A good thing, he thought as he picked up one more book to add to his stack, since by the time he was sixteen he’d been on the run, with no time for reading or anything else except staying alive and one step ahead of the authorities who were determined to slap him in a house with strangers who got paid by the state to take care of him.
They’re not always so bad.
Kendall’s words came back to him, but he quashed them determinedly. He wasn’t going to let an obviously practiced ploy for sympathy get to him. He wasn’t going to let her get to him. No matter how good she was at pulling strings he’d never even known he had.
He set the pile of books on a table and pulled back the nearest chair.
I lived in seven different foster homes from the time I was eight years old. I shared a room with three other kids, five cats, an incontinent dog, and the occasional cockroach. I’ve slept in an attic, a laundry room, and a garage.
Was it true? Had that really been her life? And had she come out of that with enough determination to get herself through college, on her own? So much drive that she had landed herself in the hospital?
No, he told himself. It’s all part of the game, part of the con, you know that.
So for once in your life, why don’t you just shut up about things you know nothing about?
Damn that woman! Why did everything she’d ever said to him keep running through his mind like an endless loop? And what the hell had happened today? He’d meant to show her how wrong she was. That he wasn’t some idiot adolescent at the mercy of his hormones. He wasn’t controlled by whoever made his body come to attention.
And she’d certainly done that.
Heat shot through him at the memory of how swiftly he’d reacted to her. Something low and deep inside him tightened again, with an erotic fierceness. He nearly groaned aloud at the strength of it. He didn’t know what had happened to him when he’d kissed her, what had made him lose track of his intentions. It wasn’t her expertise; if anything, she’d been tentative, unpracticed. She hadn’t even seemed to realize the effect she’d had on him. All she would have had to do was glance down and she would have known his nonchalance was nothing but a very shaky pretense; he’d been hard as an Elliott Bay fireboat hose at full pressure.
But she hadn’t looked. She hadn’t been able to even look at his face, let alone anything else.
But her seemingly natural response had set him on fire. And the memory of it now threatened to send him racing back to her like the kind of boy he’d just sworn he wasn’t. Racing back to take up where he’d left off, with another hot, searing kiss, and go from there. Go a long way from there, for a very long time, until they were both exhausted.
He battled it, trying to summon up that image of Kendall with his father that had turned him so cold before. But somehow he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t picture it, couldn’t quite believe it anymore. He’d been wrong about that. What that meant in relation to everything else she’d told him, he didn’t know. And didn’t want to think about, not now.
With an effort he resented even as he made it, he shoved her out of his mind. He had work to do, and there was every chance it would resolve the problem of Kendall Chase as well as the book he couldn’t seem to rid himself of.
He grabbed the first Hawk reference book on the stack and flipped it open. He was startled for a moment; he’d known Hawks had been in Sunridge forever, but he hadn’t known they’d actually founded the town itself. Maybe Aaron really had owned the town, literally. He began to scan the pages.
Hours later he sat there, stunned, a huge stack of books beside him, and an impossibility in front of him in the notes that filled several pages of the notepad he’d bought at the convenience store across from the motel.
Everything matched.
He’d checked every recorded date, every event that had been listed in that damned book that seemed to be haunting him. He’d checked the microfilm copies of the local newspaper back to the turn of the last century, and found independent verification of the historical occurrences. He’d found records of births and deaths that exactly matched the intricate family tree. He’d used every resource the surprisingly well-equipped little library had, and hadn’t been able to find one variation except a disparity of two days on the recording of the deed that had begun the town of Sunridge.
He’d verified that most of the material had been compiled by separate researchers and scholars, only a few of whom had been commissioned by the Hawks themselves, and only one by Aaron. He’d even checked the data against other outside sources, encyclopedias, other history books, old magazines, anything he could find here.
Of course, he told himself. They would use this material to put the book together in the first place. No wonder it matched. This wasn’t some slipshod plan; they would be very careful. He hadn’t gained anything by this, except to fall further behind back home. He usually worked on Saturdays, catching up on all he hadn’t been able to get to during the week. Now he’d have that to do, plus Friday’s work, when he got back.
Irritated at himself, he began to put the books back on the shelves. A slim volume with gold lettering on the spine fell over as he replaced the last book, and he reached to set it back. Hawks at War, it read. He picked it up, intrigued by the rather militant title.
It was just what the title suggested, a compendium of Hawks who had fought or served in various wars throughout documented history. Compiled by a history professor Jason suspected had been bankrolled with Hawk money, it began with a foreword that suggested they’d been fighters and warriors long before documented history as well. The picture of Jenna Hawk and her warrior, Kane, flashed into his mind. Now there was a pair you could be proud to claim as ancestors, he thought. Tough as they had to be, yet still able to look as if the world began and ended with each other.
His mouth twisted at the fanciful thought. But they were a striking pair, he had to admit that. They stood out. Like Joshua Hawk and his Kathleen. At that thought, he flipped the pages, wondering. Stopping at the section on the Civil War, his eyes widened at the number of names, at the Hawks who had died, on both sides. Fathers, sons, brothers, cousins. And at the end was a footnote, indicating that the only Hawk survivors, Edgar and his very young grandson Joshua, headed west after the war, as many others had.
Jason glanced over his shoulder at the baffling volume that still sat on the table. If it were to be believed, Joshua Hawk had become the man known simply as The Hawk, a notorious figure in his time, a gun for hire who had lived the kind of life legends were made of.
And who had, of course, Jason thought cynically, been changed by the love of a good woman.
He slapped the book shut and shoved it back on the shelf with a rather fierce motion. The Hawks, he muttered inwardly, spent far too much energy on love. The most vastly overrated emotion on earth. Love made you weak. It made you soft. His mother had been living proof of that; she’d been a strong, determined woman, a woman to be admired for what she’d done against very difficult odds. But she’d had that weak spot. That one vulnerability. She loved a Hawk.
Two of them, he supposed. For he couldn’t deny any longer who he was.
And only now did he think of what it must have done to his mother to look at him and see the image of the man who had fathered him. Every day she had had to confront the evidence of what her folly had cost her. Yet never had her love for him wavered; never had he been made to feel culpable for their situation.
He felt his throat tighten. She had been so strong, but her weakness had been Aaron Hawk. Just as Aaron had been Kendall Chase’s weakness, her blind spot. What the hell was it about that old man that had made two strong, bright, beautiful women look past his arrogance and see . . . what? What had they found beneath the surface that had made them stay? That had made them both insist there was so much more to the man than the imperious front he presented to the w
orld?
Wearily he sat back down in the chair. For a long time he just sat there, staring at the book with the gilded pages, thinking. He could understand his simple curiosity; he’d spent a lot of time growing up wondering about his history, about the family he’d never known. His mother had had no family except an older brother with whom she’d had no contact; Jason had been nearly fifteen before he’d discovered it was because of him, because the straight-laced uncle he’d never met had disowned his mother for having a child out of wedlock. So, not having had any real family other than his mother, a certain amount of curiosity was natural, he told himself.
What he couldn’t understand was this odd sense of connection he was feeling, this sense of a link between him and the Hawks who had gone before. They seemed to call to him, from Jenna Hawk and her warrior on down through time. And especially those who had been the last of the Hawks, those who, like him, had been blessed—or cursed, Joshua Hawk had observed wryly—with the appearance of the book.
Jason again felt that special affinity for Joshua. A tough man who’d had a hard, lonely life, he had, judging from the story Jason had read, fought believing in the magic of the book to the very end.
But in the end, it seemed, he had believed. Because of the woman he’d found. And it had changed his life. Forever.
“Listen to you,” Jason muttered under his breath. “You’re sounding like you believe in this farce.”
He resisted reaching for the book, resisted it until he realized what he was doing and why, that he was afraid to look at it. Because this time there would be no explanation for any changes, no time spent asleep, no time with the book out of his sight.
He was being sandbagged by a book. By a damned book.
His mouth twisted as the thought occurred to him that perhaps his adjective had been disturbingly accurate. Perhaps that was it, perhaps the devil had finally arrived to collect his due from the last of the Hawks. Perhaps it would be Jason who paid the price for Aaron’s princely little power structure here in Sunridge. Perhaps that was Aaron’s final bit of malice toward the son he’d never wanted.
Jason shook his head sharply. He was losing it. He’d never spent so much time wallowing in utter absurdity in his life. There must be something about the air in this town that gave rise to such idiocy.
And the biggest idiocy of all was this thing, he thought, grabbing the book and pulling it across the table toward him. Determinedly he opened it. There would be no addition this time, no further chapter in his own story, simply because there couldn’t be.
He reached to flip the pages. His hand jerked back when they seemed to turn on their own, coming to a halt at a left-hand page of the elegant lettering that faced a blank page. He stared at it, trying to deny what he knew was true, that it had changed yet again. That when he’d left the motel, the writing had ended at the bottom of the previous page. It had ended with yesterday’s date and the announcement that once again the last Hawk had met the woman he would marry, and with whom he would continue the Hawk bloodline.
Now it documented the very thing he’d done today. The hours he’d spent pouring over Hawk history, looking for anything that would prove what he knew, that this whole thing was impossible. It even called him a typical last Hawk, fiercely resisting the inevitable.
He barely had time to resent the characterization, because the next entry, also dated today, referred back to the woman he supposedly would marry. And ended with the statement that he would soon learn that that woman is in danger.
He slammed the book shut. She’d gone too far, this time. If there was anything he hated, it was being manipulated. He didn’t know how she was doing it, the mechanics of it, but that didn’t really matter now. What mattered was that she apparently thought he was a fool. That he could be controlled by the pushing of some insultingly simple emotional buttons.
He got up and shoved the chair back under the table. For a moment he stood there, staring at the book that had become a symbol of this whole absurd situation. Then, his jaw set with determination, he picked it up, walked back to the bookshelves, and shoved it with emphasis between the history of Sunridge and Hawks at War. Nodding with finality, he turned his back and walked away.
KENDALL GLANCED in the rearview mirror again, wondering where this idiot behind her thought she was supposed to go. There was no place for her to pull over and let the big brown sedan pass, and she was already uncomfortable with how fast she was going. This narrow, winding road, with its steep drop-offs, wasn’t anything to fool around with; every year it seemed at least one reckless teenager found that out the hard—and frequently fatal—way.
She probably shouldn’t have come out here anyway. She hadn’t accomplished much of anything except reddening her eyes. And Aaron certainly wouldn’t have appreciated her maudlin show of sentimentality, sitting beside his grave as she poured out the story of the snarl things seemed to be in. All she’d ever wanted to do was what Aaron had wanted, yet it seemed that she was being thwarted from all sides. Alice threatening her, Jason refusing to believe anything she said . . .
She’d begun to cry, there beside the grave with its newly rolled sod. But after a few minutes she could almost hear Aaron’s gruff voice berating her.
Knock off that foolishness, girl. Tears accomplish nothing. Get moving.
“Fine,” she had muttered, “what do you suggest I do?”
You don’t quit until you’ve fired your last round.
She’d always called that his circle-the-wagons mentality, but for the first time she began to see the point. She didn’t have much left in the arsenal, but it wasn’t quite empty yet. She’d picked up what little remained this morning. She didn’t think showing it to Jason would make a difference, but at least she would know she had tried everything. And she couldn’t give up until she had.
She had scrambled to her feet then, determined to make one last try to convince Jason.
If, she thought now, glancing apprehensively to her rearview mirror again, squinting as sunlight glared off the windshield of the sedan that was far too close, she ever got off this road alive.
The man was crazy. That had to be the explanation for this guy. He was so close he was practically knocking bumpers with her.
And then he was, she felt the small tap, and her heart leapt into her throat. It came again, harder. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. They were coming up on the big, sweeping curve that was the last before the road dropped down to the valley floor again. The big curve that had claimed two young lives just last summer. The big curve delineated by the metal guardrail that didn’t seem nearly as substantial to her now as it once had.
The big brown car edged up once more, this time to her left side. She saw the grill on the brown car, gleaming like the silver teeth of some monstrous, mythic creature, as the vehicle swung out from behind her. Surely he wasn’t going to try to pass on this curve? On this road?
He was. He was pulling up even now, driving on the wrong side, in the oncoming lane, his front bumper even with her left rear wheel. She took her foot off the gas, and made herself not hit the brakes in this precarious place. The brown sedan gained on her.
And then it hit her.
In her mirror she’d seen the sharp movement of the driver’s hands in the instant before the impact. She’d seen the intent in the set of his shoulders, his head.
Then she saw nothing but a spinning mosaic of colors as she skidded toward the drop.
Chapter Thirteen
HE WAS PACING AGAIN.
Jason shook his head in disgust. He didn’t even know why he was here, why he just hadn’t gone straight back to the airport and caught a plane for home. It was over, all his plans useless, all his years of preparation for nothing. The old man was dead, and beyond his reach.
But instead he was here, in the parking lot of this motel, waiting for the woman
who had already taken up far too much of his time and energy. He resented the fact even as he admitted the reason he hadn’t taken that plane: he wanted to see her again. Just, he assured himself, to see how far she was willing to take this.
His pacing steps faltered as hot, vivid memories of that kiss hit him with the force of a blow to the gut, followed by images of pursuing the heat that had exploded between them to its natural conclusion. Would she go that far to sell him her bill of goods?
Reaction shivered through him, an odd combination of heat and chill that seemed as confused as he felt. He’d always kept sex a simple thing, a straightforward approach to easing a basic need. He’d likened it to a craving for a particular food; once it was satisfied, the craving went away for a while. But this, this was different. Mixed up. Complex.
“Only because you’re making it that way,” he muttered as he turned and began to pace back the other way.
Where the hell was she? After catching a cab back here to get the car, he’d gone by Hawk Manufacturing, thinking she might be there; a sign informed him they were closed due to Aaron’s death. He’d even driven by the big house, thinking it would explain much if she was there, meeting with her cohorts in this scam. But there had been no sign of her car, only a large white limousine in front of the grand entry, parked across the curving driveway that led in from the street. He supposed her car could be in the garage, out of sight, but not if that limo had been there when she’d arrived; it effectively blocked any car trying to get past it.
So he’d come back here, figuring she’d show up eventually. Perhaps she was out looking for a place to live, although why anyone would stay in this town after being fired by the Hawks was beyond him.
If, indeed, she really had been fired.
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