Chapter Sixteen #2
They flew back to the ranch as the sun sank lower. The mountains slid past below them, and Hawk spent the flight running through how he wanted to handle McCrae.
They’d regroup at the ranch first. Pull in the rest of the team and build a plan tight enough that nothing was left to chance.
He’d make sure every detail, right down to the number of family members who were in on the act, and even what the bastard ate for breakfast, was confirmed before they moved on McCrae.
Hawk wasn’t getting sloppy, not when the stakes had a woman waiting for him with worry etched into every line of her beautiful face.
The chopper touched down, and the training field was empty now. They drove back to the ranch in silence. When the main house came into view, Hawk’s chest loosened at the sight.
It felt like home, in whatever strange way this place had become that to him.
And he suspected for Sinead too.
He was confident that they had what they needed. Sinead was going to be safe.
Then he was going to take her in his arms and start making a life with her.
* * * * *
Surely Sinead was being silly, worrying about Hawk being away from the ranch.
She moved around the room they’d shared for days while he healed and she rested. She tidied up. She made the bed. She took a long, hot shower, luxuriating in the feel of being clean and the sweet, familiar smell of her shampoo.
After that…she didn’t have a plan.
She wasn’t feeling up to being around people, so she drew a chair up to the window and watched the world go on as she tried to come to terms with all that had happened.
She wasn’t a person to sit around, so her idleness didn’t last very long. She cast a glower at her laptop. Winthrop Holdings could go on without her input for months, but she just knew her inbox was overflowing with emails.
She grabbed her laptop and sat on the bed, propped up by pillows, and opened her email.
As soon as she saw the astronomical number of unread messages, she groaned. Her dismay grew after seeing dozens of messages from her lawyers still untangling her father’s estate.
She scrolled past most of it, scanning with a practiced eye for any that took precedence.
One subject line stopped her cold.
Wyoming Plot Survey—Ready for Pickup.
Before the treasure hunt. Before the mercenaries. Before Hawk.
She clamped off the memories that flooded in, especially the image of him hitting the ground, bleeding.
At the time, she’d only wanted to know exactly where her family’s property began and ended before she started exploring it. It had seemed like the sensible thing to do.
Now it might be the piece that finally helped them make sense of the coordinates—and if it included that mine.
Her pulse quickened.
If they were going back out there, she was going armed with more knowledge. She’d pull her weight beside Hawk, watch his back the way he watched hers.
It struck her, sitting there in the quiet of their room, how wild it was that she was even thinking this way. She’d spent a lifetime feeling alone. She’d never been part of a team before, and now she couldn’t imagine not having Hawk’s back.
Without ever knowing what she was getting into when she ventured into the Wyoming wilderness with him, they’d become a team of two.
She got up, pulled on real clothes instead of pajamas for the first time in days, and headed out into the ranch in search of a ride to the municipal office.
She found Shiloh near the barn, and the woman’s face lit with easy warmth the second she spotted her.
“Heading somewhere?”
“The municipal office, if I can find a ride. Some paperwork I requested is ready for pickup.”
Shiloh hesitated, searching Sinead’s face for a long beat. Finally, she nodded. “I’ll take you. Give me a minute to grab my keys.”
They settled into Shiloh’s SUV a few minutes later and rolled down the long ranch road.
“Thanks for driving me. I’m sorry to be a bother.”
She threw her a gentle smile. “You’re not a bother.”
“Of course you’d say that. I’m a client. The client’s always right.”
Shiloh laughed, shaking her head. Blonde hair swished over her shoulder in a heavy wave.
“That’s not even close to true. You’re not a client to us anymore, Sinead.
You’re—you’re one of us. We all love you.
You were so strong when Hawk got shot. I would have been a complete puddle if that had been Oaks. ”
“You would do whatever needed doing.” Sinead’s voice came out quiet, and she folded her fingers in her lap, trying to erase the feel of Hawk’s frigid skin. “You’d do anything for Oaks, even keep it together when you can’t.”
“I would.” Her voice caught, and she blinked hard at the road ahead. “Sorry. Ignore me.”
She wanted to ask what was going on but didn’t want to push for information that she had no business knowing. She watched the fence posts blur past the window, and they settled into a comfortable silence.
After a mile or so, Shiloh spoke again, voice smaller than before.
“We want a baby. Oaks and I. We’ve been married a while now, and half his siblings have kids already or one on the way.
And I see this look on his face sometimes…
” Her voice broke. “This longing…especially when he’s holding Carson and Layne’s little one, CJ.
” She swallowed hard. “It hasn’t happened yet. For us.”
Sinead’s heart welled with pain for her new friend. She put a hand on her arm. “It will come. These things take time sometimes.”
She thought about her parents, always waiting for a son that never came.
“I pray it’s soon.” Shiloh nodded, mostly to herself, and drove on for a while in silence before she spoke again. Her tone shifted from shattered to curious. “You really don’t see yourself as we all see you, do you?”
Sinead let out a slow breath. “I had to be tough. I had to step up and basically be the son my father never got. That’s just—that’s who I had to become.”
Shiloh’s stare blazed into her for a moment before she turned her focus back to the road.
“Your parents had the money to do this differently, you know. To get a son if they wanted it. Surrogacy and artificial insemination and IVF were all possible. If a son mattered so much to them, Sinead, they could have exhausted every option trying to get one, instead of deciding you should just be a stand-in.” Shiloh glanced at her again.
“They didn’t do any of that. Maybe that means something. ”
Sinead couldn’t respond—her throat was too tight.
“Maybe,” Shiloh said gently, “you’ve always been enough, Sinead.”
She stared out the window, unable to find words for what that did to an old and tender hurt in her chest.
They reached the municipal office a while later. Being in the backcountry with Hawk for so long had worn off on Sinead. She found herself looking around, scanning the parking lot and the street.
Shiloh parked in the back corner of the lot, and nothing looked out of place. The lot was crowded with pickup trucks and SUVs. Nothing that raised any red flags. Just ordinary people going about ordinary business on an ordinary afternoon.
Sinead climbed out, feeling lighter than she had in days, genuinely at ease for the first time since the mountain.
Then everything went wrong at once.
A man appeared from between two trucks, moving fast, and Shiloh barely had time to react before he was on her. She screamed and the attacker struck her in the temple, making her collapse to the pavement.
Sinead froze for one terrible second, frozen in a way she maybe wouldn’t have before Hawk was shot.
By the time she lunged forward, another man got her by the arms, wrestling her toward a waiting vehicle.
She kicked. She scratched. She bit at anything that came near her face.
Her screams echoed across the parking lot.
“Shiloh!” she shrieked, her throat raw as the vehicle door slammed and the driver stomped on the gas.
She stared at Shiloh’s body on the ground as the vehicle peeled out of the lot. She prayed for some sign of movement, willing Shiloh to keep fighting, to be conscious. To be alive.
The vehicle careened around the corner, and Sinead’s chest heaved with sobs as a sickening powerlessness washed over her.