Page 77 of Tormented Hearts

She wanted to ask what was going on but didn’t want to push for information that she had no business knowing. She watched the fence posts blur past the window, and they settled into a comfortable silence.

After a mile or so, Shiloh spoke again, voice smaller than before. “We want a baby. Oaks and I. We’ve been married a while now, and half his siblings have kids already or one on the way. And I see this look on his face sometimes…” Her voice broke. “This longing…especially when he’s holding Carson and Layne’s little one, CJ.” She swallowed hard. “It hasn’t happened yet. For us.”

Sinead’s heart welled with pain for her new friend. She put a hand on her arm. “It will come. These things take time sometimes.”

She thought about her parents, always waiting for a son that never came.

“I pray it’s soon.” Shiloh nodded, mostly to herself, and drove on for a while in silence before she spoke again. Her tone shifted from shattered to curious. “You really don’t see yourself as we all see you, do you?”

Sinead let out a slow breath. “I had to be tough. I had to step up and basically be the son my father never got. That’s just—that’s who I had to become.”

Shiloh’s stare blazed into her for a moment before she turned her focus back to the road. “Your parents had the money to do this differently, you know. To get a son if they wanted it. Surrogacy and artificial insemination and IVF were all possible. If a son mattered so much to them, Sinead, they could have exhausted every option trying to get one, instead of deciding you should just be a stand-in.” Shiloh glanced at her again. “They didn’t do any of that. Maybe that means something.”

Sinead couldn’t respond—her throat was too tight.

“Maybe,” Shiloh said gently, “you’ve always been enough, Sinead.”

She stared out the window, unable to find words for what that did to an old and tender hurt in her chest.

They reached the municipal office a while later. Being in the backcountry with Hawk for so long had worn off on Sinead. She found herself looking around, scanning the parking lot and the street.

Shiloh parked in the back corner of the lot, and nothing looked out of place. The lot was crowded with pickup trucks and SUVs. Nothing that raised any red flags. Just ordinary people going about ordinary business on an ordinary afternoon.

Sinead climbed out, feeling lighter than she had in days, genuinely at ease for the first time since the mountain.

Then everything went wrong at once.

A man appeared from between two trucks, moving fast, and Shiloh barely had time to react before he was on her. She screamed and the attacker struck her in the temple, making her collapse to the pavement.

Sinead froze for one terrible second, frozen in a way she maybe wouldn’t have before Hawk was shot.

By the time she lunged forward, another man got her by the arms, wrestling her toward a waiting vehicle.

She kicked. She scratched. She bit at anything that came near her face.

Her screams echoed across the parking lot.

“Shiloh!” she shrieked, her throat raw as the vehicle door slammed and the driver stomped on the gas.

She stared at Shiloh’s body on the ground as the vehicle peeled out of the lot. She prayed for some sign of movement, willing Shiloh to keep fighting, to be conscious. To be alive.

The vehicle careened around the corner, and Sinead’s chest heaved with sobs as a sickening powerlessness washed over her.

Chapter Seventeen

Hawk climbed out of the pickup and stood in the yard of the Black Heart Ranch, studying the lodge and wondering what Sinead had been doing all day while he was chasing down leads on her attackers two states over.

An image of her face lifted in his mind, her eyes coming into focus first. Beautiful eyes. They shifted with so many emotions, and Hawk couldn’t wait to learn every last one.

Then her entire face flooded his mind, high cheekbones and a perfect chin. Her hair thick and just right for wrapping around his fist and tilting her head back to kiss her sweet mouth.

His insides clutched with need, and he was pretty sure his stitches could handle some strain if Sinead was up to it.

“Hawk.” Gray’s voice cut through his daydreams.

He gave a start and took off toward the security office. Standing there thinking about how he was going to make Sinead unravel in his arms wasn’t going to set their plan for McCrae in motion.

Carson was already at the table when he and Gray walked into the war room. His laptop burned day and night, and coffee flowed at all hours too. A mug with fat cartoon cows sat at his elbow.