ROBERT HAWK

Some men, like some women, were designed for cages. They had the mentality that needed the rules and structure, yearned for the simple rewards of food and silence.

He was not that man, and the fact that he was in handcuffs right now was unacceptable. Especially given all of the money he paid to this department. Over a million dollars, last year alone, in discreet white envelopes, cash changing hands as regularly as whore abortions. A million dollars and he was in the back of this disgusting car, on a seat frequented by drug users and losers.

He shifted against the vinyl and contained his temper, swallowing all that he wanted to say. He watched the city move past, still wakening, the tourists not yet out, the worker bees in motion, and clenched his jaw shut.

Some men were designed for cages. He was designed to be the one who put them there, who punished the weak and disciplined their sins.

Gwen’s death was Dario’s sin. Had he not bedded that skank, brought her to The Majestic, flaunted her under Gwen’s nose—Hawk wouldn’t have had to act. He wouldn’t have needed to involve Claudia. And Gwen … Gwen wouldn’t have even been there, no doubt trying to understand Dario’s deceit, trying to save her marriage, trying to—

He bit the inside of his cheek so hard that he tasted blood. A waste, that’s what it all was. A waste of bending over backward to give Gwen everything. A waste of training and testing Claudia, only to have her fail in the most unforgivable of ways. A waste of investing time and energy into Dario, a man who had stabbed him in the back after all that he had given him.

He’d kill them all, starting with Bell Hartley. Then Dario. And then, after she’d had a few weeks to crawl back to him on her weak little belly, he’d kill Claudia too.

It was necessary. A cleansing of the scum. And then, with all of them gone, he’d come out of retirement and take his empire back. He wasn’t too old to rule. To inspire. To control.

The police car turned into the station and his shoulders tightened at the crowd that filled the parking lot, a mix of cameras, uniforms, and gawkers, despite the early hour. He couldn’t get a goddamn reporter to cover a bacteria rumor at a competitor’s restaurant, but they could all be guaranteed to show up here, flashbulbs blazing, for this ridiculous circus of an arrest. Bullshit, that’s what it was. Absolute bullshit. A million dollars in bribes to this department and he was dealing with this bullshit.

“Tell me you aren’t going to walk me through that crowd.”

The man behind the wheel nodded. “We’ll get you inside as quickly as we can.”

This was intentional, all of it. They were punishing him, and he couldn’t understand why. He’d just lost his daughter for Christ’s sake. Couldn’t they give him some respect and time to mourn? For them to arrest him now, for bribery of all things… it reeked of interference. Someone was behind all of this, pulling strings.

He’d find that individual and wrap those strings around their neck.

The car door opened, and the sound of the crowd, of questions and shutters, the crunch of steps against gravel—all of it hit Robert Hawk at once. He lifted one Ferragamo shoe out, watching the glossy shine of the leather. Setting it down, he struggled to step out of the car without the use of his arms, the cuffs biting painfully into his wrists as he fought. No one could do this. It didn’t have anything to do with his age. It was a geometry problem that didn’t have a solution. The center of gravity was too far off, and now—as another insult—the officer would have to help him out of the car.

He shouldered off the first uniform, heaving his way from the low car and swaying slightly as he found his footing and straightened. His right elbow was grabbed by the second uniform and pulled forward, toward the crowd, a small path now visible through them and up to the building’s front steps.

Just a day ago, he’d watched with smug glee as Dario had been led through a similar group and to those same doors. He’d crowed with satisfaction and enjoyed the haunted look on Dario’s face, the hunch of his big shoulders as he wore the cuffs, the rough calls of the crowd as he’d moved through and to the station.

Just a day ago, and now he walked the same path, was treated the same way, heard the same taunting calls.

“Murderer!”

The deep voice was so strong that it carried above the others, a few stopping in their chants to look over their shoulder, the crowd disturbing a bit, bodies moving, shifting, making way for someone from the back. Hawk paused, his head slowly turning as he looked over the crowd, searching for the source of the accusation.

While Dario had avoided the cameras and slurs like a pussy, he would confront. He was Robert Hawk. He—not Dario—owned this town. This arrest would be sorted out, he would be released and order would be restored. He saw the owner of the deep voice. It was paired with a dingy white T-shirt stretched over big shoulders and the lumber of a stride that easily shoved through the crowd. The man stood a head over the others, and when he came fully into view, Hawk was unsurprised to see his jeans and cowboy boots.

Who, the fuck, was this?

The man moved his right hand, and it was a blur of action, the motion too quick to respond to. He lifted the gun, and Hawk tensed, his legs bending, old muscles working overtime to launch him forward and out of harm’s way.

The gun went off.

Screams.

Movement. Shoving, running. Hawk fell forward without hands to catch himself with and met the unforgiving asphalt face first. The thin skin of his cheek shredded and his nose collided with the ground, a crunch of bone sounding.

Another gunshot.

Another. A volley of them, of screams and panic.

A hand gripped at his shoulder, and jerked him over, onto his back. He looked up and into the officer’s face.

“I—” He couldn’t get the words out. He wheezed, coughed. Stringy moisture blocked his airway. He felt pressure on his chest and glanced down, the officer’s hands on him, his forearms flexing as he bore his weight down on the wound.

The son of a bitch had shot him. Here, in front of all of these cameras. Robert Hawk, lying on the pavement like a weak old man. His wrists screamed in pain from the weight of the officer, the cuffs pinching them behind his back, and he tried to speak, to order the man off him, but couldn’t manage anything.

Is this what dying felt like? He looked up to the sky, and the pain in his chest grew deeper, blurring his vision and turning everything to red.

BELL

Everyone dies. Dad once woke me up in the middle of the night and pulled me into the living room. He made me sit on the floor, by his feet, and listen to his lengthy and disjointed opinion on death, the drunken gist of it summed up in those two simple words. Everyone dies.

Everyone. He’d leaned forward and punctuated the word with a stabbed finger toward my nose. It’s a part of life, Bell. We’re born. We live. We die. It was around then that I noticed the glass bowl sitting on the table, the bottom littered with cigarette butts, their ends damp against the slimy bottom and faux treasure chest. It was around then that I asked where Bubba was and realized that Everyone was, in this situation, my goldfish. Everyone dies. My goldfish had died because Dad needed a place to stick his cigarette butts and Bubba’s bowl had looked like the best bet. Gwen had died because I fell in love with the wrong man.

Now, in a hot and sweaty church service inside a clapboard barn, I watched as the pastor stepped away from the pulpit and stopped before the crowd. Of course, his sermon was about death. Just my luck. I tried to run away from something mentally and ended up tripping over it on my exit.

I shouldn’t have let Laurent drag me here. This pastor didn’t understand my plight. No one was trying to kill him. His most significant concern was probably paying the utility bill on this barn and worrying about that mustard stain on the sleeve of his jacket. I was willing to bet he’d never been in love with a married man, or surrounded by strangers two thousand miles from home, with a swamp man caretaker who was currently giving me the evil eye. I glared back at Laurent and he sighed, cutting his eyes to the front.

Granted, I did bring this on myself. I watched as the pastor carefully took the steps down and started to walk down the barn aisle, his voice rising as he moved. I closed my eyes and listened to the man speak about death. His opinion was a little different than my drunken father’s had been. His opinion spoke of the forgiveness that we could experience if we simply asked God for his mercy. Dad’s soliloquy had been more focused on Bubba’s short lifespan, and the fact that he would have been poisoned to death slowly and painfully, had Dad simply dropped the cigarettes in without flushing him down the toilet first.

I felt a sharp elbow in my side and almost yelped. Whipping my head to the right, I gave Septime a dirty look.

“Don’t fall asleep.” She mouthed the words in an exaggerated fashion that a lip reader three states away would see.

“I’m NOT.” I rubbed my side and glowered at her elbows, which should be registered as a weapon. Taking the opportunity to sneak a look at her watch, I wondered how much longer this service could last.

TWO HOURS. Two hours is how long we stayed in that barn, the temperature rising as the morning passed. We talked about a lot more than death. There was a giant hugging circle that occurred, where everyone wandered around and hugged and blessed each other. I was introduced a dozen or so times as Laurent’s cousin, a moniker that no one seemed to believe, but everyone accepted. We returned to our seats and waited as ten or fifteen people stood up and told stories of blessings that they had received, or prayers that they needed. We sang. Prayed. Sang. Listened to more of the pastor. Sang. Heard church announcements. Prayed some more. Then, finally, it was over.

And I thought the eleven o’clock service with Mom had been long. I had the ridiculous urge to fly her to Louisiana just so she could sit with me through next week’s worship and slip me peppermints during the slow parts.

Next week. The impact of my thoughts hit me at the same time as the sunshine. I stepped out of the barn and lifted my hand, shielding my eyes from the glare of it as I stepped off the bottom step and onto the trampled grass. In a week, would I still be here?

“Let’s talk.” Laurent’s hand closed around my arm and he pulled me forward, striding us toward the truck. I struggled to keep up, surprised at the quick clip of his steps.

He opened the door of the truck, practically shoved me in, and held up a hand to Septime. “Get a ride back with someone.”

The order brought me to full alert, the sermon forgotten, and I scooted over into the passenger seat. “What’s wrong? Is it Dario? Tell me—”

“Here.” He pushed his cell phone out, the screen open, a text message showing. I took it carefully, worried I might hit the wrong button, and read the display.

—Hawk shot. No word yet on condition. Please tell her.

I read it three times, then closed the phone and passed it back to Laurent. Sitting back, I tried to think through what this meant and how it affected our situation.

Everyone dies. It was probably sacrilegious, but I couldn’t help but feel relief.

DARIO

He watched the FBI agent as he adjusted a cheap watch into place.

“Sorry to get you up so soon. I understand that you had a late night.”

Dario ignored the comment, glancing at his attorney.

The man smoothed down the front of his suit and lifted one expensive shoe, resting it on his knee in the casual pose of assholes everywhere. “You had news for my client?”

They already knew the news. The beauty of calling half the news outlets in town to document Hawk’s arrest? They’d also caught his death. A dozen cameras, shuttering through every bloody minute of it. It’d hit the newswire before Dario had landed. By the time he’d been back in his cell, he knew everything. His ranch foreman, Nick, had shown up and shot Hawk, then been taken down by three slugs in the chest. Another death, caused by Dario’s mistakes.

He stared down at the table and listened as the agent recounted everything he already knew. Nick had driven in from the ranch. They found a hotel reservation under his name at the Hampton Inn. He’d shot Hawk with a gun registered in his name. There were a hundred witnesses and camera footage of everything.

“You have any idea why Nick Fentes would want to kill Robert Hawk?”

Dario looked up, his brow furrowing. “Is that a fucking joke?”

His attorney cleared his throat and tapped the table in the sort of warning motion that would get him fired.

Dario tilted his jaw to one side, the muscles in his neck popping, and collected himself, then spelled everything out for the idiot. “Nick and Gwen have been in a relationship for some time. Robert Hawk, directly or indirectly, killed the woman he loved. If I’d had a gun and a death wish, I’d have done the same thing.”

He almost had done the same thing. In Hawk’s home, staring at that chicken shit of evil … he’d physically struggled with the desire to reach out and wrap his hands around the man’s neck, squeezing the cords of tendons until the bones beneath them snapped. Bell had been the only reason he hadn’t. Protecting Bell, and the thought of a life with her … that had kept his temper in check and his hands by his side.

Nick hadn’t had that seatbelt to contain him. His world had ended in the same moment that Gwen’s had, and Dario hated that he’d been the one who had to tell him. The silence on the other end of that phone… he had felt the heartbreak, had heard the emotion in the hard exhale of breath. Nick hadn’t asked who had done it. Dario had told him about Bell, and he had instantly understood, their joint hatred and concern about Robert Hawk a topic that had been discussed at length.

“Are you aware that Nick Fentes has a criminal record?”

Of course, he was. You don’t leave your wife alone with a man that you don’t know everything about. You don’t watch her fall in love without keeping tabs on the situation. It was the same reason that Gwen knew about Meghan, and then Bell. They had loved each other enough to protect each other’s hearts. Dario nodded. “Minor stuff. Most of it in his past.”

“Larceny and assault aren’t exactly minor. He almost killed a man in a bar fight.”

Dario shrugged. “You probably come from a good family, Agent King. Solid neighborhood. Honor Roll student. But Nick and I …”

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the wooden table, the cheap furniture giving a little under the weight. “I understood where he came from and the situations that led to those arrests. We discussed it, and I felt comfortable hiring him, and knowing that he could handle the ranch and anyone who might show up to mess with it.”

Nick could handle Hawk. That was why Dario had hired him. And he had seen Nick’s past as a positive, not a negative. The man could fight. Wasn’t afraid of getting dirty. He’d gone hungry enough times to appreciate a steady paycheck. He could look at Gwen with a tenderness that went against every other blood vessel in his body. When she was alone at the ranch with Nick, Dario didn’t worry about her. He knew that Nick would protect her with his life. And ultimately, the man had.

“We finished the search of Hawk’s home. Found something you might find interesting.”

Dario kept his expression bored and stayed silent, not reacting when the man reached down and lifted an evidence bag from the banker’s box at his feet. Inside the bag was a Smith & Wesson. A gun he recognized. A gun he’d carried out of Bell’s suite and into Robert Hawk’s home.

He lifted one eyebrow and didn’t move, didn’t allow himself to think about the moment in the study when he’d planted the gun. The feds had known about the bug. The gun … that he hadn’t told anyone about.

When he’d dropped the gun into the velvet-lined desk drawer, it had made a thud that seemed to echo in the room. He’d looked up and into Hawk’s face with the certainty that the man had heard the sound and would walk over to investigate. He’d sweated through the subsequent interaction, sighed with relief when Hawk discovered the wire, and left with a dozen prayers that the weapon would not be discovered until the police searched Hawk’s home.

For once, his prayers had been answered.

A gift that, thanks to Nick’s swift justice, didn’t seem to matter.

“You seen this before?” The man pushed the gun closer and waited. Dario eyed the gun and contemplated his next move.