Chapter Five
Hawk had seen a lot in his time with the military. But actual buried treasure? That was a first.
Instead of answers, the box contained only an index card with a link. Another breadcrumb. Another puzzle.
Whatever waited at the end of this trail had been important enough for someone to kill over.
He was starting to question the kind of man Sinead’s father was or what he had hidden in these mountains. Apparently he hadn’t believed in handing over secrets without making someone work for them.
Hawk sat behind the wheel of the truck with the engine running and the heater pushing warm air through the vents while Sinead stared at her phone, the glow of the screen reflecting in her wide eyes.
“The PDF has another link.” She tapped the screen and she looked at him with wide eyes. “It opens to county land records.”
He leaned closer as the page loaded. “Find anything?”
A deed appeared.
She stared at the screen. “That can’t be right.”
“Can I see?”
She held the phone between them on the console, and they both leaned in, heads almost touching. Again, he caught the scent of citrus.
Hawk skimmed the legal information. “Mind if I blow up the image?”
“Maybe you should see an eye doctor.”
He looked at her in confusion.
“You did mistake the snake for a rattlesnake.”
He snorted. “I have perfect vision. Ask anyone in my Ranger unit.”
That made her quiet.
“I just want to copy down the coordinates on the deed.”
He enlarged the document and read through the records.
“The land,” she whispered. “It’s in my name.”
“Looks that way.”
“I knew about the land we’re sitting on. It’s possible I don’t know about it all. Before I left Wyoming, I requested more plot surveys from your local county clerk. They said it could be weeks.” She swallowed and met his gaze.
The fading light caught the flecks in her eyes, making them spark gold within the depths. Up close, he made out a myriad of browns, from a peaty earth to walnut brown the same shade as her hair.
He pulled in a breath, filling his nose with her scent.
She simply stared back at him. For once, there was no sharp comeback ready on her tongue. No attitude to cover what he knew was fear.
“The coordinates are on this property?” She dashed her tongue over her bottom lip, drawing his attention to the fullness. Some might call it too full.
He jerked his gaze back to the phone and checked the coordinates against the map app.
“Not here.” He angled the phone so she could see the satellite image. The pinned location sat miles deeper into the roughest country. There looked to be no roads, and he knew the area to be all ridges and rock.
Sinead stared at it. “That’s where he wanted me to go?”
His jaw tightened. Her father hadn’t sent her to one buried box. He’d sent her on a trail.
“Reaching it will be hard. I’ll have to hike in.”
“What do you mean you’ll have to hike in?”
“I’ll find whatever X marks the spot and bring it back to you.”
“And I’m just supposed to sit around like some princess while you’re out there?” She swung her gaze to the windshield and the world quickly being swallowed by shadows. She shook her head. “I’m going, Hawk.”
As her bodyguard, his role was to assess the risks from every angle. She’d already been shot at in the woods once. He didn’t like the odds.
He shook his head, and she snatched the phone out of his hand. “You can’t go if you don’t have the coordinates.”
He tipped his head to eye her. “Really, Ms. Winthrop? You’re going to pull that move?”
She tilted her chin a little higher. “Call me Sinead. And yes, I’m pulling that move. I’m strong and capable of hiking rough terrain.”
After studying her for several heartbeats, he realized he wouldn’t change her mind.
With a sigh, he shifted fully into his seat, though he missed the scent of citrus immediately.
“I won’t go as your guide.”
She started to shake her head.
“I’ll go as your guard,” he broke over any arguments she may have. “But it will be tough.”
“I don’t care. I have to fulfill my father’s last wishes.”
“Then I’ll get a plan together. Speak to my team.” He needed time to ensure they could safely navigate that part of the mountain, let alone escape more threats. And no way in hell was he taking her into unfamiliar wilderness with only minutes of daylight left.
Or mercenaries still orbiting her.
They drove the rest of the way to the ranch in silence, and he parked in a line of Black Heart Security vehicles.
For a moment, neither spoke. Sinead stared down at her fingers looped together in her lap.
“I’ll go speak to the guys now,” he said.
She opened the door and jumped out. “Willow told me to come find her anytime.”
Even if he wanted to say more, he couldn’t, because she was gone in a blink, walking in a fast clip to the barn.
He killed the engine and sat with it for a minute, letting the plan take shape in his head—routes, gear, how far they could get in a day.
He climbed out of the truck and was halfway across the yard, sorting through satellite maps in his mind, when one of the veterans flagged him down from the direction of the barn.
“Hey, Hawk—can you give me a hand? The gate latch on the south pasture’s busted, and Veccio’s out picking up feed. I could use your muscle for twenty minutes.”
Hawk crossed the driveway to meet him. He hadn’t known Harkness long, but they’d hit it off almost immediately.
The former Special Forces medic had taken a hit from an IED in Afghanistan, suffering burns over nearly thirty percent of his body.
The visible scars—stretching across half his face and disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt—were severe enough to make Hawk wonder what the rest of them looked like.
Harkness carried them with the same quiet confidence he carried everything else, never inviting pity and never accepting it.
Twenty minutes turned into an hour, the way ranch work always did.
He and Harkness wrestled the old gate off its hinge and replaced the rusted latch with a new one.
By the time they’d tested it, making sure it swung clean, the sky had gone the color of a bruise, purple bleeding into the orange at the ridgeline.
It felt good, though, getting his hands on something simple. A problem with a clear fix, not buried coordinates and a dead man’s puzzles.
He and Harkness reached the barn once more, and the scent of woodsmoke matched with the curl of smoke coming from the back.
Harkness wiped his hands on his jeans. “Guys got a bonfire going. You coming?”
He hooked his hand around his nape. “I don’t know.” He had maps to study, routes to plan, a woman who needed him to be sharp for what was coming.
He’d had one hell of a long day, including the near-death experience. Not to mention his ego felt like it’d gone ten rounds in the boxing ring with a heavyweight.
“C’mon, man. You’ve been ghostin’ us all week.” When Harkness smiled, the skin of his mouth pulled down, but he still knew how to use that smile to persuade people.
He almost said no. But his shoulders ached in a good, honest way, and the smell of woodsmoke pulled at a part of him he hadn’t fed in a long time.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
Harkness grinned, and they strolled around the barn to the firepit. Wood was stacked inside, the flames licking higher up the sides by the second. The pit was circled by lawn chairs and a few split logs serving as benches that the couples liked to cozy up on.
He and Harkness kicked back in lawn chairs and joined in the discussions that drifted from one of the new horses that needed an attitude adjustment to a new family moving into the nearby town of Willowbrook.
Gray Malone dropped to the bench near Hawk and passed him a beer without asking if he wanted one. Ayla sat on the opposite side of the fire, her hair as red as the flames, telling some story about Navy chasing a raccoon into the shed. Willow, curled against Dutch’s side, laughed at the story.
Even though the site of the snake bite felt stiff as hell, Hawk lingered longer than he planned.
When he left the service, nobody warned him about the parts he would miss—a sense of belonging.
Even though he didn’t exactly fit in with the Malone family or the guys in the training facility, and he moved on the outer edge of the group in the therapy program, he soaked up that feeling for a little while.
He sipped the beer and stared at the fire a while longer, turning the day over in his mind.
He thought about mercenaries and ridge lines with no roads in—or out.
He tossed around the idea of them taking horses in.
He was skilled with horses, especially in the mountains. But the terrain was too rough for them.
Lastly, Hawk thought about how bad an idea it was to let her come.
The fire popped, sending sparks into the sky that was now fully dark. Stars pricked through the deep midnight blue. Very soon he and Sinead would be looking at those stars from the mountain.
He wondered where she was now, if Willow was here at the bonfire. Maybe Sinead was tucked away in some guest bedroom in the main house. He drained the last of his beer and stood, stretching carefully around the twinge in his ass.
Soon they’d be walking into the thick of those dark pines, chasing a secret her old man had buried there. And whatever waited for Sinead at the end of that trail, Hawk intended to make sure both of them walked out the other side.
* * * * *
The sun hadn’t fully cleared the ridge when Sinead rolled out her mat on the back lawn, dew soaking through her socks before she even got them off.
Two days at the Black Heart Ranch and already sunrise yoga class with the veterans, hosted by a lovely woman named Zee, felt nothing like an obligation. A rare thing for her.