R Patterson - The Shadow Hunter

“Where does this lead?” Hawk asked.

“Just keep driving,” the man said. “You’ll see soon enough.”

After a couple of minutes, the road banked to the left and down into a small valley. The drive snaked around the back of a rock and up into the mountains. Hawk glanced in the rearview mirror, watching the plain disappear as he entered the forest.

“If you’re going to kill me,” Hawk began, “there’s no need to make me drive all this way. I’m sure no one will find my body.”

The two men chuckled. “Who said we want to kill you?”

Hawk looked at the gun. “You are pointing a weapon at me.”

“It’s just to make sure you do what I tell you to do,” the driver said. “I’ll only kill you if he tells me to kill you.”

“And who is that?” Hawk asked.

“You’ll meet him soon enough.”

Once Hawk thought he couldn’t go any higher, he crested the mountain and found himself on the backside of a sprawling estate overlooking the valley on the opposite side. Ancient pine trees soared overhead, their limbs limp from the weight of the snow. They framed the picturesque three-story Tudor house, which was both grand in size and style.

I must be about to meet a famed Russian oligarch.

Hawk parked where the driver instructed before following the two men into the house. Armed guards stood near the door, nodding at the men as they entered.

“What happened to you two?” one of the guards asked, squinting as he studied their nicked faces.

“Nothing, but you should’ve seen the other guy,” the driver quipped.

Inside, servants scurried around the room, offering to take the trio’s coats and give them a drink.

However, the driver waved them off from assisting Hawk. “He’s not a guest just yet.”

Hawk felt naked without his gun walking into such danger. Despite his combat skills, he wouldn’t have a prayer of surviving should he be inclined to attempt an escape.

The driver gestured for Hawk to enter a room that contained a sizable dining room table surrounded by chairs and a small serving table in the corner. A couple of oil paintings of Russian commanders adorned two of the walls, while a large mirror hung on the other.

Hawk hoped his good deed wasn’t going to spell his doom. Left in the room by himself, all he had to keep himself company was his thoughts.

I should’ve just taken the other car and driven off after I killed those men.

Hawk was acting on instinct. The accident kicked in his fight-or-flight mechanism. And Hawk didn’t know how to flee. He felt indebted to the two men for their kindness, though now he wondered if they hadn’t picked him up for some other nefarious reason.

After sitting alone for ten minutes, the door swung open. Hawk turned around in his chair to see who was entering.

His eyes widened when he recognized the man. He felt his stomach drop.

It was Andrei Orlovsky.

“Well, well, well,” a grinning Orlovsky said as he strode toward Hawk, “it looks like someone brought me a most unlikely gift.”

Montana

ALEX POSITIONED HER CELL phone between her ear and shoulder as she poured John Daniel’s cereal. Two minutes into a meltdown, he was screaming because the first bowl she poured had too much milk. On the other end of the line, Morgan May tried to calm Alex about the fact that Hawk had spoken to her since his HALO jump and his tracking beacon had suddenly gone offline.

“I’m sure it’s just because of the satellites over that part of the country,” Morgan said. “The companies running those things don’t want to waste money extending coverage into barren stretches of land.”

Alex sniffled as she tried to hold back the tears.

“But I need to know he’s okay,” she said, emphasizing each word.

“I understand,” Morgan said. “I’m as concerned as you are.”

“I doubt that,” Alex snapped. “I don’t hear any screaming children in the background where you are.”

“Just relax and give it some time. He’ll show up sooner or later—and I’m sure he’ll be just fine when he does.”

Alex slammed the cereal box down on the table and sat down. John Daniel continued his whining, pointing at the milk jug in front of him.

Alex sighed and then poured the milk, careful not to fill it up too high and incur the wrath of an emotional preschooler who was clearly missing his father. When she was finished, she slumped into the chair before leaning forward. She rested her head on one of her hands and tried to focus on what Morgan was saying.

“Alex? Are you still there?” Morgan asked.

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“Are you all right?”

“Define all right,” Alex said before bursting into tears again.

John Daniel shoveled two spoonfuls of cereal into his mouth before declaring that he was full and wanted to get out immediately.

“You sound like you have your hands full,” Morgan said. “I can let you go if you—”

“No,” Alex said. “Don’t go. I need someone to talk to right now. And I can’t very well tell anyone around here what I’m doing.”

“If you need to vent, by all means, please vent.”

Alex didn’t wait for Morgan to ask twice. For the next couple of minutes, Alex covered a wide array of topics, ranging from her struggles as a single parent for a few days to fear of Hawk getting killed to her desire to return to work.

“You want to return to the team full-time?” Morgan asked.

“Maybe,” Alex said, forcing a long breath through her nose. “I don’t know. It’s all so crazy right now.”

“What is?”

“My life. I live in isolation on a ranch with my husband and a four-year-old son. And I was a good analyst at one point, able to identify openings by which to accomplish certain objectives both on the fly and with plenty of time to study. Now, my analyst skills are reduced to estimating when we should buy diapers next and how many.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of a woman who can manage a busy home.”

“But that’s the thing,” Alex said, throwing her arms into the air. “I’m not even busy. Half the time, I just want to curl up in a chair on the front porch and read the latest Nora Roberts novels. And I’ve done it so much lately that I’m not sure I can function under all this stress. And what’s bizarre is that I used to thrive off stress. Now, I can’t even handle the slightest bit of it.”

“If you’d like some busy work, I’ve got plenty of that too,” Morgan said. “Maybe it’ll help you take your mind off things.”

“Nah,” Alex said. “I don’t find busy work interesting enough to take my mind off of it. I need real work, the kind that requires me to be on top of my game.”

“That’s in short supply around here,” Morgan said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

Alex hung up and despaired as she scanned the mess John Daniel had made.

How do you do that so quickly?

Alex felt if she could answer that question, she’d write a book about it and have enough money to retire to an island somewhere in the South Pacific. Parents the world over would be begging her for advice, asking her to speak at conferences and go on television programs. In short, how preschoolers could turn a room upside down so effortlessly in the blink of an eye was one of those mysteries of the universe. But she could ponder that later. At the moment, all Alex wanted to do was relax, something that was next to impossible due to the chaos John Daniel had created in just a matter of minutes.

Her phone buzzed again and Alex jumped.

Is it Hawk?

Her face fell as the phrase “unknown number” materialized on the screen. She hated that terminology because a more accurate message would say, “The person on the other end of this line thinks they’re important but they don’t want you to know their number.” For a brief second, she considered sending the call to voicemail. But then again, Hawk was calling from a sat phone, which might conjure up the same message. She swiped the screen to answer the call.