She said it so passionately that it got everybody’s attention. But none more so than Hawk’s. He could just feel her pain. He found that he could not take his eyes off of her.
“My brother and I have been combing these streets ever since it happened. We’ve gone down every street in that vicinity twice already. We only came over here to talk to the police. After we leave, we’re going to comb those streets over and overand over again. We’ll search all night if we have to and every day until we find her. We’ve got to find her. We’ve got to!”
Nobody doubted her sincerity, although nobody excused what they all viewed as a lack of experience bordering on incompetence either. “You’d better find her,” William said. “She’s my wife. I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but my wife means everything to me. And I mean everything! You’d better find her or hope the police or my security team does. Because you failed her!” He said it with just as much passion as Janita had displayed. “I hold you personally responsible.”
Hawk was still staring at Janita. Would she jump defensive and try to excuse her actions the way most people would? Or would she accept the rebuke and get on with it the way very few would?
To his pleasant surprise, she was among the very few. “You absolutely should hold me fully responsible for what happened, sir,” she said. “It happened on my watch. I’m solely responsible.”
She made no excuses. She didn’t deflect. She didn’t defend. She took on all the responsibility, including for her brother’s failures. Which impressed Hawk.
But Janita didn’t care about impressing anybody. She just wanted to get this interrogation over with and get back on the streets searching. Not even the police were going to cover as much ground as she and Von could cover because their hearts and souls were in it. “If that’s all you need from us, sir,” she said to William, “we wanna get back out there and comb those streets again before it gets too dark.”
William exhaled, and then nodded his head. “That’s all,” he said.
“Let’s go,” Hawk said, to everybody’s surprise, as he began heading for the exit too.
Janita stopped and looked at him. She was confused. “Go where, sir?”
“To comb those streets, as you put it.”
All of his siblings were shocked. “You’re going withthem?” his sister asked.
Hawk looked at her. “You got a problem with that, Babs?”
“Yes,” Matty answered for their baby sister. “The police and our security team are searching for mother. What are you and that girl going to do that the police can’t do?”
“First of all, she’s not a girl, she’s a woman. Her name is Miss Cooper.”
Von was pleased that somebody was standing up for his sister.
“Secondly,” Hawk continued, “are you referring to the Brackenridge Police Department?”
“You know I am.”
“Wait around for those racists if you want. I’m hitting the streets.” He looked at Janita again. “Let’s go,” he said again, and walked out of the room.
Von looked at Janita. He’d never met Hawk Webster in person, but there was something about him over the rest of that family that they both preferred. They hurried behind him.
The remaining siblings looked at their father. Because the strongest man they’d ever known was crumbling. They knew he still loved their mother despite his terrible unconscionable behavior, but they had no idea to this extent. “Where’s my wife?” he cried out with eyes that seemed to be seeking rationality to an irrational act. As if the despair was too great for him. “Where is she?!”
Dray and Barbara, who were closest to their father, went over and sat next to him. They didn’t hug him: they weren’t the touchy-feely kind of family. But to Matty and Nat’s shocktheir father put his arms around their two youngest siblings and pulled them close against him.
They’d never seen their father this emotional ever. They knew he cared for their mother. That was why, they presumed, she was the only woman of all of his women that he ever married and refused to divorce. But they never saw him like this.
But was it love their father was displaying, Matty and Nat wondered, or was it guilt? He didn’t do right by their mother: they both knew that. Was that reality kicking his butt?
If that was the case, then good, they both thought. They loved their father, but they despised his behavior.
Even though both of them, in lesser doses, were just like him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Von hurried behind the wheel of their SUV while Janita opened the back passenger door for Hawk.
But when Hawk got inside and she was about to close the door, he stopped her. “Sit back here with me,” he said as if it was an order.
Von looked through the rearview mirror at his sister. She was as shocked as he was.
