Retribution (The Protectors, Book 3)

by Sloane Kennedy

  I swallowed hard and said, “That’s the correct number.”

  I’d become a consummate liar in the past several years, but it wasn’t something I would ever become comfortable with so I dropped my eyes when I answered her.

  She punched the keys on her keyboard and waited several long seconds and then shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s not going through. You’ll need to contact them yourself to try to resolve this,” she said as she shifted her chair and folded her hands on the desk. “Until then, I’m afraid I’ll need you to pay up front.”

  “What?” I asked in surprise. “I…I don’t have that kind of money,” I whispered.

  There was little pity in the woman’s eyes as she studied me. I knew what she was seeing. Worn, ripped jeans that were just a little too big for me, a faded green Henley that had stains I still hadn’t figured out how to get rid of and a tattered leather jacket that was about ten years out of style.

  “We can set you up with a payment plan, but I’ll need ten percent of the balance today.”

  I did the calculations in my head and felt my stomach drop as I realized I didn’t even have enough money saved up to cover half the upfront payment she wanted.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I…I could do a hundred dollars,” I offered desperately, though even that amount would hit me hard. I’d been on such a roller coaster of emotions since my visit to Matty’s pediatrician two days earlier, that I hadn’t even thought this far ahead.

  “I’m afraid that we’ll need the full ten percent today before you’ll be able to see Dr. Spengler. We do accept credit cards.”

  I felt bile rising in my throat as I understood what she was telling me. Disbelief coursed through me as I said, “Ma’am, Dr. Spengler said Matty needs to have these tests done today.” I looked around the small reception area as if half-expecting to find the older, silver haired doctor the pediatrician had referred us to and that we’d seen for the first time just yesterday. “We…we were here yesterday! He said he needed to do the tests to figure out the best course of treatment!”

  I knew my voice was cracking, but I couldn’t rein in my terror as the reality settled on me like a heavy, lead blanket.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Travers-”

  “Here.” The singular, rough word was accompanied by a credit card being tossed down on the desk in front of me. I glanced to my right and felt my heart seize up at the sight of Hawke settling his big frame in the chair next to mine. I automatically tightened my arms around Matty as I began scanning my surroundings for help.

  “Captain America,” Matty breathed as he shifted in my hold so he could see Hawke.

  “I’ll be right back with this,” the woman across from me said as she snatched up the credit card.

  “I’d like to pay the balance on the account with that,” Hawke said to the woman as she stood. “Use it for whatever is done today too.”

  “No,” I cut in and both Hawke and the woman shifted their attention to me. “No,” I repeated, my head shaking violently. I turned to tell Hawke to get the hell away from us, but then I felt Matty’s warm breath against my neck as he let out a tired sigh.

  “Daddy, I’m tired,” he whispered.

  Except he wasn’t just tired. He was so much more than that. I glanced helplessly at Hawke and then down at the mop of brown hair beneath my chin. I closed my eyes and forced back the tears that threatened to fall. I managed to nod my head, but I wasn’t sure if anything happened until a good minute passed before I heard the woman return.

  “I’ll let Dr. Spengler know you’re here,” I heard her say.

  Hawke murmured “thank you” and then I felt his hand at my elbow. I forced my eyes open and saw that the woman was on her phone, seemingly uncaring about the events that had just unfolded.

  I managed to pull myself to my feet, but I didn’t miss Hawke’s fingers brushing the back of my arm as he guided me towards a couple of chairs in the far corner of the waiting room. I hated that I noticed it at all. I hated that despite my fear of him, his touch still felt better than Roger’s had the night he’d tried to kiss me. I hated that I wanted him to keep touching me.

  But more than anything, I hated that I would have given anything in that moment to feel his arms close around me and tell me that everything was going to be okay.

  I shoved the ridiculous thought away and pulled free of his hold. He released me without hesitation, but I still felt like a prisoner. Matty had gone quiet against me again and I managed to shift him enough so my arm didn’t feel like it was going to fall off my body. As I got him resettled, I glanced at Hawke. I was looking for the gun, but didn’t see it anywhere. Which meant nothing since the shirt he was wearing was untucked and I knew the gun could be at his back.

  Hawke wasn’t a huge guy, but his bearing was. Everything about him screamed danger even as he sat casually in the hard waiting room chair. But I knew I was the only one who saw it because he was so relaxed and at ease that it seemed like he belonged there…with us. I already knew him to be a couple inches taller than me and I guessed he had at least fifty pounds on me. And if his bulging biceps and broad chest were anything to go by, it was all muscle. Tribal tattoos covered his upper arms and disappeared under the navy blue T-shirt he was wearing. His jeans fit snugly across his thick thighs and he was wearing a pair of black steel-toed boots.

  I hadn’t missed the burn scars on the right side of his face the night he’d broken into my place, but in the light of day, I finally had a chance to study them. The raised, pink flesh covered almost his entire right cheek and jaw and went down his neck which had me thinking the scars might continue lower. The disfigurement should have made him more frightening, but there was something innately beautiful about them. Like they were proof that he’d lived through something that very few people could.

  I continued to steal looks his way as I took in the rest of him. Strong, straight nose, wide, firm lips that I knew would be softer than they looked, glittering, unyielding dark blue eyes and closely cropped black hair. The crow’s feet around his eyes had me guessing he was older than me by at least ten years which put him in his mid-thirties. I also couldn’t ignore the gold band on the ring finger of his left hand.

  I was still studying him when he suddenly looked at me and I tore my eyes away from him. I could feel his gaze burning into me as I examined the thin, utilitarian carpet beneath my feet. I was too overwhelmed by everything that was happening so I did what I always did when I needed to escape and began focusing on the things in the waiting room that no one else probably even noticed. The shadows cast by the harsh overhead lights, the angles and planes of the furniture in the room…

  “Mr. Travers.”

  I snapped out of my reverie as soon as the nurse called my name and I quickly jumped up. But I didn’t make it even a step before Hawke’s fingers closed around my lower arm, his touch sending sparks along my nerve endings at the same time that a cold fear settled in my gut. I forced myself to turn to look at him.

  “I’ll wait here,” he said.

  I nearly sighed in relief as I began to plan my next steps. I’d assumed he would insist on accompanying us and I’d have to try to find a discreet moment to signal the hospital staff for help, but all I had to do was make it a couple more minutes until we were free of his line of sight and then I’d tell the nurse to call 911. I managed a nod, but when I took a step forward, he didn’t release me and I held my breath.

  But with his next words, all my plans died an instant death.

  “Whatever you’re thinking of doing…don’t,” he said calmly before glancing briefly at Matty. His steely eyes returned to mine and then his mouth was near my ear, his warm breath skittering across my skin. “Unless you want everyone to know he’s not your kid.”

  Chapter Three

  Hawke

  Tate didn’t move after I’d spoken, even after the nurse called him for the third time. I released the hold I had on his arm, ignoring the zaps of energy that were surging through my fing
ers and up my arms and placed my hand on his lower back to give him a little shove forward. He finally got moving, but I didn’t miss the way his breathing had ratcheted even higher than it had been after I’d dropped down in the seat next to him at the check in desk a few minutes earlier. As he walked away from me, I noticed Matty’s tired eyes on me where his chin was resting on Tate’s shoulder. He gave me a small wave and I had to steel myself not to return it. I wasn’t here to make friends with the kid. I was here for one thing and showing the little boy or his father any kind of compassion would make what I had to do all the harder.

  But as Matty’s eyes stayed on mine as they neared a doorway leading out of the waiting area, I couldn’t stop myself from lifting my hand slightly to acknowledge the child. He smiled just before Tate carried him through the door and I felt my heart constrict painfully as I sat back down in the chair. I could have gone with Tate for whatever tests the kid needed to have, but I’d held back because I didn’t want to know what was going on with him. I had no room for pity.

  Liar.

  My wife’s whisper in my ear unnerved me as it always did, but I also felt a pang of warmth go through me. I wasn’t a religious guy by any means, but on the rare occasion that I did hear Revay’s voice calling me on my bullshit, I welcomed it. Because she had always been the only one brave enough to tell me when I was full of it. And while I wasn’t so far gone that I actually believed it was her talking to me, I liked that my subconscious used her voice to remind me when my internal bullshit meter was pinging.

  My hope had been to not have to deal with the intriguing Tate Travers or his cute kid again, but I’d suspected even as I’d left his apartment more than a week ago that things wouldn’t be so easy. My desperation to confront Buck and Denny Buckley had led me straight from the run down area of San Francisco that Tate lived in to the dusty, remote town of Lulling, Texas. The underground group I worked for employed a young hacker named Daisy Washburne to gather information on potential marks and I’d called her on the way to Lulling to see what she could dig up on Buck and Denny. In short, she’d found nothing…absolutely nothing. Both men had been living off the grid for some time so I had no address, no recent pictures, no nothing to use to find either man. It was beyond frustrating and I’d known the second I rolled into the tiny, insular town, that I wouldn’t get anywhere by asking the residents questions – all I would do was give the murderers ample warning that I was on their trail. So I’d reluctantly turned around and headed back to San Francisco and the only lead I had to work with.

  On the way, I’d asked Daisy for any information she could give me on Tate, but like his father and brother, he didn’t appear to exist because there was no record of him anywhere. Which led me to believe he was still living off the grid for a reason. And after I’d had Daisy check why Tate had submitted his DNA to a private lab for testing, I’d suspected what that reason was.

  Several hours passed before the door Tate had disappeared through earlier opened and I stood as Tate walked through it. My first thought was that the stricken look on his face was because of me, but then I noticed that he wasn’t even looking at me. His face had gone deathly pale and each step he took looked wobbly and uneven and I instantly stepped forward so I could catch him and Matty if he lost his footing.

  “Let me take him,” I finally said when Tate teetered back and forth as I reached him. He looked at me as if finally seeing me for the first time and then he shook his head weakly.

  “Then at least sit down so you don’t fall,” I murmured as I motioned to a chair.

  “No,” he whispered. “I…I need to get him home. The doctor said he needs to rest…”

  Tate tried to brush past me, but I put my hands on his arms to stop his forward motion. “Tate,” I said as gently as I could. His red rimmed eyes lifted to meet mine and I knew he’d been crying at some point because his eyes hadn’t looked that way when he’d walked away from me. My stomach fell as I realized what that meant. “Let me take him,” I repeated softly as I held him in place. I had no idea why I hated that it was only the fabric of his shirt I was feeling beneath my fingers and not his skin.

  “Here, you can hang on to these,” I said as I tugged my car keys from my pocket along with my phone and wallet. I offered him the items and then realized how ridiculous it was to think he’d hand me his child in exchange for them.

  Tate shook his head, but after I’d put everything back in my pocket, he studied me for a long time and then said, “Just for a minute.”

  It was a testament to how tired the man was. I nodded and carefully took Matty from him. I hadn’t been sure if Matty was asleep or not, but I had my answer as soon as I pulled him against my chest. His eyes were closed and I could tell from how puffy they were that Tate hadn’t been the only one in tears at some point. His warm breath fanned across the skin of my neck and his limp body made carrying him awkward.

  “They sedated him,” Tate mumbled as he pulled a blanket from Matty’s backpack and worked it around the boy’s body. Feeling Tate’s fingers brush against me as he tucked the blanket in between Matty’s body and mine did strange things to my insides…things I hadn’t felt in a really long time…things I didn’t want to think too much about.

  Tate and I began walking towards the exit and I didn’t miss the way he stuck right next to me and kept glancing my way. He also kept his hand on one of Matty’s shoes as if that would somehow deter me from running off with the kid. Even without the burden of carrying Matty, Tate’s pace was still slow and it took us more than ten minutes to finally reach my car in the parking lot next to the hospital. Tate hadn’t even realized our destination until I fished around my pocket for the keys and unlocked the sedan.

  “No,” Tate immediately said as he tried to take Matty from me. I used my body to maneuver Tate back against the car and he instantly ceased his struggles – probably so he wouldn’t wake his son up. With Matty’s body blocking him on one side and my free arm caging him against the car on his other side, Tate began breathing erratically as he realized I was once again in control. It was exactly the position I wanted to be in, but seeing Tate’s fear for his child had me second guessing myself and the reason I’d returned to San Francisco.

  Don’t.

  I closed my eyes as the soft word penetrated my brain. But for once, I ignored the voice and said, “Get in the car, Tate.”

  The betrayal in Tate’s eyes was instant and sharp and bothered me more than I wanted to admit. But I shoved away the urge to gentle my stance and stepped back enough to allow Tate to open the door. He glanced around the empty parking lot and then at me before finally closing his eyes and reaching behind him to grab the door handle. The second he was in the back seat, I handed Matty to him and closed the door. I was glad when Tate didn’t try to get back out as I climbed into the front seat. Instead, he worked to get Matty buckled in and then he sat next to him and drew him protectively against his side.

  We didn’t speak as I pulled the car into traffic and to my complete surprise, Tate fell asleep within ten minutes of leaving the hospital. But his arm never left Matty’s small shoulders as he kept him close. I used the time to study Tate with quick glances in the rearview mirror. Although it had only been a little over a week since I’d last seen him, he looked even worse than he had when I’d confronted him that first night. His face had a gauntness to it that made me wonder if he was steadily losing weight and there were dark smudges under his eyes suggesting he hadn’t been sleeping well. Even in sleep, his entire countenance was drawn up tight with tension and I doubted that it was only because of my presence.

  Another wave of guilt went through me as I forced my attention back to the road. Tate didn’t stir even after I pulled the car to a stop in front of his apartment building. It wasn’t until I opened the door and gently shook him awake that he reacted like a startled animal and immediately wrapped his arms tighter around Matty and used his body to cover the still sleeping boy. I swallowed hard as the memory of trying to wrap
myself up like that washed over me. I’d been considerably younger, but age wasn’t a factor when your self-preservation instincts kicked in. As afraid of me as Tate was, I suspected his reaction in that moment hadn’t been about me at all.

  “Tate, we’re here,” I said quietly, but I didn’t put my hands back on him.

  Tate didn’t move for several long seconds and I didn’t rush him because I knew he needed to get control of himself; never an easy task when you were scared shitless about where the next blow would hit you. It was several long seconds before Tate finally looked over his shoulder at me and I could see the remnants of sleep still held him because he blinked his eyes rapidly as if trying to bring me into focus. Then he checked to make sure Matty was okay before finally looking around at our surroundings.

  “What…what are we doing here?” he asked as he began the process of unbuckling Matty. As he climbed out of the car, Matty in his arms, he said, “We…we don’t live here anymore.”

  “I know,” was all I said as I went to the trunk of the car. I kept my eyes on Tate as I pulled both his duffle bag and mine from it. His eyes fell on his bag as I came back around the car.

  “You were in our motel room?” he managed to get out.

  “That place was a shit hole,” I said as I once again put my hand on Tate’s arm to get him moving. “Makes this place look like the fucking Ritz,” I added as we walked up the walkway towards the apartment building.

  Tate didn’t say anything even once we were inside his apartment. He just carried Matty to the little boy’s room and then shut the door. I didn’t follow him because I knew there was no place for him to go in the windowless room. I used the time to search out the contents of Tate’s kitchen and shook my head at the nearly bare cabinets. The fridge had a few items in it, but since I knew Tate had likely left the apartment within minutes of my leaving the week before, I didn’t trust that the food was any good. I searched out my phone to find the closest pizza delivery place and ordered some food. I gave Tate a few more minutes and then went to Matty’s room to find him. The door wasn’t locked so I quietly pushed it open.