Page 90 of Night Hawk
A knock rattled the door. Had to be Clay, but she couldn’t talk to him right now. Not until she thought about what had just transpired.
“Toni, please.” He sounded desperate. “Let me explain.”
“Not now.” She turned her back to the door as if that would help.
“Please,” he said again,
His pain-filled plea got to her, and she almost opened the door.No. He’d hurt her. She remained in place until she heard his footsteps retreat down the hallway. The few bites of pancakes she’d eaten churned in her stomach. She didn’t know how long she stood there, but another knock sounded on the door, this one less insistent. Less demanding. Probably his mother. That would be even worse than talking to Clay. She was warm and wonderful and might be able to convince Toni that her son was sorry for his actions.
“Toni, it’s Drake.”
Drake?
“Can I talk to you?”
Unexpected.Should she let him in? She didn’t think he’d plead Clay’s case. If she’d learned anything about Drake, she’d learned that he knew his mind, and he understood that Clay had messed up. Plus, it would be good to have someone to talk to. Maybe it would also keep their mother at bay for now.
Toni opened the door and went to sit on the lower bunk.
Drake stepped a few feet inside the room and left the door ajar. “I wanted to check on you.”
“I’m fine. Mad, but needing to make a plan.”
“What kind of plan?”
“For starters, I can’t stay here.”
He didn’t speak for a long moment. “That bad, huh?”
“I don’t even want to look at him.”
“Ouch.”
“He brought it on himself.”
“If it helps at all, he tried to get Trent to call your office and ask for you to work a joint task force with them. Trent refused. Said if he did that he might as well call in the Bureau to start with.”
She liked hearing that, but it didn’t change the fact that she was out in the cold on an investigation involving her father and missing sister. Not to mention countless girls that she felt personally responsible for finding.
“And Clay said after watching the videos he had to do something,” Drake continued. “He couldn’t stand thinking about the girls Hibbard was holding in such deplorable conditions.”
Her heart softened another notch, and some of her anger vanished with it.
Drake shifted his feet. “Seems like that might’ve helped.”
“Yeah, a little, but I’m still leaving. For professional reasons I can’t stay here and have you all stop talking whenever I’m near, or worse, ask me to leave the room so you can talk. It could impede the investigation, and I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of finding the girls. And I also need to keep working things on my own. Find these girls and Lisa. And my dad’s killer.”
“Yeah…yeah. I get that.” His eyes narrowed. “Where will you go?”
“Hotel, or maybe my grandparents.”
“Want one of us to go with you? I mean, not Clay obviously.”
“I’ll be okay.”
Drake frowned. “Sharkey’s behind bars, but Hibbard isn’t. He could still come after you.”
“I’ll be careful.”
