Chapter 35 #2
At that, Bear tears out of my grip and stands, then strides quickly around the hood of the car. I stand up quickly enough to see him reach Duane and shove him, and then I’m moving too, Cameron right behind me.
Because if Bear is going to get in trouble, we’re going to get in trouble with him. Cam and I never discussed this–never even considered it–but now that we’re here, now that we’re a family, I know we both see it as the only choice.
“Inappropriate with her?” Bear shouts, shoving Duane again. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“There are pictures!” Duane shouts, trying–and failing–to stand up to Bear. “Pictures that show you getting too close!”
I freeze, watching the two men, because this is where it’s going to get touchy. There’s precisely one picture, and I know exactly what it shows, because I’ve seen it twice–once in Gunner’s hand, and once in Duane’s.
Two very different places for the exact same picture to exist.
And there’s really only one good reason for that. It’s been planted.
And if the photo was planted, then it makes sense if everything else is also planned. The new biker gang. The tourists making trouble with the people from Wood. The violence and fights that have never happened here before–and that just started when Bear got to town and took over as sheriff.
The moment I think it, the rest of the pieces fall neatly into place, and I know I’m right. The council. Archie Banker and his vendetta against a man he’s known for years. The rumors spread to Gunner to keep him from supporting his brother. The sudden suspension for almost no reason.
The public hearing.
They’re setting Bear up. I don’t know who ‘they’ are or what it has to do with this Duane person, but I can see it clear as day.
And I’m not going to stand for it. Particularly when that man is lying not just about me but about a member of my family.
I step between the two men, put my back up against Bear to keep him from going around me, and look up at the man who claims he’s my father.
“He’s not abusing me. He’s not manipulating me. This is a good man, and he would never do anything like that.”
I’m not surprised when Duane sneers down at me like I’m something he found on the bottom of his shoe and then looks back up at Bear.
“This man isn’t treating the girl right. I know for a fact that he doesn’t take care of the people in his charge.”
I feel Bear grow even stiffer behind me, and narrow my eyes. Whatever Duane just said, it had some special significance to Bear, though it was coded enough that I didn’t catch it.
That doesn’t mean I’ll ever forgive the man for hurting Bear.
“This man kidnapped me,” I say firmly. “He texted me repeatedly over the last week, telling me he was my father, and then asked me to go to breakfast with him. When I arrived, he drugged me and drove me away. When I woke up I was in his home, and he was sitting on the couch next to me. He claims to be my father. Claims that he wants to build a relationship with me. But no real father would kidnap his own daughter. He wouldn’t drag me away from my home and try to manipulate me.
” I pause, considering him, and then drive it home.
“This isn’t my father. Bear and Cameron are my family. I don’t want anyone else.”
He stares at me like I’ve just committed the worst crime in the history of crimes, then sneers again.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, little girl.
This man left soldiers behind at war, did you know that?
Turned and ran when they were bleeding on the ground.
Left them in burning vehicles to die so he could save his own neck.
After he’d led them right into danger. Is that the sort of man you want for your family? ”
“That’s not how that went, Duane,” Bear growls from behind me. “And you know it.”
“I know what I saw, Hawke,” Duane answers, the fury and hatred in his tone hot enough to burn. “I know you were ordered out of that area, and I know you decided to stay. That put men in danger. That cost men their lives.”
“I stayed to save the men I could save!” Bear shouts. “I stayed because I wasn’t going to leave them behind!”
Duane snorts. “Is that why they discharged you? Because you were doing the best you could?”
Bear steps around me, grabs Duane by the shirt, and lifts him up, muscles straining and face as cold as stone.
“They discharged me because I went back when I was told to leave,” he mutters quietly.
“Because I refused to return to base when my men were in those vehicles burning. I turned down a direct order because I wanted to save my men. And you were right there. You know I did.”
“I lost friends because of your actions,” Duane hisses.
And as I watch, I start to realize something.
Duane isn’t here for me. He never was. He may be my father–I don’t know the real answer to that–but he didn’t come up here trying to reconnect with me. Through some stroke of luck, he was in the Marines with Bear. He was there when things went badly.
And he blames Bear for it.
He came up here to try to get revenge on Bear. Not reconnect with me. I was just a means to an end. An unlikely one, for sure, but the piece he chose to use to get close to my stepfather.
And as the fantasy of having a father falls away from me, slipping off my body like a dress that never fit quite right, I realize something else.
I don’t care.
Because I wouldn’t want that man as my father anyhow. A man with that much hatred and violence in his soul. A man who kidnapped a girl to use her against someone he once called friend.
A man who would go out of his way to ruin someone else’s life for the sake of petty vengeance.
Why would I want a man like that when I have Barrett Hawke in my corner?
Archie Banker suddenly steps forward and puts his hand on Bear’s arm. When Bear doesn’t react, he pulls a gun out of his belt, releases the safety, and holds it against Bear’s temple.
“Put him down, Bear. This man is here as a guest of the council, and he has some pretty interesting things to say about you. We’ve all seen how you’ve handled law in this town over the past three months, and it hasn’t been good.
If even half of what he says is true, it doesn’t look good for you.
Especially when there’s no one here to speak on your behalf. ”
And in that moment, I realize that this is bigger than just Duane Price.
He may have brought the bikers and the tourists to make trouble for Bear. He had an idea to steal me away, probably to lure Bear into the open. But it was more than that.
He’s also bought the council.
And Archie Banker is going to try to take Bear down from inside Wood.
He’s going to hit Bear where it hurts the most.
Duane Price is going to win, unless we do something to stop him.
Only I don’t know how to stand up to the council. I’m not big enough on my own, even with Cameron at my side. We’re just a couple of kids, and the council runs this town.
We’re going to fail.
Before I can start to build a plan, though, yet another truck peels into the parking lot, and when I turn, I see that it holds someone I never expected to show up at a deserted cafe in the middle of the forest at 10 in the morning.
And he’s not alone.