Special Agent's Perfect Cover

Or at least a version of him.

The boyish look she’d known—and loved—was gone, replaced by a face that, aside from being incredibly handsome, was thinner and far more somber looking. Otherwise, it was still him, still Hawk. He was still tall, still muscular—the navy windbreaker he wore did nothing to hide that fact. And he still had sandy-blond hair, even though it was cut shorter now than it had been the last time she had laid eyes on him.

And when he made eye contact with her from across the street, she saw that the apparition with Hawk’s face had the same deep, warm, brown eyes that Hawk had had.

Eyes that could melt her soul.

She felt her pulse accelerating, her heart hammering as if it was recreating a refrain from The Anvil Chorus in double time.

Why wasn’t this image, this apparition, this ghost from the depths of her mind fading? Why was it coming toward her?

Carly’s breath caught in her throat, all but solidifying and threatening to choke her. Even so, for the life of her, Carly just couldn’t make herself look away.

She was still waiting for the image to break up—or for the world to end, whichever was more doable—as the distance between them continued to lessen.

When Hawk had first driven slowly through the town, heading for its center, its “heart,” Hawk had to admit that he was rather stunned. The town appeared to have gone through an incredible amount of changes.

When he had left, Cold Plains looked to be on the verge of simply drying up and blowing away, a dying town abandoned by all but the very hopeless. Those who were devoid of ambition and who couldn’t make a go of it anywhere else had chosen to remain here and die along with the town.

There was no sign of that town here.

This was more of a town that could take center stage in a children’s storybook. All around him, there were new buildings. The ones that looked remotely familiar had all been restored, revitalized, given not just a new coat of paint but a new purpose.

The streets were repaired and clean. Actually clean, he marveled, remembering how filthy everything had appeared to be when he was growing up here.

The smell of fertilizer was missing, he suddenly realized. Cold Plains now seemed like a town on its way to becoming a city rather than a hovel disintegrating into a ghost town.

For a moment he thought that he was in the wrong place, that he had somehow gotten turned around while coming here and had managed to drive to another town. A brighter, newer town.

But then he saw a few faces he recognized, people he’d known growing up. That told him that this was Cold Plains. At the same time, he began to take note of not just the newly constructed buildings but the people, as well. Briskly moving people. People who seemed to have a purpose.

He saw several parents holding on to their children’s hands, heading for what appeared to be a playground.

He did a mental double take. A playground? Since when was that part of the landscape? Or an ice cream parlor, for that matter?

“Excuse me, young man, didn’t mean to almost walk into you.” An older man laughed, sidestepping around him at the last moment. Hawk couldn’t help staring at the white-haired man. He wore color-coordinated sweats, fancy, high-end sneakers—running shoes?—and he was holding navy-blue-colored weights in his hand that looked to be about a pound each.

He was power walking, Hawk realized.

Had everyone lost their minds?

He looked around again. All the people who were out and about appeared to be smiling. Every last one of them. It was almost eerie. And then he looked closer at the women who were passing him. Smiling, as well, they were all modestly dressed. No jeans, no scruffy cutoffs or overalls. Each and every one of them, young or old, children or adults, they were all wearing dresses.

Dresses that came down past the middle of their calves.

Hell, they all looked like extras from a movie about Amish life, Hawk thought. All that was missing were those hats or bonnets or whatever those things that all but hid their hair were called—

Hawk froze.

A second ago, he’d been busy scanning the immediate area, trying to reconcile what he was seeing with the Cold Plains citizens he remembered from his past. Lost in thought, he’d forgotten to get himself prepared, and so he wasn’t.

Wasn’t prepared to have the sight of her, wearing one of those ridiculous, sexless dresses, slam into him like a runaway freight train sliding down a steep embankment. Plowing straight into his gut.

He had to concentrate in order to draw in half a breath.

Carly.

Carly Finn.

The woman who had led him on, then skewered his insides and left him without so much as a backward glance. Left him to live or die, no matter to her.

Why the hell hadn’t he realized that she would probably still be here? Still be living on the outskirts of Cold Plains?

This was where that stupid farm was, the one that meant so much more to her than he did, so of course she was still going to be here.

Still here and, despite the unbecoming, shapeless brown sack she wore, still as beautiful as she’d ever been.

More, he amended.

Even at this distance, he could see that Carly, with her long, blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, was even more beautiful than he remembered. Maybe that was because he’d been trying so hard to bury her image, to scrape it from his mind.

His hands were clenched at his sides. Fury raged through him, but there was no outlet. He couldn’t afford to allow himself one.

Damn it, he wished he could just walk away. This minute. Wished he could get into his car and just drive until he ran out of gas or purged her image from his mind, whichever happened first.

But he couldn’t, and he knew it, so there was no sense in wishing. He owed it to the Bureau to see this through, and he owed it to those five dead women to find their killer or killers. He wasn’t a kid anymore who could just think of himself. He had responsibilities, even if he no longer possessed a viable heart.

Incensed, stunned, angry and a whole vanguard of other emotions he couldn’t even begin to catalog yet, Hawk found himself striding straight for the woman clad in the unflattering brown dress.

When she saw him heading for her, Carly’s very first reaction was to want to bolt and run.

But she didn’t.

She had never run away from anything in her life and she was not about to start now—no matter how much she wanted to and how much easier it would have been than to wait for him to reach her.

Leaning for support against the white picket fence, which ran along the length of the school yard, Carly raised her chin, said a silent prayer that she wasn’t losing her mind and waited for the approaching man to turn into someone else.

He didn’t.

So much for the power of positive thinking.

Her thoughts did a complete one-eighty. Okay, so it was Hawk. What was he doing here? Of all the times she’d yearned for him to return, this was the worst possible one.

She couldn’t allow herself to forget what she was still doing here. She had to remember why she’d taken this job at the day care center and why she forced herself to smile at Samuel Grayson when she would rather just drive a stake through his heart, grab her sister’s hand and run.

“Carly?”

The second she heard his voice, a wave of heat, then cold, then heat again washed over her. For the tiniest split second, the world shrank down to a pinprick. Only sheer willpower on her part caused it to widen again, chasing away the blackness that threatened to swallow her up whole.