrestling in the dark with one of his own ATF agents.
Hawk, in fact.
See, that’s what happened when one hired the best, and Hawk was the best of the best. He was a fucking pitbull, and he’d all but publicly promised to stop at nothing until the leader of the Kiddie Bombers was behind bars.
He might as well have signed his own death certificate.
And goddamn, he’d actually gotten a shot off. That was a pisser. But the explosions Gaines’s men had rigged would go off soon, and Hawk would be lost in them. Logan also, because it had become clear tonight that there was no other way.
And though it killed him, Abby, too.
No loose ends.
And there wouldn’t be. Thanks to his crew, which included Watkins working on the inside, everything had been perfectly choreographed. Already Tibbs would have received an anonymous tip that would raise enough questions about Hawk’s “role” in the theft of the rifles from the ATF to enable Tibbs to get a search warrant for Hawk’s place. There he’d find a computer memory stick with Kiddie Bombers’ information, including purchases, sales and contacts, password-protected and encrypted just enough to make it look legit.
Hawk framed, check. Hawk dead, almost check.
And then, retirement time. Good times. The only thing that would have made tonight perfect would have been if he hadn’t been forced to take out Abby. He regretted that, and he’d miss her like hell, but he couldn’t risk the rest of his life for a piece of tail, no matter how badly he wanted that piece.
He was so close now. Close enough to taste it. God, he loved to win. And tonight, he planned to win big. “Got any last-minute prayers?”
EVEN WITH HIS VEST, the after-effects of taking a slug in the chest were brutal. His muscles were spasming, his body twitching, and it was sheer agony to get his limbs to obey his mind. But Hawk managed to grab Gaines’s ankle and yank him to the ground, leveling the playing field, though not by much. Jesus, even his brain hurt, feeling as if it’d been used as a pinball within his skull. Gathering his thoughts was an exercise in futility, but he had to fight off Gaines—then he caught the flicker from within the barn. Flames. Ah, shit, the whole thing was going to—
Blow.
The explosion knocked them both backward. The barn roof blew sky high, catching the grass in the clearing on fire, as well as the trees.
Surrounded. He was surrounded by unrelenting heat, scorching him both inside and out. Gaines came up on his knees, looking like death warmed over as he staggered to his feet, pointing his gun. “You’re hard to kill.”
“So are you.” Hawk’s gaze locked on the dark spot blooming out from the shoulder of Gaines’s jacket. “Missed your black heart, unfortunately. I blame the hit to the chest. Threw me off.”
The smoke rose from behind Gaines’s head, making it look like steam was coming out of his ears.
“It’s going to get worse,” his own personal monster said.
It was true. If Gaines chose to shoot Hawk in the nuts, there was nothing he could do. His body was shit at the moment.
Gaines pointed the gun between Hawk’s eyes.
“Go to hell,” Hawk said.
Gaines grinned. “Tell you what, I’ll meet you there.”
Hawk’s life flashed before his eyes. His parents, gone now, but so proud of him when they’d been alive. Special Forces, where he’d had a good run—no, make that a great run—before moving to ATF.
Another great run.
Until now.
Maybe he should have added some more personal touches to his life’s canvas. A wife. Kids. But he’d always figured there was plenty of time for that.
Helluva time to be wrong. “Do it,” he said, coughing from the smoke. “And die.”
Gaines laughed. “You have no idea how right you are. Now give me your gun.”
Hawk tossed it over, then attempted to keep breathing. Not easy when his chest was still on fire, and actual flames were leaping all around them. He had no idea why he was alive but just in case it didn’t last, he kicked his foot out and again swiped Gaines’s legs from beneath him. They rolled, and he got two strong punches into his superior’s gut before he lost the element of surprise and Gaines clocked him in the jaw, and then his ribs.
Unlike Tibbs, Gaines had no soft middle. He was built like a boxer, one who trained 24/7. On a good day, he’d be a tough opponent in a fight, but tonight, with Hawk in agony, was not a good day. They fought dirty and hard, and the bitch of it was, Hawk had no idea what the hell had happened—why had Gaines come after him? He fisted his hands in Gaines’s shirt, and the material ripped, revealing…
A puckered scar over his collar bone. From a bullet. Goddamn, his proof had just literally appeared. “I did hit you that night,” he
breathed. “I did. I fucking hit you.”
“But I lived.” Panting heavily, Gaines grinned. “Guess you need more target practice, huh?”
The heat from the blast and the flames licking at them had sweat streaming into Hawk’s eyes. He couldn’t see anything but Gaines’s face and a wall of flames.
They had to finish this thing off now, one way or another, or they were both going to die. Hawk swiped more sweat from his eyes and gasped to draw air into his taxed lungs. “So running the whole division wasn’t good enough for you, you had to put illegal weapons back on the street? Why didn’t you just kill a bunch of innocent people yourself?”
Gaines’s jaw tightened. He was holding onto his shoulder with his free hand, assuring Hawk that he’d been hurt more than he wanted to show. “I’m going to kill you instead.”
“I’m not dying tonight.”
“We’re both dying tonight. Only difference is that my death’s going to be fake. Well, that and the fact that you’re going out as the bad guy.”
“You’re insane. No one will ever believe that.”
“Abby will.”
Abby. Abby? What the hell did she have to do with this?
“She’s out there, you know.” Gaines jerked his chin in the direction of the clearing.
Hawk was just stunned enough to crane his head and look, but all he saw were those flickering flames coming ever closer, so close he could feel the hairs on his arm singing. “What are you talking about? She’s in the van.” Safe and sound.
God, please let her be in the van, safe and sound.
Gaines shrugged. “Let’s just say the hero worship I’ve built up with her is going to finally pay off for me, however briefly. Along with the news that Tibbs has just discovered evidence that you’ve been running the Kiddie Bombers.” He tsked. “Shame on you.”
Hawk had no idea what the hell Gaines was talking about. He couldn’t see Abby. Hell, he couldn’t see anything beyond the smoke, but Abby wouldn’t leave the van.
And yet he remembered how she’d lost her 1-900 voice when she’d sounded worried about him.
Or so he’d assumed…
He hadn’t survived all he’d survived without seeing the ugly side of human nature. Maybe she hadn’t been worried for him at all, but for Gaines. Ah, God, the thought of her in cahoots with the bad guy put a sharp pain right through him. A new pain, over and above the others, and that was saying something.
“Once Abby realizes I’m here and that I’m missing, she’ll want to save me,” Gaines mocked. “Too little, too late, of course.”
Hawk willed his damn muscles to obey the commands his brain was sending. Get up. Kick his ass. “Abby’s done with you. She turned you in,” he improvised.
Gaines went utterly still. “Bullshit.”
“Are you willing to gamble on it?” he taunted, biding time, trying to figure a way out of this mess.
Gaines straightened to scan the horizon, still holding his shoulder as he searched for someone.
Abby?
“If that’s true, I’ll have to up my timeline.”
Oh, Christ. “You won’t find her.” Because Hawk would get to her first. He began to inch backward. He had no idea where he thought he could escape to, but it was time to go. He’d managed to get a foot away when another explosion rang out, raining down fiery fragments on top of them. The smoke was so thick Hawk couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, but he sure as hell could keep moving, and he hightailed it as fast as he could.
“Goddamn you!” came Gaines’s howl of fury at Hawk’s escape.
Using the choking smoke as a screen, Hawk dodged into the woods, past the flames and grabbed a tree for support. Christ, he felt as if he’d been run over by a Mack truck.
Sinking all the way to the spinning ground seemed like a good idea. He did manage to roll to his back, where he studied the smoke-filled sky. Though he couldn’t see anything without his night goggles, which had slid off, oh, somewhere about the time that Gaines had given him a nice one-two punch to the left kidney, he could hear sirens. Fire engines, probably cops, too. Lots of them.
Because somehow Gaines had managed to frame him for everything he’d done, which was plenty.
God, he was so screwed.
ABBY COULDN’T BREATHE. Yes, she’d just run a half mile in less than two minutes, and was now inhaling only smoke as she stared in horror at the barn, engulfed in flames, but that wasn’t why she couldn’t catch any air in her lungs.
Had she really seen Hawk shoot Gaines before the explosion? She’d left the van in such a hurry that she hadn’t taken a radio. The only personal effects she carried were her gun, cell phone and the mini credit card she had attached to it in case of emergencies. She’d already called Tibbs. He’d told her that according to Thomas, Logan had fallen from the roof and was waiting for a helicopter to airlift him to Cheyenne Memorial Hospital. No word from Hawk.
God. The whole night had blown up in their faces. She’d asked Tibbs about Gaines being here, and he said he’d check and get back to her. In the meantime, gun drawn, she tried to get closer to the barn but the heat stopped her. She couldn’t see a thing, and she couldn’t get closer.
And then her cell vibrated. “Gaines is there,” Tibbs drawled. “Apparently, he came to watch the takedown.”
“Oh, my God.” So if she hadn’t imagined Gaines, then she probably hadn’t imagined Hawk shooting him either. Still holding her phone to her ear, she took off again but immediately tripped, falling flat on her face and losing her grip on her gun. Twisting around to see what she’d fallen over, she saw a roof shingle, and…a rifle?
“Abigail?”
“I’m here, Tibbs. I’m okay.” Crawling to the rifle, she picked it up, burning her fingers. She dropped it, but she didn’t need to access her computer to guess that the serial number on this rifle would match one of the ones stolen from their storage.
Was that why Gaines had come—had he suspected the Kiddie Bombers had taken the illegal weapons for their own personal use?
And why had Hawk shot him?
“Gaines radioed his office that he’d gotten into the barn,” Tibbs told her.
“The barn is on fire.”
“Did he get out?”
“On it.” After spending a few futile minutes trying to find her gun, she checked the rifle. Loaded. She slipped the leather strap over her shoulder and took a deep breath for courage. You can still do this. All around her the flames leaped and crackled and burned brighter, spurred on by the vicious wind.
Knowing she had to hurry, she moved deeper into the woods to get around the fire, staggering to a halt at the unholy howling of a wolf that sounded far too close. Could be worse, she told herself. Could be a grizzly.
Some branches rustled and she nearly swallowed her tongue as she rushed into motion, her shoes crunching on the frozen ground as she circled back in toward the barn, determined to get to the bottom of this crazy evening.
She passed no one, and not for the first time felt unnerved by that fact. How was the place so utterly deserted? None of it made any sense.
Unless.
Oh, God. Unless it had been a setup from the start. At the realization, her feet faltered, and she slipped on the rocky terrain but caught herself in time on a tree only twenty feet from the barn. Abby wanted so badly to wake up, to know that she wasn’t losing her mind.
She thought she knew Hawk, and sometimes she’d even felt as if he knew her, which was exceptionally crazy because she’d never let him in at all. But, God, the thought of him being a bad guy was like a knife to the gut.
Again her cell phone vibrated. She flipped it open.
“Where are you?” Watkins demanded.
“I’m—”
“I know, I’ve handled it,” he said.
Abby went absolutely still. “What?”
“Nothing, talking into my radio.
Wait—radio? He was talking into his radio? But the radios were down. And now her heart was in her throat. I�
�ve handled it…those three words brought her directly back to another raid, and another extremely bad time.
They’d been the words Gaines had spoken before she’d gone in that day, and then later, she’d heard those words from the men who’d held her. They’d spoken the words handled it into a radio to some unseen boss.
No. Had to be coincidental. Of course it was.
“Where are you?” Watkins asked tensely. “Why the hell did you leave the safety of the van? I need you to get back to the safety of the van, Abby. Do you copy?”
She opened her mouth to answer him but stopped herself.
Not saying a word was stepping over a line, a big one, but she didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Because who the hell was the bad guy here? Hawk?
Or…Watkins?
God, she was losing it.
“Abby?”
Yeah. That was her. But instead of responding, she quietly shut her phone and kept hugging the tree because suddenly her legs didn’t want to hold her.
She’d seen Hawk shoot Gaines. Hawk, gun in his hand, shoot point-blank. That made it him.
Right?
Her brain hurt, physically hurt. She couldn’t process it all, or make sense of it. Who to trust? Knowing she had only herself, she pushed away from the tree and ran—
And then tripped over…oh, God…a man sprawled on the ground, far too close to the flickering flames. “Elliot—” Dropping to her knees, Abby set her hands on his back and realized her mistake instantly.
This body was one solid muscle. With a moan, he rolled to his back, keeping his eyes closed beneath dark lashes and the straight dark lines of his eyebrows, which were furrowed together.
Hawk.
4
ABBY CROUCHED OVER HAWK and checked for a pulse, which he had. Relieved, she got to her feet and peered through the trees that were providing them cover. Out there she could see the barn. The side door was open, fire ripping outward, drawn by the cold, chilly oxygen. Beyond them, she could see…oh, God…boxes and boxes of ammo. She ran back to Hawk. “Hawk.”