Chapter Three
Hawk had played four years of high school football. He’d suffered torn ligaments and two concussions. He did two tours in Iraq, fought ISIS and insurgents, and bore the scars to prove it. But he’d never once had to limp into a debriefing.
He was now.
Plus his arm ached from a brand-new tetanus shot.
But worst of all…
His pride was totally destroyed.
He didn’t shoot his own damn snake. The woman he was hired to protect did it.
And the friggin’ thing wasn’t even venomous.
He knew the way to the Black Heart Security office blindfolded, but the voices carrying down the hall pulled him toward them.
As he approached the war room, he heard two of the Malones talking, Gray and Denver filling in the gaps of a story about the one time they went hunting for bear in the mountains when they were teenagers.
Then a feminine voice, soft yet echoing with the strength of the owner. But he only caught every few words Sinead was saying.
Hawk forced his stiff glute muscle through the last few steps to the war room. When he walked in, everyone was sitting at the conference table. Five of the six Malone brothers were present, along with Sinead Winthrop.
Willow sat at her usual corner desk, hand curled protectively over her stomach, rounded with her and Decker’s, aka Dutch’s, child. Ayla sat with her pen hovering over a notepad, pausing to listen to the story that Sinead Winthrop was regaling them all with.
When he entered, every person in the room looked up at him.
His gaze collided with Sinead’s first. She sat in a relaxed pose, pushed a bit away from the table, her leg crossed beneath. Her long walnut-brown hair looked smooth, as if she hadn’t been dodging bullets on Timberline Ridge or shooting snakes.
No, Sinead Winthrop looked like she’d just breezed in for a corporate meeting and found herself surrounded by old friends.
Carson, the eldest Malone brother, nodded toward the open chair at the foot of the table. “Pull up a seat, Hawk.”
His body might not be filled with venom, but his ass was still tender from fangs that bruised. The thought of sitting made him shake his head. “Think I’ll stand.”
A laugh—totally at his expense—circled the room. He bit down on a groan and positioned himself near the door, back to the wall.
Carson turned his attention to Sinead. “Ms. Winthrop was just telling us about her safari in Kenya.”
A rough noise vibrated Hawk’s chest. Again with the Kenya story? It seemed too out there, too farfetched. He’d spent enough time down at the many bars in Willowbrook listening to similar tales from the old-timers.
He didn’t believe a word of her tale. Shooting a snake was one thing, but driving her guide out of the bush after a lion attack was completely unbelievable.
She gave a little toss of her head, sending her dark hair rippling in a silken sheet down her straight back. “We were nearing the end of the story anyway.”
“What happened after you reached the hospital with your guide?”
“I ran inside, calling for help. Doctors and nurses flooded out to get Njorage out of the Jeep.”
Hawk studied her face. He had to hand it to her. He’d played cards with the best, and Sinead seemed to have a damn good poker face—she didn’t have a single tell that she was lying through her perfect, straight white teeth.
Colt Malone toyed with the brim of his Stetson set in front of him on the table. “What happened to the lion?”
“Oh. I’ll show you.” Sinead pulled out her phone. Even the way she ran her thumb across the screen had an air of calm that most liars couldn’t pull off.
She held up the screen, and everyone reacted to what they were seeing.
Hawk remained rooted in place. He didn’t need to see whatever was on that screen. He already knew it was fake.
“Holy…” Colt issued a whistle and accepted Sinead’s phone to inspect the image closer.
“Scroll through the album if you’d like. The first photos are just shots I took before the incident.”
Colt let out noises of awe, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. And he even held the phone closer to his face to inspect a photo.
By the time her phone made it halfway around the table, Hawk caught himself leaning forward with interest and pressed his shoulder blades against the wall again, folding his arms.
Willow moved to lean over Dutch as he perused the photos, and she didn’t bother holding back excited gasps at what she saw.
She looked up at Hawk. “Did you see these yet?”
“No. But I heard the short version of the story.”
“You have to see.”
He liked Willow. He liked all the Malones. And he was part of the team. He supposed he was involved because he was also Sinead’s bodyguard. That was the only reason he walked over to take a look—not because he was interested.
He expected to see a picture of a lion at the zoo, carefully cropped to look like it was in the wilds of Kenya. What he saw was Sinead with her arms around its shoulders, the enormous body stretched in front of her.
Feeling her stare on him, he looked up. “Nice kill.”
“I never wanted to kill anything when I was over there. I only went to take photos and for the experience. But I couldn’t just let Njorage be killed.”
He thumbed through a few more photos. The lion again—very much not in a zoo—stretched on the ground with two grown men lying in front of it to provide scale.
A snapshot of her standing beside a hospital bed, her guide extensively bandaged but smiling and giving a thumbs-up at being alive.
The next was a photo of the guide, his wife and…Hawk counted…eight kids, who would have been orphaned if not for her heroics.
And lastly, a shot of Sinead standing with what looked like the leader of the Kenyan village. She was wearing an intricate beaded necklace and holding a carved shield in what was obviously the Kenyan equivalent of the key to the city.
He withheld his grunt of annoyance and held the phone out to her. When she took it, their fingers brushed.
He drew back and let his fist hang at his side, trying to un-feel the small tingle of electric current.
Gray leaned back in his seat, the image of a man about to enjoy himself. “Hawk. Do you think you can still perform?”
The room’s attention swung to him like he was the punchline nobody had gotten to.
After fighting with men cut from the same bolt of rough cloth, Hawk understood what brotherhood meant. He’d heard the guys on the team rib each other a hell of a lot. So he understood their teasing. Didn’t mean it didn’t chafe his already prickly ego.
He caught a mutter from Sinead, under her breath but not quite low enough. “Not sure he could before.”
Hawk felt heat climb up the back of his neck that had nothing to do with snakebites or tetanus shots.
“I can perform fine.” His voice came out tight. “The snake got my ass, not my aim.”
Ayla issued a snort of suppressed laughter, and Willow’s eyes sparkled with mirth over the hand she clapped over her mouth.
Sinead examined her fingernails, the lift of her brows suggesting she believed otherwise. “I’m fine to continue on my own now that the danger’s passed.”
Whatever professional composure he’d walked in with evaporated, replaced by hot impatience. He made a sharp move to go, ignoring the pull in his glute. “I’ll take you back to your vehicle. Right now. We’re done here.”
Sinead rose from her chair without hesitation, chin up and looking entirely too pleased with how this was going.
“Sit down, Ms. Winthrop.” Carson didn’t raise his voice—he didn’t need to. Their boss carried an authority that made everyone stop and listen.
She turned her attention to him.
“There’s a clause in your contract. You don’t get to dismiss us. We’re on this job until you’re safe—however long that takes.”
Sinead sat as if the wind fell out of her designer sails, and Hawk allowed himself a small flicker of satisfaction.
Carson flipped open a folder in front of him. “Of course, that clause is contingent on continued threat assessment. If the situation’s resolved and there really is no further danger to the client, the contract terminates automatically.”
Sinead was back on her feet before he’d finished the sentence, moving like a woman who’d just been called to board her flight.
“Then I believe we’re finished.” She looked right at Hawk. “Two men are dead, and I have a very specific hole in the ground I need to dig.”
“Except,” Carson said with an air of mildness that anyone who knew him understood to be cold calculation, “two men are dead. And we don’t know if there could be more.
Which means the threat isn’t resolved. The clause stands.
” He closed the folder and lay his hand on the top like the drop of a gavel.
Sinead sat back down, harder this time, arms crossed in the first display of real irritation Hawk had seen from her.
The crack in her cool, calm demeanor.
Her gaze met Hawk’s. For a long beat neither looked away.
She stood again. “I’ll hire my own security then. Someone who isn’t bound by whatever clause you’re inventing on the spot.”
“Not inventing.” Carson gave her a direct look. “Page four of the contract you signed when you gave verbal agreement over the phone with Willow.”
Hawk bit down on the inside of his cheek hard to keep from laughing. Even though he wanted to be finished with the woman, he didn’t want to give her the ability to fire him.
Besides, he was on that ridge. Whatever doubt he had about how real the threat was ended the minute that man lifted his weapon and took aim.
Those men were real. Their bullets were real.
She stood one more time with a stubborn air. But he knew the Black Heart Security team—as long as she was in danger, they weren’t going to let her out of the contract.
“Sinead.” Willow’s gentle tone made her sit for the third time, arms crossed tightly.
He couldn’t resist it. Two months on the team and half a day of humiliation gave him the right, in his eyes.
“For someone with so many objections to sitting down, ma’am, you sure do it a lot.”
She cut her gaze to him, as sharp as the scope glint that had saved his life six hours ago. “At least I can sit down, Mr. Hawk.”
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