Page 120 of Chaotic Curse
Except when it is.
If I’m right, this is the first clean clue we’ll have.And if I’m wrong…
Hawk will continue to chase ghosts, and I’ll have to live with that.
I’ll have to live with my fear of losing him.
I’ll fix it all.I’ll find my stalker and I’ll save Hawk.I’ll do it because I love him.Because he deserves better.
I turn off the lamp.
And for the first time today, my resolve is heavier than my fear.
37
HAWK
I get backto my place and chuck my boots in the foyer.The AC cools my sweat-soaked skin.
Texas summers are relentless.
My shoulders ache.My hands are tight from the drive, from too much thinking about things I can’t undo.
Images cloud my mind.
Eagle in that hospital bed.
Fragments of Ted’s skull and brain matter on the floor of my father’s office.
Daniela, as a child, being forced to do the unthinkable.
And the man in my barn who’s still breathing when he shouldn’t be.
I need something to do with my hands before I put them somewhere I can’t take back.
I head to the kitchen.A man needs to eat, after all.
I open the fridge and take stock—eggs, cherry tomatoes, a wedge of Manchego, half a roasted chicken.Bread under a towel on the counter.The smell of it—yeast and flour, faintly sweet—takes me back to mornings when life was simpler.
What a crock.
My life has never been simple.
Even when I thought it was, when I was playing carefree games of Monopoly with Ted, things were brewing under the surface.I just didn’t know it yet.
I slice the bread thick, drizzle it with olive oil, and slide it under the broiler until the edges go dark gold.The pan hisses when I drop the tomatoes in.They burst open, bleeding red, smelling like I’m walking past an Italian bistro.I shred the chicken and toss it in with the tomatoes.Add thyme.Smoked paprika.
This is for me.But I make twice as much.
Not because he deserves it.No.Reyes doesn’t deserve anything but the business end of a shovel.But keeping a man fed keeps him sharp.And I want him sharp.I want him to know exactly how deep in it he is.
Two plates.Toast on the side.Cheese shaved so thin it melts when it lands on the chicken.I eat, the good food tasting like sawdust, and then pack the rest in a plastic meal-prep tray.
Time to drive to the barn.
* * *
Reyes is awake.
