Chapter Six
His piercing gaze seemed to burn through her skin before he took a wide step back, at least as wide as the restroom would allow. This wasn’t how she would have foreseen her day going. Not in a million years. This turned her peaceful existence on its head.
Goosebumps scattered her flesh as she tried to reconcile her brain to the facts of the situation. Leo was dead. No matter how much she repeated that inside her head it still didn’t sink in.
He wanted her to only trust Hawkeye. Did she have any other choice?
She could have easily been killed too. If the shooter had been off his mark by an inch, she would have been on the sidewalk bleeding out next to Leo.
Hawkeye was staring at her. He’d removed his hat which gave her a better look at him.
His eyes were about the only kind thing on him.
The scowl he wore was as fixed as the prominent scar above his left eye.
And what about the scar on his arm? Had he fought in a war?
Had he been hurt in the military, or caught in a snare while investigating?
The wound hadn’t healed completely. She only knew this because she’d taken a year in nursing school until she’d dropped out.
All the blood and guts were too much for her.
And she wasn’t what you would call a people-person.
She was more of a dog or cat person, and strangely, she didn’t have one of those either.
She wouldn’t mind having a pet, but her apartment building didn’t allow them.
It was time to find a new place to live.
As Hawkeye stuffed her shirt into the trashcan, she examined his profile closer.
His attempt to hide his face under whiskers made him look rugged, but he was handsomely rugged.
He wasn’t like most men though who wanted to play up their features.
Hawkeye downplayed his features. She wondered if he was a teddy bear underneath all that scruff and scowling?
He probably had a huge heart. At least she thought he had a heart. The jury was still out.
He might want to go unnoticed, but a man his size must find it hard to disappear, even in a city like San Antonio saturated with tourists and cowboys. There was something…different about him. Something she couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“What do you do for a living? When you're not private investigating for Leo,” she asked.
“I’m a ranch hand.” There was no hesitation when he answered.
“Let me see a hand,” she demanded.
“My hand?” One corner of his mouth curved into a grin. “Which one?”
“You choose.” She stuck out her own hand insistently.
He laid his right hand in hers. She examined his short, flat nails that were surprisingly clean for a man who professed that he was a rancher. She turned it over. He had calluses upon calluses on the backs of his knuckles. He worked with his hands. So, he was telling the truth about that part.
It was possible that he was on the up-and-up.
Leo said Hawkeye could be trusted. To verify that someone was a good person would mean Leo had to know him.
Margo and Leo never discussed his clients or cases.
In fact, he never asked about her work either.
She doubted he’d had any clue how many books she’d written over the course of five years.
“Can I have my hand back now?”
She released her hold, feeling her face heat up in embarrassment.
He stepped over to wash his hands, and she took advantage of continuing to examine him. She considered herself a good judge of character. Though he told her not to trust him, or anyone. Leo certainly trusted Hawkeye. But then that begged the question, could she trust Leo?
No. He wasn’t trustworthy.
What if Hawkeye had been the one who shot Leo?
She searched for a hidden gun. Where would he hide one? She didn’t see any unusual bumps and lumps.
“How’d you get the scar?” she asked.
He looked at her through the mirror. “What scar?”
She smiled because his answer was absurd. “On your arm.”
He shut off the water, shook the excess off his hands and grabbed a paper towel. As he dried his hands he faced her. “It’s best you know as little about me as possible.”
“Yet I’m supposed to trust you?”
“No, I told you not to.” He slammed his hat down on his head. The ends nearly touched the neckline of the shirt.
“And yet you expect me to trust because you said I should listen to you if I want to live.” She tapped the toe of her shoe.
“Actually, Davani said for you to trust me, and I’d protect you. Which I will.”
She sighed. “If I’m not supposed to trust you then I should walk away and go and speak to the police. They’d keep me safe.”
He leaned against the sink. “You can if you want but you’ll be dead by nightfall.”
“Is that a threat?” Her throat ached.
“No. I want to keep you safe but unless you’re willing to listen and obey, I can’t do what I need to do.”
“Obey?” she choked on the word. “Who uses that term these days?”
“My commands. Better?” he said without any shame.
“No.” She wasn’t sure if she appreciated his no-nonsense bullshit attitude or if she should be scared. “What are your commands, drill sergeant?”
“You’re going to have to square your shoulders.
Don’t think of the man out there dead on the concrete.
Think of you.” He looked her directly in the eye and she tried to read him but to no avail.
He wore a poker face, trained to hide his thoughts behind a mask.
She’d never been successful at hiding her emotions because every single one leaked into her expression.
What had Leo gotten her into? Hell, what had Leo gotten himself into?
She sucked in a rush of air, placing her fingers against the base of her throat where her pulse raced.
Margo felt off kilter. Something she found there in the hardened lines of Hawkeye’s expression told her he would protect her, but at what price?
She couldn’t trust her own instincts. She didn’t want to trust him.
Yet, he might just be the only one she could trust. She didn’t have to trust him at all.
She wanted out of this nightmare alive, and he had that air about him, one that screamed dependability.
Margo was on to him. This was all a bit backward. Reverse psychology. He told her not to trust him and now she was leaning toward trusting him to keep her alive.
Once she’d done research for a book and how tragedy affected people.
Meeting someone who had suffered more tragedy made a person’s experiences seem less tragic—less critical.
People searched for others who had experienced far worse than their own experiences.
And in Hawkeye she saw through his scars and eyes that he’d suffered something untenable.
Suddenly she wanted to peel away his layers, find out what terrible things he’d witnessed in life that made him put up distance and walls.
What made his scowl a permanent fixture?
She’d always liked a good mystery, hence why she enjoyed writing suspenseful novels.
She liked a psychological roller coaster with a twisted ending.
What better mystery to crack than her own?
If this were one of her novels, what would her lead female character do?
Strengthen-the-fuck-up. Use her brain as her best defense.
Margo needed to find a connection with Hawkeye—a natural human need in a time like this when she felt alone.
Bonding over something would help them see each other less as strangers and more as alike.
She’d been alone, independent, for a long time.
She could be independent, find resilience buried within her.
Swallowing against the pain in her throat and straightening her backbone, she forged ahead.
Here was her chance of finding a bridge between them.
“I know tragedy, Hawkeye. I took care of my grandmother who withered away like crude seasons. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and suddenly, she was on a decline.
A nightmare I couldn’t turn away from. At times, I was torn between hoping she would find peace in death and struggling to keep her with me for reasons that were self-serving.
It became a struggle. The joy and happiness were stripped from her eyes, and I knew she was no longer in that frail body.
For six months I stayed by her bedside, spoon feeding her, taking care of her bare necessities, until she passed peacefully.
I didn’t weep for the woman who lay in a bed that had turned into her prison.
I cried for the woman who’d been a nurturer, the friend I always had when times were rough.
” Margo had her grandmother’s tough resilience.
She felt her strength seeping into her. “I can do hard things, that I can promise.”
She hoped sharing that story that she hadn’t shared with anyone else would be an invisible bridge with him. She’d been way off the mark because she received no reaction…at all. He just stood there staring as if waiting for a punchline. If he had a heart, it was shriveled and dry.
She took a step back, hardening her nerves. “Who would want Leo dead?” she said.
Was there hesitation in him or was he one of those people who needed to chew on every response that left his tongue? “A man like Leo tends to have many enemies,” Hawkeye finally said.
“He could be abrasive. In fact, he was an asshole more times than not.” She couldn’t believe she’d said the words aloud. She could think them, but she should never have voiced them. He’d certainly think she was callous. But did she care? She was only telling the truth about Leo.
Margo and Hawkeye stared at each other for a moment, sizing the other up.
She wanted to say something, something brave and warranted for the situation, but she suddenly felt exhaustion filling her body.
A heaviness she couldn’t quite explain. She wanted the conversation to end but knew it was only beginning.