Chapter 2: Pretend I'm Your Dad
Grace Carter was sitting at the kitchen table when Emma came home, working on a crossword puzzle with a pencil chewed nearly to the eraser. She looked up, smiled, and then frowned, because a mother knows when something is wrong.
"Emma? What happened?"
Emma told her. She told her about Hawk, about the man across the street, about the warning. She told her everything, except the part about it being time for the truth, because she did not know what that meant, and she was afraid of what her mother might say.
Grace listened without interrupting. Her face went pale. Her hands folded together on the table, and for a long time she did not speak. When she finally did, her voice was quiet.
"Jack Reynolds," she said. "He kept his word."
Emma stared at her. "Mom, you know him?"
"I knew him a long time ago," Grace said. "He was a friend of your father's."
The words landed like a stone in still water. Emma had not heard her mother speak of her father in years. Thomas Carter had walked out when Emma was four, or so the story went. He had left a note, or a phone call, or nothing at all, depending on which version you believed. Grace had never told the whole story, and Emma had learned, over time, not to ask.
"Mom," Emma said slowly, "what is going on?"
Grace stood up and went to the window. She looked out at the street, the way Hawk had looked out at the diner, and Emma realized, with a jolt, that her mother had been afraid for a long time. Not the sharp, sudden fear of a stranger across the street, but the slow, patient fear of someone who had been waiting for a knock on the door for twenty-two years.
"There are things I haven't told you," Grace said. "Things I thought I was protecting you from. I was wrong. And now Jack is here, and it seems the past has found us anyway."
That evening, Hawk came to the house. He stood in the doorway, hat in his hands, and he looked at Grace the way you look at someone you have not seen in twenty years and still recognize instantly.
"Grace," he said.
"Jack," she said. "Thank you for watching over her."
"Always," he said.
They sat at the kitchen table, and Hawk turned to Emma, and his voice was gentle and steady.
"Emma, I need to ask you to do something strange," he said. "I need you to pretend I am your father."
Emma blinked. "What?"
"The men watching you," Hawk said, "they are looking for a girl who is alone. A girl with no one to protect her. If they think you have a father, a father who rides with a club, a father who is never far away, they will think twice. They will be careful. And careful men make mistakes, and mistakes give us time."
"Time for what?" Emma asked again.
"Time to find out what they want," Hawk said. "And time to keep you safe."
Emma looked at her mother. Grace nodded slowly, and there were tears in her eyes.
"Do it," Grace said. "Do what Jack says. He is trying to protect you."
Hawk leaned forward, his voice low and steady. "Here is what we are going to do," he said. "Starting tomorrow, one of my men will be near the diner all day. Sarge will park across the street. Doc will be at the counter. Nobody will bother you. You keep your routine. You go to work. You come home. You do not change anything, because changing things tells them you are scared."
"And if they come closer?" Emma asked.
"Then they will find out what it means to have a family," Hawk said.
Emma looked at him closely. "Did you know my father?"
"Thomas was my best friend. We grew up two streets apart. He was the one who talked me out of trouble when I was young. He was the smartest man I ever knew. He could walk into a room of strangers and walk out knowing their stories. And he loved your mother, Emma. He loved her from the day he met her. And he loved you."
Grace reached across the table and touched Hawk's hand. "Thomas trusted Jack with his life," she said. "When Thomas started his investigation, Jack was the only one he told. Jack tried to warn him. Thomas wouldn't stop. He said the truth was worth it."
And now?
"Now," Hawk said, "we finish what he started. And we keep you safe while we do it. That is the promise I made to your father, and it is the promise I am making to you."
So the next morning, Emma went to work, and Hawk came to the diner, and he sat in his usual booth, and when Rosa asked who he was, Emma heard herself say, "That's my dad," and the words felt strange and heavy and, somehow, comforting. Hawk looked up, and he smiled, a small, sad smile, and he said, "Morning, sweetheart," and for a moment, Emma almost believed it.
The man across the street was there again. But this time, when he looked at the diner, he saw something different. He saw a girl who was not alone. He saw a man in a leather vest sitting in her booth, watching the door, watching the street, watching him. And he stayed in his car, and he waited, and he did not come closer.
That night, walking home with Hawk beside her, Emma said, "Do you think it worked?"
"I think it bought us time," Hawk said. "And time is what we need."
"Why?" Emma asked. "Why me?"
Hawk was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "Because of who your father was. And because of what he knew."
Emma stopped walking. "My father walked out on us," she said.
Hawk looked at her, and his eyes were full of something she could not name. Grief, maybe. Or guilt. Or love.
"Emma," he said softly, "there is a lot you don't know. And I promise you, before this is over, you will know all of it."