“I think it’s pretty obvious that he loves his mother,” Hawk said. “You just need to give him a good reason to see you.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Perhaps that you just found out you have cancer and only have a few weeks to live,” Hawk said. “That should spur him back quickly.”
“If I tell him that, he’ll never believe me again for as long as I live.”
Alex rested her hand reassuringly on Mrs. Templeton’s forearm. “If this organization isn’t stopped, none of us may live much longer.”
Mrs. Templeton sighed before taking a long drag on her cigarette. She sent a plume of smoke towering upward before responding.
“I don’t like the idea of being used as your bait, Mr. Flannigan,” she said. “And I don’t like the way you’ve implicated my son in the murder of your mother. But I’ll do it. I’ll tell him I’ve got cancer with only weeks to live in order to get him to come back home. However, I must warn you that he could also come here with a whole army of thugs if he gets suspicious about anything.”
“We’ll be ready for anything he throws at us,” Hawk said.
“Just promise me you won’t kill him,” she said.
“I’m not sure I can—”
“If you do have to kill him,” Mrs. Templeton interrupted, “please don’t do it in front of me.”
“We’ll do our best not to,” Alex said. “But it’s hard to make those promises without knowing what the future holds.”
“I understand. Just do your best, okay?” Mrs. Templeton said.
Hawk nodded and stood along with Alex, and they followed Mrs. Templeton into her house. Once they reached the kitchen, Mrs. Templeton took the phone off the hook and dialed her son’s number.
Taking a few steps back to give her space, Hawk watched Mrs. Templeton as she spoke with her son. She wasn’t anything like Hawk’s mother, though not many women were. But there was a familiar trait he noticed, one inherent in all mothers.
Mrs. Templeton cared about her son.
As she talked, Hawk noticed how her voice softened and her eyes lit up. Even the most cynical person could see that she cherished her son. Whatever misfortune she had experienced didn’t seem to dampen the joy she exuded when speaking with Mack. Her eyes twinkled, and the corners of her mouth seemed to be permanently etched upward.
But then her face fell.
“There’s something I need to tell you, son,” she said. “And it’s serious. I’ve only got a few weeks to live.” A tear trickled down her face before she sniffled. “I want you to come see me as soon as you can, okay?”
Seconds later, mascara-streaked tears were rolling down her cheeks as her eyes turned red as she hung up the phone.
“He’ll be here tomorrow,” she said before shuffling into the living room and collapsing on the couch.
Alex walked over to Hawk. “I told you this wasn’t the right way to go about this. Look what you’ve done to this poor woman.”
“I probably should’ve listened to you,” Hawk said, “but what’s done is done. Now we just have to watch her every move until he gets here.”
CHAPTER 21
AN HOUR AFTER MRS. TEMPLETON delivered the news to Mack, he called the house again and asked if he could meet her at their spot the next morning at 10:00 a.m. He said he was flying in but had a little surprise for her.
“Where’s your special place?” Hawk asked.
Mrs. Templeton ignited another cigarette and didn’t respond until she cycled smoke through her lungs and out her nose.
“There's an overlook in the Santa Fe National Forest that we used to go to all the time when he was a kid,” she said. “We didn't have much money, so we went hiking all the time as opposed to having him sit in front of the television playing shoot-'em-up video games. A lot of good that did.”
“Anything in particular you can tell us about this overlook?” Alex asked.
“I have plenty of pictures,” she said. “Would you like to see them?”
Hawk and Alex both nodded.
Mrs. Templeton walked over to a bookshelf and selected a photo album.
“I know you young people may have never seen one of these,” Mrs. Templeton said, “but this is how we used to look at pictures back when we developed them into prints and didn’t have them on our phones.”
Hawk smiled at the woman’s wit. She was growing on him.
After she took a seat, he and Alex sat on Mrs. Templeton’s left and right, respectively. She opened up the book and thumbed through the pages, skipping through several until she reached a page full of pictures of the overlook.
“It’s just beautiful up there,” she said. “Mack told me that he always felt so tall and invincible when we went up to El Diablo Point.”
“It’s called El Diablo Point?” Alex asked.
“Yes, the local Spanish settlers called it that because they thought it was the kind of place the devil would’ve taken Jesus to tempt him, like the story in the Bible. You can see all of Santa Fe from that vantage point.”
“So it’s a popular spot?” Alex asked.
Mrs. Templeton shook her head. “It’s a rather difficult hike.”
“Can you still make it?” Hawk asked.
“It’ll take me longer than usual, but I can still hoof it up the mountain without too many issues.”
Hawk asked for directions to the bathroom and excused himself.
“Are you getting all this?” he asked over the coms.
“Loud and clear,” Black said. “I’ll make a little trip up to El Diablo Point right away since I don’t suspect you’re tempted to leave.”
“I’m warming up to this woman,” Hawk said, “but I still don’t trust her.”
“Can’t say that I blame you, though her sobbing sounded pretty genuine.”
“There’s no doubt that she’s scared, but I think she’s manufacturing some of this.”
“Just wait until she
