Chapter Eight
Petra
“You look loopy.”
She blinked at the man standing there, looming over everything. Broad shoulders, slender hips, and legs that went on and on. Basketball player, probably.
“How are you feeling right now?”
She blinked again, focusing on his face. Nice nose on the smallish side with a little bump in the middle—it might have been broken at some point. Solid jaw. Rugged. Obviously, someone who was outside a lot. He had laugh lines, and she liked that about his face most of all.
All in all, a good-looking man.
“Petra?” He touched his chest. “It’s Hawkeye. Do you recognize me?”
Petra stilled. Did she know him? Yes, of course. “Yes. I’m… They gave me…” Petra looked around at the nurse, doing something off to the side.
“We administered a sedative. Miss Armstrong was having difficulty being still in the machine.”
“She’s neurodivergent. That makes sense,” Hawkeye said matter-of-factly. And Petra was grateful. He was right. It did make sense.
The nurse handed him a baggie, sent him a professional smile, and left.
Hawkeye snagged the leg of the visitor’s chair and dragged it over, sitting so Petra could see his face without straining.
Petra reflexively reached for his hand. “The sounds from the machine were very electric. While I laid on my back with instructions not to move, it was like nails on a chalkboard and more than my nerves could handle.”
He put the baggie beside him and wrapped her hand in both of his. He was an anchor.
“They gave me a helper drug. They told me the name, but I can’t remember it.” Was that English? Did those words make sense?
“I’m glad you got some relief from the stress. Do you remember talking to the doctor?”
“Me?” Petra didn’t feel drunk or high. But she didn’t feel normal either. Relaxed.
“You spoke with the doctor. Do you remember the conversation?”
“In the hall when they said you should hold my hand?” The more she moved her mouth, the more limber her thoughts became. She was feeling a bit more in her body, a bit more like herself.
“A minute ago, here in this room.” Hawkeye shuffled to the edge of his seat and leaned closer.
“No,” Petra said. “I don’t remember that.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you what she said. Ready?” He lifted his brows and waited.
“I don’t know.” Petra felt very small. Very fragile. Had she had a stroke? She took a moment and wiggled her fingers and toes. She bent and kicked her legs and jiggled her arms.
She wasn’t paralyzed.
“I’m not going to tell you anything bad right now.” Hawkeye’s voice was rumbly and deep. It brought to mind Tibetan singing bowls and how Petra liked the big ones that shook the marrow of her bones like his voice did.
Petra pressed her lips together and nodded, working very hard to stay focused on Hawkeye’s words.
“Your brain looks fine. They’ve ruled out a stroke.”
“No stroke.” She mouthed the words because her voice couldn’t wrap around the syllables to give them volume.
“No stroke.” He smiled with his eyes—warm and maybe a little charmed.
Was that possible? Could he be charmed by her confusion?
She wiggled her hand by her eye.
“All the concerns are not off the table,” he said. “They don’t have an explanation for your pupil, which looks the same as it did on the plane.” He held up the plastic bag with what looked like prescription eye drops. “I have this. You’re supposed to take it with you tomorrow morning when you have an appointment with the eye doctor to see if he can come up with a diagnosis.”
“So, we leave the hospital?” Did they do that? Did they let people with wonky eyes go off to fend for themselves?
“I’m wondering about phone calls.” Hawkeye’s words were spoken clearly, slowly. Petra had time to put them together in a sentence and find meaning.
“To next of kin?” She tried for sarcasm to lighten the mood. But the look on his face made her immediately regret saying that. “I’m sorry you’re being kind, and I’m being—”
“Scared. It’s understandable. I was wondering if you had plans to meet someone on the island and if I should reach out to them on your behalf, so they don’t worry. Boyfriend?”
“I’m not in a relationship. I was coming with a friend, but she got too sick to fly. Speaking of friends, we have people in common.”
“Yeah?” His thumb painted soothingly over her hand.
“Rowan Kennedy and Avery Goodyear-Kennedy.”
“Right,” Hawkeye said. “How did you make that connection?”
“I’m good friends with Avery, and I wanted the scuttlebutt on your team since you were going to be on my flight. And she said she knew you.”
Hawkeye nodded. “Do you remember when you talked to her?”
“At the airport, I sent her a picture of you guys standing outside with your K9s. And she gave me names and basics.”
“Girl talk.”
“Yeah, well, we’re both women, but I guess. Because of your caps, she couldn’t tell who was who. But she did recognize Max and Cooper.” She paused. “Have we already had this conversation?”
“We did.” A smile wiggled the corners of his mouth. “You’re loopy from the meds they gave you. I was asking if you know anyone here. There’s an open question about your health status.”
“Not stroke, thank goodness.”
“And I’m concerned about you sleeping alone.”
“Seriously? That’s your play? I have an alien baby pupil without a diagnosis, and you want to have a sleepover?”
Confusion crossed his face but ended in a smile. “Petra, you’re a friend of a friend. This isn’t a play for you in any way, shape, or form.”
Well, that was embarrassing.
And disappointing.
Hawkeye was acting in service of a friend of a friend.
A girl can fantasize after the fact. That was an odd thought for her, and Petra wondered where it had come from when she remembered Tamika had suggested that morning—a lifetime ago when Petra knew her day was destined for the crapper—that Petra could turn it around by finding a warm body to make her feel good about life.
This wasn’t a rom-com after all.
But at least as the friend of a friend—a degree of distance even farther than being relegated to the friendship corner— Petra could be grateful she wasn’t navigating this shit show alone.
“You sound drunk, and Rowan would be pissed if I left you vulnerable so far from home.” Hawkeye’s tone was light and reasonable.
“You’re right. If something bad were to happen—worse —he’d expect you to,” she held up her hand and made an expansive gesture, “see it through in some way.”
“Do you remember where you’re staying?”
“Blue Fin Hotel.”
The nurse arrived with a wheelchair.
Petra moved from bed to chair in silence.
They were quiet as the nurse pushed Petra out the main hospital door and then waited while Hawkeye got Petra up into the front seat of what smelled like a rental.
They must have told him to bring the car around, or why would his car be parked here by the door? Had he told her about this?
Okay, still loopy.
He circled the front of the car and climbed in, adjusting the seat back as far as it would go and fixing the mirrors.
After pulling on his belt and checking that hers was securely clasped, Hawkeye set his phone in the cupholder and focused on the blue directional line.
“SUV, you’d need the headroom,” Petra said.
When he turned onto the road, he glanced her way, “I’m going to throw it out there and see what you think.” He turned his attention back to the road. “When we get to the hotel, we can ask and see if they have two adjoining rooms available. If they did, we could leave the doors open between the rooms. Cooper would serve as chaperone.”
“Cooper.” Petra turned and looked over her seat to the back.
“Cooper and your bags are waiting to see how things land, and then Halo will help with logistics. If I stayed in an adjoining room, it means someone could be there and get to you if things take a turn.”
Petra swiveled back in her seat to look at him, rerunning those sentences.
He drove silently, not pushing his agenda. He laid the offer down.
An offer. Take it or don’t.
As time passed, he didn’t up the pressure on her to accept.
He didn’t huff and puff that she didn’t answer and immediately accept his hero’s gesture.
He sat there patiently, hands on the wheel, letting her process as he drove through the twilight sky.
Petra thought about being on the plane with her sleeping mask on and how she had planned to invite Hawkeye for dinner or a drink once they landed.
The clock read eight-thirty. She hadn’t had anything to eat since dinner yesterday.
If she mentioned food to him, he’d get her something to eat. But this was a different vibe than what she’d intended. In fact, she’d envisioned seducing him and enjoying some sexy time over the weekend if he could get free from work—a vacation adventure for her, some stress relief for him.
And at that point, all she had was Avery’s green flag to tell her Hawkeye was safe. Well, that and Iniquus’s reputation for only hiring people with a high thread count on their moral fiber.
Did that make sense? Fiber…thread count…Threads were fibers… moral cloth.
Cloth? Fabric.
There, that’s what she was aiming for: Iniquus had a reputation for only hiring people with high thread count moral fabric.
But that thought didn’t matter. What mattered was that Hawkeye felt like a good guy. Upstanding. Forthright.
If her eyeball had come to his notice, all he had to do to get his good karma points was mention it to the flight attendant and step aside.
But he stepped forward.
“Yes,” Petra said. “Thank you. Though I hate to put you out, I think that would be wise. And it’s very kind of you to offer. We can see if that can be arranged. And if it’s not possible. We could think of something else. Alone, I think I’d feel too vulnerable and isolated.”
Hawkeye drummed his thumbs on the top of the steering wheel. “Physically, I know the meds are making you feel off. How about mentally? It’s not a small deal that people thought you were having a health crisis that could have profound effects on your future.”
“I think I’ll have to process all that once I know what the eye doctor says. That’s what’s happening, right? Tomorrow morning, I go to the eye doctor?”
“You have the first appointment. We need to be there at eight. I’ll have time to get you there and back before I head out to train Cooper.”
“Thank you.” Relieved to take the focus off herself, Petra asked, “What is Cooper learning tomorrow?”
Hawkeye sent her a grin. “Tomorrow, he’ll be learning how to surf.”
“Surf? But why?” she asked.
“Oh, lots of reasons. We constantly work to build our dogs’ confidence. Working dogs need to consistently be challenged mentally and physically. Smart animals get bored when they’re not challenged. So, facing a challenge is one reason. Another is, if we’re doing rescue work on a coastline, the K9s need to be comfortable in the surf, able to work on the water, and probably most importantly, know how to stabilize themselves on floating objects as a safety measure against floods and currents.”
“And when you train them, is that all day?” she wondered.
“We watch the dogs to make sure they’re not getting overhyped. Too much adrenaline leads to poor choices.”
“In dogs and in humans,” Petra said. “So how do you manage that?”
“If we’re introducing a new task? We break it down, building on something they already know how to do. For example, back on the Cerberus campus, we have a wave pool, and they’ve already been working on getting on a board from the water and balancing. We won’t be starting from complete scratch out there on the waves. That’s part one of management. We don’t let them fail. The next tiny thing will be sitting on the beach and working up to throwing the ball in the water. Give them a break. Then, after they rest in their crates, we’ll let them hang out on the surfboards with us if they're up to it. Hoover, that’s Ash’s K9, big red German shepherd.”
Petra gave a nod. “He was the first dog on the plane this morning.”
“That’s right. Hoover’s a big water dog, so he came to provide peer-to-peer mentorship.”
“Oh, nice! You said crates. Why not just let them sleep on the sand?”
“Their crate, by themselves, without distractions, is their thinking spot,” Hawkeye said. “They go into their private space and rest for twenty minutes, which helps them relive the experience and process it to learn more quickly and with less stress.”
“Like they do in Finland with their kids. No homework. Hands-on learning, mixing fun activities with harder ones, then out you go to play in the woods no matter the weather, to process and maybe apply what you just learned to your playtime. It’s an extremely effective system.” Petra paused and covered her eyes as if to shield herself. “What was that smile?”
“Nothing really, just for someone in the FBI, you have a non-linear way of thinking.”
“You’re not the first person to say that.” Petra rested her head against the side window and felt the coolness of the night air radiate through her hair to her scalp. “Have you worked with Cooper for a long time? Where did you buy him? Here in the States, or did you have to go over to Europe?”
“He’s been with me for almost four years now. I didn’t buy him, though,” Hawkeye said, “I found him in the road.”
“What? Found him? An amazing dog like Cooper?” Petra only knew a very little about working dogs. But she did know that when the special operators came through camp with their K9s, the teams treated their K9s like fellow soldiers and held them in high esteem. She also knew that the military bought their dogs from specific breeders, and they could cost more than a car. “How could that happen? Would you tell me?”
“The Hawkeye and Cooper origin story? Sure. I knew Cooper was a special dog from the moment I first saw him. Tiny puppy. I’m guessing about eight weeks old. Scrawny. He ran into the middle of the road, facing down my vehicle and barking his head off. This puppy’s whole body posture was so readable. He was determined to stop me, and it was for a damned good reason.”
Petra bent her knee and pulled her leg onto the seat to turn sideways, leaning forward to focus.
“So, I’m out in the country, taking a drive to clear my head. And this tiny pup ran out in front of my vehicle, where he squared off and barked at me ferociously. It was comical, really. And I climbed down from my cab to see if he had on a collar so I could get him back to his mama. Cooper was so small; I wasn’t even sure he’d weaned yet. I was afraid he was going to run away, so I got into a low squat and was chirping at him, trying to get his curiosity and courage up so he’d come see me. Every time I got close, he’d bound off a bit, then turn to see if I was following. So now he had sparked my curiosity. He stopped at a ditch with tall weeds, and I thought that, since he didn’t have a collar on, his litter mates might be in there and be hungry. I was making plans for rounding them up and getting them to a no-kill shelter.”
“But it wasn’t more puppies,” Petra whispered.
“It was a human baby. Seven months old. He must have crawled from his yard toward the street. And was just then coming up the side of the ditch. Determined little bugger.”
“Baby! Can you imagine what would have happened without a warning?”
“Especially in the size truck I was driving,” Hawkeye said. “I could have easily missed the baby on the road. Lots of bad could have happened. There was cold water in the ditches. If the baby hadn’t crawled out, he could have gone hypothermic and died pretty fast if he hadn’t drowned first, weighed down by his clothes. He could have crawled into the woods and disappeared, lots of wild animals, coyotes, and the like.”
“A random baby in the weeds? Like Moses in the reeds on the Nile?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. But, that is about how it looked. When I picked the baby up, he seemed okay, damp and dirty from crawling, mud from head to foot. I could see through a break in the trees that a gravel drive was hidden under the dried leaves. And a few paces in, I could see a house.
“The baby wasn’t crying? What was Cooper doing?”
“The baby let me hold him without any fuss. Cooper looked satisfied that he got someone to pick up the baby. I felt there was a lot more to this story. Things seemed too still. If a baby is missing, alarms are clanging.”
“Like the cat on the plane. Everyone was in motion. You’re right. A still environment was suspect,” she said.
“I had no way to stow the baby away safely while I checked things out, so I cautiously approached the house in the shadows. The puppy bounded out toward a patch of sunlight, then he raced back, yipping at me to hurry up.”
Petra reached out and gripped his arm.
“I followed, coming up over the mound where I saw a blanket laid out with baby toys. As I walked closer and could see the other side of the elevation, I made out an elderly woman. She was non-responsive. So, I have a puppy nipping at me to get me to fix things. The baby starts screaming bloody murder, and I have an unconscious woman in front of me.”
“9-1-1 was far away?” Petra asked.
“I didn’t have a cell connection out there. I put the baby in the middle of the blanket and told the puppy to keep that baby on the blanket. The woman didn’t have any discernable vital signs, but her skin still had color and was warm to the touch, so she hadn’t been down that long. I gave her CPR. Every time I looked over, the puppy was hard at his job. And I was hard listening for a vehicle to come up the road. A few minutes in, I hear one. I lifted a finger to the puppy—and I say here puppy, not Cooper because you know big Cooper, and you shouldn’t have that image in your head. This puppy was small enough to curl up in a cereal bowl.”
“My goodness.” Petra pressed a hand to her chest.
“I held up my finger so the puppy would remember he was to do his job guarding the baby, and I tore off through the woods to intercept the car. It was an off-duty firefighter. He had a radio in his truck and some medical equipment. An oxygen bagger. Soon enough, the paramedics showed up with an ambulance. They loaded Grandma up and took off. The firefighter and I waited for social services to send someone to take custody of the baby.”
“How was puppy-Cooper doing through all that hubbub?” Petra asked.
“He never lost focus on his job. He was pushing toys over to the baby with his nose, and he’d bop the baby in the chest when he got close to the edge of the blanket.”
What a fascinating story. Petra had so many questions about what was going on in the puppy’s brain. But since her own circuitry was buffering, she’d save most of them for a more cogent time. For now, she’d just ask for this much, “From a K9 trainer’s point of view, why did that work? How did Cooper know what to do?”
“We became a team. It was a life-or-death situation, and animals of all kinds tend to line up and work toward a common purpose when a life is on the line. Cooper saw me as the leader. I sent him a picture of his duties, and he did them.”
“Like a movie in your head? That’s what you showed him? Clairvoyance?”
“That’s right. Cooper was creative as hell with the problem-solving. Just a miracle puppy on the side of the road.”
Petra felt tears sting her eyes. A miracle puppy. The ramifications of his showing up were enormous. “He had to come from somewhere, right? But it sounds like that wasn’t his baby or his owner.”
“Before the social worker showed up, the baby’s mom arrived with the groceries. She said the puppy didn’t belong to their family, everyone was terrified of dogs, and she’d never seen the puppy before.”
“What did she think of her baby crawling to the road?”
“I never told her about that,” Hawkeye said. “I said there was a puppy in the road, and I went to see if it belonged to the house. I mean, it’s true enough, and the mom was pretty distraught by all the doings, near hysterical. I drove the woman and the baby to the hospital and got a ride service to take me back to my truck.”
“And Cooper, where was he? Waiting on the blanket?”
“In my coat pocket, curled up asleep.”
“Tiny then!” Petra wished Cooper were there so she could give him some extra scritches.
“Compared to now, yes. From the get-go, Cooper was an itty-bitty powerhouse of protection, cunning, strength, and fearlessness.”
“Okay, Cooper? Why that name?” Yeah, Petra was pushing herself to have this conversation. She was afraid with the meds in her system that she’d fall asleep, and Hawkeye would feel like he had to scoop her into his arms again. Once a day of the heroine carry was probably a good quota to stick to. While the questions helped her to stay engaged, they were also sapping Petra’s resources. And at the same time, she wanted to know everything about this man. The image of bottom watering a drooping houseplant came to mind. She sighed. Maybe she’d come up with some sexier imagery after some sleep.
“Cooper was the name of the baby he saved.”
“Ah, now, see? I thought it was because your nickname is Hawkeye, and you named him after James Fenimore Cooper and the Leatherstocking tales.”
“My sister, Cora, was named after that, so you aren’t far off the mark.”
“Does your given name have a literary bent, too?”
“My given name is Michael George Kesse. Michael for Crichton and George for Orwell. Mom was a high school English teacher.” Hawkeye pressed the blinker up and then turned right into a parking lot.
“Would you tell me about that?”
“Curious Petra, we’re at the hotel.” He pulled into a spot, put the SUV into park, and turned her way. “The drugs must be wearing off because your mind is picking up speed.” He sent her a grin. “I’ll answer all your questions in a bit. Come on, let’s go see what we can figure out about the room situation.”