Shadow Hawk Read online

  He could be, as Hawk liked to say, a real prick.

  But Logan preferred to think of it like this: it took little to no effort at all to compliment a woman, to touch her the way she wanted to be touched, to listen when she spoke. They loved it.

  And he loved being loved.

  Normally, by the time he backed out of whatever budding relationship he had going, moving into different waters, the woman he’d been with felt great about themselves.

  Both parties happy.

  But staring into his angel’s eyes, he suddenly had no fancy words, no moves. He had nothing, and as the silence grew, her smile faded. She stood.

  “No, wait. I’m—”

  “Sorry? Don’t be. It’s okay.” She shook her head. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have stayed. You just rest now, and—”

  “Your name,” he said hoarsely. Christ, his chest hurt.

  “What?”

  She tried to pull free but he didn’t let go of her, couldn’t, because suddenly, seriously, his chest hurt like hell. And it wasn’t from his fall. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “I’ve got to go.” Gently but firmly she broke loose and turned to the door, and Logan closed his eyes. The irony didn’t escape him. When it came to women, he did the leaving, he always had. A shrink would have a field day with the reasons for his behavior, but he didn’t care about any of that now, except that for the first time in his life, the roles were reversed.

  She was leaving him.

  It didn’t matter that he’d known her for all of a handful of minutes. That he didn’t even know her fucking name. That he was injured, and he had no idea where or how Hawk was, or how the take-down had turned out.

  Nothing mattered but this, crazy as it was. “Please, wait.”

  Hand on the door, she went still but didn’t look at him.

  More pain in his chest. Ah, now he got it. Not his chest, but his heart. He stared at her slim spine, at the lush red hair that he wanted to bury his face in. Turn around, he silently willed.

  She didn’t. Of course she didn’t.

  Because for once, he wasn’t in charge, and he had no choice but to reveal himself. “I felt it.”

  Pivoting around, she locked her eyes on his. “What?”

  “The connection. If you meant this thing zinging between us at the approximate speed of sound, possibly even the speed of light, then, yeah.” He cleared his throat, and did something utterly new.

  Bared his soul. “I felt it.”

  She looked down at her feet, then back into his eyes. “Callen. My name is Callen O’Malley.”

  “Well, Callen O’Malley…” He held out his hand. “Now that I’ve puked in front of you, not to mention been delirious and probably an all around class A asshole to boot, maybe I could show you a different side of me. A better side.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “And what side would that be? I’ve already seen every inch.”

  One glance at the hospital gown he wore instead of his ATF gear was all the explanation of that statement he needed. “I hope they were the good inches.”

  She smiled, and he felt like he’d won the jackpot. And when she stepped back toward him, he thought he could just die right now, because for the first time in hours, hell years, he felt like everything was going to be okay.

  “YOU GOING TO tell me the plan?”

  Hawk glanced at Abby in surprise. She hadn’t spoken to him in thirty-three minutes. He knew because he was still holding her phone and he’d glanced at the readout at least a thousand times.

  By some miracle, they hadn’t been followed, but they were on borrowed time. He had only until their pursuers caught up to them to figure out a concrete plan for getting Abby somewhere safe, and then to her computer. “She speaks.”

  “Hostages don’t speak. We suffer.”

  He glanced over at her, but she was already shaking her head. “Forget I said that.”

  Yeah, okay. Except he never forgot a thing. Not how she’d gone running out into the night from the relative safety of the van into the woods because she’d been worried about him, or how she’d sounded when she’d found him slumped on the ground. Or the feel of her arching against him as he’d kissed her.

  At the time he hadn’t been sure if she’d meant to pull him closer or push him away, but he knew better now.

  She’d meant to shoot him.

  Only she hadn’t.

  “I need to make a stop,” she said.

  “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Thirsty?”

  She shifted in her seat, looking uncomfortable. “No.”

  “Then no stop.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Damn it. The one excuse he had no defense against. Pulling off the highway at the next exit, he drove into the only thing around, a campground with a sign that read Lost Hills. The sign didn’t lie, the place was rugged, remote. Indeed, someone could easily get lost here. The guard station was empty, and Hawk chose to take that as the first good sign in an otherwise entirely shitty evening.

  Maybe his luck was changing.

  He drove down the bumpy one-lane road, eyeing all the campsites, which were empty. Normal people didn’t camp in northern Wyoming in the late fall, because it would freeze your body parts off cold. The road had plenty of turnoffs, and he picked an out-of-the-way spot. Pleased, he turned to Abby.

  Who was distinctly not pleased. “I don’t see a bathroom,” she said.

  “Well—”

  “And don’t you dare point to a tree.”

  Which was exactly what he’d been about to do. “I’ll close my eyes.”

  “How do you know that I won’t gut you when you do?”

  He sighed, the exhaustion creeping up on him like a sledgehammer to the side of the head. “Because you’re not crazy about blood.”

  She let out a disbelieving laugh.

  “Look, kill me if you have to, I’m feeling halfway dead anyway.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “And if you don’t, we’ll take off again when you’re ready.

  “To go to my place for my computer, and then we flush out Gaines. Right?”

  There was going to be an “and then.” His head swam for a moment, probably from sheer exhaustion. That, and an odd need to ask her to repeat the “we.”

  There hadn’t been many “we’s” in his life. Not once a woman realized his long hours and dangerous work would keep him just a little too gone, and way too distant. Few had hung in there, seeing past the job to the man beneath.

  “Right. We’ll stick to the plan.” Well, mostly. Except for the part where she was with him when he flushed out Gaines.

  “And if the numbers don’t match…?” she pressed.

  It was a good question. A fair question. “The numbers will match.”

  “Right. And you know this because your instincts tell you so.” Abby laughed, completely mirthlessly, and covered her eyes, leaning her head back against the headrest.

  “You never explained. What’s your attachment to Gaines, anyway?”

  She shot him a look that said none of your business. Well that, and go to hell. Preferably yesterday.

  “Look,” he told her. “I can promise you, I am not the bad guy here.” Hawk felt that bore repeating. Over and over. But when he took in her ashen face and the bruises forming around her wrist, he grimaced. “Okay, I didn’t mean to be the bad guy.”

  She turned away and made him feel like shit. “Abby, please. Look at me.”

  After a hesitation, she leveled him with those wide baby blues.

  “I woke up this morning and I was the good guy. I was on the verge of bringing down the Kiddie Bombers. Then I went to the raid and ended up fighting off our boss.”

  “It’s just all so hard to swallow—”

  He thrust her cell at her. “Call him. I guarantee you, you’re never going to hear from him again.”

  Taking the phone, she flipped it open and stared down at the keypad. “What am I supposed to