Whitewood looked wary. “He knows . . . what your plans are? You trust him?”
He knows more than you do, you ninny, Alice thought. And he knows that I know enough to hang him.
“Yes, I trust him. It would be . . . most stupid of him to cross me.” She gave Whitewood a look that made it clear that warning was meant for him, as well. “And he knows it.”
“What is he going to do?”
“Whatever I tell him to do,” Alice told the lawyer pointedly.
Whatever is necessary, she added to herself. By any means necessary. It wouldn’t be the first time.
She left the lawyer stuffing papers into his briefcase and made her way slowly upstairs. It was becoming more difficult every day, and her breathing more laborious when she finally made it to her room. She hated the encroachment of age, hated the betrayal of her body when her mind was as sharp as it had ever been. But the satisfaction of remembering her past success did much to alleviate her sour mood.
No, it wouldn’t be the first time she had resorted to extreme measures to hold what was hers. And if this was to be the last time, she would at least have the pleasure of knowing that it was to thwart the final wishes of the man who had never loved her. And that the son who should never have been born would pay the price.
“AARON USED TO say the Hawks were either blessed or cursed, depending on who you asked,” Kendall said quietly. “In the old days, people said there was a special god who looked out for them. Some said it was something closer to the devil.”
She looked, as she had been doing periodically for the past hour, at Jason. He didn’t react. He just sat there, staring at the book in his lap, not reading, just staring.
He’d begun with his name, and read until he’d reached the blank pages after the list of dates that followed that script entry. He’d muttered under his breath several times while reading, and twice had looked away from the book, his hands tensing as if he was about to slam it shut. But each time, looking like a man drawn utterly against his will, he had resumed reading that list. Intently, so intently that she doubted he was even aware of his surroundings or her presence.
Then he at last actually had slammed the book shut. But he hadn’t said anything; he’d just continued to sit there, staring, his breathing strangely audible, as if he’d been running. It was after several long, silent minutes of this that she had finally begun to speak to him, in a soft, quiet tone that she hoped was soothing. She wasn’t sure it had worked; his hands had tightened around the leather-bound volume. And he looked no less tense than he had before.
She tried again, her voice even softer this time.
“Aaron said most Hawks had only heard of the book, that many thought it didn’t really exist. Hawks tend to be . . . logical. Pragmatic. They don’t deal well with unexplainable things.”
His grip on the book tightened visibly. He had beautiful hands, she thought irrelevantly. Long, agile fingers, tendons that stood out, defining the strong, masculine structure. The thin white line of a scar marked the top of his left hand, curving down from his wrist, across the back and fading away just above his ring finger. The mark only emphasized the strength there, and she wondered what it would be like to be touched by him, to know that strength was harnessed into gentleness for her.
She nearly gasped aloud at the unexpected thought; what on earth had come over her? She never indulged in silly fantasizing. Never. Not even about men as strikingly handsome as Jason West.
It must be the oddness of the whole situation, she told herself. The appearance of the book that, despite Aaron’s insistence, she had doubted really existed. The impossibility of the whole thing was affecting her. Along with, she supposed ruefully, the suggestive remarks Jason West had made. But she’d never been one to fall prey to that kind of thing. Especially when she knew perfectly well those remarks had been made mainly to intimidate her, not out of any genuine desire or attraction to her. Men like Jason didn’t pursue small, quiet women like her; tall, leggy, dramatic females were undoubtedly more his speed.
Hastily she got to her feet, turning away from him as she went on, afraid he was going to look up at any moment and catch her gaping at him, afraid he would read the knowledge of her wayward thoughts in her face. She resumed her explanation.
“Aaron was like that. He liked the heroic aspect of the Hawk legends, but he hated the magical parts. He used to scoff at them even as he told them to me. He’d laugh about it, and people who tagged anything they didn’t understand as magic.”
She turned back in time to see Jason’s hands move, as if testing the book to be sure it was still real and solid beneath his fingers. As if he was looking for some way to deny its existence. Its presence. Its appearance. Its magic.
Kendall went on, knowing he was listening, and afraid she might never get another chance to convince this man that his father truly had changed before he’d died. She stood facing him, putting every bit of earnestness she could manage into her voice.
“But when he was so ill . . . he didn’t laugh anymore. He said he’d come to believe in the book, and that it only appears when the last Hawk is in danger of becoming just that, the last.”
She hesitated, watching him, but he still didn’t move, didn’t look at her.
“Like you,” she said.
He flinched, as if she’d struck him, but he didn’t speak. And still he didn’t look at her. He just stared at the leather-bound book. She took a step toward him.
“I know this all sounds crazy,” she said, her voice even quieter now, “and impossible—”
“What’s impossible,” he said, speaking for the first time since he’d seen his name inscribed on that gilt-edged page, “is what’s in this book.”
His voice was tight, tense, like a wire pulled to the point of snapping. Kendall sat down on the edge of the bed, near Jason’s feet. He hadn’t changed his position, but the air of insouciance had vanished. His body was rigid, his jaw clenched.
“Jason,” she began, but stopped when, at last, his head came up and she saw his eyes. They had been either glacial or hot with anger since she’d met him, but nothing like they were at this moment. She’d seen Aaron in a rage over a threatened hostile takeover of Hawk Industries, and had thought then she never had and never would see a fiercer gaze. She had now.
“There are things in here that no one knows. No one.” His voice dropped on the words, but they were no less harsh because of it. “Things about me. About my mother. Things I never knew about her. Things I never told her, or anyone else, about me.”
“So it is . . . magic,” she said, thinking it ridiculous even as she said it, knowing that it was only some childishly hopeful part of her that wanted to believe.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. He gave her a look that was half scorn, half disbelief. “You want me to believe that you helped run Hawk Industries, but your best explanation of this is magic? That’s crap, and you know it. Or should.”
She didn’t react to his tone, and she had no way to answer what were soundly logical points. “Then what’s your explanation?”
He grimaced. “I don’t have one. Yet.”
The last word was ominous and, coupled with the look he gave her, almost threatening. And it poked at a sore spot within her that had had more than enough prodding since Jason West had come to Sunridge. Her chin came up.
“If you think I managed to sneak that into your room, while you were inside, then right under your nose sneak it into your suitcase, and somehow in between, also right under your nose, add an entire section of hand calligraphy to it, then perhaps it’s your theory that needs rethinking.”
He glanced at the book he still held. She saw his jaw tense, and knew he’d already, however reluctantly, realized the truth of what she’d said. She hastened to pound home the point.
“It seems you have two pos
sibilities. One you can physically disprove, and one you can’t. Perhaps I could have waltzed the book right past you into your room, but there’s no way I could have gotten it into your bag, because it was already in your car when I got here.”
“You could have followed me to the airport.”
“And put the book in your suitcase without you seeing me? And got back here before you? You don’t give yourself much credit, do you?”
He shifted uncomfortably, and she knew that she’d struck home. He wasn’t the kind of man who missed things. Like Aaron, she suspected his son missed very little of what went on around him. Under any circumstances.
“Even if that was true,” she said, “there’s certainly no way I could have added that new section. That would take time. The book wasn’t out of your sight long enough. You know that.”
His hands clenched around the book, so tightly she could hear the faint sound of his fingers moving on the leather. His booted feet came off the bed and hit the floor. He stood up. With a wild movement, he flung it across the room. It bounced off the wall with a heavy thud, barely missing the mirror over the dresser. It dropped to the polished surface of the dresser, then slid across it to fall with a more muffled thud to the floor.
“There’s another option,” he muttered. “I’m losing my mind.”
“No, Jason. You’re not going crazy.” She paused, then added softly, “Don’t try and resolve everything now. Right now you need to concentrate on Alice.”
He grimaced. “Ah, yes. The charming widow.”
“There’s no excuse for what she’s trying to do.” Kendall took a deep breath. “But I think I . . . understand her a little better now. She’s very bitter. As bitter as you are. And for the same reasons, I think.”
Jason turned on his heel to glare are her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Aaron never loved her. She was married to him for over forty years, she loved him as much as she could ever love anyone, and he never loved her back.”
Jason’s mouth twisted. “Is that what you think this is about? That my father never loved me?” He nearly spat out the word. “Grow up, Kendall. Only a fool twists himself up into knots over what passes for love in this world.”
“Then why are you so angry?”
“I’m angry,” he bit out, “because I don’t like being played for a fool. I’m angry because whatever crazy game you’re up to, you think I’m going to buy it. I’m angry because whoever did this”—he kicked at the book, lying on the floor near his feet—“has been prying into things that are no one’s business but mine. You told me whoever Aaron hired hadn’t found me yet. If I’m supposed to believe that, then explain to me how things no one else knows got into that book.”
“The same way the book got here in the first place.”
“Are we back to that? Magic?” He shook his head scornfully. “You really believe it, don’t you? How did you last as long as you did with that bastard? From everything I’ve read, he was the most hard-nosed, skeptical son of a bitch in the world.”
“He was,” Kendall agreed. “And that part of him fought with the Hawk heritage every day. I think that’s what drove him to tell me the stories. He wanted someone else to find them as absurd as he wanted to.”
“He wanted to find them absurd?”
She nodded slowly. “I think so. He couldn’t deal with that part of it. Any more than you can.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “But you can? You didn’t find them . . . absurd?”
She sighed, knowing there was no way to explain without telling this man things she didn’t want to tell him. If she could explain even then; she wasn’t sure she understood herself. But she also sensed that if she didn’t, his willingness to listen would evaporate. If it took baring her soul to a man who would no doubt laugh to get the job done, then she would do it. She would just be prepared for the ridicule when it came, she told herself.
“Maybe I didn’t want to find them absurd,” she said slowly.
“You wanted to believe in stories about magic books?”
She nearly changed her mind then, but made herself go on. She had to, she told herself. For Aaron’s sake. She was his voice now, his only chance to reach out to the son he’d never known.
“It isn’t the book or the idea of magic. Not really. It was the idea of the Hawks, a family that continued uninterrupted, over centuries, that appealed to me. I think it’s wonderful.”
“Wonderful?” He nudged the book with his toe, none too gently. “This thing is some kind of bad cosmic joke, and you think it’s wonderful?”
“I never knew about my family, never knew where I came from. My parents died before they could tell me. Maybe that’s why . . .”
Her words trailed off as he gave her a look rife with suspicion, a look she read easily.
“No, this isn’t a ploy to try and gain your sympathy.” He looked startled, and she chuckled wryly. “You looked at me just like Aaron looked at anyone he thought was trying to manipulate him. Sorry,” she added hastily when he stiffened, “I know you don’t like being compared to him, but it’s really amazing.”
He glanced at the book on the floor, and she somehow knew what he was thinking.
“But not as amazing as the resemblance between you and Joshua Hawk, is it? What does the tree say? Is he your . . . that’d be what, half a dozen or so greats before the grandfather?”
“I don’t know,” he said as he stood there, staring down at the book, and there was something in his voice that hadn’t been there before, some catch, some tightness. She couldn’t put a name to it, but it made him seem vulnerable somehow. It didn’t seem possible, but it was an impression that wouldn’t go away. And Aaron had taught her to trust her impressions.
“You didn’t look?” she said, making her voice matter-of-fact with an effort. She leaned over to pick up the book.
“No,” he said. That odd tone was still there.
“Well, let’s see then,” she said, trying to sound no more concerned than if she were simply looking something up in a dictionary. She found the page, stared again for a moment at the uncanny resemblance between Jason and the man in the picture. She wished she could read the whole story; she wanted to know about this man, and the woman beside him. But now was not the time. She turned past the picture and the story to the page where the family tree began again. She turned the book sideways and lifted a finger to begin tracing the intricate trail that began anew with the five children born to Joshua and Kathleen Hawk. A trail whose first line belonged to their firstborn son.
Jason Hawk.
Chapter Nine
HE DIDN’T KNOW where he was going. He only knew he had to get out of here. He had to get away from this room. Away from that damned book. And away from Kendall.
He’d again thrown the book across the room, realizing the absurdity of reacting so strongly even as he did it. Just as he realized the absurdity of the fact that he was running, actually running, as if to escape some fate too horrible to be met head-on. Running in a way he hadn’t run since he’d been that scared kid living by his wits on the streets of Seattle.
The whole thing was nonsense, but he was reacting as if it were real. As if Kendall’s ridiculous tales were real.
He jammed his hands into his pockets as he slowed to a walk, wishing he’d grabbed his coat. Wishing he’d been rational enough to take the car, if not rational enough to stop himself from taking off at all, into the middle of the night.
And, he thought wryly, rational enough not to go charging down the main highway, where even at this late hour cars at high speed claimed the right of way and pedestrians were, if not actually targets, at least fair game. That white sedan had nearly taken him out.
He should go back. Or at least get off this road, he thought as he heard the squeal of tires as a car mad
e a sharp turn.
What you should do is get the hell out of town, he told himself. Get yourself back home, where the only mystery you have to deal with is when and where are the salmon going to run, and why won’t that diesel on McKenna’s old trawler smooth out. Real things. Not fantasies. Not legends made up by a dying old man. Not books that materialized out of thin air and haunted you.
And sent you running away like a scared kid.
He lifted his head and looked around. If he hadn’t already known from the fresh, crisp breeze, here flowing down from the higher elevations of the Sierras unimpeded by buildings, carrying the scent of pine and fir and the coldness of snow, the gravel shoulder he stood on told him he was outside the city limits. Sunridge preferred landscaped highways, and with the Hawks as part of their tax base, they could afford it.
He sighed. If he went back, Kendall would . . . He wasn’t sure what she would do. She hadn’t tried to stop him from leaving. She hadn’t said a word, even when he’d slammed the book she seemed so enamored of against the wall.
He took a couple of steps back from the road and sat on the metal guardrail. It was cold and bit into the backs of his thighs. He thought he’d long been past this feeling of not being sure what to do, and he didn’t like revisiting it. And now that the initial reaction to the impossibility he’d just confronted had ebbed a little, he was feeling a little foolish. And he didn’t like that either.
He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there in the dark when it registered, that itchy feeling at the back of his neck, the same kind of prickly feeling he’d had coming out of the motel office. His head came up sharply and he looked around, wondering what was causing it this time. The only thing he noticed was a white sedan pulled over to the side across the road, its driver sitting motionless, appearing to be staring at something over Jason’s left shoulder.
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