See Prologue for Disclaimer, Rating and Author's Notes

Airwolf~~~Airwolf~~~Airwolf~~~Airwolf~~~Airwolf

Chapter 4

A quick 'knock' on the stair railing outside the loft startled Cait enough to turn away from the picture. Still confused, she just called out a quick, "yeah" and turned back toward the fireplace mantle and its array of photographs. Some part of her knew she probably looked like hell, but she couldn't stop wondering how that photograph came to be. As Hawke entered the loft, she realized that she couldn't stop shaking, either.

"Hey, Cait... you look like you've seen a ghost. What happened?"

She couldn't say anything right away, just shook her head, and didn't look at him. It didn't surprise her when he came up and put an arm over her shoulders, tucking her next to his side. She remembered him doing that the night before as well, and didn't object. There'd always been something about Hawke that felt familiar, something that had let her know she could trust him, and Dom, too, and she hadn't been able to figure out what, but that photo... that photo could explain everything.

"I did, kind of... that photo over there. That's Dom on the left, I think." She felt Hawke's nod more than saw it. "Has to be your dad in the middle... looks too much like you to be anyone else. And I have to ask... his name didn't happen to be 'Alan,' did it?"

"Yeah, how did you...?" Hawke looked down at her, a slight suspicious look flashing in his eyes that she wished wouldn't be there... but it didn't surprise her.

"On the right," Cait said, her voice getting softer as she went on. "On the right is a man who went by the name 'Kincaid Brennan' during World War II. Most of his friends just called him 'Cade.' Brennan wasn't the name he'd been born with, but the name he'd been born with would have gotten his family into a load of trouble. There were a lot of people in his own home town that wouldn't have taken well to one of their good Irish boys fighting side-by-side with the Brits, instead of against them. They would have been even more outraged to learn that he'd made it into the SAS. He figured going by his ma's maiden name would be as good a way as any to keep that secret, to keep his parents and siblings safe. That man was my da, Hawke... and I'm pretty sure your dad's the one who taught him how to fly. Da always talked about his friend, Alan... but never once mentioned his last name. I don't understand, Hawke. Why wouldn't he have mentioned it? And how – in the name of all that's holy – did I meet you in that damn jail?"

Very little made sense to Cait at the moment, and far too much had happened in too short a period of time. With no small amount of effort, Cait gathered all her scattered thoughts, slipped out from under Hawke's arm, loosened her death-grip on the hairbrush, and picked up the photograph that was the source of both her confusion... and possibly any number of answers she'd been seeking for quite some time.

"None of this makes any sense. I know my da, Hawke. If mine and yours were friends, there's nothing that would have kept him from checking on your family. No reason I wouldn't have met you before Pope County, nothing Da wouldn't have done to find... your... how do I know you have a brother, and how do I know he's missing?"

Airwolf~~~Airwolf~~~Airwolf~~~Airwolf~~~Airwolf

Contrary to popular belief, many things had surprised Stringfellow Hawke at one point or another. What he'd just heard from Caitlin instantly catapulted to the top of the list, yet, strangely, his first thought had nothing to do with his brother or parents. 'Firearms qualifications and close-quarters combat… not too much different from my childhood,' she said. Well, a veteran of the SAS might be more likely to teach his little girl how to take care of herself, or at least be able to if he wanted. Hell, 'complicated' doesn't even begin to describe this situation anymore.

He looked at Cait, really looked at Cait, taking in the shaking hands with their white-knuckled grip on the photograph that started the latest bout of confusion, the face pale enough that every last freckle stood in sharp relief... and the pain. The pain in her eyes was unmistakable. Hawke had known the third man in the photo, but hadn't seen him since his parents' funerals when he was ten, and he vaguely recalled some argument between that man and Dom. At the time, he wasn't thinking about much other than the fact that his parents were never coming home again. At that point, he hadn't even been entirely sure that he and Saint John would even have a home. Dom had had to reassure both the boys that they always had a place with him, that Alan and Cora Hawke had planned for the possibility of something happening before the boys were old enough to care for themselves. There was nothing and no one in this world either Hawke had loved so much as their children, and they wouldn't have left them with nowhere to turn.

Hawke remembered that the man – Cade – had had dark hair, but his eyes had been just like Cait's, warm and welcoming. And if his memory was to be trusted, he'd also been something of a prankster. Hawke thought he'd seen Cade push his dad into the Lake once, but he'd been without his parents for so long that he wasn't even sure he'd really, truly know what they looked like anymore, if he didn't have the photos to remind him. Neither could he completely trust his memories of a little red-headed imp with a sense of humor like her father's. How much of what was going through his mind was truth, and how much was his mental wondering of what could have been?

At the moment, though, his focus wasn't on the girl he might have known, but the woman who stood before him. The part of him that had been trained by – and worked with – several of the best operatives in the business was understandably suspicious, but he had yet to meet anyone who could fake the kind of reaction Cait was having to that photo. He could only imagine how much of an impact that remembering something like this could have... particularly since it didn't sound as if her father was around anymore to provide the answers she so clearly needed. Yeah, he'd been there before, needing answers that didn't exist. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he acknowledged Cait's presumption that her father would have been searching for Saint John, and wondered what Cade might have found, but that could wait.

His voice was soft when he spoke to her. "Cait. Caitlin, hey, look at me for a second." He saw her tremendous strength of will surge to the front as she visibly gathered herself. By the time her eyes met his, her hands had stopped shaking, though her grip on the photograph was just as tight. I'll have to get her to loosen up a little before she actually manages to do some damage to her hands... or the frame. There were tears in her eyes, but she wasn't letting them fall, and while there was no lack of confusion in those eyes... she also looked pretty pissed.

"I'm okay, Hawke... utterly furious with Da for trying to protect me when I could have helped him, but okay. I just have a lot of questions with no answers at the moment, pieces of overheard conversations. He talked about 'Alan' a lot, but never mentioned a last name, and I never knew why. And I know he spent quite a bit of time looking for someone who I now suspect is your brother... but he never contacted me about it, and when I asked, I'm pretty darn sure he lied to my face. I was a Marshal, Hawke, with contacts in a lot of places, both high and low. There were questions I could have asked – of trusted sources – with no one bein' the wiser for it. So, yeah, I'm not too happy at the moment... particularly since I'm pretty sure one of the many things he was looking into got him killed. I just don't know which."

"How?"

"Da was a private investigator, Hawke, and very good at what he did. He made friends of local, state and federal law enforcement, but didn't want to join any of them, himself, though he was more than a little proud when I did. He just wanted to work on his own for a while, is all. I know it was something he was workin' on that got him killed, though the coroner disagreed with me. 'Accidental drowning,' he said. Da swam like a fish; water may as well have been his natural element. 'Accidental drowning' my ass."

Hawke reached to take the photo from Cait's hands and took a brief moment to force away an entirely inappropriate thought before taking hold of her shoulders and guiding her to sit on the bed. "You're looking into it?"

"Not as much as I'd like to be. As much as I can, while making sure nobody's going to make the rest of my family miserable for it. Marilyn and my brothers are safe enough, but Eileen's still home with Mom, and they're not practiced in self defense. Da offered, but Eileen wasn't interested. To be fair, Mom didn't really want her to be interested. I think she was afraid Eileen would follow me into law enforcement if Da taught her the same way he did me. I was the first cop in the family, but not the last. Both the boys are in that line of work, too, and doing some quiet checking of their own. We were keeping the Archangel Michael busy there for a while."

Hawke was glad he hadn't been drinking anything or he might have choked on it. "Archangel Michael?"

She gave him a half-smile and kept her answer simple. "Michael the Archangel is the patron of police officers, Hawke... well, all law enforcement officers, actually. I can't imagine he'd make a distinction between local, state and federal."

You'd be surprised, he thought, thankfully keeping himself from saying it. "Why did you come here, Cait? Why leave the job in Texas, your mom and sister?"

She shrugged her shoulders, and Hawke saw her flinch. Okay, so at least one of her shoulders is still giving her a little trouble. "Couple of reasons. I truly love law enforcement – once a cop, always a cop – but it was different without a team... without even a partner. It was just me and the helo, and I liked that, sometimes, but you saw how well that ended. I'm not like Da, there. I don't like workin' alone. Doesn't mean I won't, and doesn't mean I can't, just means I don't like it. Highway Patrol wasn't the right place for me, Hawke. That's part of the reason I left. My reasons for coming here, specifically, are a little different."

He let a single raised eyebrow ask the question for him, and managed to coax another smile out of her in the process. "There was always something about you that seemed familiar, Hawke. I wouldn't have let just anybody out of a jail cell, even given that the good sheriff was raising the hair on the back of my neck. I knew he was a son of a bitch, but I didn't know anything about you. You could have been every bit as bad... but somehow, I knew you weren't. Yeah, part of me is interested in that big black battleship with rotors that you like to tell me doesn't exist, because that implies you have contacts I don't, that might help me answer a few questions. Full truth of the matter is, though, that as beautiful as that helo is, I didn't come for her. I came here because of you, because I trusted something about you before I even knew your name, and I wanted to know why."

TBC...