Hawk

All Rights Reserved © 2002 by AnnieMae Robertson

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Writers Club Press

an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse, Inc.

5220 S. 16th St., Suite 200

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

Any resemblance to actual people and events is purely coincidental.

This is a work of fiction.

ISBN: 0-595-23675-8

ISBN :978-1-4620-6737-4 (e)

Printed in the United States of America

To my children for their loving support and encouragement.

Contents

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Metta for demonstrating her editing skills once again. And to the Fletchers for all manner of assistance when needed.

Also, thank you to an old friend who introduced me to the wonder of our natural world and made me promise to never leave it the worse for my having walked here.

And to Patty Hearst and a number of other survivors for helping me to understand that we all do what we need to, mentally and otherwise, when the alternatives are closed down.

In HAWK I use the term Indian rather than the more appropriate and respectful Indigene or First Nations Persons, because Indian remained in common use up to the mid-eighties when Chelsea lived in Boston and Paul sat in his car outside her door.

CHAPTER 1

It was Chelsea’s approaching wedding that made it necessary for Hawk to kidnap her. For three hours he sat in his old Chevy outside her apartment building on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston and waited for her to come out. He watched the Saturday morning people move along the sidewalk, each too centered on his own commitments to pay any attention to anyone else. A man scuffed along in house slippers curbing his dog. A woman dressed in sneakers and a tailored suit pulled a basket on wheels. A group of young people turned and bounced to music from a large radio perched on a shoulder. There was a paperboy, at least twenty years beyond being a boy, who leaned into the strap of his heavy bag and walked all the way inside the building vestibule and out without the bag looking any lighter.

There was a young couple carting books as though they were on their way to class or the library. They stopped to lean on the front wall and exchange words that seemed angry but were quickly resolved. They touched and continued on their way, sidestepping a derelict of a man who staggered off course toward the next alley. There was the usual battery of joggers moving past, spaced like the ragged end of a marathon, small headsets affixed to their heads, wired for sound.

The morning was dark. The tail end of a tropical storm had shifted the season from late summer to mid fall, but the weather report promised a change. The clouds would give way to blue skies, a good day for outside activities. And kidnapping was certainly an outside activity, at least in the sense that sooner or later when Chelsea did come outside, Hawk was going to drag her into his car.

He had planned for two months. It had taken that long for things to jell. And though he had some hesitation because of the weather and the season, winter so soon on the way, he knew kidnapping Chelsea could not be put off until spring. In another month she would be Mrs. Jack Thompson and though Hawk felt no need to recognize that arrangement as acceptable for her, such a complication would make his plans much more difficult to accomplish. Husbands raised whole other issues than did boyfriends.

Chelsea had noticed the car pulled in against the curb. It was a pale green Chevy. Not that she was into identifying automobiles, but looking down from her apartment window she recognized the lines as being the same as a Chevy she had owned a year before. Hers had been blue and just as ordinary. In fact, the reason she had noticed the car at all was because it had been parked there all morning as if it were in a non-posted parking space, something that didn’t exist in that part of the city. She wondered if it was abandoned and sitting accumulating tickets, an auto discard. But there were no telltale bits of paper tucked under the wiper blades and that was even more curious.

She was not happy about the dark sky. Sunshine would have been asking too much, she thought with irritation, especially since the possibility of rain meant she couldn’t wear her off-white outfit, the one with the long loose jacket and not much else. Rats. It was the only thing she had that moved right and made her feel as if she had materialized off a designer’s sketchpad. Her interview was critical and so was lunch following with Jack. There were so many plans, so much to think about.

The interview had a lot of bearing on the lunch and vice versa, because Jack was the one who had pushed her into going after the job. Go for it, Babe, he’d told her. What’s to lose? Everything to lose. Her confidence, her self-image, her independence.

You don’t need to work, you know, he had added, as if she needed something added. Some women stay home and have babies. Some women...Some women die without ever knowing who they are, who they could have been.

Jack was just trying to give her a way out if she couldn’t cut it. That, by itself, was diminishing, but she loved him. And, damn it, she shouldn’t need his validation. She had talent enough. That was the problem with her present job. She was too talented to spend the rest of her life executing everyone else’s ideas, drawing idiot lines, the coloring book whiz kid. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that she had better promotional copy buzzing around in her head, high-tech solutions using new techniques that the other designers were too stuffy to consider.

But it wasn’t easy to keep smiling when Jack suggested she was afraid to put her talent on the line, especially when she suspected he was right. If she didn’t put it out there it didn’t get stomped on, and she could still tell herself she was the greatest graphics designer around. She had plenty to lose.

Albuquerque, her cat, scratched on the bathroom door all the time Chelsea was taking her shower. He was a furry pest. Then when she let him in he paraded around the tub rim lifting each foot up and shaking it, looking at her as if she had intentionally tricked him into getting his paws wet. She was a sucker for his little squeak of a meow. She lifted him into her arms and rubbed the soft place under his chin. Pest. She smiled at herself in the mirror, turning him so he could see their image as if he was a cat that cared for images.

She set Albuquerque on the floor and followed him into the next room, and on into the little kitchen. He purred around her legs begging things—stroke—food, whatever she had to give. You really are a pest, Albuquerque. What am I going to do with you?

Jack was allergic to cats. It was a major issue. Two minutes into the room and he was red-eyed and puffy. The fact that Albuquerque seemed determined to be a fur collar and liked Jack’s shoulders better than most made it a critical problem. But Chelsea couldn’t bear to give the cat up. He’d been her best friend for a long time. And boarding him at Barbara’s was a compromise that wasn’t much better.

By the time we get back from Bermuda he’ll be settled in and happy. I guarantee it.

Chelsea knew better. Albuquerque would never be happy at Barbara’s, restricted to one section of her house. He’d never be settled in anyplace but with me, she thought. Damn Jack and his allergies. She picked the cat up and carried him over to the window and looked down at the car still sitting there.

They were planning a large wedding to please Jack’s family, actually his mother. Mothers were luxuries. She had never known hers and felt a bit like she was standing alone in a corner. Hell, she thought, I’m not alone. I’ve got Albuquerque, at least for now. I love you, you little mutt.

She had nightmare visions of the wedding. Two thousand people jammed into the pews on the groom’s side—it seemed like Jack either knew or was related to every third person they met—and only ten people on the bride’s side including the bridesmaids. Of course she knew she was exaggerating, but she wasn’t far enough off for it to be funny. They had sent out four hundred invitations. Actually, Jack’s parents had sent out the invitations, just as they were picking up all the costs. It was to be the social event of the season. But even considering that, four hundred invitations seemed inconceivable to Chelsea, especially when only twenty-eight went to her friends.

Friends? They had thinned out since she’d started giving Jack all her attention. There were the girls at the office and the group from Easthampton, and of course Doris who had been her best girlfriend for years. And there were the Schaubs who were going to stand in as her parents. They were nice people and still the closest to family she had, other than her cat. Life was such a bitch.

She tried to explain how she felt to Jack. Poor Babe, he sympathized. Well, you’ve got plenty of family now, and you’ve got me. And she did have him, and that was miracle enough.

His mother took her to those elegant shops along Newbury Street and searched patiently until they found that perfect wedding gown. Jack will adore it! Absolutely perfect, Dear, perfect—perfect—perfect! And it was perfect. Chelsea stood on a platform in the middle of the fitting room and turned slowly, looking into the mirrors. She wasn’t sure who looked back. Some pleasant-faced woman standing erect and elegant in clouds of white, all pearls and lace, who had nothing whatsoever to do with Chelsea.

It’s premarital jitters. Everyone gets them, Doris reassured her when they talked about it later. And Doris had been right, of course. Jack was not like the other men she had known. He was warm and accommodating, and she certainly preferred marrying a man who wanted to please his family to one who didn’t give a damn. And even considering Albuquerque, Jack had offered to go through desensitizing treatments. But she’d heard sometimes those treatments were dangerous. God, why did she feel so strung out on guilt? Sending the cat to Barbara shouldn’t seem like such a sacrifice. She should be willing to meet Jack halfway. But it seemed she was always turned away from herself, going toward meeting someone else halfway.

She glanced in the mirror on her way out the door. The dress she had on was expensive and looked it, but it wasn’t the white outfit. Her whole world was one massive pile of compromises.

When Chelsea stepped out the front door the first person she saw was Hawk moving across the sidewalk toward her. She recognized him in his white deerskin shirt with all its beading, and remembered his name as Paul Duprey, though she couldn’t imagine why he was there. She didn’t know him well enough to connect his sudden appearance with herself. He was, after all, only someone she had run into at a party across the state. He was an interesting character, which was why she remembered him at all, but certainly not a friend. Paul?

He was wearing the leather breeches he personally tanned and stitched when he was younger. He was wearing knee high moccasins, fringed along the turn-down top, the rolled soles shaped to his feet like a protective additional layer of skin. A feathered hat completed his outfit and made him conspicuous enough to draw her attention, but not so out of place in Boston to cause her to anticipate any personal threat. As a matter of fact his dress, combined with her recognition of his face, made the kidnapping easy. Indians have a certain appeal to some women, especially to one like Chelsea who shared so many early Saturdays with the television commercial of the Indian weeping over the condition of the rivers. To her every Native American was a romantic survivor of Wounded Knee.

So when Chelsea emerged from her front door Hawk crossed the sidewalk and propelled her with just enough force to guarantee forward motion into the front seat of his car. He talked in a rapid-fire patter about old friends, and dropped enough names to keep her from thinking. And once inside the car she found she could not get out, the