Don’t hold your breath, Grayson. I’ve fooled a better man than you,
she thought, remembering the look on Hawk’s face when she told him she really didn’t love him.
“I couldn’t impose on you that way.” Carly paused a moment, then added his name to her declaration, enunciating it slowly, melodically, “Samuel. You’re much too busy a man. I’d feel guilty taking up your time like that.”
He laughed off her protest. “I’m never too busy to spend some quality time with one of the community’s good citizens, Carly.” His peppermint-laced breath seemed to form a cloud all around her, making it difficult to breathe. “You’ll find, my dear, that I can be
very
approachable.”
Yes, she just bet he could be. She’d heard that he had “approached” at least half a dozen women within the transformed sectors of Cold Plains since she began paying attention to what was happening here, to the place she called home.
“I shall keep that in mind,” she promised. “But now I really do need to get back to my lesson plan.” She smiled up sweetly at him, entertaining herself with the thought that some day that man would get what was coming to him. And maybe having Hawk here signaled the beginning of the end of King Samuel’s would-be reign. She relished the thought. “Otherwise,” she continued, “the children won’t be able to do their homework assignments tonight.”
“Careful, Carly,” he warned with a warm smile. “You don’t want the little ones thinking that you’re a slave driver.”
Instead of just being enslaved by a man with a golden tongue,
she countered silently. Because that was what Grayson did, enslave an entire community of people who now moved about like automatons, with compliant, moronic smiles on their faces.
Were all the people here so easily brainwashed? Were they all so desperate for something new, something different, something supposedly “better” that they would blindly obey a man whose real agenda was still hidden?
The thought made her very uneasy—as did the realization that she wasn’t really safe. Grayson had all but put her on notice. She would have to be on her guard against him. No doubt, he had plans for her, plans that very well just might make her wind up the same way that those five women whose bodies were scattered throughout the state had ultimately wound up.
She had no proof, but in her heart, Carly just
knew
those dead women were somehow tied to Grayson.
She also knew she should be afraid, really afraid, but somehow, just knowing that Hawk was in the area quelled her uneasiness. He’d always had the ability to make her feel safe. Maybe it was unrealistic to think that he still gave a damn what happened to her, but somehow, she sensed that he did.
The children, thirty seven- and eight-year-olds in total, finally began to grow restless. Had they been a normal bunch they would have gotten that way much sooner.
For now, she turned her attention to them, putting any and all thoughts of Grayson, Mia and Hawk on the back burner. Or at least trying to.
She was successful on two counts, but Hawk’s image refused to take a backseat to
anything.
Two out of three wasn’t bad, Carly consoled herself.
The minute he’d driven away from the center of town—and away from Fargo’s steely gaze—Hawk pulled over to the side of the road and took out his cell phone. By now he knew the number by heart.
Punching the numbers in, he tried to reach Micah Grayson again. He’d been trying the number periodically ever since the man hadn’t shown up for their appointment or called to explain why.
And as with all the other times when he actually
could
get through—and reception out here left a great deal to be desired—Hawk heard the phone on the other end ring once, then immediately after that heard his call go to voice mail.
There was no need to leave yet another message. He’d already left three. Still, Hawk bit off, “Where the hell are you, Grayson? I swear, if you’re not dead, you will be.”
With that, he jabbed at the word
End
on his phone and terminated his unsuccessful call before jamming the cell phone back into his pocket.
Sitting there, he impatiently drummed his fingers on the dashboard. Ordinarily, he wasn’t a man who worried. He just calculated worst-case scenario and the probability percentages that such a scenario would actually occur. But the problem was that this time he
was
worried. Really worried. Micah Grayson was nothing if not a consummate professional and completely business oriented, even though the business he was in was utterly unorthodox.
In the old tradition, Micah was as good as his word, which was his bond. If he had said he’d show up somewhere, then he’d show up. Unless something really dire had happened to him, preventing him from keeping the appointment.
And if that was the case, had this “dire something” happened because of his chosen occupation, or was it somehow tied to what Micah wanted to tell him about the murdered women?
Since there were no answers right now, why should he make himself crazy? Hawk thought. There was already enough of that going on. His mind reverted back to his last exchange with Carly in the school yard.
Damn but this land, which was cruel and hard on everyone, had somehow been good to her. She’d lost weight, he’d observed. Just enough weight to make her hauntingly beautiful, not enough to make her appear weathered and worn.
There was no justice in the world, he thought. If there was, he would have found her off-putting and frazzled, with a pack of little kids squabbling at her feet.
But that, he reminded himself, would have meant that someone had to have been with her. Touching her. Making love to her. And that would have clearly torn him apart.
Was this any better? he silently demanded. Seeing her and finding out that he still wanted her? Maybe more than ever?
His cell phone began ringing. It took him a couple of rings to extract it from his pocket again. Glancing at the number, he realized that he was still nursing the hope that Micah would turn up as mysteriously as he’d vanished and call back.
But the caller wasn’t Micah, it was Boyd Patterson, one of the three special agents he’d recruited for this mission.
“Bledsoe,” Hawk snapped as he answered his phone. In return, he heard a high-pitched noise on the other end, followed by static and then a voice that sounded as if it actually belonged to an extraterrestrial attempting to make first contact. “Patterson?” Hawk asked dubiously. Other than the caller ID on his screen, he hadn’t heard anything to correctly identify the person on the other end of his squawking phone.
In response to his single word question, Hawk heard more static, now joined by an ear-shattering crackling noise.
Civilization, he thought in frustration, was still only moderately flirting with places like Cold Plains. Full contact with the inventions of the past ten years was still a patience-trying league away.
“Listen, I can’t hear you,” Hawk finally said into the phone, raising his voice in case the reception on Patterson’s end was better than what he was hearing on his. There was no point in continuing to try to make out what, if anything, was being said on the other end of this call. “If this
is
Patterson, I’m about fifteen minutes out and heading back to the cabin. Stop draining the damn battery and turn your cell off for now. Maybe you’ll have better luck using it later.”
With that, Hawk ended his call and instead of putting the cell phone back into his jacket pocket, he tossed the small smartphone onto the passenger seat, leaving it within easy reach in case a miracle happened and decent reception actually put in a public appearance for more than a ten-second spate.
The phone remained silent for the duration of his trip.
It wound up taking him less than the promised fifteen minutes to reach the secluded cabin. He’d already been here a number of times to check out its accessibility as well as to ascertain just how much visibility was available from within the cabin. He wanted no surprises—just in case he and his team needed to make a stand here.
To the untrained eye, the modest little cabin looked like the perfect getaway home, a place where a busy executive might take off for a few days to unwind and become one with nature.
What it
didn’t
look like was a place where four FBI special agents were conducting an investigation into Samuel Grayson’s comings and goings, his land holdings as well as the “investors” he had brought along with him. All this while actively maintaining surveillance on the man and his main residence.
The cabin’s rustic appearance suited Hawk’s purposes just fine.
Though there was no one in the area, Hawk left nothing to chance and was not about to drop his guard or grow lax. He parked his vehicle behind the cabin, out of sight. The other three agents, he noted with approval, had already done the same. If someone did happen to drive by in the coming days, nothing out front would arouse curiosity or create the need for speculation.
Walking into the three-room cabin through the rear door he’d had put in, Hawk was instantly enveloped in a warm, welcoming scent. One of the agents was cooking. Unless he missed his guess, the agent was making stew. The tempting aroma reminded him that he hadn’t really eaten today. Seeing Carly again had thrown him off and killed his appetite. Things like food and eating had temporarily been banished to a nether region.
But now hunger returned, barreling through him with a vengeance. He could hear his stomach growling, making demands.
He passed the agent who had been on the other end of the unsuccessful call. Special agent Boyd Patterson looked as if he was currently at his wit’s end, trying to coax a little cooperation from his Bureau-issued laptop.
“Smells good,” Hawk commented, nodding toward the tiny kitchen in the rear.
The other agent barely glanced up. “Rosenbloom bought supplies,” he explained, preoccupied. “He figured since we’re going to be stuck here, he might as well make us all something decent to eat.”
Hawk smiled, nodding his approval. “Knew I brought him along for a reason.” Then he raised his voice and called out to the rear of the cabin, “Someday you’re going to make some woman a wonderful wife, Rosy.”
Lawrence Rosenbloom paused momentarily to stick his head out of the alcove. The tall, thin special agent had initially trained to become a world-class top chef before he’d succumbed to the enticing, so-called promise of adventure and excitement while in the service of his country.
He took his superior’s comment in stride, firing back, “I’d be careful what I said, Bledsoe. When I worked at a famous five-star restaurant in New York, I saw servers spit into the food they were bringing out to customers who irritated them.”
Hawk nodded, as if this revelation was news to him. “Any of these customers have a gun?” he asked the other agent mildly.
Rosenbloom went back to slowly stirring his creation. “Can’t say that I ever saw any.”
“Therein lies the difference,” Hawk told him, his voice still incredibly friendly. “
I
have a gun. I ever catch you even thinking about doing what you just said, I’ll use it.”
“Point taken.” Rosenbloom grinned. “Guess that makes this a standoff.”
“Guess so,” Hawk agreed.
“So?” Patterson interrupted impatiently. He wasn’t one of those types who regarded camping as something even remotely recreational. He preferred skyscrapers to grass every time. “Did you find out anything?” he asked with interest.
Yeah, I found out I’m still in love with Carly Finn even after all these years. I found out I’m not the robot I thought I was. And it sucks!
Out loud, Hawk replied, “Yeah, I found out something. I don’t know
why
Samuel Grayson came in with his men and bought up huge chunks of property, but he’s managed to turn the whole damn town into the movie set straight out of
The Stepford Wives.
”
Patterson blinked, trying to follow what he was being told. But Hawk had lost him with the reference. “The what?”
“It’s a cult classic,” Rosenbloom’s disembodied voice came floating out of the kitchen alcove. “All the wives in Stepford were brainwashed into being obedient and subservient to their husbands. They moved around the town like a bunch of smiling, mindless robots.”
Temporarily pushing back from the table and his computer, Patterson grinned. “Sounds great. Where do I sign up?”
“Spoken like a man who hasn’t been married,” the third agent, Stephen Jeffers, a twenty-year veteran both of the Bureau and marriage, remarked. There was a note of pity in his voice.
Taking a momentary break, Rosenbloom left the stove and walked out into the main room. “If that’s all you want out of a relationship, Patterson, get yourself a dog from an animal shelter. Me, I like intelligent conversation and a woman with some proven fighting spirit.”
The grin on Patterson’s face turned wistful as he allowed his mind to drift for a second. It was a general known fact that Rosenbloom’s wife was not just intelligent and feisty, she was exceedingly sexy, as well.