Page 8 of Tormented Hearts
“I have the GPS, Mr. Hawk.”
“Left.”
“I’m taking a left.”
He fell quiet, and she used the reprieve to focus on the road, which narrowed to a trail barely wide enough for the big truck. Gravel gave way to washboard ruts that jolted the vehicle every few seconds and couldn’t feel good to her passenger.
She glanced in the rearview, checking on him, and found him paler than he’d been ten minutes before. Sweat stood out on his brow.
He lifted his head and caught her stare in the mirror. “This is a stick shift.” He said it like he’d offered a revelation. “Can you drive a stick?”
She almost laughed. The venom must really be working its way through the muscled bodyguard enough to scramble his memory enough to make him forget she’d driven the vehicle to the ridge to get him inside.
“Of course I can drive a stick.” She downshifted through a curve to prove it. “That’s all they have in Kenya.”
“Who said anything about Kenya?”
“When I was on safari in Kenya, a lion attacked my guide. I had to get him into the vehicle and drive him back to base camp myself. Manual transmission, no power steering, and a very upset lion somewhere behind us the whole way.”
A pause, long enough that she checked the mirror again.
“That sounds made-up.” His voice had gone tighter around the edges, breath shallower between words than it had been a minute ago, and she felt a small unwelcome twist of worry.
“I thought strong men always suffered in silence.”
“I’m allowed to question your safari credentials while actively dying.”
“You’re not going to die, Mr. Hawk.”
She dialed Black Heart Security’s number and put it on speaker without slowing down, both hands locked on the wheel through the next bone-jarring rut.
“This is Sinead Winthrop. I’m five minutes from the ranch. Your man’s hurt—we need medical staff ready when we get there.”
Willow’s voice projected into the vehicle. “What kind of injury?” Her voice sharpened, all the warmth from their earlier exchange replaced as she went into triage mode. “Knife? Gunshot? How much blood are we talking?”
“Snake bite.”
A beat of silence on the line. “Where?”
Sinead glanced once at the rearview. Hawk had his head tipped back against the seat, jaw set with pain.
“Don’t tell her,” he grated out.
“She’s going to find out anyway.”
He looked like he was bracing for her response. She decided he deserved it, mostly because he’d spent the last mile questioning her lion story.
“His ass.”
Willow laughed—a real, surprised bark of a laugh, the kind that escaped before she could stop it. Then she tried to smother it into something more composed.
“I can hear you,” Hawk announced from the back seat.
“Sorry.” Willow didn’t sound remotely sorry. “Pregnancy brain. I could have sworn I hit mute.”
“I’m sending pictures of the two men I neutralized. Get someone out to collect the bodies,” Hawk told her.
Sinead didn’t know if he was trying to preserve his ego by shifting the focus from his ass to the protection he’d provided, but his hands shook as he brought up his phone and thumbed the screen.
