Hawk's Way: Callen & Zach (19 page)

He could remember thinking at the time that it was a good thing he had opened the kitchen door to the quiet knock instead of Rebecca. Because he took one look at the cowboy, at his worn boots and frayed jeans and dusty hat, and knew that Rebecca would have hired the man on the spot.

“Can I help you?” he had asked.

“I’m looking for a job.”

“I don’t need any hands right now.” Which was the truth.

“I’m a hard worker.”

“I don’t doubt it. What put you out of work?”

“Oh. Well.” A flush cheated up the cowboy’s throat. “The boss and I didn’t get along.”

“I see.” Probably a troublemaker, Zach thought. And felt relieved again that it hadn’t been Rebecca who had answered the door.

“Man kicked his dog,” the grizzled cowboy said. “Even a dog don’t deserve that.”

Zach had to agree. So maybe the cowboy wasn’t a troublemaker. “I wish I could help you, I just don’t need any more hands right now.” Especially with Camp LittleHawk disbanded for the summer. In fact, Rowley Holiday had taken off to join the rodeo circuit again.

“I’d be willin’ to do just about anythin’.”

Zach shoved his thumbs in his back pockets to resist the temptation to hire the man. “I just don’t have any work,” he said.

The man turned away, hesitated, then turned back. He rubbed his whiskery jaw, then swiped his hand nervously along the leg of his pants. “You see, I got me a sick missus. Cancer. She’s in the hospital gettin’ chemicals pumped into her right now. I gotta have work to pay the bills.”

Zach was certain he could have shut the door with a clear conscience if the man had mentioned any disease except cancer. He had a niece he had watched fight cancer, and he had spent the summer with kids ravaged by the disease. He told himself, when he offered Smitty a job, that he was doing it out of plain Christian charity, not because Rebecca had gotten him to thinking about how he had plenty and enough to share. Or because he knew how pleased and proud she would be of him for making “the right” decision.

In fact, when Rebecca heard what he had done, she gave him a look so tender, a kiss so sweet, that he flushed like a teenage kid asking for condoms at the drugstore.

His decision was vindicated now, because he needed someone to take care of his horse so he could get to the house, and here was Smitty available to help.

“Can I give you a hand, Boss?” the bewhiskered cowboy asked.

“Know anything about sprains?”

“Sure do. Worked once upon a time at a racing stable. Got a poultice that’ll do wonders. You just leave this cow pony to me. I’ll take care of him.

“You better put some ice on that ankle of yours, too, Boss,” Smitty said.

“I’ll do that. By the way,” Zach said as casually as he could, “have you seen Rebecca this afternoon?”

“Yeah. She was headed toward the canyon on horseback.”

“Was Jewel with her?”

“Naw. She was alone.”

Zach headed for the house. Maybe Rebecca had left him a note. Maybe there was some good reason why she and Jewel hadn’t gone riding together. Maybe Jewel had gone over to play with Callen’s girls.

And maybe the Proffits took her away.

Zach felt a chill of alarm when he entered the kitchen. It was so quiet you could hear nightfall coming. He let the screen door slam behind him and heard it echo through the house.

“Rebecca? Jewel?”

He limped his way down the hall to Jewel’s room, afraid of what he would find. His heart was thumping crazily in his chest by the time he reached her doorway.

He made an audible sound of relief when he saw that her things were still there. He crossed to a chest and pulled the drawer open just to make sure. Her tiny T-shirts and flowered underwear were still there. Her favorite doll and her Pooh bear lay on the bed.

So where was she? And why wasn’t Rebecca back from her ride? It was nearly dusk.

He headed back to the kitchen, grabbed the wall phone and called his sister.

“Hi, Callen.”

“Hello, stranger. We haven’t seen you guys since the Labor Day picnic. When are you going to bring Jewel and come visit?”

Zach felt his heart drop to his boots. He knew it was futile, but he asked anyway. “Jewel isn’t there?”

“No. Don’t tell me you’ve misplaced the child, Zach. That’s a little careless even for you.”

“Uh…I’m not exactly sure where she is. There were some people here this afternoon who wanted to adopt her.”

“I know. Rebecca called me right after you left this morning. How did the interview go?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”

Callen took an outraged breath, but Zach cut her off at the pass. “Before you start yelling at me, you should know my horse went down in a rabbit hole. The two of us had to limp our way back. I just got home a little while ago.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just…I can’t find Rebecca or Jewel.” He shoved a frustrated hand through his hair.

“Shall I send Sam over to help you look?”

“I’ll take a portable phone with me, and if I don’t find Rebecca where Smitty said she was headed, I’ll give you a call.”

“All right. We’ll wait to hear from you.”

Zach wasn’t truly alarmed yet. There was probably some perfectly logical reason why Rebecca wasn’t back yet. And Jewel might be visiting some other friend. She might even be with his parents.

He had the phone in his hand dialing his parents’ number when the screen door screeched open.

He turned with his mouth open to chastise Rebecca for not leaving him a note and froze.

Jewel stood in the doorway. Her forehead was scraped and oozed blood, her face was dirty and streaked with tears. Her lower lip was swollen almost twice its size.

“’Becca,” she sobbed. “’Becca.”

Zach was across the room in two strides and swept the little girl up into his arms.

“Where’s Rebecca?” he demanded.

Jewel clenched his neck so hard she threatened to strangle him. “I’m so-or-ry. I’m so-or-ry,” she sobbed. “Po-o-or ’Bec-c-ca.”

Zach resisted the urge to shake her. The child was already hysterical, and violence was only going to make things worse. But he was terrified. Sorry for what? Why
poor
’Becca? Where the hell was his wife? What had happened to the two of them?

Zach did his best to comfort Jewel, but he was shaking so hard himself it took him a long time, too long, to calm the little girl enough so she could speak coherently.

“Where is she, Jewel? Where’s Rebecca?”

Jewel’s chin trembled. Her mud-brown eyes sparkled with unshed tears.

“Jewel, please, where is she? You have to tell me. I have to go help her.”

“You can’t help her,” Jewel said.

“Why not?”

“’Cause she’s dead.”

Z
ACH’S HEART MISSED A BEAT
. His brain denied the words Jewel had spoken. The little girl had to be mistaken.

He set her on her feet and knelt beside her. “You have to take me to her, Jewel. Can you find your way back to where she is?”

“Her horse saw a snake and started bucking. She fell a long way down. I called to her and called to her, but she didn’t answer me. I tried to get to her, but the trail doesn’t go that way.”

He brushed the curls away from Jewel’s injured forehead. “How did you get so banged up?”

“Oh. My pony bucked me off, too, but I didn’t fall into the canyon.”

Zach could see it all, the two horses frantic with fear and with no room to maneuver away from the snake on that narrow, treacherous trail. Rebecca falling…falling. How far was “a long way down”? Maybe she was only injured. Maybe she had only been knocked unconscious. Maybe even now she was walking back to Hawk’s Pride, wondering where the hell—heck—he was.

“You were a brave little girl to find your way back here all by yourself.”

Tears welled in Jewel’s eyes, and she shook her head. “I just got on my pony and told him to go home. He’s the one who knew the way.”

“Still—”

The child clutched handfuls of his jeans leg. “It’s all my fault ’Becca got hurt. She told me I shouldn’t have run away. She told me she would never have let those awful Poppet people take me away. But you said you didn’t want me, and they didn’t want me, either—cause I limp and I have scars—and I was afraid.”

Zach dragged Jewel up into his arms and hugged her tight. “Oh, Jewel.” How could anyone not want her? He knew now what her parents had been thinking when they named her. She was a jewel, all right, one more precious than sapphires or topazes or emeralds. And he would always treasure her as the priceless, irreplaceable gem she was.

It took him a moment to get hold of himself.

“We have to go find Rebecca,” he said past the bullfrog-size lump in his throat. “Will you help me?”

“I’ll try. What if I can’t remember where she is?”

“Don’t worry,” Zach reassured her. “We’ll find her.”

He left the kitchen on the run, bellowing for help at the top of his lungs. People came on the fly from all directions.

“Rebecca’s been injured somewhere in the canyon. I need someone to call 911 and get the paramedics on the way. Tell them we may need to airlift her from the canyon.” If her back was broken. Or her neck.

“I’ll do that,” Mrs. Fortunata volunteered.

“I need someone to hook the horse trailer up to my pickup and load my horse and another for whoever comes with me. We’ll drive to the canyon and go down on horseback.”

“I’m on my way, Boss,” Smitty said.

“I need someone to come with me to help…” He couldn’t make himself say “carry her body,” and said instead, “to help me climb down the canyon wall.”

“I’ll come,” Campbell said.

Zach hurried back inside to doctor Jewel’s wounds and wait for the call from Smitty that the trailer was ready.

T
HE CLOSER THEY GOT TO THE CANYON
, the more frightened Zach felt. What if Rebecca was dead? What if he never had a chance to tell her he loved her? Oh, dear God how he loved her! He had been pretending she was just like any other woman, that she could be replaced, because he was frightened of committing himself.

But there was no one quite like Rebecca. No one else would have dared to invade his house with her darling imps and homeless waifs…and make it feel so much like a home.

She had to be alive.

The trip down into the canyon was accomplished as quickly as was humanly possible within the bounds of safety. Zach had taken Jewel up behind him on his mount, and Campbell followed them. They were fighting time, because daylight was fast receding.

When they turned a bend, Jewel pointed down and shrieked, “There she is! Zach, I see her!”

She wasn’t moving. Even from where he was, Zach could see blood on her shirt. He gauged whether it would help if they went farther down the trail before he tried climbing down into the canyon, but it bent in the other direction. He was going to have to go down from here to reach her.

He quickly lifted Jewel down, then dismounted and began rigging a rope to the horn of his saddle. He had
done enough climbing on these canyon walls as a kid to know what he was doing. He quickly rappelled down the cliff wall, landing not far from Rebecca’s body.

As he approached, she moaned.

He fought a gust of totally inappropriate, very relieved laughter. She was alive! That was all that mattered. He bent down beside her, looking before he touched to see the extent of her injuries.

“Kid,” he said softly, “you’ve really done it this time.”

To his amazement, she opened her eyes and stared right at him. “Zach. I love you.”

His throat ached. He knew why she had said it. Because she thought she was going to die. What a fraud she was, almost as bad as he was. “I love you, too,” he said in a rusty-gate voice.

“You do?”

“Yep. Now shut up so I can see how badly you’re hurt and get you out of here.”

“Is Jewel all right?”

“Jewel’s fine. She made it all the way back to the ranch by herself.” He didn’t think now was the time to tell her Jewel had thought she was dead. “Can you move your arms and legs?”

“Uh-huh. But I think my right wrist snapped when I used it to break my fall.”

Her wrist was swollen to twice its normal size. “It looks broken, all right.” He examined the cut on her forehead, which seemed to be the source of most of the blood. The head wound was less worrisome, now that he saw she was lucid. He looked at her eyes for signs of concussion, but didn’t see any.

“Were you knocked out?”

“I must have been. It was early afternoon when I fell. The next time I opened my eyes, the sun was headed down past the rim of the canyon.”

Zach took off his hat, shoved a hand through his hair, and pulled the Stetson snugly down. “I have to decide whether to move you myself or wait for the paramedics.”

Rebecca struggled to sit up. “I can—” She winced and grabbed at her stomach.

“Something hurts?” Zach reached around her to support her back.

“I don’t know. I must have bounced off a couple of rocks on the way down,” she said with a halfhearted laugh. “Feels a little tender.”

“Let me take a look.” He undid her belt, unzipped her jeans and pulled the tails of her shirt up to take a look at her belly. It was horribly bruised. “Looks a little beat up.” He touched her to see how tender she was, and she cried out with pain.

This looked serious, like maybe she was bleeding internally. Suddenly, the relief he had been feeling that she wasn’t paralyzed or concussed vanished. She could die of injuries on the inside, injuries he couldn’t see.

He took the time to wrap a bandage around her head to stop the bleeding from the cut there. Then he said, “If you think you could stand it, I’d like to rig a sling to get you out of here.”

“Anything,” she said. “I just want to go home.”

“You’re going straight to the hospital,” Zach said. “And no arguments.”

It was a sign of how bad her injuries were that she didn’t make a fuss. In fact, in the thirty minutes or so it took him to get her up onto the trail, her condition deteriorated. She was unconscious again.

“Is she dead?” Jewel asked.

“No. In fact, I talked to her. She asked about you, and I told her how you came home to get help.”

Jewel laid a palm on Rebecca’s pale cheek and looked up at him. “Is she going to be okay?”

“She’s going to be fine. We have to get her to the hospital, though, so they can make her well.”

He had to get to the rim of the canyon for his cellular phone to work, but Zach had already decided that Rebecca needed to be airlifted to the hospital. It was the hardest thing he had ever done to watch the helicopter lift off without him.

It took too long to get the horses loaded back up, to drive back to the ranch, and then disconnect the trailer from his pickup so he could head for the hospital.

“Can I come?” Jewel asked.

“No, you have to wait here with Mrs. Fortunata.”

“But ’Becca needs me!”

“You can go visit her when she’s better,” Zach promised.

“But she might die! Like my mommy and daddy died!”

“A hospital is no place for children,” Zach snapped, his patience gone. “I have to go. Be a good girl, and go find Mrs. Fortunata.”

He turned his back and headed for the cab of the truck. He didn’t see Jewel climb into the back of his pickup and hide under a tarp.

Zach parked the truck in the hospital lot and hadn’t gone two steps when he felt a small hand insinuate itself between his fingers.

He grabbed hold and turned to find himself staring at a mulish expression every bit as stubborn as anything he had ever seen on Rebecca’s face. “How the hell—
heck—did you get here? Damn—darn it, Jewel, what am I going to do with you?”

“I
have
to see ’Becca.”

Zach didn’t have time to take her home now. Grim-lipped, he tightened his hold on her hand and dragged her along with him. “You can sit in the waiting room. But I don’t want to hear a peep out of you. Understand?”

“Uh-huh.”

Once inside, Zach headed for the closest desk with someone behind it.

“Your wife is in the operating room,” the admitting nurse told him. “She had internal injuries that required surgery. The surgeon will come see you when he’s finished. There’s a waiting room on the second floor.”

Jewel was as good as her word. She was quiet as a mouse. But she never left his side, and she was with him every step he took. When he insisted that she stop tagging along behind him, she sat in a chair in the corner and followed him with her eyes. It was as though he was her last connection to Rebecca, and if she let go, she would lose everything.

He understood how she felt.

Zach was surprised when Callen and Sam arrived, although he shouldn’t have been. Word passed quickly on a country grapevine. His family had always rallied to each other in times of trouble. His mother and father arrived shortly thereafter, and he had a call from Falcon, asking about Rebecca’s condition.

“I don’t know anything yet,” Zach said. “They’re still operating.”

“Are you all right?” Falcon asked.

Zach remembered another time, years ago, when he had gone to the hospital with Falcon when his step
daughter, Susannah, had become very ill, and they had feared it was a relapse of her leukemia. He had wanted to stay and provide a comforting shoulder for his brother. Now he realized why Falcon had sent him away. If he had that shoulder available, he might very well cry on it. And he couldn’t afford to fall apart. He had to stay strong for Rebecca. And for Jewel.

“I’ll be fine,” Zach said. “As soon as I know Rebecca’s going to be all right.”

“Ask Mom to give me a call when you know something. We’ll be praying for you.”

“Thanks, Falcon.”

It was late when the doctor finally arrived, his surgical greens dotted with dark patches of sweat. Zach recognized him as a guy who had been a couple of years behind him in high school. If he just thought a minute, he would remember the doctor’s name. Only his brain was a little jumbled right now. He just couldn’t think.

A volunteer had come in and turned off several of the lights, so the room was basked in shadows. Sam and Callen had gone home to put their children to bed, and his parents had retreated to the hospital cafeteria for a quick cup of coffee. Jewel, who had refused to leave with Sam and Callen, and Zach were alone in the waiting room.

When the surgeon approached Zach, his expression was grim. Zach’s knees threatened to give way, but he wanted to be standing when he heard what he could see was going to be bad news. “Ted Slocum,” the doctor said, holding out his hand.

Zach took it. “I’m Zach—”

“I know who you are, Mr. Whitelaw.”

Zach didn’t even realize Jewel had joined him until he felt her tiny hand close around his. He gripped her fingers and found as much comfort as he gave.

“Is she… How is she?” Zach asked.

“She had serious internal injuries. We couldn’t stop the bleeding.”

All the blood drained from Zach’s face. “She’s not—”

“She’s alive,” the doctor hurried to reassure him.

“Thank God.” Zach’s eyes closed momentarily in relief. “Oh, thank God for that.”

“Her condition is stable, and I expect her to make a complete recovery. But I had to take out her spleen. And her uterus.”

It took a moment for the doctor’s words to sink in.

No. Oh, no. Poor Rebecca. Oh, poor Rebecca.
Zach felt numb, but he knew the pain wasn’t far off. It was like the time he had been stomped by a Brahma in a college rodeo. For a moment he had simply lain breathless in the dirt. Then he had tried to draw air into his lungs, and a fierce, searing pain had cut across his chest. He fought off the moment when he would be forced to confront the reality of the doctor’s pronouncement, the moment when the pain would start.

“We wanted a family, you know. Three kids, or maybe four. Now you’re telling me Rebecca can never have any children. It’s…” He felt his self-control disappearing as a blinding rage took hold of him. “It isn’t fair, goddamn it! This just can’t be happening. Rebecca will… She… Rebecca… Oh, God, how will I ever tell her?”

“I’m sorry, Zach. There was nothing else I could do.” The surgeon reached out a hand in comfort, but
Zach shrank away from his touch. The doctor turned and headed for the door.

“When can I see her?” Zach called after him.

“She’ll be in recovery for a while. I’ll have a nurse send for you when she’s conscious.”

Zach sank into the nearest chair and dropped his head into his hands. He bit his lip to hold back the wounded cry that sought voice, but the awful, wrenching sound escaped his throat and echoed in the room.

He realized now the choice had been made long ago. He could not give up Rebecca. That did not keep him from grieving the loss of his never-to-be-born children. Or the loss of the children Rebecca would have loved the way she loved all helpless living creatures who crossed her path. A tight band gripped his chest making it nearly impossible to draw breath. The emotional pain of this catastrophic event was every bit as bad as the physical pain had been all those years ago.