Heart of the Hawk (16 page)

“But if you’re doing a job—”

“That changes nothing. It’s understood, if you hire The Hawk, you expect there to be killing.”

“Yes, but it’s not like they pay you to just go out and kill someone cold-bloodedly—”

“It’s true, I’ve never backshot or ambushed anyone, or killed anybody who wasn’t trying to kill me.” He leaned over, bracing himself with a hand on the table as he looked at her. “But do you really believe that makes a difference? Yes, I take jobs no one else will take. They won’t take them, because they know they’ll be called upon to kill or be killed. And most men don’t find that easy, so they walk away.”

“And you do? You find it easy?”

Josh steeled himself to lie to her. “Yes.”

For a long, silent moment she looked at him, and it took more nerve than he ever would have expected to keep looking at those golden eyes.

“Which part is easy, Josh?” she finally said, her voice soft, barely above a whisper and sending a shiver down his spine.

“What?” he finally managed to ask.

“Which part is easy for you? The killing? Or the chance of being killed?”

He straightened up, his brows lowering.

“Will that be payment enough for your family, Josh? When you finally get yourself killed?”

He went rigid, staring at her. He wanted to shout at her, tell her she was wrong, so very wrong. He wanted to tell her she had no idea what she was talking about. He wanted to tell her to stop talking about him at all, to stop thinking about him, and most of all to stop making him think about her.

He turned on his heel and walked out without a word.

Chapter 11

MAYBE HE’D HEAD on over to the livery stable and sleep there tonight, Josh thought. He was sure Luke wouldn’t mind sharing his space in the hayloft. Maybe he’d finally be able to
get
some sleep.

The more he thought about it, the better the idea sounded. He stepped over his outspread bedroll and picked up the saddlebags that served him as a pillow. Not that they’d been too comfortable of late, not when all he could seem to think of—when he wasn’t thinking so damned much about Kate—was that cursed book they held.

Between the two of them, the woman who’d been taking up far too much of his thoughts, and the book that haunted him every moment he wasn’t thinking of her, he hadn’t had much sleep, and less peace in the last three days.

He’d found himself locked in a kind of absurd tug-of-war—when she took over his mind, when he was thinking too much about the striking color of her eyes, or the way she blushed, when he was reminding himself too often that she was the plain, unremarkable woman he’d made a widow, he would purposely turn his wayward thoughts to the book, that impossible, preposterous book that couldn’t exist but did.

But then he would think of how it had changed, how the damned thing seemed to be writing itself, how there were things in it that no one could know, and he found himself shying away from it like Buck shied from a rattler. But the only thing powerful enough to take his mind off the impossibility of the book was the woman, and he was caught in the circle again.

He stared at the bags in his hand for a long time. He didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to look at the book again, afraid of what he might find.

It was that that finally decided him; he’d be damned if he’d let himself be buffaloed by a book. He opened the bullet-scarred flap and yanked the now too-familiar volume out. He barely noticed the odd sensation this time; his anger overcame it. He dropped the bags as the book fell open in his hands, this time to a story he’d only glanced at before, of the first of his ancestors to come to America, and the only Hawk to survive the trip.

He glanced at the picture of a dark-haired man and the petite but determined-looking woman who stood beside him. Matthew Hawk, the entry said, in the same elegant script used throughout the book. And the woman he’d found, according to the story, a woman who’d brought back his will to live, to survive; Celia Hawk had stood beside her man through the fires of the American Revolution, and after they’d fought to free their country, they’d fought to rebuild the Hawk dynasty. And they’d done it. With the same unflinching courage as the first Hawks.

Drawn by a need he didn’t understand but couldn’t resist, he went back to the beginning. Back to the very first story, back to the drawing of Jenna Hawk. He looked at her again, this woman with the eyes like his own, this woman of legend, who had lived in a time so old even the date of her birth was unknown, this woman who had found a miracle for her people in the man who stood beside her.

Josh shook his head, trying to fight off the compelling urge that seemed to be overtaking him as he read. The urge to believe in this nonsense, to believe that the Hawk legends he’d been raised on were real, not just a rather fanciful family tradition. The urge to believe in the utter impossibility of this book. The urge to read every story chronicled here, to study every branch of the intricate family tree, to know of each Hawk who had come before him, so he would know his own place in this incredible history.

Hawks always breed true
.

He bit back a bitter laugh. He knew what his place in this history was. He was to be the end, the ignominious end of a proud line that had endured for centuries. He wondered what his story would be, how it would look amid all these stories of brave, dauntless Hawks, this story of the last one gone bad, of the one who ended it all.

God, he was believing this. He was standing here thinking about all this as if it were true, when it had to be the biggest blazer he’d ever seen. He didn’t know how, or why, but the thing had to be a trick of some kind. It had to be. Because if it wasn’t . . .

With tight-jawed determination, he grabbed a thick sheaf of pages and turned them over. He wound up on exactly the page he’d been aiming for, the last of the family tree. He wasn’t surprised; he’d expected nothing less, not the way things happened with this book.

He stood there for a long time, as the light from the small window began to fade, staring at the single line, the last fragile thread of the Hawk family, the final branch, that bore his name. Finally, with the same determination that had made him turn those pages, he turned one more.

A shiver rippled through him. He’d half expected it, but it still jarred him like one of Buck’s wild bucking sprees when he was feeling ornery.

The first page was still empty, as if left open for some mysterious purpose only the book knew. On the next page, the original list of dates had been replaced, gone as if the wind had blown over tracks in the sand and left the surface clean to be written on anew. In their place were the details of those dates, the markers of death along the trail of a misspent life; his father’s death, his grandfather’s, the first man he’d ever killed. . . . There were brighter times, dates not connected with death, but they were few, and grew less frequent as the grim story progressed. It was an ugly saga, harsh and ruthless, with little to indicate there was a single worthwhile facet to this last Hawk.

It was the truth. And if it looked all the uglier spelled out, he had no one to blame but himself. He’d chosen this road, and there was—

At a sound from his left he dropped the book, his hand streaking for his Colt as he crouched and spun.

“Oh!”

Kate cried out and jumped back. She dropped the books she’d been holding and stood in the kitchen doorway, staring at him. Josh exhaled audibly. He slid the Colt back in its holster. He stood there, looking at her, cursing himself for being so wrapped up in his own misery that he hadn’t realized it was her, hadn’t even heard the door open, and cursing her for coming up on him like that anyway. He figured after the way he’d talked to her, she would have gone out the back and up the outside stairs to her rooms, to avoid him.

“I-I’m sorry,” Kate stammered. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

“Never mind,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m . . . a little edgy.”

He walked to the doorway and knelt down to pick up the books she’d dropped. He looked up at her questioningly.

“You keep books in the kitchen?”

“I . . . had to hide them from Arly. The kitchen was the best place. He never went in there unless it was to eat.”

He straightened up with the small stack of books in his hands. “Why didn’t he like you to read?”

“He said it was foolish, and a waste of time. And it wasn’t for women, anyway.”

Josh snorted. “More likely he didn’t want you finding out you were smarter than he was.”

Kate blinked. “That’s what Deborah said.”

“You said she was a very wise woman.”

Color stained her cheeks, and he knew she was remembering how that conversation had ended. Hastily, she took the books from him, glanced around, then stepped quickly across the small room and bent to the floor and picked up the book he’d dropped when she’d come in.

“How did this one end up all the way—Oh. I’m sorry, it’s yours.”

She straightened and held it out to him. He didn’t take it. For a long moment he just stood there, looking at her, at the book she was holding, fighting the ridiculous idea that had come to him. He’d be crazy to do it. She’d think he was crazy if he did. So why was he even thinking about it?

She was looking at him doubtfully, clearly wondering why he didn’t take the book from her.

“I didn’t look at it again,” she said, as if she was afraid she’d somehow angered him by touching it.

“Look at it,” he said, before he could stop the words.

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“Look at it. At the story you read before.”

“But—”

“Just do it, Kate.” She backed up a step, and he realized how he had sounded. “Please,” he amended, in a gentler tone. “Just the last story.”

“Yours?”

His mouth twisted. “Yes.”

She studied him for a moment, then pulled the book back. For a moment she fumbled with the other books she held, and he reached out and took them from her. She gave him a wary look, but he nodded at the Hawk volume, and her slender hands moved at last to open it.

She found the blank pages and worked her way back. She paused, her lower lip caught between her teeth in a way that made Josh’s stomach tighten as she began to read. After a moment she looked up at him.

“You wrote some more,” she said.

He let out a long, compressed breath. “So you see it, too. That it’s changed.”

“Changed?”

“From what you read before.”

“Well, yes. There’s more here. You’re finishing the story, aren’t you?”

He hesitated, knowing how this was going to sound, yet also knowing if he didn’t tell someone, he was going to slowly go out of his mind. Luke was too young, Pike would laugh him out of town, Rankin couldn’t read it anyway. . . .

“No.”

Her forehead creased. “No, what?”

“I’m not finishing it. I didn’t start it. I haven’t,” he said, gesturing at the book, “written any of that.”

“Then who did?” she asked simply.

“I wish I knew,” Josh said grimly.

“What do you mean?”

Josh rammed his fingers through his hair distractedly. “I mean the damned thing’s writing itself. I mean the legend is true. I mean the Hawks are either hexed or insane. I mean I’m going crazy as a loon.”

Whether she was reacting to his tone or his expression he didn’t know, but after a moment of contemplating his face, she said, “Come into the kitchen and sit down. I’ll put on fresh coffee.”

She moved around the kitchen with quiet efficiency, firing up the woodstove once more, preparing the coffee to go into the pot. Josh glanced at the small window in the back wall, at the fading light outside, and went to light the kerosene lamp on the table. The routine, ordinary task somehow eased his agitation, as did the fact that Kate thankfully didn’t feel compelled to chatter to fill the silence.

But at last, when the coffee was ready, and she had poured him a cup, then poured one for herself and taken a seat opposite him at the table, she looked at him expectantly.

He didn’t know where to start. Or even if he should. But he could hardly change his mind now. He’d started this, now he had to finish it.

“That story Luke was talking about,” he began. “The one about the very first Hawks?”

She nodded. He hesitated, still not sure what to tell her, or how much.

“What about it?” she finally asked.

“I’ve heard it all my life,” he said, figuring this was as good a place to start as any. “It’s sort of a family legend. One of those stories that get fancied up with magic and miracles for children. One of my earliest memories is my grandfather telling me the story of Jenna and Kane.”

“That’s the first story in here?” She was still holding the book, but looking at him.

He nodded. “Jenna was the first Hawk. She was . . .” He stopped, pondering. Then, still somewhat reluctantly, he told Kate Jenna’s story, much as his grandfather had told it to him. When he finished at last, she sat staring at the drawing she’d turned to early in his recounting of the tale.

“She must have been an incredible woman,” Kate said, her voice quiet and as heartfelt as if she believed every word of the preposterous tale he’d told her.

“Yes.”

Then she looked up at him. “But I don’t understand about the book.”

Josh laughed, more sour than amused. “Neither do I. I always thought it was just part of the legend, as imaginary as the wizard or magician, or whatever it was that she saved, and the promise that the Hawks would go on forever. I’d never seen the book, my father hadn’t, my grandfather hadn’t, nor had his father or his before him.”

“But . . . you said the legend says it appears only to the last Hawk of the bloodline.”

“Yes,” he said, sounding bleak. “According to the legend, the last of the Hawks are the only ones blessed—or cursed—by the appearance of the book.”

“So it wouldn’t have appeared to them, because they weren’t the last.” She glanced down at the book, then back at his face. “You are.”

“I know.”

“But why? What are you supposed to do with it?”

He gave her a quizzical look. “You sound as if you believe in it.”

She looked down at the book, then lifted it in her hands. “It’s here, is it not? You have to believe at least that much. How do you deny what you can see and touch with your own eyes and hands?”

“Don’t ask me,” Josh said sourly, “I’ve been trying to do just that ever since the thing appeared.”

“It just . . . appeared?”

“In my saddlebags.”

He hesitated, then went ahead, figuring at worst she’d tell him he was crazy and to leave for good, which just might solve a couple of his current problems.

“And when I looked at it,” he said, “the writing ended with my name on the tree. Only on the tree. It wasn’t on that next page.”

Kate looked startled, then thoughtful. “That’s why you asked Luke yesterday if he’d seen your name in it, isn’t it?”

He nodded. Kate’s expression didn’t change, and Josh didn’t know if he wanted to know what she was thinking, or was better off in ignorance.

“But what are you supposed to do with it?” she asked again.