Bravo, Tango, Cowboy

She nodded her agreement. “I need to check on Brandon. I worry when he’s too quiet. There’s no end to what a curious three-year-old can get into.”

She stretched to her feet, but didn’t bother to slip back into her shoes. Her bright teal socks mocked her gray mood as she padded to the small play alcove just off the kitchen.

Originally the space had held a large farmhouse table surrounded by tall wooden chairs and benches. But she’d needed Brandon close to her, constantly in her sight for the first year after Lucy’s abduction. Even now, she liked having him nearby so that she heard him immediately if he called out to her.

Brandon had given up on building towers and had constructed a ranch with his blocks and plastic animals, complete with a riding arena for the toy horses Linney had bought him. Carne was gnawing on a short length of rope. The well-chewed, soggy knot was his favorite toy.

“Would you like a juice box?” she asked.

“Cherry.” Brandon sat one of his cowboys on top of a horse. “Can I have a cookie, too?”

“Sure. One cookie and some juice coming up.”

“I want to go outside and ride my tractor.”

“As soon as my guest leaves.”

“Make him go home now.”

“We still have things to talk about.”

“Talk to me, Mommy. Outside.”

He should probably be outside playing with kids his own age. Even Merlee had suggested Alonsa enroll him in the preschool program at church for at least a few days a week. Alonsa had gotten as far as registering him, but on the morning she was to drop him off, she discovered the class was going on a field trip to a local pumpkin patch.

If she could lose Lucy when they were one-on-one at the zoo, how could a teacher possibly watch Brandon close enough in a group of children? She’d taken him home and given up on the preschool idea altogether.

Brandon and Carne followed her back to the kitchen. Hawk helped himself to a refill of coffee as she handed Brandon his juice. Carne dropped the chew toy from his mouth and made a task of watching Hawk.

It hit Alonsa how strange it was to have a man making himself at home in her kitchen. It should have been more awkward than it was, but Hawk had an easy way about him that made her comfortable. And a blatant virility that had the opposite effect.

“Wanna ride my tractor,” Brandon said, directing the comment at Hawk and letting a few crumbles of cookie tumble from the corners of his mouth.

“Remember the rule,” Alonsa reminded him. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. And I told you Mr. Taylor and I have business to discuss.”

“You have a tractor?” Hawk said. “Awesome.”

“It goes fast, too.”

“I’d like to see it.” Hawk glanced at Alonsa. “If it’s okay with your mother.”

“She don’t care, huh, Mom?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but started running toward the back door.

“Get your windbreaker,” she called after him.

“Aww.” Nonetheless, he followed orders and yanked a bright red jacket from a low hook by the mudroom door.

Alonsa retrieved her cell phone from the counter next to the cookie jar and clipped it to the waistband of her jeans. “I suppose we can talk as well outside as in, as long as we stay out of Brandon’s earshot,” she said.

“I don’t see why not. I could use a little fresh air myself.”

Alonsa wasn’t quite sure how to take that. Was it her house in particular Hawk found stifling or houses in general? Not that it mattered. She detoured to the family room for her shoes then followed the both of them outside and into the bright sunshine that characterized living in this part of Texas. It was January, and at midmorning the temperature had already climbed into the high fifties.

“It’s snowing in New York,” she said, thinking out loud.

“Do you miss that?” Hawk asked.

“Not often.”

“Broadway?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “And the city in general.” Her quiet life in Texas seemed a galaxy away from the life she’d once lived.

Brandon, on the other hand, knew only this life. He didn’t remember his father or his sister. He knew only what Alonsa had shared with him and what he’d seen in the many photographs scattered about the house. His father had died while being a hero. His sister was away.

Occasionally he asked questions about Lucy, but for the most part the simple explanation that she would be home soon satisfied him. At some point she’d have to tell him the truth, but not yet.

He jumped on his battery-operated tractor, turned the key and started bouncing down the blacktop driveway. “Watch me go fast, Mr. Taylor.”

“Don’t get a speeding ticket.”

Brandon laughed and aimed for a bumpy spot in the drive with Carne running in front of him, his yappy bark colliding with the caw of a belligerent crow.

“Don’t go past the curve,” Alonsa called. “Stay where I can see you.”

“Don’t you ever let him outside alone?” Hawk asked.

“In the fenced backyard, where I can watch him from the kitchen window.”

“That’s it?”

“He’s only three, Hawk. And we’re not that far off the highway. Anyone could wander up.”

“It’s half a mile to the cattle gap. Ranching kids get used to wide-open spaces early.”

“It’s not like I have him imprisoned. He has a play set with a slide, swings, a fort and a huge sandbox to play with his construction equipment.”

She walked away, heading to an old tire swing that dangled from the low branch of an oak in the side yard. She didn’t have to explain her child-rearing habits to Hawk Taylor. Besides, Brandon wasn’t a ranching kid. They didn’t have a single cow on the land.

Hawk followed her. He leaned against the trunk of the tree while she stirred the dirt beneath the swing with the toes of her shoes. Squirrels darted among the branches over her head. A light breeze crackled the dried, fallen leaves. Brandon’s tractor rumbled in the background, punctuated by Carne’s excited barks.

Life was going on as usual, only nothing felt usual today. Tension swelled between her and Hawk, not quite anger, not quite attraction, but some weird place in the middle.

He wrapped his fingers around an overhead branch. His muscles flexed and pushed at the cotton fabric of his shirt. “You’re not convinced Lucy’s abduction was random, are you?”

She exhaled slowly. “I told you that Craig Dalliers says all the evidence points to the fact that it was. The FBI has thoroughly checked out and eliminated every possibility that it was related to Todd’s work with the agency.”

“So you’ve said. That wasn’t the question.”