It was futile to argue with her. She would only succeed in getting him to lose his temper.
Same old Carly, he couldn’t help thinking.
Despite his concern, Hawk caught himself grinning for the remainder of their time together. It was way too late for them after all these years had gone by—but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t savor the small moment that had unexpectedly been carved out for them at this junction.
He could.
And he would.
Chapter 9
A
fter breakfast, just before he and Carly went their separate ways that morning, Hawk decided to try one last time to talk a little sense into Carly, to no avail.
She listened quietly as Hawk continued to enumerate all the reasons—again—why what she was doing was tantamount to juggling with loaded pistols. When he was finished, he could tell by the expression on her face that he had made no headway whatsoever in making her come around to his way of thinking.
Instead, rather than arguing with him, she pointed out the upside of having her continue to pose as one of the faithful in Grayson’s circle.
“Think of it this way, Hawk. You need to have a person on the inside to be your eyes and ears. I’ll be that person.”
That was all well and good, if she were a trained special agent—and someone else. But she wasn’t trained in undercover work, and she was Carly, someone he didn’t want taking any risks.
So he shook his head and got ready to leave. He looked down into her eyes one last time. “I don’t want to see anything happening to you.”
Carly smiled at his concern. She wouldn’t have been able to explain why, but the very fact that he was worried made her feel safe.
“That makes two of us,” she assured Hawk. “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”
He really wished he could believe her, Hawk thought, walking over to where he had left his car last night. But where her sister was involved, Carly would take whatever risks she felt were necessary in order to save Mia.
Getting into his vehicle, Hawk blew out a long breath. The best way to protect Carly at this point was to nail Grayson as quickly as possible for at least one of the murders. Once he had that, once he could point to Grayson’s connection to one murder, he had a feeling the rest would fall into place.
Preoccupied, he inserted his key into the ignition. Just as he was about to start the car, he saw that there was a folded piece of paper on his dashboard.
Staring at it, Hawk frowned.
He was positive that hadn’t been there last night when he drove up to Carly’s house. His hand automatically covered the hilt of his service revolver as he looked around slowly, deliberately. But other than Carly’s house, the barn and the corral, nothing was visible for miles. Whoever had broken into his vehicle and left the paper on his dashboard was long gone.
Not knowing what to expect, he took out his handkerchief, and holding it by the edge, he opened the folded paper and read:
“Please meet me at the Hanging Tree at 10 this morning. I urgently need to speak with you. Come alone.”
That was it. Three terse sentences. No signature, no indication what this was about. For all he knew, he was being set up.
But this could also be on the level. It might be one of Grayson’s people who’d had enough, was unable to break away and was willing to trade information for help in getting out of the cult—because at this point, that was what it was. A cult.
Hawk glanced at his watch. The note said to be there by ten. Because he’d lingered over breakfast—and over Carly—he didn’t have all that much time to spare. The reference to the meeting place made him think that perhaps he was dealing with someone who was a native of the area. Outsiders didn’t know about the oak tree’s nickname.
The Hanging Tree had gotten its name because of a story that had made the rounds over a hundred years ago. The biggest branch on it was uniquely bent and actually pointed down. The story had it that an outlaw gang caught the sheriff who had been pursuing them, and that they hung him from the biggest, strongest branch of this massive tree and then just rode away, leaving the sheriff to die. The branch miraculous bent down far enough for him to reach the ground with his feet. Freeing himself, he went on to track down and avenge himself of each of the outlaws who had left him to die.
When he was a kid, Hawk liked to pretend he was that sheriff, hunting down outlaws and dispensing his own brand of justice. After a while, the lines between reality and make-believe blurred a little. He supposed that story had gotten him thinking about becoming a law-enforcement agent.
Before he took off for the appointed meeting place, Hawk called Rosenbloom at the cabin. “I just wanted you to know where I’m going in case I don’t get back.”
“You want backup?” Rosenbloom asked.
The agent sounded eager to get out of the cabin. Hawk couldn’t blame him. But he also couldn’t use him right now. “The note said to come alone.”
He could almost
hear
Rosenbloom’s frown over the phone. “Since when do you listen to notes?”
Since I don’t want to jeopardize this case, I’m in a hurry to wrap it up and keep Carly safe, because the woman doesn’t have enough sense to stay the hell out of this.
“I didn’t call you to argue,” he told the other man. “I just want you to know where I’m going.”
“Got it.”
Hawk hung up and drove straight to the appointed place. Taking precautions, he got out of the vehicle and slowly circled around. The man he saw standing by the tree and impatiently shifting from one foot to the other was a stranger to him.
But as he drew closer, Hawk realized that this was someone he’d seen recently. But where? And with whom?
Was it a setup? Hawk wondered again. Whoever this guy was, he definitely appeared uneasy. Why? Because he was afraid of being watched? Or because he was afraid he might get cut down in the cross fire?
Dr. Rafe Black looked at his watch. It was three minutes past ten.
Where the hell was Bledsoe, anyway?
He dragged a hand through his black hair. Three months ago, he had been blissfully unaware that Cold Plains, Wyoming, even existed. And then he’d received a phone call from a woman he’d been involved with a little more than nine months ago for exactly one night. At first, when she told him her name, he couldn’t even place her.
And then he remembered. She was a sweet-faced, almost timid young woman.
Abby Michaels had tracked him down and was calling because she thought he should know that he was now the father of a newborn, healthy baby boy named Devin.
Stunned by the news, he took a moment to recover. When he began firing questions at Abby, the line went dead. He tried to shrug it off as a practical joke that one of his colleagues was playing on him, but he had the uneasy feeling that it wasn’t.
And he was right.
A week later, he received a brown envelope with a photograph of a male infant. It could have been his own photograph taken at that age. The child had the same dark eyes, the same dark hair that he’d had. In addition, the baby had his mother’s nose and small, rosebud mouth. One look, and he
knew
this was his child—and Abby’s.
A letter was included with the photograph. In it, Abby asked him for ten thousand dollars to help care for the baby, instructing that it be wired to a bank in Laramie.
He did as she asked, going down to Laramie with the hopes of finding Abby, his son and some answers. However, none of it materialized. Abby and the baby were nowhere to be found. Wondering if he’d been duped, Rafe nonetheless seriously considered hiring a private investigator to track down Abby and his son.
He was still debating that course of action when he saw the news story about the five murdered women being found in different locations. In all honesty, after a long day at the hospital, he was only half paying attention when he saw Abby’s photo being flashed on the screen. That got his attention immediately. She was one of the dead women.
Rafe had tuned in just in time to hear that all five women, including a Jane Doe, had Cold Plains, Wyoming, in common. He started packing immediately.
Cold Plains was where the answers were. Once he arrived, he went about the business of opening up a practice, thinking it would help him blend in. He was hoping to pick up enough information to enable him to locate his son. After all, people told their doctor things they didn’t share with their friends or families. Maybe he would hear something useful that would help.
He’d hardly been in Cold Plains more than two weeks when he heard that there was an FBI special agent in town looking into the deaths of these women. Into Abby’s death.
Confident that this was the break he’d been looking for, Rafe had decided to contact Special Agent Bledsoe and share what he knew about Abby. However, Rafe instinctively understood the need for caution and secrecy. Apparently, there was a killer loose, and he didn’t want to attract undue attention, which might result in his son being harmed—if the boy was actually here, something he hadn’t established yet.
“Who are you?” A deep, low voice behind him growled out the question.
Caught completely by surprise, Rafe spun around, not knowing what to expect and wishing he’d brought some kind of weapon with him. Half braced to be staring into the face of a killer, Rafe exhaled a loud sigh of relief when he saw that the man facing him was the FBI special agent he was waiting for.
“Damn, but you scared me,” Rafe told him, his hand splayed across his chest.
Hawk made no apologies. “Didn’t know if I was walking into a trap.”
Seeing the ironic humor in the situation, Rafe laughed shortly. “That makes two of us.” He put out his hand to the special agent. “I’m Dr. Black. Rafe Black,” he added.
After a beat, Hawk took the offered hand and returned the handshake.
He glanced over his shoulder at the Hanging Tree. “Well, Dr. Black, I can’t say that this is exactly a typical meeting place. Why did you want to meet me out here and not in your office?” Hawk asked.
That, at least, was a simple question to answer. “Because I didn’t want anyone overhearing what I had to tell you.”
Hawk was still waiting to find out what this was all about and if it in any way helped to shed some light on the murders he was investigating. “Which is?”
Rafe took a deep breath and then plunged into his story. “I had a relationship with one of the murdered women, Abby Michaels.”
His interest piqued, Hawk continued to scan the area, making sure that they weren’t caught by surprise. So far, they appeared to be alone out here.
“Go on.”
Rafe backtracked a little. “Well, not so much a relationship as a one-night stand.”
Hawk did his best not to sound impatient, but it wasn’t easy. The level of his adrenaline was rising. “Which is it?”
“A one-night stand,” Rafe said definitively. “At least I thought that was all it was. But three months ago, I got a phone call from Abby saying that she’d just given birth to a baby boy and I was the baby’s father.”
Hawk looked at him sharply. This was the first he’d heard about a baby. Would they find yet another, much smaller body somewhere out there? “Did the numbers work out?”
“Yeah, that’s about the time we hooked up. Abby sent me a photograph of my son.” He took it out of the pocket of his jacket and glanced at it before holding it up for the special agent. “This could have been a picture of me as a newborn.”
Hawk took the photograph and studied it for a moment before handing it back to the doctor. “You are aware that most babies look alike.”
Rafe knew what the agent was implying, but he was convinced that this was his son. And just as convinced that he had to find him somehow.
“No, this one’s mine,” he said with conviction. Then because the agent was looking at him a bit skeptically, he added, “It’s a gut feeling. I
know
he’s mine, Bledsoe,” he told Hawk.
“I’m the last one to dismiss a gut feeling,” Hawk assured him. A gut feeling was what had gotten him this far. Granted it was by no means an exact science, but he’d found that his instincts were right over seventy percent of the time. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“Because I need your help,” Rafe said without any fanfare. “I can’t find him. I came as soon as I saw the story on TV about the murdered women all being from Cold Plains. I thought maybe she’d left my son with her relatives, but I’m beginning to think that maybe she didn’t even come back here between the time she called me and the time she was killed. I’ve been asking around if anyone’s heard anything about a motherless baby somewhere in the area, but so far, nobody seems to know anything. Or,” he amended, “if they know, they’re not saying.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Hawk told him with a dismissive laugh that had no humor to it. “Did you go to the police chief with your story?” he asked out of curiosity. Fargo definitely wouldn’t have been his first choice, but then maybe the man was different with the people of his town.
“Yes, I did.” Rafe’s frown told him just how far that had gotten him. His next words confirmed it. “Man’s not very friendly,” Rafe testified. “Said he hadn’t heard anything about any of the women in his ‘community’ having any unwanted children, but I get the feeling that he’s not telling me the truth.”