Читать книгу The Guardian - Bethany Campbell - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

HAWKSHAW RECOVERED HIMSELF, more or less.

This woman was one last assignment—and there was a rigid rule about assignments: Do Not Get Emotionally Involved. In his present mood, it seemed a laughably easy rule to keep.

He loaded the woman’s luggage in the back of his van and swung the heavy dog cage inside. The dog snuffled and whined.

It was a basset hound, for God’s sake. One of those low-slung, bowlegged lugubrious-looking dogs with ears that nearly dragged the ground.

Except for the dog, the woman and kid were traveling remarkably light. That was good. That was probably Corbett’s doing. (Couldn’t Corbett have talked her into leaving the fool dog behind?)

The kid was strapped into the back seat. He’d wakened briefly when his mother put him in the van, but now he was dead to the world again.

Hawkshaw got into the driver’s seat. The woman sat in the passenger seat, staring up at the ink-dark sky. The lights of the airport parking lot fell through the windshield, illuminating her profile. It was a nice profile, he noted, but she wasn’t Helen of Troy.

He started the van. From the back, the dog gave a pathetic yodel of canine heartbreak.

Hawkshaw headed out on South Roosevelt Street, toward the highway. The street ran beside the shore of the Atlantic side of the island, and the sea was rough tonight.

“We’ve never been in Florida before,” said Kate Kanaday, staring out at the ocean. Its darkness was dimly streaked with lines of white foam breaking.

She had a low voice, the kind that would sound sexy over a telephone. He hadn’t noticed her voice before. Funny. Maybe it was the darkness that made him notice now. He thought of a man listening in the dark to that voice, becoming excited by it.

She said, “Where are we going? Will you tell me that much? Corbett wouldn’t say. Only that we’d meet you here, in Key West.”

He narrowed his eyes against the glare of oncoming headlights. Traffic was heavy, even at this time of night. Key West was a party town, and the party never stopped.

He said, “It’s in the lower keys. A place called Cobia Key. Not many people know where it’s at.”

Which is to your advantage, he thought. Which is to your very great advantage.

“I do,” she said without hesitation. “It’s the island sixteen miles north of Key West. There’s a heron preserve there.”

He allowed himself to lift an eyebrow in surprise, but kept his gaze fastened on the road. “You’ve heard of it?”

“I read about it,” she said in her low voice. “When we were delayed so long in Miami, I bought a book.”

Of course, he thought. She’d read about it. She would. “Yeah,” he said. “You worked in a bookstore.”

“Yes,” she said. “I used to.”

There was no self-pity in her voice, only resignation.

Hawkshaw stole a sideways look at her. The van’s windows were down, and although her hair was pinned back in some sort of braid, strands had escaped and fluttered around her face.

The van was on the highway now, crossing one of the dozens of bridges that linked the islands that formed the Keys.

The Kanaday woman said, “You live on Cobia Key?”

“For now,” he said. “It’s nothing fancy. It’s in the backcountry. Off to itself.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, still gazing moodily at the Atlantic. “As long as it’s safe.”

In the back of the van, the basset hound gave a throaty complaint followed by a series of mournful snorts.

She said, “You were in the Secret Service with Corbett?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Until he retired, went into business on his own?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve retired, too?”

“Yes.”

Two years ago he’d taken an early retirement, at age forty-two, exactly twenty years after signing up with the Treasury Department. He’d loved the job, but he’d left it in self-disgust after he’d lost Sandra.

He didn’t want to talk about himself or the Service or his relationship to Corbett or to think about Sandra. So he said, “Tell me about this problem you’ve got. Do you think Corbett’s got some lead on the stalker? Something he’s not ready to tell you or me?”

She stiffened as if the word stalker sent a bolt of electricity ripping through her system. She drew her breath between her teeth. “No,” she said. “I don’t think he does. He’s afraid my only option is to go away.” She turned to him. “I have a friend, Carol, in Denver who’ll help. I worked it out with her over a pay phone, so nobody could tap into the conversations. But Corbett still didn’t want us to go straight there. He’s very cautious. I hate imposing on you.”

“Don’t mention it,” muttered Hawkshaw.

“I mean it,” she said. “I hate it. My money situation’s complicated right now, but somehow I’ll reimburse you. I pay my own way. We’re not a charity case, Charlie and I.” She turned away again. “So tell me about yourself,” she said. “What do you do, now that you’re retired?”

“As little as possible.”

“Do you have a first name?” she asked.

“None that I answer to.”

“How long did you and Corbett work together?”

“Fourteen years, off and on.”

“All of it in Washington?”

“A lot of it,” he said.

“Like where else?”

“Here.” he said. “There.”

She shifted in her seat and he could feel her looking at him. “Would you rather we not talk? Is that it? All you have to do is say so.”

The words surprised him. There was a certain sassiness in them he hadn’t expected. But, what, God help him, if she was a talker, one of those women who never shut up?

“I’m out of practice,” he said dryly.

“If you’re worried that we’re going to intrude on your life, don’t be,” she said. “We’ll keep to ourselves as much as possible.”

“Umph,” he said.

“The last thing I want to do is be a bother.”

“Um.”

“I mean, I, of all people, know what it’s like to have your privacy invaded.”

Touché, he thought. A good point, that.

“I have plenty to do,” she said, as if to herself. “I’ve got a lot of decisions to make, things to plan. I mean, if I look at the bright side, I’ve got a whole new life ahead, a completely fresh start.”

He almost said something sarcastic. Already she was trying to look on the bright side? To be optimistic? Lady, don’t you understand what’s happening to your life?

He stole another glance at her. She had one elbow on the window’s edge, her knuckles pressed hard against her jaw.

The moon, nearly full, had broken through the clouds, silvering her profile. She looked like a face delicately carved on a coin.

With a start, he realized she was biting her lip. He thought he saw the glitter of tears in her eyes, but she blinked hard twice, then three times. The glitter disappeared.

He said nothing.

In the back, the dog whined as if its heart were irreparably broken. But Katherine Kanaday kept her back straight, her eyes looking straight ahead, and her chin up.

HAWKSHAW’S PLACE WAS in “the backcountry,” he’d said, but his words had given Kate no hint of how desolate the backcountry could seem.

The van left the main highway, meandered through a small development of homes that stood dark and lifeless as tombstones. Then the houses grew fewer and farther apart, and when, at last they came to an end, civilization seemed to end with them.

The dark land stretched out blackly on either side, thatched with scrub wood. The air was heavy with a rich, swampy scent. The winding road narrowed and seemed to roll on forever, but at last Hawkshaw turned in at a graveled drive. He got out of the van and opened a padlocked gate.

Kate could make out a tall chain-link fence glinting faintly against the trees. After Hawkshaw moved the van through the gate and refastened the lock, he drove on into a darkness so thick it gave her a twinge of claustrophobia.

A small deer leaped across the road and was caught briefly in the van’s headlights. It was such a tiny, elfin creature, Kate thought she was hallucinating.

She gasped in surprise.

“Key deer,” Hawkshaw said, sounding bored. “That’s all.”

She blinked and the animal was gone, as if it had vanished back into the magical world where it belonged. Of course, she thought, it had been one of the miniature deer peculiar to these islands. “Oh,” she said softly. “I read about them.”

He gave no response. He pulled up next to a house that even in the darkness seemed neglected, almost deserted. She heard the lapping of water when she got out of the car and thought she could smell the ocean nearby, but she could not see it.

Hawkshaw carried Charlie up a narrow flight of stairs to what seemed to be a long deck. He unlocked the front door, switched on the inside lights, and took the boy inside. Kate followed, blinking at the disarray.

Hawkshaw was lean of body and spare of speech, and she had expected the house to be lean and spare, as well. But the living room was crammed with run-down furniture and cluttered with fishing and boating paraphernalia. Some sort of huge stuffed fish hung on the wall; it gave her an unwelcoming stare.

“It’s kind of a mess,” Hawkshaw said, in a masterpiece of understatement.

Kate smiled weakly. The decor, she decided, could be described only as Late Bachelor Hellhole.

“Your room’s this way,” he said, moving down a narrow hallway. “Watch out for the oar.”

He hit another light switch with his elbow, and stepping over an abandoned oar, he carried Charlie down the hall to a back room. He turned on yet another light.

Kate followed warily. The bedroom gave off the air of being unused for years, perhaps decades. Boxes were piled haphazardly against the walls, as if Hawkshaw had been moving out, then suddenly changed his mind.

There was little furniture: an old wicker dresser, a metal desk and folding chair, a pair of twin beds with mismatched spreads.

The Ritz it isn’t, thought Kate, with sinking heart.

But Hawkshaw turned down the cover and sheet of one bed with the air of a man who knew what he was doing. She was surprised to see that the sheets and pillowcase seemed crisp and clean, freshly laundered.

He laid Charlie down and started to untie one of the child’s scuffed running shoes, then abruptly straightened. His eyes met hers. “You’ll want to do that,” he said gruffly.

The room was small, its ceiling low, and suddenly Hawkshaw seemed even taller and wider-shouldered than he had at the airport. He hooked his thumbs on either side of his belt buckle and cocked one hip. He looked her up and down, his eyes narrowed. The slant of his mouth was resigned.

“There’s a bathroom in there,” he said, nodding toward a badly chipped door. “I’ll get the rest of your things. And your dog.”

Kate winced. The dog, still caged in the van, had started to bay piteously.

Hawkshaw shook his head, then pulled the brim of his hat down even more. He made his way past her, but the room was so small that he accidentally brushed his arm against hers as he headed toward the door.

The fleeting touch of his body was unexpectedly electric. Once again his gaze locked with hers, and the complexity she saw in those green depths shook her.

Quickly he glanced away, and then he was gone, striding down the little hall. She felt a strange, inner shudder. She’d read a profound resentment burning in his eyes, and she was sure it was resentment of her.

He did not want her and Charlie here. She had almost been scalded by the rancor she had felt flaring in him. Yet she sensed more than rancor in that swift, telling look. There had been something like desire, all the sharper for not being welcomed.

She knew because she had felt the same sensation; a sudden hot spark of sexual attraction that she disliked, and wanted to disclaim.

The slightly musty air of the room seemed to throb with his presence, even though he was gone. Don’t be asinine, she scolded herself. She was so tired that she was drugged by fatigue; it was making her imagine foolish things.

She sighed and bent over Charlie and finished untying his shoes. She slipped them off, loosened the button at the throat of his polo shirt. Then she shook him gently.

“Charlie,” she whispered. “Everything’s fine. We’re in Florida. Get up and go to the bathroom. Then you can go back to sleep.”

Charlie stirred grumpily. His long lashes fluttered open, and he squinted, frowning at her. He tried to roll over and ignore her.

But she persisted. She wanted him to know he was in a new place, but that he was safe and that she was there with him. Finally she roused him enough to lead him into the bathroom.

“We’re in Florida,” she told him, “with a man named Mr. Hawkshaw.”

“I don’t care,” Charlie grumbled.

“I want you to understand. We’re in Florida. With Mr. Hawkshaw. What did I just say?”

“Florida,” Charlie muttered. “Mr. Shocklaw.”

“Hawkshaw,” she repeated, taking him back to the bedroom. “There’s your bed. The bathroom’s right over there. I’ll leave the light on in case you have to get up.”

The boy climbed back into bed and struggled, frowning, to get between the sheets.

“Do you want your pajamas?”

“No,” he yawned. “Let me sleep.”

He fell back against the pillow, his eyes already closed.

Hawkshaw came in the door, carrying their few pieces of luggage. He set them down near the doorway. The fat basset hound, Maybelline, waddled behind him, her eyes wells of sorrow over what she had suffered.

Maybelline gave sadly accusing looks to both Kate and Hawkshaw. Then huffing and straining, she managed to clamber onto Charlie’s bed. She shot the two adults another aggrieved glance, then turned around several times and, with a grunt, plopped down beside Charlie.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Kate said. “The dog always sleeps with him. He’ll feel more at home if she—”

“No problem,” Hawkshaw said, cutting her off. He turned and left, closing the door behind him as if he was glad to have a barrier between them.

Kate sighed and sat on her own bed. She stared at the shut door and suddenly felt as if she were in prison.

If Hawkshaw found it so damned disagreeable to have them here, why on earth had he said they could come? He might be a fine bodyguard, a protector par excellence, but did he have to be so silent and surly and turbulent?

On top of it all, he had some weird sexiness, and he knew it. As if she, of all people, was going to go for the dangerous, mysterious type. No, thank you. If she ever got mixed up with another man, she hoped it was a mildmannered teddy bear of a fellow who gave off an aura of danger no greater than a marshmallow.

Oh, hell, she thought wearily. Why was she criticizing Hawkshaw? He might be edgy and rude, but he’d been good enough to take them in, hadn’t he? Perhaps she should no more blame him for his prickly coldness than she should blame an attack dog for being vicious.

She sighed, rose, and got ready for bed. She wouldn’t let this man get her spirits down. She simply would not allow it.

She left the bathroom light on and the door partly open, in case Charlie awoke. She turned out the overhead light and settled into the bed, which was surprisingly cool and soft.

From beneath the closed bedroom door came a wedge of yellow light, and there was the sound of music somewhere, muted and rather haunting. Hawkshaw must still be up.

She was stricken with a sudden, piercing memory of his sea-green eyes. No, my girl, none of that, she told herself firmly. She would not think that way.

The stalker had stolen a few small items from her—possessions that she had left near the doorstep or on her patio—nothing that seemed of great consequence.

But, in truth, he had stolen far larger things: her job, her home, her peace of mind. He had stripped trust from her life, especially trust of men. And along with it, he had thieved away desire.

HAWKSHAW SAT AT HIS father’s battered desk in the living room, going over the Kanaday woman’s file again. Now that he had met her and the kid, the case no longer seemed an abstraction, nor did they. They were flesh and blood.

Yes, he thought, and the reality of her was distracting, because all he wanted to think of was Sandra, who was marrying someone else and would never be his again.

Sandra, he thought hopelessly. The memory of her was always like a knife in the heart. He forced himself not to think of her sensual blondness. He made himself look instead at the fuzzy reproductions of the snapshots that Corbett had sent of Kate Kanaday. There were only three.

The first showed her and the kid sitting before a towering Christmas tree. The picture was dated two years ago. The kid, Charlie, was on Kate’s lap, mugging for the camera, and she was smiling with what seemed like real joy.

The camera didn’t love her, he told himself. Not the way it had loved and flattered Sandra.

But the smile—Kate Kanaday’s smile was nice, and it was full of the love of life. He wondered if she would ever smile that way again. He set the photos aside, face down.

He scanned the file again, looked at one of the notes from the stalker. The man had written:

I WANT TO TOUCH YOU EVERYWHERE. TO KISS YOU EVERYWHERE. TO EXPLORE EVERY INCH OF YOUR BODY. YOU WILL OPEN YOURSELF TO ME, AND CRY OUT WITH UNBEARABLE PLEASURE AT THE JOY MY BURNING THRUSTS WILL BRING YOU...

Hawkshaw shook his head in disgust. He knew what the police had probably told her, that guys who wrote such muck seldom acted on it. They got their jollies through the words and didn’t have to do the deeds.

But Hawkshaw knew this was not always true. He closed the file, pushed away from the old desk. He got to his feet and took another beer from the fridge. He went outside, to the deck.

The boards creaked beneath his feet. The deck was sagging and in disrepair like the rest of the property. He would have to make up his mind sooner or later: either fix up the house or tear it down for good.

He sipped the beer and stared off into the velvety darkness. This point of land was surrounded by tidal streams and mangrove islands. He heard the splash of a fish, perhaps even a dolphin, for dolphins sometimes came into the waters.

He inhaled deeply of the salt, humid air. He had spent much of his youth here, in this very house.

Now the house was decaying around him. He stared up at the featureless sky. Man-made dwellings were fragile in this climate; they took constant maintenance. Hawkshaw decided he was not good at maintaining things, at least the things that were supposed to belong to him.

He turned and looked at the lone light that shone from the farthest window. The woman had left the bathroom light on for the kid, a gesture that touched him in spite of himself.

Don’t be touched, he warned himself. Don’t feel anything. Don’t get involved.

The woman and kid had come into his life suddenly, and with luck they’d disappear just as suddenly. Until then, he’d watch out for them because they were a legacy from Corbett, a favor to be returned and a debt to be paid.

But nothing personal. Hawkshaw would stay uninvolved.

He had made it his specialty.

A RAGGED SCREAM WOKE KATE. In panic she raised herself on her elbow, staring about the strange room.

The morning’s first light poured between the curtains. Charlie slept in the bed next to hers, his brown hair dark against the white pillowcase. His breathing was even and deep.

Maybelline slept beside him, her squat body curled up against his legs. She opened one bloodshot eye, limply raised one ear. She sighed a doggy sigh.

The scream rent the air again, and Kate’s heart pounded in confused dismay. But Maybelline closed her eye, lowered her ear. Her body relaxed, and in the fraction of a moment, she snored.

The scream sounded again, this time farther away, and Kate thought, A seagull. That’s all. Seagulls make an awful sound like that.

It came back to her in a surreal rush that she and Charlie were somewhere in the Florida Keys. The realization jarred her, and she sank back against the pillow. She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

She and Charlie had arrived in Florida last night, and now they were hidden away with a friend of Corbett’s. And that friend was a tall, lean unfriendly man named Hawkshaw....

Her muscles stiffened at the recollection of Hawkshaw. Like Corbett, he had been in the Secret Service, and that, in truth, was almost all she knew about him.

She raised herself again on her elbow. She barely even knew where she and Charlie were, for God’s sake. She had better find out, because she was going to have to explain it all to Charlie. And prepare him for Hawkshaw.

The room was musty, and she thought she could smell the ocean—or was it the Gulf? Or both? She also imagined the aroma of coffee in the sultry air. Squinting at her watch, she saw that it was just after six; with luck Charlie should sleep for another hour.

She slid from bed, opened her suitcase and snatched up her toiletry case and a change of clothes. The face that stared back at her from the mirror startled her. She looked pale and uncertain of herself. She hated that uncertainty; it had once been so foreign to her.

She clambered into jeans and a pale-green T-shirt, put on her old running shoes, then slipped out of the bedroom, leaving the door open in case Charlie awoke. She cast a last, worried glance back at him, the dog still snoring by his side.

She padded down the hall. The living room looked as cluttered and disheveled as it had last night. Almost everything in it seemed dated, as if the contents had come from an era older than Hawkshaw’s own.

The kitchen was overcrowded, but she found a freshly brewed pot of coffee warming on the counter and a clean mug. She filled it and stepped to the front door.

She eased open the screen door and looked up and down the deck for Hawkshaw. Her heartbeat quickened as she saw him, sitting on a bench, hunched over a weathered picnic table. He had a manila folder open in front of him and seemed to be deep in study.

He sat in profile to her, a forelock of hair falling over his eyes. He wore olive drab shorts and that was all. The rest of him was as naked as the day God made him.

The morning sun was still mellow, and it spilled over on his shoulders, gleamed on the muscles of his back. His arms and legs were sinewed and bronzed, and she could see the tracery of veins that etched his biceps.

The azure-blue of the sky framed the sharp angles of his profile. He looked at ease with himself, as much a part of nature as an eagle or a stag might.

He did not look up at her, and not even his slightest motion betrayed that he knew she was there. But he said, “Hello, Katherine. Bring out your coffee and sit down. We have things to talk about. By the way, your socks don’t match.”

She blinked in surprise and her gaze fell involuntarily to her feet. On one foot was a navy-blue sock, on the other a black one.

Almost reluctantly she came to his side. She sat down on the bench as far from him as she could. He sipped at his coffee, but he didn’t look at her.

“How did you know I was there?” she demanded. “How did you know I had coffee? How did you know my socks don’t match? You never even saw me.”

“I saw you,” he said in his soft growl. “It’s my business to notice things. Or it was.”

He had shaved. The lean planes of his face were clean, and the scent of something piney hovered about him.

“How long did you say you and Corbett worked together?” she asked uneasily.

“Fourteen years,” he said.

He raised his eyes to hers. They were keen eyes, and for the first time she realized they also seemed intensely intelligent.

“But you don’t want to talk about me,” he said. “You want to talk about where you are. Right?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Charlie’s already confused about everything. Somehow I have to explain this to him.”

“Right,” he said, turning his gaze from her. He set down his coffee mug. From a stack of papers on the table’s corner he drew out a map.

He unfolded it and set it between them. “This chain of islands is the Lower Keys.”

He picked up a red pen. She noticed the long, jagged scar on his right arm. With the precision of an artist or an engineer, he circled the last island in the chain. “That’s Key West, where you landed.”

She nodded mechanically. A breeze sprang up. From the corner of her eye, she saw how it fluttered the lock of hair that fell over his forehead.

“We came up the one main road,” he said, tracing a line. “We’re here, Cobia Key. We’re at the edge of the heron sanctuary. More or less surrounded by mangrove islands. Like I say, we’re isolated.”

His gaze met hers again, and it seemed to her that it held a strange mixture of coolness, distance, and unwilling hunger. Uneasy, she turned her face from his and stared out at the dark tangle of the mangroves. “You’re alone here?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said in a tone that implied, And that’s how I like it.

She heard gulls crying in the distance, but she realized that this place was oddly still, almost hushed. The landscape did not seem tropical or exotic. Instead it seemed brooding, the mangrove forests full of mystery.

She had imagined Florida abloom with flowers and bright with colorfully plumaged birds. She had not envisioned these thick, low woods, deep with secrets. It was an alien atmosphere, and she took a drink of coffee to steel herself against it.

“What is this place?” she asked, giving the worn deck a critical glance.

“It used to be a guide service. Mostly kayak tours. Not anymore.”

She looked at him questioningly. “You bought this when—when you retired from the service?”

“I inherited it,” he said. “When my father died.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, although she could detect no sorrow, no grieving in him.

“It’s getting ready to fall down,” he said from between his teeth. He tapped the map with the pen again. “But that’s where you are. What’s left of Hawkshaw’s Island Adventures. In Nowhere, Florida.”

“Over there,” she said, nodding toward the patch of green-gray water glinting between the trees. “Is that the ocean?”

“No. Just a channel.”

Unexpectedly he stood. The tattered shorts rode low on his hips. He handed her the map, his hand brushing hers. She found that the touch made her draw in her breath.

“Look,” he said. “I’m not much of a host. I’m out of practice. But can I get you something to eat?” he asked. “More coffee?”

“No,” she said hastily. “I’m fine. But Charlie will probably be hungry. I wish I’d thought last night to ask you to stop, to let me buy a few things.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I put in plenty of supplies.”

Seeming restless, he moved to the edge of the deck and put his bare foot on the lower railing. He stared out over the trees.

“It’s going to get hot,” he said quietly. “Really hot. Can you feel it?”