Page 100 of Shielding Instinct

She certainly didn’t have to think that if she tried for a relationship with Hawkeye, it would be destined for pain and grief.

What did he call her? Amazing. Remarkable.

That had been her experience with him.I mean, here he is chasing through the dense rainforest with no clue what he’s going after because I heard a noise.

“Oh shit,” Hawkeye said, coming to an abrupt stop. “Petra, maybe you need to—”

He stepped out of the way, reaching for Petra and guiding her forward.

There, on the ground, lay a little girl. Curled into a ball, she used an exposed root as a pillow of sorts. There on herneck was a bright red welt. The same welt Petra had seen at the tidepool when the child had yanked her necklace off and tossed it seaward. This was the Johnsons’s daughter.

This was not one of the scenarios Petra had envisioned and offered to Rowan, who was probably about to land in St. Croix with two fellow FBI special agents all because of the picture of that necklace.

Petra swallowed down her emotions. “Hello, sweetheart. Do you remember me? I met you the other day when you and your mommy were at the tidepool.”

The child didn’t turn toward Petra but scowled ferociously at Hawkeye. Anger and fear filled her eyes. Her body was fierce. She was a tiny warrior in a mud-covered bathing suit.

“My name is Petra. What’s your name?” She took a step closer.

The child focused on Cooper who stretched out as a barricade between her and Petra.

Petra thought Cooper was using his body to give the child a sense of safety from the adults. But he was doing it strategically. He wasn’t guarding her. If Petra reached for the child, it would be allowed.

Cooper’s origin story came to mind, how he stopped Hawkeye’s truck and kept the baby on the blanket. Cooper seemed to know what a youngling needed.

Petra would defer to Cooper and stay on this side of his body barricade.

“Where are your brothers?” Petra slowly lowered herself until her butt was on the ground.

“She has brothers? How many children are we talking about?” Hawkeye handed Petra his water bottle.

“It was a family of five,” she said as she unscrewed the top. “And older brother maybe six or seven. And younger brother maybe three or four?” Petra showed the bottle to Cooper, thenstretched it past him to set it down beside the child. “Parents in their mid-to-late-thirties.”

Hawkeye shifted to the side and started inspecting the foliage and the dirt. Petra assumed he was looking for tracks.

Petra pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and, in this position, remained perfectly still.

Just like earlier with the Rotti, Petra wanted to give this child a moment to acclimate. After all, two adults and a dog had burst through the foliage.

Something traumatic had obviously happened to this child between this moment and the last time Petra had seen her without her necklace on the cliff.

Did this have something to do with her necklace being missing?

Petra looked through her lashes as she scanned the child’s body. There were no marks or bruises that looked like blows. Mostly, she was filthy, and her hair was wild with debris.

She had two white rivulets where her tears had cut through the dirt on her face, and her eyes were red and swollen from crying.

“What are we doing, Petra?” Hawkeye asked, his voice warm and low. He stood away from them, seeming to have taken the “who do you want in the woods, a man or a bear” responses from women quite seriously as he kept his distance.

“Did you find tracks?” she asked in return.

“They’re single barefooted tracks that go on for a short distance. I don’t want to go farther right now.”

Petra pulled out her phone but before she looked, Hawkeye said, “No bars, no satellite.”

She turned back to the child and showed her the photo from the day before. “That’s you at the tidepool. There’s your little brother. Did you hike out here with your brothers?”

The child glanced at the phone with disinterest. There was no spark of recognition. No“Where is my daddy?”Instead, she scooted closer to Cooper and threw a leg over him as she clung to his ear.

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