Wild Hawk (20 page)

“You’re forgetting one little detail,” he pointed out. “How did she find us?”

Kendall shook her head. “Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe she knew. Maybe she had you tracked from the time you left L.A.”

“You’re saying she knew where we were, but the old man couldn’t find us?”

“Maybe she was why Aaron hadn’t been able to find you. I wouldn’t put it past her to have paid off the investigator he hired.” Realization struck her. “That’s why he hired . . . a friend this time. Someone he knew he could trust. He must have suspected she’d done something like that before.”

“So she . . . what? Kept tabs on us for years? And did nothing?”

“As long as your mother did as Alice told her, there was no reason for her to do anything. But when Aaron began to search again, there was always the chance he might find you.”

“So she hired a killer?” He shook his head. “I don’t know if that boat’s going to float, Kendall. That’s presupposing a lot of craziness.”

“Don’t underestimate her, Jason.” Her mouth twisted sourly as she flexed muscles that were still tight with strain. “Not like I did.”

“You really think she’s capable of trying to murder you?”

A chill swept through her at his words, but after a moment Kendall shook her head. “The day she told me what they’d done about the will, she was so smug, so . . . contemptuous . . . but I don’t think she intended that. She just wanted to scare me. To show me that she . . . meant what she’d said.”

“I’d say hanging by your back wheels over a seventy-five-foot drop is more than just a warning,” he said, his mouth twisting downward at one corner.

“I just can’t believe . . . Alice is a very calculating person. She’ll do what she thinks is necessary, but only that. Otherwise, she would have—”

She broke off, suddenly aware of the insensitivity of what she’d been about to say.

“Otherwise she would have killed my mother when she first found out about her,” he finished for her. His tone was blunt, unemotional. As if he was talking about somebody else.

“Yes,” she said simply.

He lapsed into silence then, and she couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking. Her knack of reading people had never been as erratic as it was with Jason. Sometimes she looked at him and knew exactly what he was thinking, other times he was an enigma that seemed beyond her comprehension. And sitting here staring at him was not helping her resolve that particular dilemma. All it was doing was making her too aware of the unexpectedly soft, thick fringe of his lashes, the lean strength of his body . . .  and the remembered heat of his mouth.

She forced herself to think about something else, anything else. To think about what else was in that box, and to ponder the wisdom of showing him now or waiting until he was more apt to listen to her.

In spite of it all, she nearly laughed at the idea of waiting until Jason was in a more receptive mood. He’d been about as receptive as a cornered porcupine ever since she’d met him. Decided now, she got up once more and took the single step to the table that held the box containing the things the police had retrieved from her wrecked car.

She took out a heavy manila envelope and held it out to Jason. It was a moment before he looked up; he was still staring at the small stack of letters he held. She wondered if he would ever read them. At last he put down on the table and shifted his gaze to the big envelope she was holding.

“What’s this?”

“The codicil to Aaron’s will. The only copy Alice hasn’t gotten her hands on.”

His expression was unreadable as he took it. “It was in your safe deposit box, too, I presume?”

“Yes. I took it and the letters out when I—”

“When you what?” he prodded when she stopped.

“It doesn’t matter. I just—”

“Right now, everything matters, Kendall. What else did you do at the bank?”

He had the right to know, she supposed. After all, if Alice went through with her nasty little plan, he’d be implicated as much as she would. With a sigh, she told him what she’d done with the hundred thousand dollars Alice had had put in her account. And to her amazement, he smiled.

“You walked across the bank lobby carrying a hundred thousand in cash, and just plopped it into your deposit box?”

She nodded. “I had the notary who works in the bank witness that I went in with the money and came out without it. And when.”

“How long after the time on the withdrawal record?”

“Two minutes.”

He shook his head, still smiling. “Nice work.”

Her mouth quirked. “I know a good lawyer would tear it to bits, but it was all I could think of on short notice. And I’d be a lot more confident if the Hawks didn’t completely own the bank, and Alice didn’t in effect run it.”

His smile faded. “And have the bank’s staff in her hip pocket?”

“She could have any one of them fired in an instant,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I couldn’t risk taking it somewhere else. Too much time delay for them to use against me. I wanted it out of the account and into the box as fast as possible, and some kind of record of it.”

“Then she could know what you did. That it means you plan to fight her. And if they called her, she knew where you were.”

A new, frightening edginess filled her, and Kendall began to pace. “You think they did?”

He answered her with a question she knew she should have thought of already. “Either that or you’re being followed. How else did the guy who rammed you know where to find you?”

“I can’t believe she’d really hire somebody to . . . kill me.”

“Why not? Hell, maybe it’s even the same guy from twenty years ago. He did a damn good job then.”

She stopped pacing. He sounded bitter—rightfully so, she thought—and only half joking. For a long, strained moment she looked at him. Then, quietly, she asked, “Then you believe it?”

“That the merry widow had my mother killed?” Kendall saw his jaw tighten. “I don’t know. But I know how to find out.”

“How?”

“Simple,” he said, standing up. “I’m going to ask her.”

Chapter Fifteen

THE MINUTE ALICE Hawk had walked into the room, the hair on the back of Jason’s neck stood up in primitive, gut-level reaction. And he knew what Kendall had said, in her effort to talk him out of this, was true; this woman had the capacity for genuine viciousness.

Kendall had nearly begged him not to confront her, but he’d only become more determined. He couldn’t face down the old man, but he could do the next best thing. And whether she wanted to or not Alice Hawk would tell him, one way or another, the truth.

“How dare you come here!”

The old woman’s voice rang with outrage. Jason, who had been lolling with intentionally insulting casualness on the expensive sofa, his booted feet impudently on the even more expensive marble coffee table, controlled his instinctive reaction and looked up at the woman glaring down at him. She was even thinner than he’d thought, and no less rigidly straight and furiously angry than she’d been at the funeral. Definitely a tough old bird, he thought. A vulture, given the chance. But he’d turned the tables on more than one scavenger in his life; it was a lesson he’d learned years ago.

“Come now,” he drawled, “I’m sure that’s not why you let me in here. If you just wanted the pleasure of throwing me out, you would have had that bouncer at your front door do it already.”

“I may still do just that.”

She was really playing the grande dame, he thought. And she looked the part, dressed even at this hour in a businesslike dark silk dress, her silver hair swept up into a regal style atop her head. A large solitaire diamond graced the ring finger of her left hand, surrounded by the glitter of several smaller stones. A small fortune on that one finger, Jason thought. He wondered if Aaron had bought it for her, or if she’d bought the ring for herself along with the husband.

“No, you won’t throw me out,” he said, grinning at her. “You’re too curious.”

Something flickered in her dark, narrowed eyes. It was the same sort of look Kendall gave him right before she told him he’d done something that reminded her of Aaron. Except in this woman the look was somehow malevolent, especially compared to Kendall’s amused wonder.

“Perhaps I am,” Alice said. “Curious about where you got the gall to show your face here, in my home.”

“From what I’ve heard, I’d say the gall came straight from my father.”

As he’d intended, she reacted to the last two words as if he’d slapped her. She went rigid, but before she could speak, he went on.

“But I’m happy to say I inherited my mother’s spine. You won’t control me by controlling the purse strings, like you did my father.” He used the words again purposely, knowing it rankled her. “I don’t want a damn cent from the Hawks.”

And as quickly as he spoke the words, her expression changed. Calculating, Kendall had called her. It showed right now. Clearly.

“That’s very good,” Alice said with cool contempt, “because you’ll never get a cent. Never.”

“There’s only one thing I want from you. An answer.”

“I don’t answer to anyone, least of all you.”

He maintained his casual, careless posture, but kept his gaze riveted on her face, watching her eyes, knowing the reaction he was looking for would be there.

“How about to the police? They may not be quite as impressed with you in Seattle as they are here.”

For the first time he saw a hint of caution alter her expression. But it didn’t show in her imperious voice. “Seattle? Why should I care about the police there?”

“I think you know why.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Now leave my house.”

“There is no statute of limitations on murder, Alice. Twenty minutes or twenty years after, it’s all the same under the law.”

For a split second he saw something flicker in her eyes, something beyond wariness but short of fear. “You’re impudent. And crazy. Now get out.”

“Why did you do it? She did what you told her to. She left. We were out of your way, out of your life. She never even spoke to my father again.”

“But he died speaking her name.”

Alice’s voice quivered with rage, and Jason sensed she had tried very hard to hold back those ill-advised words. And he saw too that she knew very well what was implied by those words. She was quick to try to cover her tracks, and he had to force himself to ignore the realization that Kendall had told the truth about Aaron’s last words and concentrate on what Alice was saying.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’ve had quite enough of you and your wild accusations. You can’t prove anything now, and you never will. Get out of my house or I’ll have you thrown out.”

“Don’t bother.”

He moved his feet from the table and stood up. Next to his height and bulk she seemed fragile, looked almost brittle with age. But he didn’t need Kendall’s warning not to underestimate this woman. He’d learned long ago that sometimes the most harmless-looking foes were the most dangerous. They were the ones who carried the knife in their boot or the zip gun in their waistband. And they’d use it from behind more often than not.

“You’ll get nothing from me,” she repeated loudly as he walked past her toward the door.

He looked back over his shoulder at her. “You’re too late,” he said, meaning it in more ways than she knew. “I already got what I wanted from you.”

He ignored the burly man who had obviously been lingering outside the library door, awaiting a summons to bodily throw him out; the man’s face wore an expression of disappointment that was almost comical. Purposely Jason grinned at him as he walked past him out into the night, and began to whistle cheerfully as he strode out to his car and got in.

He dropped the jovial facade as soon as he closed the car door. He watched his mirrors carefully as he pulled away, but there was no sign of a tail. He hoped he’d left the old woman a little off balance, unsure of what he’d do now. Uncertain exactly how much he knew. Not realizing that only one thing that he’d discovered tonight really mattered.

It was the truth. Alice Hawk had murdered his mother as surely as if she’d been driving the car herself. Rage boiled up in him. He fought it. It was a dangerous emotion, interfering with clear thinking, and he had too much to think about.

When he reached the main road he stopped, pondering for a moment, then he turned the car in the opposite direction from the motel. He wasn’t ready to face Kendall just yet. Not until he’d decided what he was going to do.

Well, not what he was going to do; he knew that. It was how he was going to do it that he hadn’t decided yet. He drove through the darkness, thinking.

Alice was guilty as hell, just as the book had said. He wasn’t sure how that made him feel about the book, but he was sure of one thing. He wasn’t through with the Hawks yet. Not as long as Alice Hawk sat smug and safe in her mansion, certain of her privileges, exempt, in her eyes, from the rules that governed others, while his mother had died far too young, and at this woman’s hands.

She had done it, but she was also right. He couldn’t prove it; he could hardly offer up the book as evidence. No, he couldn’t prove it. But he could make her pay.

She might be more than seventy years old, but a fierce anger burned in Aaron’s widow’s dark eyes, and he knew she would be a formidable adversary. But then, he’d always enjoyed those fights the most, the ones against worthy opponents, because winning meant so much more then. And he would win this one, too. Alice Hawk didn’t know what she was up against. She didn’t know that she was dealing with a man who had learned to hate at a very young age, and who had raised it to an art form when it came to anything and anyone named Hawk.

And that lost, rudderless feeling that had overtaken him when he’d learned he’d waited too long to take his revenge on his father had disappeared, vanished before the growing tide of fury. For now he had a target perhaps even more deserving than Aaron Hawk. And it was a target he would enjoy taking as much as the Hawk namesake enjoyed taking an unsuspecting field mouse. And he would take extra enjoyment in the knowledge that nothing would enrage Alice Hawk more than to know that it was he who had brought her world crashing down around her.

And he knew just who would help him do it.

“YOU DIDN’T EXPECT her to come out and admit it, did you?”

Kendall watched Jason from across the table in the cozily lit restaurant. She’d been startled when he’d suggested they go out for some dinner after his late return from his meeting with Alice Hawk. But she’d sensed he was wound up, beyond restless into unsettled, and since she’d been hungry anyway—she’d been too worried about what would happen with Alice to eat while he was gone—she had agreed.

And then she’d been even more startled when he had, without consulting her, driven straight to Aaron’s favorite restaurant in town, the quiet, elegant Gables. She didn’t mention that fact, although it again struck her as amazing, the seemingly impossible similarities between the father and son who had never known each other. Besides, she hardly had to tell him Aaron had come here often, not when everyone from the maître d’ to the head chef himself approached her to express obsequious sympathy on Aaron’s passing. She had smiled graciously; Jason had ignored them, just as he ignored the startled looks he’d been garnering since they’d walked in the door.

“No,” Jason agreed mildly now. “I didn’t expect her to admit to anything. I expected exactly what I got.”

He’d told her Alice had been furious that he’d dared to set foot in her house. That she’d threatened to have him thrown out bodily. And that she had denied knowing anything about his mother’s death. All of which Kendall would have also expected from Alice. What surprised her was that Jason had left it at that and simply obeyed Alice’s orders and apparently walked meekly out. She couldn’t see him backing down from anyone, even the redoubtable Alice Hawk.

Besides, she thought, if that was all that had been said, what had taken up the rest of the three hours he’d been gone?

“I was driving around,” he said when she finally asked exactly that. “Thinking.”

“Thinking . . . about what?”

He lifted his glass of the delicately fragrant wine he’d ordered, a Napa Valley specialty of the house that, ironically, had been one of Aaron’s favorites. He looked at her over the rim of the glass, in a way that made her feel like she was being inspected. He took a small sip, then set the wineglass down.

“Let’s talk about that later. Things have been a little . . . heavy, and I think we need a break.”

And then, quite unexpectedly, he smiled at her. A real, genuine smile. Her breath caught as his entire demeanor changed. For the first time since the time they’d talked about how she’d met Aaron, his bright blue eyes were full of warmth. Gone was the dark, brooding man she’d known; gone was the cool, assessing Jason West, and in his place was a beguiling stranger.

For a moment she wished she hadn’t had to say no to the wine, because of the pain medication the hospital had given her; she could have used a drink. But then she thought again; alcohol fogging her brain was the last thing she needed. She was already far too attracted to this man for her own good, and she didn’t quite trust this sudden change in attitude.

“And,” he said with a touch of ruefulness that was quite winning, “I believe I owe you an apology.”

He owed her several, she thought, recovering some of her equilibrium, but said only, “Oh?”

“I made some pretty harsh assumptions about you when we first met. And I underestimated your capabilities and intelligence as well. I’m sorry.”

Kendall blinked, taken aback yet again. When the man decided to apologize, he really did it right, she thought, feeling more than a little stunned.

“I . . . thank you.”

His mouth curved upward even farther. “Does that mean you accept my apology?”

She struggled to shake off the effects of that dazzling smile. She didn’t know where he’d come from, this charming, appealing man; she only knew that Jason West had suddenly become more dangerous to her than ever.

“With reservations,” she said, managing to sound skeptical rather than breathless.

The smile became a lopsided grin. The silliness of it, coupled with the unexpected warmth in his eyes and the lock of silky, dark hair that had fallen over his brow, made him look years younger than when she’d first seen him at the funeral, or at any time since.

“As in ‘What brought this on?’ ” he asked, in a tone that matched the grin.

“Exactly,” she said, feeling disarmed by his self-deprecating words nearly as much as his amused expression; she barely managed not to respond to the engaging grin by automatically returning it.

He shrugged. “I figured if we’re going to work together on this, we’d better clear the air.”

“Work together . . . on what?”

He reached into the inside pocket of the coat he’d tossed on the next chair when they’d taken their seats in the quiet back corner of the upscale restaurant. He pulled out the manila envelope she’d given him, the envelope that contained the codicil to Aaron’s will. She was surprised he had it; he must have picked it up while she was changing clothes. Then the inference of his action struck her, and her gaze shot back to his face.

“You’ve decided to fight her?”