Jill Shalvis - Shadow Hawk

She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Somehow she’d been caught up in this perilous game between two men capable of doing whatever they needed done. Just days ago she’d have said she didn’t trust either of them fully.

But she couldn’t say that now. Scary as Hawk seemed as he led her back to the relative safety of the SUV, she knew the truth.

She trusted him with her life. “Hawk.”

He opened the driver’s side and urged her in. “Yeah?”

She waited until he’d pulled out of the parking lot. “Do you remember the first thing I said to you last night?”

He sped down the road. “The part about you trusting a rat’s ass before you could trust me?”

“Um, yeah.” She winced. “That.” They’d both been Gaines’s victims. But no longer. “I’ve changed my mind.”

He glanced at her with an arched eyebrow. She’d surprised him.

“I can trust you. With anything.”

“Hold that thought,” he said, and whipped them onto a side construction road so fast her hand slapped on the dash. He steered them behind a cluster of trees and yanked on the brake.

“What are you doing?”

“This.” Hauling her to him, he covered her mouth with his.

Yeah, this. This was what she needed. She sank into the kiss, wrapping her arms around him, running her hands up and down his back, over his shoulders, up his neck into his hair, everywhere she could reach. She couldn’t get enough of touching him. In this spinning, out-of-control world, he’d become her anchor, her rock.

And given the way he clutched at her, his own hands fighting with hers for purchase, skimming up her sides, her spine, then back to the front, beneath her shirt now, skin to skin, he felt the same way. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.” His lips brushed her skin.

“It won’t.” She cupped his face as he gently set his forehead to hers. They stayed that way a moment before Hawk drew a deep breath and lifted his head to look into her eyes.

He’d shifted gears already, and she took a moment to catch up.

“Abby.”

She sighed.

“Gaines’s ranch. Can you tell me where it is?”

“That would be a really bad idea.”

“Or a really good one.”

She understood the problem. Without ever wanting to, she’d become his soft spot, his Achilles’ heel. Whether she was with him by choice or not didn’t matter to Gaines, that she was with him at all made her a problem. A dispensable one. If he didn’t get to Gaines, Gaines would likely get to him. And her. “I can draw you a map,” she admitted.

“Good.” Hawk punched some numbers into her cell phone. “Callen? Is he ready?” He listened, and his brow raised as he glanced at Abby. “I can talk to him? Great, thanks.” There was a pause. “God, Logan, are you ever a sound for sore ears-”

His voice was so husky with emotion, she felt her throat tighten.

“Are you sure you’re up for this, Logan, because-yeah, I hear you. Jesus, am I glad to hear you.”

Abby looked out the window, concentrating on breathing as she listened to their reunion. They spoke in short, clipped sentences that spoke of the longtime ease between them, and an ability to guess what the other was thinking.

She’d never had a relationship like that in her entire life, because she didn’t open up. She had started to with Gaines, and look what had happened. He’d set her up to be tortured.

How was she supposed to ever trust her judgment again?

She peeked at Hawk, still talking to Logan. He was trying to line up a secure place to dump her. Was she going to let him do that?

“I want her safe.”

The words did something to the cold spot in her heart. The truth was, in spite of herself, she had learned to trust again. She knew Hawk was innocent. She knew he cared about her, and the knowledge warmed her in a way she’d never experienced.

She wished they were still at the B &B and she was back in his arms, where everything was okay as long as he kept holding her. Because with him, no matter what was going on, she felt safe. “Hawk, I’m staying with you.”

Eyeing her, he said into the phone, “Are you sure, because Christ, Logan-yeah. Okay. We’ll be right there to get you. Yeah, ‘we.’” With a sigh, he closed the phone and reached behind him for her laptop, which he handed to her. “Serial numbers.”

“What’s the matter?”

He shook his head. “In a minute. Look up the serial numbers.”

She started up her computer and her e-mail program automatically opened. On a hunch, Abby opened some old files, then leaned back and shook her head.

“What?” Hawk leaned over her to try and see.

“You said you shot Gaines on that raid eighteen months ago.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t know it was Gaines at the time.”

“I didn’t come to suspect so until later, no.”

“Eighteen months ago he took a one-month leave.” She flipped through several e-mails from him from that time. “Emergency appendicitis.” She looked at him. “Too bad I don’t believe in coincidence.” Feeling overwhelmed by how big this was, she rubbed her hands over her face. “My God.”

He reached for her, but she straightened and shook her head. Not the time to fall apart. “The serial numbers.” While she pulled up another file, he grabbed the confiscated rifle and read her the number.

Abby’s stomach thumped as she matched it to her list. “It’s here. Now tell me what Logan said to put that look on your face.”

“Tibbs called again. They know the body wasn’t Gaines.”

Their eyes met. “Then who?”

“Watkins.”

“Oh, my God.” So Gaines had killed one of his own. Knowing it rammed home another certainty-Gaines would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.

“Gaines had Logan pushed off that roof to kill him,” Hawk told her. “He needs us dead.”

“Which is a very good reason not to go to his ranch.”

“Or to go.” There was knowledge in his eyes and acceptance.

Oh, God. He was going there to end this, one way or another, for her. So she’d be safe. “Hawk,” she said. “You are not going to go there to die.”

“Not me, no.”

He sat there, so serious, so determined, she felt her heart just give in. From the very beginning he’d evoked myriad emotions from her-annoyance, lust, more annoyance, awe, affection, the ever-popular annoyance…and now, love. “We need to go to Tibbs.”

Hawk let out a low laugh. “So he can hold me while they sort this out?”

“He won’t-”

“He would, yes. That’s his job. We’ll call him, but when it’s too late to stop me from finishing this with Gaines.” His eyes were hard, his voice tight. “Which we do today.”

Cheyenne Memorial Hospital

HAWK AND ABBY PULLED INTO the hospital parking lot just as a nurse wheeled out a large woman and her baby.

Hawk hopped out of the SUV, squatted before the wheelchair and grinned for the first time in two days. “Congratulations on your new arrival.”

“Fuck you,” Logan said from beneath his Vegas showgirl-style wig. He looked at Abby, then back at Hawk. “Huh?”

“What?”

“I just never thought you’d ever land yourself someone as classy as Abby, that’s all.”

Abby’s brow shot up. “And how do you know he ‘landed’ me?”

“It’s all over your face. Both your faces.”

She blinked, then looked at the pretty nurse behind Logan, who smiled and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Callen. And don’t worry, I don’t see anything but a lovely glow.”

Abby put her hands to her face. Hawk looked over Logan’s multitude of injuries, then glanced at Callen. “You didn’t do so shabby either.”

Logan reached for Callen’s hand. “Yeah, I did pretty darn great.”

Callen smiled dreamily, but that faded as two police cars pulled into the lot. “I wonder if that’s related to our new problem?”

“New problem?” Hawk asked.

“Later. Run now.” They all piled into the vehicle, with Logan looking a little green despite his grin, which told Hawk he was hurting much more than he wanted to let on.

“New problem?” Hawk demanded from behind the wheel. “And the cops? What do they want? My head?”

“On a platter,” Logan said. “The ATF has large sums of money going in and out of your accounts. Out being the key operative here, apparently. Supposedly you’ve just withdrawn a huge sum of money. Then there’s the memory stick Tibbs found. And, wait for it…in spite of the fact that they do not have Gaines’s body and all the evidence is looking right at him, they’re charging you with kidnapping Abby.”

“Is that all?” Hawk asked in tune to Abby’s gasp. “Hell, that’s not too bad.” He met Logan’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “We’ll go to Gaines’s ranch in two hours.”

“Why two hours?”

“Because nightfall will be a better time to get close to Gaines.”

“We can go to my place,” Callen said.

It seemed as good a plan as any, especially since Logan really did look like death warmed over and Abby seemed ready to shatter. They’d take a few minutes, hopefully get their game plan together and finish this.

One way or another.

Callen’s condo

HAWK PACED CALLEN’S SMALL spare bedroom while Abby sat on the bed watching him. “Okay,” he said. “So he’s got the money, freshly laundered through my account. He’s going to vanish, and soon. Unfortunately, he’s run into a snag. Me.”

“If he sees you, you’re dead.”

“Right,” he agreed. “Which is option number one.”

“And option number two is?”

She sounded pissed, a front for her fear, which he appreciated, but he didn’t plan on dying. “Me turning myself in on the mercy of the legal system.”

Abby’s eyes were conflicted. “I’ve been thinking about that. Given how he’s handled everything so ruthlessly, that’s not a good option. He’ll try to have you killed while you’re waiting for justice.”

“Probably.”

“So we move to option three,” Abby said tightly. “Which is me offering myself up.”

He stared at her in utter speechlessness. Finally, he managed to say, “Over my dead body.”

“No, listen. We both know he has this obsession with me. He’s got an ego the size of Texas, right? And he thinks I worship the ground he walks on, that’s what keeps that ego going. You know it,” she continued when he opened his mouth. “I’m the one thing he never got, and it’s eating at him, Hawk, you know it is. I offer to go with him if he leaves you alone. It might work.”

“Abby.” His belly felt hollow. That she’d even suggested it after what she’d been through last year told him how much he meant to her. Touched beyond words, he ran a finger over the cut on her cheek, then leaned in and kissed it. “Not happening.”

“I don’t want you to die.”

“Makes two of us.”

She looked into his eyes, her own soft and sweet and heartbreakingly open. “Remember last night, when you said you’d do anything to make this all up to me?”

“Of course.”

She backed to the door and hit the lock.

“What are you doing?”

Her hands came up and pulled off Serena’s sweater, beneath which she wore her own bra. “I just figured out how you can do that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hawk’s voice was no longer so steady, and neither were his hands as he shoved them in his pockets to try to keep them off her. But God, she stood there, offering him everything with her eyes, her body…

She reached for the zipper on the jeans. It was a tribute to how much she’d stunned him that she managed to shimmy out of them before he moved. Good Christ, she was commando. “Abby-” He reached for her but she slapped a hand to his chest.

“No, I’m not naked yet. I want to be naked with you.”

His mouth went dry. All of his blood rushed to his groin so fast he got dizzy.

“Please, Hawk,” she murmured, unhooking her bra and letting it drop, standing before him, gloriously nude. “Love me.”

The kicker? He already did. So goddamn much he could hardly breathe. Gently pulling her in against him, he slowly backed her to the bed, following her down, down…ah, yeah, ending up right where he wanted to be, between her legs.

Home.

Her lips were soft, receptive and made for his, and kissing her was like heaven on earth. So was touching her. Never in a million years had he expected her to offer this again, to want him in the way he wanted her, and it hit like a freight train. “Abby.”

She was busy, her mouth spreading hot, sweet kisses down his throat, her hands shoving his jeans down at the same time so that she could wrap a leg around him, opening herself up so he could sink inside her.

God.

Yeah, he might have spent six months fantasizing about her, but those dreams had nothing, nothing at all, on the reality of being with her, feeling her body move with his, hearing her pant out his name as if there was no one else on earth who could do her right. The only sound in the room now was their harsh breathing as they struggled to keep their wordless pleas and moans from being overheard. Being with her like this was beyond his dreams, so sensual, so earthy and erotic as hell. It was also oddly unnerving because he knew…