Page 40 of Hawk

He looked sad but nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. I know they have a guard at the gate and everything, but knowing that they had someone follow me to her house…” His eyes shimmered, and he shook his head. “What if they hurt her trying to get me. I just…”

“Shh, mouse. They didn’t, and that’s what matters. Do you need to take it to her right now?”

“No, she was going to take a nap, so I have a couple of hours before she expects me.”

“Okay, let’s head over to my office and talk to Kat and Maddox, and then we’ll drop off the gift.”

“Where’s your truck?” He looked around. “And hold on. How did you get here so fast?”

“I didn’t bring my truck. I ran.” I pointed at the back of the Three Bears Tactical building. It was one of the tallest buildings in the downtown area, so it wasn’t hard to see.

“Oh, wow, I didn’t even think about how close I was to your building, or I might’ve tried to make it there instead of the bank.”

“It’s good you didn’t. What you did was exactly the right thing. You got away, and you ran to the closest safe place.”

“I could hear you in my head saying the objective is to get away. So that’s what I did. I got away.”

“Yeah, I heard that you took that guy down.”

“How did you know that?”

“Kat saw it happen on camera.”

That was the thing. Nowadays, very little was private. Vesper, like most cities, had CCTV cameras at pretty much every intersection.

“On camera?”

“Yeah, Kat tapped into the local traffic cameras and saw you. She was pretty impressed.”

“All I did was what you taught us in class. Break the hold and get away.”

“You protected yourself. I’m proud of you, Mika.”

A few minutes later, we walked into the building. “So, are you ready to see the rest of Three Bears Tactical?”

Chapter fourteen

Mika

We walked down to the gift shop and picked up the gift for Mary Ellen. Then we walked down the street to the Three Bears Tactical building. It didn’t take us long, but there was something I needed to say before we got there.

“I’m really sorry, Hawk. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble. It was stupid of me to go by myself, but it never occurred to me he might have someone following me. In my mind, there was no way he would know where I was, and I was only making a quick stop.”

“It didn’t occur to me either. We didn’t even know for sure if he was here with the gang or by himself before today, so you couldn’t have known. I won’t make the same mistake again, though. I’m gonna be sticking so close to you that you won’t know where you end and where I begin.”

He’d said that firmly, like it was some kind of threat, but the truth was, it sounded pretty darn good to me.

“I can’t believe all the stuff you taught us in class actually worked.”

“Well, we weren’t just practicing all those moves for the fun of it, you know.”

“I do, but I didn’t really think I could do it if the time ever came.” I’d spent way too long feeling helpless to trust myself in a situation like that. But now I knew that even though I might not be able to fight, I still had the basic skills I needed to protect myself.

I’d only been into the Three Bears building by entering from the garage, so I hadn’t really ever paid much attention to the front. There was a small bistro on the bottom floor of the building that I hadn’t even realized was there.

“Goldie’s Delights?” I asked. “Is that like a play on the Three Bears?”

“It is. The owner thought she was being clever.”

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