by Julie Miller
The last thing Hawk saw was Sarah's golden-brown hair fanning through the air as she fell. When the dizziness cleared and he could focus again, neither Sarah nor the bastard were in sight.
His head felt like a lead pendulum swinging off-kilter atop his neck. Still, he had to get to Sarah. Lying with his face in the dirt wasn't the way to do it.
Ignoring the ache in his ribs where he'd been kicked, he concentrated on sitting up and leaned his back against the brick perimeter of the fire pit. The earth spun madly, rising up toward him, then falling away. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his focus to the calm center within him, that peaceful place of balance and beauty where he turned for wisdom. In this case, he sought to clear his head of the pain and vertigo that rendered him useless.
"Sarah?" he called again, blindly seeking her out.
He heard her scream. The fearful sound pierced his soul before being silenced into a muffled cry. The bastard had his hands on her! He had her mouth! That sweet, beautiful, sexy mouth. Martín would soon violate her in other ways too unforgivable for Hawk to allow himself to imagine.
Rage boiled within him, overwhelming his attempt to regroup, bubbling up alongside a shame and doubt that drove him up to his hands and knees. If only he could stand!
"Hawk!"
Faces swarmed around him, joining the whirlpool of images spinning in and out of his line of sight. He felt hands on his shoulders and a tugging at his wrists. The girls.
"I can't get them. We need something to cut it."
They balanced him on either side and tried to free him. Hawk shook them away, needing to get to Sarah before it was too late. He tried to stand, but the bindings on his feet kept him in place. The girls tried to break his fall, but he took two of them with him when he crashed to the ground again.
"Knife." He spat out a mouthful of dirt. "In my vest. Salazar's tent."
"I'll get it."
One of them ran off and Hawk pulled himself in the opposite direction, toward the scuffling noise at the foot of the trees.
He'd fail her.
Son of a bitch! He couldn't get there in time. He couldn't help. He'd fail her.
"Sarah!" He cried out her name desperately. Frustration and helplessness weighed him down. He crawled farther, pulling himself with his hands, pushing with his feet. His sluggish movements propelled him forward in laughable slow motion. But the bear was a talisman of power. If he could get closer to Sarah, his strength would return.
Hawk was a master of cunning and gifted with second sight. But those powers would do him little good if he couldn't reach Sarah in time.
He hadn't reached Jonathan in time. His commanding officer had died.
On Tenebrosa.
The nightmare of his failure played itself out a second time.
"Help me up." The four girls struggled to drag him to his feet, then held him steady when Colleen returned with his weapon. "My feet first," he commanded.
He chomped on the inside of his lip, waiting a lifetime for the seconds to pass before he could move his legs again. He moved out when the pressure eased around his ankles. Colleen trotted alongside him, sticking the knife between his hands and trying to cut while he reeled toward the flattened break of ferns and leaves amid the trees.
"Sarah, hold on!" he shouted again, feeling the pull of her powerful spirit, praying to the Ancient Ones to watch over her until he could get to her.
The crack of a gunshot reverberated in the air, stopping Hawk in his tracks.
"Sarah?" Fear knifed through him, taking the steadying rush of blood from his head. He reached inside his shirt and clutched the sicun that hung around his neck. The smooth spirit stone felt cold and lifeless, robbing him of hope.
His shock spread through the girls, freezing them in a chain reaction behind him. But he'd been a soldier once. He'd served as spiritual leader to his tribe, a community elder to others. This wasn't the time for him to feel pain. It wasn't the place to mourn the loss of something that had never been his. It was a time for action.
Pressing a finger to his lips, he silenced their questions. He took the knife from Colleen and inched forward, swearing to wring the bastard's neck with his bare hands before ramming the knife up under his ribs.
Sarah's death was his fault. He'd add her innocent life to his guilt. But first he'd take de Vega's life as a small token of retribution. Then he'd track down the others one by one and punish them for bringing Sarah to this island of evil in the first place. He'd punish them all for destroying her.
"He's dead."
A break in the undergrowth parted and Sarah stepped out. She clutched the bloody front of her blouse together in her left fist. Martin's gun dangled from her right.
"Anybody have a safety pin?" Her gaze swung around the stunned semicircle waiting for her.
Hawk tucked his knife in a cargo pocket and rushed forward. "What happened?"
He grabbed her shoulders, slid his palms across her chest and stomach, looking for her wound. He pressed his hand to the reassuring strength of her powerful heart. She closed her fingers over his wrist and pulled him away.
"I asked you not to touch me."
Her request was understandable, in light of what she had just endured. But they weren't the words of an injured woman repelled by the touch of a man. They belonged to the sharp-tongued schoolmarm putting him in his place.
"Are you hurt?" Perplexed by her reaction, but honoring the shield she had erected around herself, he let go of her and stepped back.
"Nothing serious."
Hawk studied her from the slight distance. A flat dullness had snuffed the gleam from her golden eyes. He tried to read her aura, but the halo of light proved dim, grayish, like fog. He saw no fear in her. No relief. Nothing.
She had removed herself from the horror, shut down that part of herself that might reveal fear or disgust or anger or any other emotion. She was probably in the preliminary stages of shock. She was certainly in denial.
"It's not a safety pin, but it might help." Hawk looked down at the girl beside him. The sensitive one, Lynnette, held out a button that had been pinned to her shirt.
"Thanks." Sarah took it, handed Hawk the rifle, then proceeded to double up the front of her blouse and pin it into place. Incognizant of the dark dampness of the material clinging to her skin, she worked diligently, covering herself modestly if not completely. "There."
The slogan on the button mocked the duty the pin behind it served. I GIVE UP. WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM?
"Okay." She reached for the gun, but Hawk tightened his grip.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
She tilted her chin, and for an instant their eyes locked. The blankness in her gaze wavered a fraction. His mind glimpsed the image of that powerful Kodiak with its heart ripped out. But just as quickly as the impression hit him, her eyes shuttered and she let go.
She circled behind him to the girls, snapping orders with soft-voiced precision. "Grab your packs and whatever water you can carry. We'll hide out in the jungle until they leave. Denise, get the radio out of the mess tent. We'll call El Espanto and have someone pick us up."
"Yes, ma'am." Despite the hesitancy of confusion in Denise's voice, she and the others scattered like bees from the hive to do Sarah's bidding.
Sarah herself wasted no time. She recapped the water jug and set it next to his vest. Then she fell to her hands and knees and scavenged through the dirt and mud surrounding the fire pit. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders. With manic twists of her wrist, she knotted the toffee strands into a rope and tossed it behind her back. Uttering a breathy, frantic grunt, she dug her fingers into the soil again.
"What are you doing?" Hawk asked.
"I have to find my barrette. I have to keep this hair out of my face."
He patted the air, placating her from a cautious distance. "Sarah, honey, calm down. You'll scare the girls, acting like this."
"I don't have time for that honey stuff right now." In one jerky motion, she st
ood and spun around, advancing on him. "I have to get them out of here. Are you going to help me, or are you going to stand there and lecture me?"
A wild streak flared in her eyes, then vanished beneath a flat hazel squint. "Are you hurt?" With renewed worry, she held up her hand. "How many fingers do you see?"
Hawk gently wrapped his fingers around hers and pulled down her hand. "I've got a killer headache, but I'm going to be fine."
"You probably shouldn't sleep. Or if you do, we'll wake you every few hours to be sure you're not unconscious."
"Sarah." Concerned by the coolness of her clammy skin and the rapid-fire delivery of her words, he added a touch of steel to his soothing counselor's voice. "Your adrenaline is wearing off and shock is setting in. You need to sit down and relax before you collapse."
"Relax?" She jerked her hand away and rubbed at her palm as though wiping away his touch. "We're surrounded by thieves and perverts with guns, and you want me to relax?"
"Here's the radio." Denise lugged the leather-shrouded box onto the brick wall of the grill.
Sarah pulled out the headphones and trailed her fingers across the face of switches and dials. "Do you know how to work this?"
Hawk identified the markings as old Soviet issue, a relic discarded from Cuba or traded on the illegal market. Definitely not state-of-the-art, current technology. If that thing reached fifty miles into El Espanto, he'd wear a crew cut and deny his Pawnee heritage.
"Do you?" she repeated, distress raising her voice to a higher pitch.
He closed his fingers around Sarah's slender shoulder. "We'd have to hike that radio twenty, thirty miles closer before we'd be in range."
"Fine. Let's do it." Jerking away from his touch, she turned and slipped her arms through the radio's webbed straps and slid it on like a backpack.
Denise raised her pale gray gaze from Sarah up to Hawk. The girl's mounting fear shimmered around her face. Hawk nodded to her, conveying calm and reassurance. "Get your pack like the others."
"We've got it." Colleen handed an extra pack to Denise while the other girls gathered around them. Hawk smelled their fear in the air. He didn't need to turn to see the worry etched on their faces or ringed in their auras.
He reached behind Sarah and lifted the radio with his free hand. "Enough. We'll find another way out of this. Let it go."
She clawed at empty air, trying to retrieve the radio he set beyond her reach. The roar of heavy machinery in the jungle diverted his efforts to calm her.
"We need that!" she yelled. "Give it back!"
The unmistakable sound of diesel engines grinding through their gears too quickly shifted even Sarah's focus to the three trucks that skidded to a halt at the edge of the clearing, their motors still running. Luis Salazar jumped from the cab of the first truck, his fingers caressing the butt-end of a SIG 9mm as he strode toward them.
He motioned with the government-class weapon and Antonio leaped off the third truck. "Take Señor Hawk's gun."
With the business end of Antonio's pistol pointed at Sarah, Hawk set his rifle on the ground and made no protest when Antonio picked it up and tossed it to Raul in the back of the truck. Without moving his gaze from Luis, Hawk sensed the boy's reluctance to comply. He only hoped the teen wouldn't do anything foolish.
The timing for heroics couldn't be worse with Sarah and the girls lined up in the sights of various guns from each of the trucks.
"What are you going to do with us?" Sarah's voice cracked as she worked to control the shock that taxed her mental and emotional strength.
"Not a thing, señorita." She visibly flinched when Luis tried to charm her with a false smile. Hawk swayed a step toward her, but Salazar stopped him short. "Do not move, señor, or I will kill her. You have been an unanticipated thorn in my side since the beginning of our journey."
Without moving his gun, he faced Hawk. "I asked Martín to keep you occupied so you would not discover our plan. His attentions to your woman kept you very distracted, no?"
His woman. The phrase spread with a possessive rightness through Hawk. But the staggering depth of the connection he felt to Sarah held a bittersweet aftertaste.
All this was his fault. The gun pointed at her now, the attempted rape, both were his fault. She could have blissfully completed her field trip without being traumatized by these goons. But his appearance had altered Salazar's plans. Instead of the expedition serving as an unknowing front while he and his men pillaged Las Lagumas, Hawk's presence turned Sarah and her girls into expendable pawns. Made them vulnerable to this greedy man's deception.
Guilt warred with hatred in Hawk's gut, but he was powerless to act on either emotion. Salazar smiled, and the supreme satisfaction on his face indicated that he understood and enjoyed Hawk's helplessness. "The gunshot we heard," Luis taunted, "I suppose you took care of Martín?"
"I shot him."
Salazar cocked an eyebrow at Sarah's weak protest. He glanced at her chest, as though noticing the bloodstain there for the first time. He bowed in a mocking display of respect. "Impressive. I did not think you were strong enough to do such a thing."
Could no one else see her limitless courage?
"He tried to rape her." Sarah didn't need to justify her actions, especially to this bastard. But Hawk defended her anyway. He grabbed the tip of Antonio's gun and shoved it away from his ribs. Surprised, the smaller man made no protest. "She killed him in self-defense."
At Salazar's command, Antonio backed off, then turned and scurried back onto the truck. "Most unfortunate," said Luis. He bowed to Sarah. "Gracias. Now I have only four men to pay.
"By the way"—he shifted his aim to the radio—"you won't be needing that."
Hawk alone braced for the thundering report. Glass shattered and the radio sailed across the fire pit, landing with a crash at Lynnette's feet. The girl screamed and jumped back. The others rushed to her side, seeking and giving comfort to fight their universal terror.
Clearly outgunned, Hawk stayed his ground and watched Salazar wave the drivers into motion and scramble into the back of the last truck. Luis's reasoning made cold-blooded sense. He didn't have to do anything to ensure their silence. Abandonment this far into the jungle was as good as a death sentence.
Unless one had been trained in military logistics and survival skills. He might be rusty, but he had a damn sight more experience than his sheltered schoolmarm and her bevy of bookish girls.
This was his third chance to make things right in Tenebrosa. If he didn't get Sarah and the others safely home, then he didn't deserve any more chances.
"But Uncle, they will die if you leave them like this! I cannot live with that!"
Hawk swerved his attention to the back of the truck, loaded with crates from the tomb. Raul Salazar obviously hadn't counted on murder being a part of his uncle's scheme.
"Fine! You join them." Luis's family loyalty proved nonexistent. He snatched the rifle from the boy's grasp, flattened his boot in Raul's midsection and kicked him off. The boy landed hard and rolled away as the trucks picked up speed. Before he could climb to his feet, his uncle waved a fist. "Now I pay only three."
Lyndsay ran to Raul and helped him up, ignoring the young man's string of foreign obscenities, shouted loudly enough to drown out his uncle's laughter. Lynnette's screams faded into sobs, but her cries were joined by others. Hawk heard the repetitive chant of someone reciting prayers. Above the frenzied din, he heard Sarah pleading with them to stay calm.
When the trucks disappeared around the bend in the road, Hawk pulled his knife and dashed toward the tree line. Three men plus Salazar. Two on the last truck and only the driver on each of the others. If he worked quickly, he could pick them off one by one. Maybe he needed to take out only Salazar. Antonio, at least, possessed a weak stomach for violence and could easily be persuaded to surrender his weapon.
He'd hacked his way to an undetected spot past the next curve before he shivered with the awareness of being followed. He flattened himself on th
e ground and hid from the unseen stalker. He breathed against his hand to dispel his breath and prevent the canopy of greenery from moving and giving away his location.
Where had the fifth man come from? Maybe Martín had only been wounded. Or was Raul recklessly trying to help?
The thunder of the engines approached. Hawk could not be seen from the road, and the first truck passed him by. The prickle on his neck froze into an outright chill as the sensation behind him moved closer. He turned his knife in his grip, prepared to kill.
The second truck hit a rut and tossed mud across his shoulders and back before bouncing on by. The unnatural awareness shimmied down his spine and he stopped breathing.
Rolling over, he looked up in grim horror and saw a glimmering chimera of gold and black and prismatic colors hovering in the air above him. Sweat popped out on his top lip despite the arctic cold front seeping from the swirling miasma.
No. He mouthed the word and closed his fist around his burning sicun. A combative heat radiated from the smooth obsidian pendant.
The third truck wheezed around the bend, its engine grinding with an earsplitting roar as the driver shifted into a higher gear. The distorted air above Hawk flashed and jerked as though startled by the sound.
The spinning whirlpool stopped, and the two-dimensional being elongated itself, listening.
Hawk gave the specter human characteristics even though he knew the thing was not human. It hadn't been for centuries.
But it was alive.
It was angry.
It was full of hate.
And it sped after the retreating truck, disappearing inside beneath a slim flap of canvas.
Chapter Seven
Hawk's footsteps resounded like hoofbeats on the densely packed jungle floor. He retraced his path without the silent finesse he'd used to follow the convoy. If that thing—if he—was loose, then he would have passed right through the camp on his way to Salazar.
Luis Salazar didn't believe in the spirit world. He clearly didn't respect it or he would never have violated Meczaquatl's burial chamber. Hawk not only believed in the immortal existence of spirits, but he believed in the sentience of such beings. His own tribal history and the Christian tenets of his faith taught him of an everlasting afterlife.