Hawk framed, check. Hawk dead, almost check.

And then, retirement time. Good times. The only thing that would have made tonight perfect would have been if he hadn’t been forced to take out Abby. He regretted that, and he’d miss her like hell, but he couldn’t risk the rest of his life for a piece of tail, no matter how badly he wanted that piece.

He was so close now. Close enough to taste it. God, he loved to win. And tonight, he planned to win big. “Got any last-minute prayers?”

EVEN WITH HIS VEST, the after-effects of taking a slug in the chest were brutal. His muscles were spasming, his body twitching, and it was sheer agony to get his limbs to obey his mind. But Hawk managed to grab Gaines’s ankle and yank him to the ground, leveling the playing field, though not by much. Jesus, even his brain hurt, feeling as if it’d been used as a pinball within his skull. Gathering his thoughts was an exercise in futility, but he had to fight off Gaines-then he caught the flicker from within the barn. Flames. Ah, shit, the whole thing was going to-

Blow.

The explosion knocked them both backward. The barn roof blew sky high, catching the grass in the clearing on fire, as well as the trees.

Surrounded. He was surrounded by unrelenting heat, scorching him both inside and out. Gaines came up on his knees, looking like death warmed over as he staggered to his feet, pointing his gun. “You’re hard to kill.”

“So are you.” Hawk’s gaze locked on the dark spot blooming out from the shoulder of Gaines’s jacket. “Missed your black heart, unfortunately. I blame the hit to the chest. Threw me off.”

The smoke rose from behind Gaines’s head, making it look like steam was coming out of his ears.

“It’s going to get worse,” his own personal monster said.

It was true. If Gaines chose to shoot Hawk in the nuts, there was nothing he could do. His body was shit at the moment.

Gaines pointed the gun between Hawk’s eyes.

“Go to hell,” Hawk said.

Gaines grinned. “Tell you what, I’ll meet you there.”

Hawk’s life flashed before his eyes. His parents, gone now, but so proud of him when they’d been alive. Special Forces, where he’d had a good run-no, make that a great run-before moving to ATF.

Another great run.

Until now.

Maybe he should have added some more personal touches to his life’s canvas. A wife. Kids. But he’d always figured there was plenty of time for that.

Helluva time to be wrong. “Do it,” he said, coughing from the smoke. “And die.”

Gaines laughed. “You have no idea how right you are. Now give me your gun.”

Hawk tossed it over, then attempted to keep breathing. Not easy when his chest was still on fire, and actual flames were leaping all around them. He had no idea why he was alive but just in case it didn’t last, he kicked his foot out and again swiped Gaines’s legs from beneath him. They rolled, and he got two strong punches into his superior’s gut before he lost the element of surprise and Gaines clocked him in the jaw, and then his ribs.

Unlike Tibbs, Gaines had no soft middle. He was built like a boxer, one who trained 24/7. On a good day, he’d be a tough opponent in a fight, but tonight, with Hawk in agony, was not a good day. They fought dirty and hard, and the bitch of it was, Hawk had no idea what the hell had happened-why had Gaines come after him? He fisted his hands in Gaines’s shirt, and the material ripped, revealing…

A puckered scar over his collar bone. From a bullet. Goddamn, his proof had just literally appeared. “I did hit you that night,” he breathed. “I did. I fucking hit you.”

“But I lived.” Panting heavily, Gaines grinned. “Guess you need more target practice, huh?”

The heat from the blast and the flames licking at them had sweat streaming into Hawk’s eyes. He couldn’t see anything but Gaines’s face and a wall of flames.

They had to finish this thing off now, one way or another, or they were both going to die. Hawk swiped more sweat from his eyes and gasped to draw air into his taxed lungs. “So running the whole division wasn’t good enough for you, you had to put illegal weapons back on the street? Why didn’t you just kill a bunch of innocent people yourself?”

Gaines’s jaw tightened. He was holding onto his shoulder with his free hand, assuring Hawk that he’d been hurt more than he wanted to show. “I’m going to kill you instead.”

“I’m not dying tonight.”

“We’re both dying tonight. Only difference is that my death’s going to be fake. Well, that and the fact that you’re going out as the bad guy.”

“You’re insane. No one will ever believe that.”

“Abby will.”

Abby. Abby? What the hell did she have to do with this?

“She’s out there, you know.” Gaines jerked his chin in the direction of the clearing.

Hawk was just stunned enough to crane his head and look, but all he saw were those flickering flames coming ever closer, so close he could feel the hairs on his arm singing. “What are you talking about? She’s in the van.” Safe and sound.

God, please let her be in the van, safe and sound.

Gaines shrugged. “Let’s just say the hero worship I’ve built up with her is going to finally pay off for me, however briefly. Along with the news that Tibbs has just discovered evidence that you’ve been running the Kiddie Bombers.” He tsked. “Shame on you.”

Hawk had no idea what the hell Gaines was talking about. He couldn’t see Abby. Hell, he couldn’t see anything beyond the smoke, but Abby wouldn’t leave the van.

And yet he remembered how she’d lost her 1-900 voice when she’d sounded worried about him.

Or so he’d assumed…

He hadn’t survived all he’d survived without seeing the ugly side of human nature. Maybe she hadn’t been worried for him at all, but for Gaines. Ah, God, the thought of her in cahoots with the bad guy put a sharp pain right through him. A new pain, over and above the others, and that was saying something.

“Once Abby realizes I’m here and that I’m missing, she’ll want to save me,” Gaines mocked. “Too little, too late, of course.”

Hawk willed his damn muscles to obey the commands his brain was sending. Get up. Kick his ass. “Abby’s done with you. She turned you in,” he improvised.

Gaines went utterly still. “Bullshit.”

“Are you willing to gamble on it?” he taunted, biding time, trying to figure a way out of this mess.

Gaines straightened to scan the horizon, still holding his shoulder as he searched for someone.

Abby?

“If that’s true, I’ll have to up my timeline.”

Oh, Christ. “You won’t find her.” Because Hawk would get to her first. He began to inch backward. He had no idea where he thought he could escape to, but it was time to go. He’d managed to get a foot away when another explosion rang out, raining down fiery fragments on top of them. The smoke was so thick Hawk couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, but he sure as hell could keep moving, and he hightailed it as fast as he could.

“Goddamn you!” came Gaines’s howl of fury at Hawk’s escape.

Using the choking smoke as a screen, Hawk dodged into the woods, past the flames and grabbed a tree for support. Christ, he felt as if he’d been run over by a Mack truck.

Sinking all the way to the spinning ground seemed like a good idea. He did manage to roll to his back, where he studied the smoke-filled sky. Though he couldn’t see anything without his night goggles, which had slid off, oh, somewhere about the time that Gaines had given him a nice one-two punch to the left kidney, he could hear sirens. Fire engines, probably cops, too. Lots of them.

Because somehow Gaines had managed to frame him for everything he’d done, which was plenty.

God, he was so screwed.

ABBY COULDN’T BREATHE. Yes, she’d just run a half mile in less than two minutes, and was now inhaling only smoke as she stared in horror at the barn, engulfed in flames, but that wasn’t why she couldn’t catch any air in her lungs.

Had she really seen Hawk shoot Gaines before the explosion? She’d left the van in such a hurry that she hadn’t taken a radio. The only personal effects she carried were her gun, cell phone and the mini credit card she had attached to it in case of emergencies. She’d already called Tibbs. He’d told her that according to Thomas, Logan had fallen from the roof and was waiting for a helicopter to airlift him to Cheyenne Memorial Hospital. No word from Hawk.

God. The whole night had blown up in their faces. She’d asked Tibbs about Gaines being here, and he said he’d check and get back to her. In the meantime, gun drawn, she tried to get closer to the barn but the heat stopped her. She couldn’t see a thing, and she couldn’t get closer.

And then her cell vibrated. “Gaines is there,” Tibbs drawled. “Apparently, he came to watch the takedown.”

“Oh, my God.” So if she hadn’t imagined Gaines, then she probably hadn’t imagined Hawk shooting him either. Still holding her phone to her ear, she took off again but immediately tripped, falling flat on her face and losing her grip on her gun. Twisting around to see what she’d fallen over, she saw a roof shingle, and…a rifle?

“Abigail?”

“I’m here, Tibbs. I’m okay.” Crawling to the rifle, she picked it up, burning her fingers. She dropped it, but she didn’t need to access her computer to guess that the serial number on this rifle would match one of the ones stolen from their storage.

Was that why Gaines had come-had he suspected the Kiddie Bombers had taken the illegal weapons for their own personal use?

And why had Hawk shot him?

“Gaines radioed his office that he’d gotten into the barn,” Tibbs told her.

“The barn is on fire.”

“Did he get out?”

“On it.” After spending a few futile minutes trying to find her gun, she checked the rifle. Loaded. She slipped the leather strap over her shoulder and took a deep breath for courage. You can still do this. All around her the flames leaped and crackled and burned brighter, spurred on by the vicious wind.