Chapter 3
HAWKE
Tate didn’t move after I’d spoken, even after the nurse called him for the third time.
I released the hold I had on his arm, ignoring the zaps of energy that were surging through my fingers and up my arm and placed my hand on his lower back to give him a little shove forward.
He finally got moving, but I didn’t miss the way his breathing had ratcheted even higher than it had been after I’d dropped down in the seat next to him at the check in desk a few minutes earlier.
As he walked away from me, I noticed Matty’s tired eyes on me where his chin was resting on Tate’s shoulder.
He gave me a small wave and I had to steel myself not to return it.
I wasn’t here to make friends with the kid.
I was here for one thing and showing the little boy or his father any kind of compassion would make what I had to do all the harder.
But as Matty’s eyes stayed on mine as his father neared a doorway leading out of the waiting area, I couldn’t stop myself from lifting my hand slightly to acknowledge the child.
He smiled just before Tate carried him through the door and I felt my heart constrict painfully as I sat back down in the chair.
I could have gone with Tate for whatever tests the kid needed to have, but I’d held back because I didn’t want to know what was going on with him. I had no room for pity.
Liar.
My wife’s whisper in my ear unnerved me as it always did, but I also felt a pang of warmth go through me.
I wasn’t a religious guy by any means, but on the rare occasion that I did hear Revay’s voice calling me on my bullshit, I welcomed it.
Because she had always been the only one brave enough to tell me when I was full of it.
And while I wasn’t so far gone that I actually believed it was her talking to me, I liked that my subconscious used her voice to remind me when my internal bullshit meter was pinging.
My hope had been to not have to deal with the intriguing Tate Travers or his cute kid again, but I’d suspected even as I’d left his apartment more than a week ago that things wouldn’t be so easy.
My desperation to confront Buck and Denny Buckley had led me straight from the run down area of San Francisco that Tate lived in to the dusty, remote town of Lulling, Texas.
The underground group I worked for employed a young hacker named Daisy Washburne to gather information on potential marks and I’d called her on the way to Lulling to see what she could dig up on Buck and Denny.
In short, she’d found nothing…absolutely nothing.
Both men had been living off the grid for some time so I had no address, no recent pictures, no nothing to use to find either man.
It was beyond frustrating and I’d known the second I rolled into the tiny, insular town, that I wouldn’t get anywhere by asking the residents questions – all I would do was give the murderers ample warning that I was on their trail.
So I’d reluctantly turned around and headed back to San Francisco and the only lead I had to work with.
On the way, I’d asked Daisy for any information she could give me on Tate, but like his father and brother, he didn’t appear to exist because there was no record of him anywhere.
Which led me to believe he was still living off the grid for a reason.
And after I’d had Daisy check why Tate had submitted his DNA to a private lab for testing, I’d suspected what that reason was.
Several hours passed before the door Tate had disappeared through earlier opened and I stood as Tate walked through it.
My first thought was that the stricken look on his face was because of me, but then I noticed that he wasn’t even looking at me.
His face had gone deathly pale and each step he took looked wobbly and uneven and I instantly stepped forward so I could catch him and Matty if he lost his footing.
“Let me take him,” I finally said when Tate teetered back and forth as I reached him. He looked at me as if finally seeing me for the first time and then he shook his head weakly.
“Then at least sit down so you don’t fall,” I murmured as I motioned to a chair.
“No,” he whispered. “I…I need to get him home. The doctor said he needs to rest…”
Tate tried to brush past me, but I put my hands on his arms to stop his forward motion.
“Tate,” I said as gently as I could. His red rimmed eyes lifted to meet mine and I knew he’d been crying at some point because his eyes hadn’t looked that way when he’d walked away from me.
My stomach fell as I realized what that meant.
“Let me take him,” I repeated softly as I held him in place.
I had no idea why I hated that it was only the fabric of his shirt I was feeling beneath my fingers and not his skin.
“Here, you can hang on to these,” I said as I tugged my car keys from my pocket along with my phone and wallet. I offered him the items and then realized how ridiculous it was to think he’d hand me his child in exchange for them.
Tate shook his head, but after I’d put everything back in my pocket, he studied me for a long time and then said, “Just for a minute.”
It was a testament to how tired the man was.
I nodded and carefully took Matty from him.
I hadn’t been sure if Matty was asleep or not, but I had my answer as soon as I pulled him against my chest. His eyes were closed and I could tell from how puffy they were that Tate hadn’t been the only one in tears at some point.
His warm breath fanned across the skin of my neck and his limp body made carrying him awkward.
“They sedated him,” Tate mumbled as he pulled a blanket from Matty’s backpack and worked it around the boy’s body.
Feeling Tate’s fingers brush against me as he tucked the blanket in between Matty’s body and mine did strange things to my insides…
things I hadn’t felt in a really long time…
things I didn’t want to think too much about.
Tate and I began walking towards the exit and I didn’t miss the way he stuck right next to me and kept glancing my way.
He also kept his hand on one of Matty’s shoes as if that would somehow deter me from running off with the kid.
Even without the burden of carrying Matty, Tate’s pace was still slow and it took us more than ten minutes to finally reach my car in the parking lot next to the hospital.
Tate hadn’t even realized our destination until I fished around my pocket for the keys and unlocked the sedan.
“No,” Tate immediately said as he tried to take Matty from me.
I used my body to maneuver Tate back against the car and he instantly ceased his struggles – probably so he wouldn’t wake his son up.
With Matty’s body blocking him on one side and my free arm caging him against the car on his other side, Tate began breathing erratically as he realized I was once again in control.
It was exactly the position I wanted to be in, but seeing Tate’s fear for his child had me second guessing myself and the reason I’d returned to San Francisco.
Don’t.
I closed my eyes as the soft word penetrated my brain. But for once, I ignored the voice and said, “Get in the car, Tate.”
The betrayal in Tate’s eyes was instant and sharp and bothered me more than I wanted to admit.
But I shoved away the urge to gentle my stance and stepped back enough to allow Tate to open the door.
He glanced around the empty parking lot and then at me before finally closing his eyes and reaching behind him to grab the door handle.
The second he was in the back seat, I handed Matty to him and closed the door.
I was glad when Tate didn’t try to get back out as I climbed into the front seat.
Instead, he worked to get Matty buckled in and then he sat next to him and drew him protectively against his side.
We didn’t speak as I pulled the car into traffic and to my complete surprise, Tate fell asleep within ten minutes of leaving the hospital.
But his arm never left Matty’s small shoulders as he kept him close.
I used the time to study Tate with quick glances in the rearview mirror.
Although it had only been a little over a week since I’d last seen him, he looked even worse than he had when I’d confronted him that first night.
His face had a gauntness to it that made me wonder if he was steadily losing weight and there were dark smudges under his eyes suggesting he hadn’t been sleeping well.
Even in sleep, his entire countenance was drawn up tight with tension and I doubted that it was only because of my presence.
Another wave of guilt went through me as I forced my attention back to the road.
Tate didn’t stir even after I pulled the car to a stop in front of his apartment building.
It wasn’t until I opened the door and gently shook him awake that he reacted like a startled animal and immediately wrapped his arms tighter around Matty and used his body to cover the still sleeping boy.
I swallowed hard as the memory of trying to wrap myself up like that washed over me.
I’d been considerably younger, but age wasn’t a factor when your self-preservation instincts kicked in.
As afraid of me as Tate was, I suspected his reaction in that moment hadn’t been about me at all.
“Tate, we’re here,” I said quietly, but I didn’t put my hands back on him.