have any idea what kind of effect she had on him, even after twelve years?
Jenna pivoted. “I saw movement over there.” She craned her neck. “That’s the hawk.” With the cage banging against her thigh, she darted toward the trees.
Keith followed behind. She stopped abruptly on the edge of a clearing. He peered over her shoulder and saw a medium-size bird with gray-brown feathers. Jenna stepped back and slipped behind a tree, pulling Keith with her. He towered over her by at least ten inches. She stood on tiptoe and pulled his head toward her to whisper in his ear.
“He hasn’t seen us. If you circle around to the other side, we have double the chance of getting him. Wait for a moment when you have a clean shot to throw the cloth on his head, and I’ll do the same. Whoever gets to him first, the other person needs to move in quickly.”
His heartbeat sped up when she stood this close. Her breath made his ear hot. Twelve years ago, he had just begun to see her as a young woman and not a buddy. The feelings that had barely blossomed before she rejected him were still as strong as ever.
After squeezing her shoulder to indicate he understood, he slipped into the evergreens, careful not to step on any underbrush. He knew plenty about moving silently through the woods. He had trained for cold weather combat and then they sent him to the desert. Sometimes, the military didn’t make any sense. He walked until he estimated that he was positioned opposite Jenna. He edged closer toward the clearing, still using the trees for cover.
A gust of wind blew through the trees. The hawk hopped off a log to the ground. The bird cocked his head and flapped his wings before settling. Almost indiscernible movement on the other side of the clearing told him where Jenna was. The bird fluttered as though alarmed and turned so he was facing Keith. Jenna materialized in the clearing and tossed the cloth over the bird. In a flurry of movement, Keith dove in. His vision filled with feathers and a sharp object pierced his hand. He swallowed a groan of pain.
When he oriented himself, Jenna had secured the cloth on the bird’s head with a piece of leather. Her fingers wrapped around the animal’s feet.
Blood oozed from the cut on his hand as the pain radiated up his arm. He followed Jenna to where she had set the cage.
Jenna made soothing sounds as she slipped the now still bird into the cage and secured the door. Her voice was like a lullaby. She turned to face Keith. A gasp escaped her lips as she grabbed his hand. “You’re bleeding.”
He pulled away, tugging the cuff of his shirt so it covered his wrist. “It’s all right. I can take care of it.” He didn’t want her looking at his arms.
“I should have warned you—their talons are like knives.”
“So I discovered.” Keith held out his uninjured hand for the cage. “I can take that.”
They hiked toward Jenna’s Subaru with the sun low on the horizon and the sky just starting to turn gray and pink. His old Dodge truck was farther down the road.
“Thanks for helping me,” Jenna said. “I always thought we worked together pretty well.”
Flashes of memory, of kayaking and rock climbing with Jenna, surfaced. They had had fun together. “We didn’t work. We played.”
“Still, we were a good team.”
Keith studied Jenna’s wide brown eyes. Being with her opened too many doors to the past and the painful memory of her turning her back on him when he had needed her most.
A muffled mechanical sound caused them both to stop in their tracks. In the distance, just beyond the rocks where they had taken cover, a helicopter rose into view. The machine angled to one side moving away from them.
Jenna’s expression indicated fear. “Tell me your grandfather has recently purchased a helicopter.”
Keith shook his head.
Jenna’s fingers dug into his upper arm. Her voice trembled. “Do you still believe this is just foolish kids with firearms?”
TWO
Jenna placed some live grasshoppers in the rescued hawk’s cage. Though the sense of panic had subsided, she still felt stirred up by what had happened. She tried to calm her nerves by focusing on doing routine things around the rescue center. She could deal with anything a wild bird did, but being shot at was an entirely different story. The hawk picked hungrily at the food. Except for the occasional beating of wings, the rescue center was quiet this time of night. All the volunteers and the one other staff person had gone home.
Outside, she heard Keith’s truck start up. Their encounter with the helicopter and being used for target practice had left her feeling vulnerable. When Keith had seen how shaken she was, he’d offered to follow her in his truck to the rescue center.
She had phoned Sheriff Douglas and told him about the helicopter and being shot at on the King Ranch on the drive home. Even then, as she retold the events to the sheriff, it had been a comfort to look in the rearview mirror and see Keith following her.
She didn’t know what to think about Keith Roland. He seemed like a different person from the one he’d been that last summer, but the memory of his destructive teenage behavior made her cautious. And there was no denying he was more distant now. She thought of how he had jerked away when she’d tried to pull back the cuff on his shirt to check the wound from the hawk’s talons. But he still was able to make her feel safe. She wouldn’t have had the courage to get the hawk without his help.
She grabbed a torn sheet and safety pins from a bottom shelf where medical supplies were stored. As she pinned the sheet onto the cage, the beating of wings and scratching sounds slowed and then stopped altogether. She’d done an initial exam but couldn’t find a reason why the rescued hawk couldn’t fly. It had been a relief not to find any sign that this bird had been shot. Both dark and pale mottling on the bird’s breast and flanks indicated that he was a fairly immature Swainson’s hawk. She had a theory about this bird. Flying was part instinct and part learned skill.
In the morning when her assistant Cassidy came in, they’d be able to do an X-ray to make sure there was no physiological reason the bird was flightless. Cassidy was on call 24/7, but Jenna had decided that the bird had been traumatized enough for one day. The X-ray would go better once the bird was hydrated and had his strength back. And Jenna would do a better job after a good night’s rest let her shake off the last of her jitters. Maybe by morning the sheriff would call with a perfectly logical explanation for the gunshots and helicopter…and even if he didn’t, it would be easier to feel brave in the daylight. For now, she’d just finish up things at the center and head home—hoping that her hands would stop trembling somewhere along the way.
Jenna checked on the bald eagle she had found yesterday, Greta. They had done an X-ray to make sure they’d gotten all the buckshot but that didn’t mean the bird was out of the woods yet. Infection from the wound was still a concern. The eagle didn’t react when Jenna looked in on her. She was still weak.
Jenna skirted the area that housed the cages filled with smaller birds and stepped into the office. An owl sat on a perch by her desk. She made clicking noises at Freddy, who responded by stepping side to side on his perch. Freddy was one of the center’s permanent residents, who served as an ambassador bird when Jenna did her presentations to schools and groups. Only the birds who would die if released in the wild got to stay at the center on a long-term basis. Freddy had fallen out of his nest and been rescued by a boy. The bird had imprinted on humans. As an owlet, Freddy thought he was a person. He was capable of flight but probably wouldn’t last long in the wild.
Jenna filed through the stack of papers on her desk. There was still work to do, but she could do some of it from her house, located just behind the center. She grabbed the camera from a drawer. She had a bunch of photos she needed to transfer to her laptop for the center’s newsletter. Once she had everything she needed to take home with her, she stepped out the back door into the cool evening of late summer. The flight barn to her right and a separate building up the hill that housed the other ambassador