Chapter 41 Hawk
HAWK
I’m close.
Every beat of my heart seems to say Dani, Dani, Dani…
Then my phone.
It’s Vinnie again.
I push it on speaker. “Yeah?”
“I pushed everything we’ve got to APD and county,” Vinnie says. “Coordinates, Reyes’s properties, the bus station footage, Belinda’s description of the place. They’re staging near the highway turnoff. You should see them in the next fifteen to twenty.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
I don’t tell him twenty is too long. I don’t tell him I can already feel time thinning and pulling apart.
“Tell them to kill sirens two miles out,” I say. “We can’t afford to spook them. If the…” I can’t finish.
I can’t bring myself to even think what is constantly on the edge of my mind.
“I told them. Hawk, don’t be a hero. Eyes only until backup arrives. I mean it. Raven needs you. We all need you.”
I love my sister. I love all my siblings. But they don’t need me like Daniela does. Not at this moment.
Right now, she’s my priority. My only priority.
“I’ll do what I can,” I say. “Call me if anything changes.”
I end the call just as my truck surges over a rut hard enough to punch the glove box open.
My registration and some other papers fly out and onto the passenger seat.
I leave them. I’m in a maze of back roads.
Every ranch has these offshoots—old surveyor cuts that became maintenance roads that became afterthoughts. Dad used to call them arteries.
Right now? They feel like fucking land mines.
The road takes a sharp turn around a dry creek bed and then straightens for a quarter mile. I hit the gas.
The phone buzzes again. Vinnie. I jab the speaker button. “Yeah.”
“They rolled sooner than I thought. Cops are headed your way.”
“Got it.”
“And Hawk?”
“Yeah.”
“If you get eyes on the house—”
“I’m not going in.” The lie is clean though it tastes like bile. “Not until they arrive. I heard you.”
Silence.
He doesn’t believe me.
Not that I expected him to.
A sigh. Then a deep breath. “Please be careful.”
“You got it.” I end the call.
That wasn’t a lie. I’ll be careful. I’ll be careful with Daniela’s life.
I reach for the water bottle rolling in the cup holder. Blech. It’s warm and tastes like plastic.
Another bend. The dirt track dips into another dry creek bed. I’m calculating the distance left—maybe four miles, maybe three—when the horizon twitches.
Movement. A car—red, maybe?— knifing through the dust ahead. It’s coming at me way too fast for this nothing road.
Fuck.
Fuck it all! It’s a red Mustang. Daniela’s car.
She got away! She fucking got away!
My heart slams so loud I hear her name in the beat.
“Baby! I’m coming!”
But a half second later…
No.
It’s not her.
That’s not Daniela behind the wheel.
The posture is all wrong. It’s not her. It’s a man.
Fuck.
Is it Franco? I’ve never met him, don’t know his posture or build…
No.
It’s not him.
Because I recognize the man behind that windshield.
It’s Hernando Reyes.
I have an instant, and sometimes an instant is a lifetime.
I don’t aim for the nose. Too much risk of airbag, and a head-on right here would turn both cars into confessionals.
I drop two wheels off the right shoulder and then saw the wheel left and brush the brake. The rear pivots, weight swings, and the nose cuts across the skinny road as the Mustang flashes past. I nudge the tail of my truck into the tail of Dani’s car.
The Mustang fishtails, overcorrects, and skates sideways into the scrub.
Two wheels hit a shallow berm, and the car buckles up on one side, hanging there like it’s thinking about flipping, but then slaps back down so hard I feel the thud through my seatback.
It plows twenty feet into white brush and stops.
I don’t breathe for a full two seconds. Then I jam the truck straight, stomp the brake and pivot into a U-turn.
I slide to a stop ten yards behind the Mustang, angle the truck a little to block the road. I shove the door open and kill the engine.
Reyes shoves his door open and stumbles out. He lists, catches himself with a hand on the roof, and then turns, dazed and blinking.
He sees me.
Fucking bastard.
He flinches.
He’s scared.
Damned right he’s scared.
“Afraid you’d miss me?” I say.
We move at the same time.
He swings first, looping his arms. I duck, step in, put a shoulder in his ribs and drive him back against the hot metal. He brings a knee up, but I twist my hips and catch it on my thigh.
It hurts. But it’s a good hurt. He’s in way worse shape.
“Key fob,” I say, voice flat.
“Go to hell,” he pants.
I pop him once in the stomach and slam my forearm across his collarbone and pin him with the car door. He coughs, tries to rake my face with his nails. I turn my head and feel one catch the outer shell of my ear. I don’t care.
“Keys,” I repeat.
He grins up at me through the dust. “Too late, cabrón.”
I trap his wrist, move it, find his front pocket. He tries to bite. I buck my forearm under his jaw until his teeth click together. The sound is satisfying. I close my fingers around a fob and take it.
He twists, but I have him trapped.
“Talk,” I say.
He laughs. “By the time you get there,” he says, his voice smug, “she’ll be in pieces.”
My vision tunnels. Blood roars. Every muscle in my hands wants to make him eat his own words, and I want that so much it scares me.
I loosen my grip by a millimeter so I don’t do something I can’t take back.
“What did you do?” I demand.
He licks his lip and smiles wider. “Franco likes endings,” he says. “Grand finales. She came, didn’t she? Like you knew she would.”
“What’s the timeline?” I grind out.
He shrugs against the door. “Ask the maestro.”
I don’t have time to unthread his riddles.
I step back and shove him, hard. He staggers, goes to a knee in the dust, and then flops onto his ass. He looks up at me like he’s measuring whether I’m going to kick him in the ribs.
I’m not. Not today.
I crouch and jam the fob in my pocket. The engine is still idling. I punch the power button and slam the door. The car locks with a chirp.
“Where?” I glance over my shoulder at him. “Where is the house?”
He laughs again, quieter. He knows I know. He knows everything that matters is already in motion and there’s nothing left to bargain with.
“Tick,” he says. “Tock.”
I stand. My legs are humming. My hands shake.
I look down at him one more time, memorize his face in case I need to pick it out of a lineup, and then run back to the truck.
I slide in, slam the door, throw it in gear.
In the rearview, Reyes claws himself upright, sways, pats at his pockets and looks dumbly at the Mustang.
I can’t spare him another thought. I shove Dani’s key fob lower in my pocket.
My phone again. Fuck!
It’s Vinnie. I put it on speaker.
“What the fuck?” he demands. “What’s going on?”
“Reyes,” I huff out. “He was driving Dani’s car. He tried to run me off the road. Correction—he tried to run past me. I clipped him. He’s on foot. I’ve got Dani’s keys. Her car’s dead in the brush.”
“You okay?” His voice tightens.
“I’m fine.” It’s almost true. “He said something. Sounds like Franco’s got something planned. Something…” Fuck. I inhale a deep breath. “It’s not good. I’ve got to hurry.”
“All right. I’ll route the nearest unit to your GPS pip. They’re three out.”
“Tell them to keep it blacked out the last mile. No light. No noise.”
“Done. Hawk—”
“I’m going,” I say, and drop the phone onto the seat so I don’t have to hear the rest.
I’m the fixer, damn it. The fucking fixer.
Every problem that has come my way, I’ve fixed.
Sometimes my fixes caused more problems, but I fixed those too.
My record is solid.
And Daniela won’t be my first failure.
Not her. Not ever.