Hawk: (19 page)

Shooter called in reinforcements, as Hawk grabbed bottles of water from the break room fridge. It was hell waiting for the others to arrive, but Hawk knew they needed to gather supplies first. Finding Tildy might take the better part of the day, and, even if they found her quickly, she was going to need water and possibly medical treatment before they could get to her safety.

The Cowboy had apparently stopped by to pick up Easy. He swung into the lot in his large, black
Humvee and pulled in next to Hawk. Vegas also got out of the vehicle, dressed in boots, khakis and a long sleeve t-shirt. Hawk frowned as they approached the building; he was unsure about potentially putting her in danger.

Tex caught his look as they entered through the side door. “She’s from the desert. And we might need a woman,” he added quietly.

Vegas followed Tex into the relative darkness of the garage and spied Garrett. If she was surprised to see a man missing half an ear, she didn’t show it. Hawk wanted to rip off Garrett’s other ear after considering Tex’s words. He’d been so intent on
finding
Tildy that he hadn’t thought to consider what might have come before. He turned on Garrett, his rage clearly visible on his face, causing Garrett to shrink back in the chair he’d collapsed in.

“I didn’t rape her,” Garrett insisted.

Hawk wasn’t certain whether or not to believe him. Garrett had bent her over a car and ripped off her underwear. It was safe to say that, at this point, Hawk no longer had any idea what his cousin would do.

As Hawk took a step closer and
Garrett’s breath started to hitch. “I swear. I swear to God, Hawk! I didn’t touch her like that!”

The heavy side door
closed with a bang- Caleb standing just inside. He was wearing civilian clothes, but had his sidearm in a black holster. “If you did,” Caleb said quietly, “I’ll kill you myself.”

Garrett’s eyes widened. “I know you! You’re a cop!”

Caleb shook his head. “Not today. Not to you.” To the others he said, “I’ve got my med kit. Some ropes. Some flare guns. She might need a medevac chopper,” he added, looking at Garrett.

“I didn’t hurt her!” the terrified man insisted.

“You left her in the Badlands to die,” Hawk pointed out.

A few hundred feet down the dirt acce
ss road, the small group of ex-Army rangers parked their trucks and got out on foot. They crossed the terrain parallel to the road in a single file line, scanning the area. Garrett insisted he didn’t know exactly where Tildy had forced his truck off the road. Hawk guessed that with the front headlight out, pieces of it would be scattered in the area where she’d made a run for it, if the rain hadn’t washed them away. He glanced up at the sun, which would be overhead soon. Caleb hoofed it to the front of the line where Hawk was leading the somber parade.

“In another hour, we’ll have to call in reinforcements,” Caleb told him, also eyeing the blazing ball of light hovering in
the sky.

Hawk scowled but nodded. Calling in the RCPD would halt the search, at least temporarily. They
would want to question Garrett as well as want to know about Hawk’s
own
brand of questioning. In the meantime, Tildy would be baking in the Badlands’ excessive heat, possibly dying of thirst or injuries, while they waited for the authorities to organize themselves.

Hawk was a tracker, as good as his uncle wh
o’d taught him and Garrett when they were boys. Indeed, Garrett had said he’d stalked her to the edge of a steep arroyo and only gave up the chase because there appeared to be no way out of the hole she’d slid into. Garrett had also assumed that the flash flooding would finish her off for him, and the raging electrical storm was the only reason he hadn’t stayed to be sure.

The rain had washed away the top layer of dirt that normally covered everything in the badlands, making it next to impossible to look for
any signs. There was little vegetation in this area, so no broken tree branches or snapped twigs on the ground could be followed. They’d have to rely on finding the scene of the accident.

Garrett and Easy stayed behind, waiting in one of the vehicles. Garrett would be of no use at this point, and Easy was too wary of navigating the uneven ground of the canyons with his prosthetic leg. It was probably just as well Garrett stayed behind. Every minute that passed had Hawk wanting to
choke the life out of him.

How had things gotten this bad? How had he changed this much w
ithout Hawk having recognized and put a stop to it? The answer was obvious though. Actively avoiding someone was probably the least effective way to gauge their mental state. Hawk had abandoned Garrett and, consequently, Garrett had abandoned all pretense of trying to go straight.

I just need her to be safe
, Hawk thought to no one in particular, certainly not to God. God had not been there when Jason was burning, nor when Jimmy was screaming for someone to find his foot; it had been the remnants of their unit that had done what needed to be done. Though the memories of being saddled with such horrific tasks were a burden to carry, they reminded Hawk that if anyone was uniquely qualified to find Tildy and bring her out of the Badlands, it was the men who were looking for her now.

Both the sun and Garrett’s drink fogged memory of the night before were working against them. It had to end. He had to find her- now. As he looked around, he began to realize the severity of the flash flooding that the storm had brought with it. Large areas of the fire road were nearly washed out; deep ruts were now baking solid in the heat. Whatever was left of the accident would surely have been washed away, too. They needed an aerial search, which would take time to organize. Hawk could only hope it didn’t take
too
much time.

“Caleb,” he said, slowing his pace. “It’s-”

He stopped midsentence. He’d never taken his eyes off the terrain and as he spoke and now something glinted in his peripheral vision. He craned his neck to look straight at it. Whatever it was, it was small, some piece of metal that may possibly be a part of Garrett’s headlight. Hawk pivoted and broke into a run.

The fire road had no exit. It just continued on, skirting this side of the Badlands, intended for use by emergency vehicles when wildfires broke out in the summer. This summer had been particularly wet
, and therefore the risk was minimal. Even the locals never used it as a road, so Hawk had seen no litter since they had begun walking.

As he neared the object, he realized it wasn’t a piece of Garrett’s headlight. Snagged on a small bush that barely made it to Hawk’s calves was Tildy’s St. Christopher medal. Hawk snatched it off the thorny scrub bush and glanced around. There were no large rocks here. The medal must have been swept this direction by the storm. As Caleb caught up to him and spied the necklace in his hand, he pointed beyond Hawk’s shoulder just as Hawk said, “There.”

A large rock formation, nearly as tall at Hawk, was just a hundred yards away. Hawk sprinted to the rock to orient himself toward the canyons, head-on.

As he negotiated the storm-scarred terrain, he could hear Caleb b
ehind him, calling Tildy’s name, but Hawk couldn’t bring himself to call out to her. Hearing no response would have been too much for him. He simply ran toward the canyons, his boots crunching bushes and rocks along the way.

To the right was a channel that cut into the terrain and continued on for as far as Hawk could see. He abandoned that option and looked left, where another, larger rock formation stood between the road and the Badlands proper. It was excellent cover from gunfire. He skirted around it and headed for the jagged edge of an arroyo beyond it. Caleb shouted Tildy’s name again.

Stopping just before the edge, which was loosely packed and threatening to give way under his weight, Hawk peered down. The hole was self-contained, as Garrett had said it was. There was no safe way down, and definitely no way out for a person who’d been injured. As he leaned further over the edge, his heart hammered in his chest, and blood roared in his ears. She had to be here. There could be nowhere else for her to go.

“Hawk,” Caleb warned, staying well b
ack from the perilous edge that could not support both of them.

Hawk reached out behind himself. “Take my hand,” he demanded.

Caleb got as close as he dared and grasped his hand, carefully lowering Hawk over the edge. The rest of the group arrived, boots pounding the Earth behind them, but Hawk did not look back.

“Don’t get too close,” Caleb warned them. “The ground won’t hold.”

“Is she there?” Abby called out. She sounded almost as desperate as Hawk felt.

Hawk remained silent. He planted his feet as firmly as he could on the loose ground and once again peered as far over the edge as he dared. For the first time, he felt his hope solidify into something tangible. Tildy had climbed as far up the slope as she could manage, prob
ably to escape the rising floodwaters. She was there now, lying perfectly still. From this angle though, Hawk was unable to tell if she was breathing.

“Tildy!” he shouted down to her. She didn’t move. “Tildy!” Still nothing. “God damn it,” he muttered, pulling back from the edge.

Without needing to discuss it, Caleb let go of Hawk’s hand and stripped off his pack. He tossed it to Shooter, who dug a climbing rope out of the main compartment, as well as a small first aid kit. Caleb unclipped the radio from his belt and began hailing the local ranger station. He gave his badge number and approximate location. Instead of an ambulance, he requested a Lifeline. Tex grabbed some flares from the front compartment and lit one.

Hawk made it down to her in record time with Caleb and Shooter holding the rope from above him on the ridge. She still hadn’t moved. The moment his feet planted on the ground beside her, he dropped down and took her in his arms. “Angel,” he whispered, feeling for a pulse. “Please, Angel.”

He found it with two fingers and felt like giving a shout of relief. Instead, he called up to Caleb to report it.

“Tildy,” he said, gently shaking her.

Her arm was banged up, purple and marred with bloody scratches. The side of her face had some dried blood as well. She was also missing a shoe, and her bare foot was cut up from the rocks.

“Tildy, honey, you’ve got to wake up,” he prompted, balancing her in the crook of his arm and twisting the cap off a small bottle of water.

He felt another surge of relief when her eyes fluttered open. She looked up at him, her soft brown eyes registering his presence. She frowned.

“I dreamed of you,” she told him.

“I’m here now,” he told her softly. “Sit up. Drink this.”

“You didn’t find me.”

His heart lurched again, and the weight of guilt settled down onto it like one of the boulders that surrounded them. “I’m here, Angel. I did find you.”

“I was lost,” she mumbled, as Hawk raised her up and lifted the bottle to her lips.

“I found you,” he insisted.

He managed to get her to take a little water.

She coughed a little and then drank some more. “Garrett,” she said when she stopped to take a breath.

“I know. I know,” he told her. “How bad are you hurt?”

Hawk cursed himself for a coward. He couldn’t ask her if Garrett had hurt her, if his cousin had raped her before trying to kill her. It would just be another way that Hawk had failed her and another reason to kill Garrett.

“It’s all my fault,” Tildy whispered and began to cry.

“Oh God, Angel. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault,” he assured her, but she continued to cry anyway.

Hawk and the boys managed to get her up to flat ground before the helicopter came. Caleb traded places with Tex on the rope so that he could assess her injuries. By the time Hawk had come up out of the arroyo, Tildy was sitting in Abby’s lap, while Abby slowly rocked her and petted her hair.
He couldn’t hear what Tildy was telling the other woman; he wasn’t certain he wanted to know.

The chopper arrived, and they loaded Tildy on it. Caleb insisted on flying with her, and Hawk would have demanded it anyway. There wasn’t enough room for him as well, so he hoofed it back to the truck.

“Go,” Shooter insisted, giving Hawk his keys. “We’ll stay with Garrett. The rangers called RCPD anyway. They’re on their way.”

Hawk frowned. He wanted more than anything to get to Tildy and be with her, but he didn’t want to leave the lieutenant alone to face the cops. Shooter had done so much for him already.

“I-” Hawk began while shaking his head.

“Get in the truck,” Shooter demanded. “That’s an order.” He turned his hardened gaze toward Garrett, who was in the back seat of Tex’s Hummer. “I’ll take care of
him.
”

The image of Shooter holding the pliers came to Hawk’s mind. All at once, he realized that, given their history, Hawk could not bring himself to kill Garrett, no matter how much he deserved it. Also,
that he didn’t really care if Shooter did. As though the older man read his mind, he said, “I’m not going to kill him, but he’s not gonna be a problem. That’s a promise.”

Hawk nodded and too
k the keys from Shooter, giving his cousin one last look. If Garrett had anything to say to him, he didn’t speak up. The anger and bravado had finally vanished, leaving a man who looked tired and broken, and not because he was missing half an ear. Hawk realized the truth of the look. Sometimes, you just have nothing more to say to a person- ever. He turned and walked away.

At the hospital, Caleb was waiting for him. Tildy’s parents had been notified en route and were already in the room with her.

“He told her you sent him to babysit her because you were running late. He took her from the Community Center, said he was going to shoot her, and so she wrecked the truck. She banged up her elbow when she ran. Don’t think it’s broken, but x-rays will come back on that,” Caleb told him. Tildy’s version of events matched Garrett’s perfectly.

Hawk’s eyes closed, and, for the first time in nearly 24 hours, he allowed the tension that had been roiling inside him begin to recede. The important details of Caleb’s report weren’t what he said but what he didn’t say. It was Caleb’s way of telling him that Tildy hadn’t been raped.

“You sure she’s going to be okay?” Hawk asked, always the coward.

Is she telling the truth?

Caleb nodded. “The elbow’ll heal, broken or not. And she knows where he is now- in jail. He can’t do anything more to her.”

Hawk took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Caleb believed her.

“Her folks are in there now, but they can’t stay long. She’s exhausted.” Caleb waited a moment before he said, “Go see her before she falls asleep.”

Hawk hesitated.

“Just go see her,” Caleb insisted.

Hawk gave Tildy’s parents a few more minutes alone with her before he knocked softly on the room door. Her father answered and frowned at him. “What are you doing her
e? She’s sleeping now.”

Hawk stepped into the room. Truth be told, he was actually relieved that she was asleep. Not only did she need to rest, but he
also had no idea what to say to her now. He was disappointed not to be able to see her though, since the curtain was pulled around Tildy’s bed. The other bed was empty and Tildy’s mother sat perched on the edge of a fake leather chair against the wall.

“I found her,” he told them. “Is she okay?” He kept his voice low so he wouldn’t disturb her.

“She’s fine,” Deirdre Fletcher insisted. “She’ll be fine.” She looked away from Hawk and back to the curtain. “I just can’t believe all this.”

Mrs. Fletcher sounded more irritated than concerned.

“All this trouble,” the woman continued. “And we didn’t know a thing.”

Hawk was irritated at
her
irritation. Didn’t she realize how close Tildy had come to dying in that canyon? If Hawk hadn’t realized the truth, hadn’t forced Garrett to confess, she’d be out there right now, dying of exposure.

“I’m sure she just didn’t want to worry you.”

“Listen,” Blake Fletcher said. “I don’t know you. And I don’t know how well you think you know my daughter-”

“We’re friends,” Hawk insisted. “I’m her friend.”

Deirdre stood up. “You are not the kind of friend we want for Matilda. Wouldn’t you agree that her association with you has brought us nothing but trouble?”

He couldn’t argue that point, much as he wanted to. Tildy didn’t belong in his wo
rld. He had always known that, but it was still hard to let her go.

“You’re right,” he admitted. “We’re just friends, but maybe we shouldn’t be.”

He reached into his front pocket and pulled out the medal. He held it out.

“You should give this to her when she wakes up,” he told them. He knew her parents hadn’t really given a shit about her up to this point, and he was certain they cared even less about a woman who’d only worked for them a short time, but given all Tildy had been through, surely they would finally put their problems aside and be real parents for a change.

Deirdre Fletcher eyed it as though it would bite her. Her husband only did more of the same.

“It’s Isabel’s,” Hawk told them.

“Isabel?” Deirdre repeated, looking to her husband for an explanation.

“I don’t know what you believe,” Hawk said, “But Tildy believes Isabel watches over her and keeps her safe. It’s really all she has to hold onto sometimes.”

Deirdre scoffed and shook her head. “Well, that’s ridiculous.”

Hawk tamped down on his rising impatience with these people. “Look, I said I don’t know what you believe, but Tildy absolutely believes it. And it may be the only reason she made it out of that canyon alive. Because she thought Isabel was watching over her. So for her sake-”

“That’s ridiculous,” Deirdre repeated. “It’s just more of Matilda’s nonsense. She’s gotten herself into so much trouble this year. It’s unbelievable. My daughter doesn’t need that,” she said, indicating the necklace. “Or you.”

Hawk’s fist closed around the chain. “I understand if you blame me,” he said quietly. Hell, he blamed himself more than anyone else could. “But Tildy needs to believe that Isabel-”

“She’s not even dead!” Deirdre finally snapped.

Hawk paused and stared at her.

“That’s why the whole thing is just utter tripe! Isabel isn’t dead. We
fired
her, and it’s high time my daughter-”

“I don’t understand,” Hawk interrupted, shaking his head. “She said Isabel died.”

Deirdre sighed heavily, and Hawk looked to Blake for an explanation. Blake’s expression was as dark and irritated as his wife’s. “Isabel was a bad influence on Matilda,” he explained. “My wife and I agreed that it was best to send her away. She-”

“She what?” Hawk demanded. “How could she have been a bad influence? What does that even mean? Tildy was just a kid!”

“She caused problems,” Deirdre insisted, narrowing her eyes at Hawk.

“What problems?”

“Just... she was just a
bad influence
. Matilda spent too much time with her. She was too reliant on her.”

“You mean Tildy
loved
her.”

Deirdre’s mouth set into a hard line.

“Tildy loved Isabel and not you. And she told Isabel about all the shit you did to her.”

“That is a lie!” Deirdre shot back.

“No, you couldn’t have Tildy telling anyone that you were
abusing
her. And you couldn’t stand it that she loved someone else.”

“You watch your mouth,” Blake Fletcher finally said, moving closer to Hawk. “If you go around making outrageous accusations about my wife, I’ll-”

“Isabel’s alive?”

They all turned to see Tildy, clad in a hospital gown, standing beside the curtain she’d pulled back.

“Matilda-” Deirdre began.

“She’s not dead?!” Tildy cried, gripping the curtain tighter with her good hand.

“Matilda,” Deirdre replied in a calm voice, “We can talk about-”

“I don’t want to talk to you!” Tildy snapped. She turned her gaze on Hawk. “Or you!”

Hawk’s brow furrowed and he stepped toward her. “Tildy.” He had so much to apologize for: both for Garrett and his own inability to keep her safe. He had screwed up in so many ways. “Tildy-”

“Get out!” she shouted. “I guess we’re
just friends
. So thanks for stopping by! Get. Out!
All of you!
”