Gawain (Knights of Excalibur Book 1)

by Hanley, Donald

“I need you to follow someone.”

  She made a dismissive sound. “You don’t need me for something like that.”

  “Actually I do.” He gave her an outline of the situation. but he suspected all she heard were the names Butler and Hawk.

  “Them, I will follow to the ends of the earth,” she snarled.

  “I thought you might. How is your father doing?”

  “He’s still weak but he will recover,” she said with a disdainful sniff. “He is very hard to kill, that one.” Her studied indifference was marred by the worried tremble in her voice.

  “All right. Start at the hospital, you might be able to pick up Butler’s trail from there. Hawk was there a little while ago, he might still be there.”

  “Bon.”

  She hung up before he could say anything else. Lionel set his phone back down on the desk, hoping he hadn’t just made a terrible mistake.

  10

  Hawk scrolled through Lucas’s emails, skimming through the text in each one before moving on. Most of them were typical company notices, along with a handful of personal messages from his friends and acquaintances. None of them so much as hinted at what Lucas was doing in Boston and he said so to Nim.

  “Keep looking,” she sighed. Even over the phone, she sounded tired. “It’s all we have unless he decides to contact us.”

  “Or ends up in another hospital.”

  “Let’s try to stay positive, Gavin. How’s Nick Johnson?”

  “He’s fine, other than the concussion. His wife came to get him and bring him something to wear.” Lucas’s outfit was too small for him, which meant that Lucas was walking around in baggy clothes.

  “And he has no idea why Lucas hit him?”

  “He says Lucas just woke up suddenly, got out of bed, and decked him with a right cross he never saw coming.”

  “Well, we’ll make sure he’s compensated for what happened. He was supposed to protect Lucas, not substitute for him.”

  Hawk grunted and took another bite from his cheeseburger, chewing stolidly even though it was cold now. The restaurant was crowded but his booth was in the back where no one could listen in or peek over his shoulder, not that there was anything to see on the tablet. He was starting to think his trip to see Tam Nguyen had been a complete waste of time. Maybe if he’d gone straight to the hospital, Lucas would still be there.

  “Have you traced Johnson’s credit cards yet?” he asked. Lucas also had his wallet and keys, although his car was still in the hospital parking lot. Hawk supposed Lucas didn’t know where it was, or maybe he thought it would be too easy to spot. Lucas also had Johnson’s revolver. Hawk wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

  “We have an alert on his corporate card. We’ll have to ask the police to track his personal cards, but I’m not sure we want them involved.”

  “They’re already involved,” Hawk pointed out. “I just spent half an hour with them at the hospital explaining why it wasn’t my fault.” He took a gulp from his coffee cup. It was cold too and the waitress was nowhere in sight.

  “True. Perhaps we should make use of them then. They have more resources on hand to conduct a search. His victory over Mr. Johnson aside, Lucas isn’t well. We need to find him quickly.”

  “What about the Quest?”

  “There’ll be other Quests.” Nim didn’t sound like she was all that sure about that. “Lucas is more important.”

  “All right, I’ll keep at it.” The problem was, Hawk had absolutely no idea where to look.

  “Thank you, Gavin. We called Ben and told him what happened. He’s flying in from London as soon as he can find a flight so he’ll be able to help you when he gets there. The others are tied up with other assignments. I’m sorry we can’t do more.”

  “I don’t think numbers are going to help much,” Hawk told her sourly. “If Lucas needs help, he’ll contact us. If not –” Hawk shrugged. “We may just have to let this play out.”

  Nim was silent for a while and he couldn’t tell if she agreed with his assessment and didn’t like it or she was trying to think of a diplomatic way of telling him to keep his pessimism to himself. “Do what you can, Gavin,” she said finally, “but be careful. If you’re right about Savard –”

  “Don’t worry about Savard,” he growled. “I’ve dealt with him before.”

  “I seem to recall you coming away with a few missing pieces that last time.”

  “They grew back. Let me finish going through this thing. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “All right. Good luck, Gavin.”

  “What did I tell you about wishing me luck?”

  “Goodbye, then,” she said, and he was glad to hear a hint of a laugh in her voice. He hated seeing her upset or unhappy. It happened far too often these days.

  “Goodbye.” He hung up and rubbed his face with his hands. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night and it was finally catching up with him.

  He went through the other apps on the tablet one by one, starting with the web browser. Lucas’s search history had been cleared and Hawk wondered if there was any way to retrieve it from the depths of the tablet’s memory. Maybe he needed to head back to the Boston office after all.

  Most of the other apps were games of various sorts, no doubt just something to keep Lucas’s mind occupied whenever he had a few minutes to kill. His ebook reader had an extensive collection of novels, mostly historical fiction judging from the titles. The one he was in the middle of reading, The Third Futile Battle, gave Hawk a moment of pause. He opened it and saw that Lucas was about halfway through.

  On the morning of the second day, he read, he stood upon the battlefield and listened to the cries of the soldiers and the clashing of steel somewhere to the north. A ghostly fog rose up from the broken ground, hiding the bodies of the slain from his eyes, and the air hushed, as if the world was waiting for him to complete his task. But he could not do it, for he had no inkling of what that task might be.

  The hair on the back of Hawk’s neck stood up and he shivered despite the warmth of the restaurant. Why does this sound so familiar? he wondered uneasily. I’ve never read this book before. He closed the app, making a mental note to ask Nim if she recognized the story. Maybe Lucas had mentioned it when he told her about the Quest.

  Hawk flipped through the rest of the programs, finding nothing that gave even a hint of what Lucas was up to or where he might have gone. The last one, some sort of sketchbook for artists, just showed a page with a doodle on it, sort of like the base of a green table lamp, or maybe a mound of sherbet. He tilted the tablet left and right dubiously, trying to figure out what it was supposed to represent and why in the world Lucas would bother drawing it, but nothing came to mind. He was about to close it and shut off the tablet in frustration when he noticed the small indication at the top of the screen: 5/5.

  Curiously, he swept his finger to the right across the screen. The new image that appeared was instantly recognizable and Hawk sat back in surprise. Jagged black lines scribbled all over the page took on the shape of a snarling animal with wild fur and teeth like daggers, rising on its hind legs with its arms and claws outstretched. The beast’s eyes blazed bright yellow, the only color in the portrait, promising rage and pain and death. He’d seen eyes like that before and a shiver swept down his back.

  “Fuck,” he muttered to himself. Lucas drew this before he went out and got himself mauled. Did he know Savard was after him? If he did, why didn’t he stay someplace safe or call for help? Shit.

  The third picture of the set was drawn in sharp black lines on top of a puddle of grays, as if Lucas had spilled dirty water on the page and then outlined the result with a felt marker. The main shape was a smooth oval with a smaller one in the center, but the shading made it look three dimensional, like a thin disk with a bulge in the middle. Small markings curved around the outer edge of the disk, almost like letters, but they didn’t form any words Hawk recognized. Even zooming in on the image failed to reveal
any secret information. They were just random tick marks. He let out his breath in a frustrated huff and moved on.

  The next image was just as inscrutable as the lamp and the disk, a rough green square with criss-crossing red and yellow lines. “Jesus, Lucas,” he muttered to himself. “Couldn’t you at least have labeled them or something?” He flicked his finger across the screen one more time and blinked. This one was another portrait, but as different from the beast as anything could be.

  It was a woman, standing with her back to Hawk. She was clad in a long gown of white, just a few pale lines to suggest the soft flow of the fabric. Her hair draped across her shoulders and down to her waist, a cascade of rich brown highlighted with gold. Her head was turned just enough to reveal the curve of her cheek and the corner of her mouth, but something about the gentle strokes outlining her face made her look worried or perhaps sad.

  Is she the Quest Lucas is on, Hawk wondered, gnawing on his lip, or is she someone who can help him on his Quest? How the hell is he supposed to find her from this? It was impossible to judge the woman’s age or her height, let alone recognize her if their paths ever crossed, but this was clearly someone important to Lucas.

  “Oh, that’s so pretty!” Hawk started, scowling at the waitress leaning over the table to look at the tablet. For a large woman, she was surprisingly quiet on her feet. “Did you draw that?”

  “No, a friend did.” He quickly blanked the screen and pushed the tablet aside.

  “Well, he’s very good. Can I freshen up your cup for you?” She waved a steaming carafe of coffee over his nearly-empty mug.

  “Yeah, sure.” He pushed it forward and she filled it to the brim, making him wonder if he’d be able to pick it up without scalding his fingers.

  “And are you done with that?” Half of his burger and most of the fries littered the plate. “I can bring you a dessert menu if you’d like.”

  “No, I’m done. Just bring me the check.”

  “All righty, hon.” She gathered the scattered utensils and the stray fries that had escaped onto the table and cleared everything away. “I’ll be back in two shakes.”

  Hawk just grunted as she wandered away, already returning to the sketchbook and flipping back and forth through the images, trying to discern what they meant. The beast was pretty obvious, given what happened to Lucas, but the others were a complete mystery.

  Who is this woman? What does she have to do with Lucas? Did he find her already? He tried to figure out when the picture had been drawn, but the app didn’t seem to store that information. Lucas could have drawn it yesterday or a month ago, for all he knew.

  He flipped past the green square and scowled at the disk. It looks like a hubcap, he thought, or a UFO. Have we ever had a Quest that involved aliens? He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. I really need to get some sleep, I’m not thinking straight. Why the hell didn’t Lucas write a description or a title or something useful on this?

  He tilted his head back and forth and tried to imagine looking at the object straight on. It’s circular with something set in the middle. Does the gray color mean it’s metal, maybe iron or silver? Maybe it’s a piece of jewelry. A brooch or a pin, maybe? Is this what he’s looking for? There was no way to tell. Only Lucas know what the picture represented.

  Hawk skipped past the beast to the last one Lucas had drawn before his demise. He stared at it sourly but it was still just a half dozen curved lines shaded green. Is the color green significant? That’s pretty much the only real color in any of these, other than Savard’s eyes.

  He went back to the square. It was the same shade of green but the two images looked nothing alike. Is this a map or a logo or just some random scribble? God damn it, Lucas. Help me out here.

  “Here you go, hon.” The waitress appeared out of nowhere and laid a slip of paper face down on the table. “Just pay up front when you’re ready.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Come back any time,” she said cheerfully, “and bring your friend.” She nodded at the tablet. “Tell him I said he’s a very good artist.”

  “Thanks, I will,” Hawk told her grimly. If I ever see him again.

  “So what’s that supposed to be?” She pointed to the square with a pudgy finger.

  Hawk was about to tell her to fuck off and leave him alone, but he paused and reconsidered. He pushed the tablet across the table towards her. “Does this remind you of anything?”

  The waitress picked it up and perused the image, tilting her head back and forth with her lips pursed in thought. “Is this supposed to be one of those magic eye things? You know, the ones that show a picture if you look at it just right?” She tried peering at the image with just her right eye and then with her left. “I never could get the hang of those.”

  “No, it’s just a regular picture,” he sighed. He held out his hand for the tablet and she gave it back with a shrug.

  “Sorry, hon,” she said. “The only thing that reminds me of is my husband’s pajamas.”

  Hawk blinked at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, that striped pattern. Plaid. Carl’s is blue and red, mostly, but it’s the same idea.”

  “I see,” he said absently, his mind already racing ahead. “Thank you.”

  “No worries, hon. See you around.” She ambled off to see to the rest of her customers as Hawk carefully laid the tablet down and drummed his fingers on the table. Then he pulled open the web browser again and searched for Scottish tartans.

  He was completely unprepared for just how many different tartan patterns there were, not even considering all the modern variants. There didn’t seem to be an official list of tartans and the few compendiums he found were sorted by clan name, not the pattern. The best he could do was find a site with tartan samples and scan for a match, flipping back and forth between the web and the sketchbook to remind himself what he was looking for. It didn’t take long for everything to start blurring together.

  “Green, two yellow stripes, one red stripe,” he muttered to himself as he scrolled through a seemingly endless catalog of cross-hatched colors. Green with two red stripes and two yellow lines belonged to Blackstock. Munro had red with green and yellow stripes, and the Buchanan clan claimed green with wide red and yellow stripes. He was about to give up and ask Nim to get one of her researchers to figure it out when his finger stopped on a tartan with two yellow stripes beside a red stripe over a dark green background. It was a perfect match. He checked the clan name underneath the photo.

  “Fuck me.” He stared at the tablet in disbelief for a good minute before switching back to the sketchbook to double check. It was identical to the tartan in the catalog. Then he flipped back to the woman’s portrait and peered at it, wishing he could somehow get her to turn around. Is that her?

  Hawk pulled out his phone and hit redial, tapping his fingers impatiently as he waited for Nim to answer. He was about to give up when she finally responded.

  “Sorry, I was on another call. Have you found something?”

  “We’ll know soon enough. I need you to find an address for me.”

  “An address? Whose?”

  “Patricia Macmillan.”

  11

  Trisha closed her door and stamped her feet on the tiled entryway, trying to get some feeling back in her toes. The walk from the bus stop wasn’t all that far, but the temperature outside was dropping quickly now that the sun had set. She unwound her scarf and shrugged off her coat, hanging both on the hooks on the wall.

  “Marco?” she called. “Are you awake?” The house was silent, but Marco didn’t usually make much noise unless he was hungry. She continued into the living room and dropped her purse on the couch. He wasn’t in his usual spot on the comfy chair either.

  She headed upstairs, tugging off the elastic that kept her hair out of her face, and stepped into the bathroom, starting the water running in the tub and adding a generous dollop of bubble stuff. She needed a good long soak, both to thaw out and to ease
the tension in her neck and shoulders after her day.

  In the bedroom, she kicked off her shoes and stripped off her scrubs, tossing both articles into the overflowing basket by her dresser to be dealt with on Laundry Day. Her bra followed them and she rubbed the welt it made under her breasts as she stuffed her arms into her fluffy purple robe, knotting it tightly around her waist. The room was a bit chilly but heating oil was expensive and it didn’t make sense keeping an empty house warm most of the day.

  A querulous noise sounded down at floor level and she got down on her hands and knees to peer under her bed. “There you are!” Marco blinked at her sleepily, baring his fangs with an impossibly huge yawn and kneading the carpet with his claws. “Come on out, sleepyhead. Keep Mommy company.” Marco considered his options and closed his eyes again, resting his fuzzy chin on his curled paws. “Fine, be that way.”

  She headed back to the bathroom and shut off the water just as the bubbles reached the top edge of the tub. She tested the temperature with her fingers and let the cold water run for a few more seconds while she searched for a clip to keep her hair up. When everything was finally perfect, she shucked her ankle socks and panties and tossed her robe across the toilet seat, slowly easing herself into the bath and feeling the warmth seep into her muscles. She sank low enough to rest her head on the back of the tub with her chin just above the bubbles and closed her eyes with a thankful sigh.

  She lay there almost motionless, listening to the faint crackle of the bubbles as they dried and burst and the low rumble of the furnace coming through the air duct. She almost wished she’d turned on some music, but it was more peaceful this way. If there was some way to make sure she didn’t drown, she could easily fall asleep here, although the water would probably cool off pretty quickly.

  “Mrow.”

  Trisha pried one eye open. “Marco,” she called. It sounded like he was in the hallway.

  “Mrow.”

  “Marco.”

  “Mrow.” He was closer now. It was too bad he couldn’t say “Polo”. That would have made the game a lot more fun.