She had done the right thing. What came next she couldn't control. She had never been able to control what came next. She had only ever been able to control what she did when it got there. She folded her hands on the table.
She breathed. She thought about Maya saying, "I think you did the right thing. " And the way her voice had been so steady when she said it so clear, like she'd thought about it and arrived somewhere solid. That was 12 years of watching her mother make decisions, Sienna thought. That certainty in her voice was 12 years of watching someone who didn't walk past. She was not going to start now.
She looked at the address on the paper. Tomorrow she would meet them. Whatever that meant, whatever that cost, whatever the world decided to do with a woman who had spent her last $8 on a stranger's life, she would meet them. And she would find out who Hawk really was. The diner Cole had suggested was called Patty's, and it was the kind of place that had been on the same corner since 1987 and intended to stay there until the building fell down around it.
Sienna had passed it a hundred times. She had never been inside because it was three blocks off her regular route and three blocks when you were mapping every minute of your day was a real distance. She arrived seven minutes early because she was always early to things that made her nervous and being early gave her the illusion of control which was sometimes the only kind available. Cole was already there. He was younger than his voice had suggested, maybe 25, maybe a little older with the kind of face that was still figuring out what it was going to settle into.
He had a leather vest on but it was open over a plain gray t-shirt and he was sitting in a booth by the window with his hands wrapped around a coffee cup and he looked up when she came in with an expression that was somewhere between relief and carefully managed anxiety. "Ms. Clark. " he said and started to stand. "Sienna. " she said. "Sit down, please. " He sat.
She slid into the booth across from him and the waitress came and she ordered coffee because it was $2.35 and she had exactly $14 until Friday and she had already done the math. "Thank you for coming. " Cole said. "You said it wasn't a threat. " Sienna said. "I decided to believe you. " He almost smiled. "That's fair. " "How is he?
Amalia? Hawk? " Cole's hands tightened slightly on his cup. "He's stable. They're keeping him for another day or two. Doctors are saying if you hadn't given him the aspirin when you did, if you hadn't called when you did. " He stopped and looked at his coffee.
"They said there was a window and you kept him in it. " Sienna nodded. She didn't say anything. "He wants to see you. " Cole said. "You mentioned that. " "I know. I'm" He exhaled.
"I'm going to say something and I want you to hear it the way it's meant which is respectful. " "Okay. " "Not everybody would have stopped. Most people when they see the vest, when they see the patches, they cross the street. They look the other way. They tell themselves it's not their problem. He looked up at her.
You didn't do that. "I saw a man on the ground. " Sienna said. "I know. That's exactly what I mean. " The coffee came and she wrapped both hands around it the way she did in the morning when the apartment was still cold out of habit, out of something that was almost comfort. "Cole," she said, "I need to ask you something and I need you to be straight with me. " "Okay. " "My neighbor told me I should be afraid.
She told me I got myself involved in something I don't understand and that people like" She stopped, chose her words. "That people in your organization are dangerous. That coming here is a mistake. " Cole didn't look away. He didn't get defensive. He just looked at her steadily the way people look when they've heard a version of this before and have decided the only honest response to it is honesty.
"Some of what your neighbor thinks is probably true," he said. "And some of it is a story people tell because it's easier than knowing the real one. " He paused. "Hawk is not what people think he is. That's all I can tell you right now. Because the rest of it is his to tell. " "What does he want from me? " she said.
"Nothing. " Cole said, "Um" genuinely. "He wants to thank you. He wants to look the person in the eye who sat with him on the ground when he was dying and he wants to say thank you to her face. " "That's it? " Sienna looked at him for a long moment. "When? " she said. "Tomorrow, if you are willing. " She thought of Maya at the breakfast table that morning eating cornflakes and reading the back of the cereal box the way she always did as if the nutrition facts were literature.
She thought of the $1.42. She thought about what Deb Kowalski had said and what Maya had said and the difference between them. "Okay," she said, "tomorrow. " She drove herself to the hospital the next morning. She didn't tell anyone where she was going. She told Maya she had an errand before her shift, which was technically true in the way that the true things you don't fully explain are still technically true.
Cole met her in the lobby. He walked her up and she noticed that people looked at him in the elevator, the way people looked at anyone in a leather vest with patches, and she watched their faces do that thing, the quick assessment, the recalibration, the decision to stare at the door instead. Cole didn't seem to notice or had noticed so many times it had become part of the weather of his life. Hawk was in a private room at the end of a corridor. He looked different in a hospital bed than he had on the ground.