Heart of a Hunter Read online

  “More. I need more.” She crushed herself against him to gain focus, only to lose it again when his fingers rounded her waist and stroked the sensitive hollow at the base of her spine. “Let me go, Sebastian.”

  The sudden stillness in him was more frightening than the seduction she couldn’t resist. But before he could say anything, the beeper on his desk shrilled.

  “Answer it,” she said, as the invisible web making them one separated strand by strand. “You know you have to.” When they stood apart, an aching cold made her shiver. Why had she done this? Why had she hurt him? Why was she risking the love of the one person who made her feel secure?

  Because the next time that phone rang, she wanted him to talk to her about the coming hunt and not shut her out. She wanted him to know she truly understood his job, him.

  He stalked to the phone and ripped the receiver off the cradle. Punching in numbers, he stared pointedly at her. She memorized the lines of his face—the sharp jaw, the thin nose, the full lower lip, the cleft in his chin, the upside-down V his work had creased between his eyes, the dark shadow of beard that he could never quite seem to get rid of no matter how often he shaved, the clean cut of his straight black hair. She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. She licked her lips and imprinted his taste.

  “Falconer,” he barked into the phone.

  She opened her eyes, blinked as if taking a last picture, then turned toward the steps. She wanted to stay. She had to go. Her heart suddenly weighed heavily with the contradiction of her needs.

  “Olivia! Wait.”

  But she couldn’t. She was leaving because she’d nearly lost herself in him again. When she was stronger, when she was his equal, when she could stand solidly beside him without forgetting herself…then she’d return.

  “HOLD FOR MR. SUTTON,” the voice on the other end of the line ordered in a clipped voice.

  Sebastian put a hand over the speaker and called, “Olivia!”

  But she wasn’t waiting. She was running up those stone steps as if the devil were on her heels.

  Maybe he was. In the past year, he’d felt himself grow colder, harder. Had his work seeped into his home life? Olivia was so sensitive that his dark moods were bound to frighten her. Decompressing took longer and longer. Would he one day get stuck in the mind of the scum he chased?

  Tethered to the phone and his boss, Sebastian watched helplessly as the ten best years of his life walked out the door. Maybe if he’d been able to give her the child she so desperately wanted. But no, he realized, the slowly widening rift between them went deeper than that. Something had been bothering Olivia for months now, and he’d gone against his habit of facing unpleasant things head-on and chosen to believe the closeting he saw in her eyes was temporary. Winter blues. She had them every year. Should he have suggested adoption? Would that have calmed the sadness in the summer sky of her eyes? A vacation. They needed a vacation. Somewhere sunny.

  He strained the length of the telephone cord. “Olivia!”

  She wasn’t really leaving. She couldn’t. He needed her. Did she know he watched her sleep? That he took comfort in the slow rise of her chest, in her simply being there, alive, beside him? That she was the reason he could keep doing what he had to do and still stay sane?

  Finding her was always his first objective when an assignment was over. Getting back to Olivia. The beat of that need pulsed in him from the second he ratcheted cuffs on a fugitive. And then, when the long ride home was finally over and he saw her, alive and breathing, he could let the tension slip, let his breath out, let his heart feel again. With the first hug came a silent prayer of thankfulness. She was safe. He was home. And for now the world was right.

  But not tonight. Tonight the mountain smoked from the unseasonable sweat of the day. Every year in February, winter seemed to grow weary of blowing blue and mean. For a day or two, it teased New Englanders with the false hope of spring. Temperatures rose. The sun blazed. Snow melted. And that brief flirting with spring seemed to have the same effect as a full moon, making everyone a little crazy.

  Cabin fever. That was it. She’d be back. He’d give her a day, then he’d show up at Paula’s and take Olivia home where she belonged. Better still, he’d take her for that long-promised vacation and they would talk—really talk.

  “Falconer,” Edwin Sutton barked into the phone. Sutton was the executive in charge of a thirty-man, seven-state, ongoing Fugitive Investigative Strike Team covering the northeast. He liked for operations to run smooth, for the felon arrest numbers to run high, and he liked to play those successes to the press. With no wife, no kids, not even a dog, the Service was his life and ambitious couldn’t even begin to describe him. “Head for Connecticut. We just lost two of our men.”

  A personnel loss wouldn’t look good on Sutton’s scorecard. He’d want closure and fast. “Who?”

  “Sean Greco and Robert Carmichael. They were on transport. There was a fire. Two prisoners are dead. Three escaped. Somehow they cornered Greco and Carmichael outside the building, had them drive getaway, and cut the hell out of them under an overpass on I-95. This is going to get us blowback. I want it contained, and fast.”

  Bad PR would tarnish Sutton’s record. With D.C. his next planned step up the ladder, he had to keep the stain from spreading. “Any leads?”

  “We’re working on IDing the three pukes on the run. Two more turned to toast in the fire. We gotta sort them out. I want you on this full time till they’re back in their pen. And Falconer, the Feebs are involved. Crossed state lines and all that bull.”

  “Great.” That meant the case was officially the FBI’s, but protocol allowed participation of the slain officers’ agency. He didn’t want to work with the Feebs. They couldn’t pass wind without permission and tended to mess up investigations. Not to mention their tendency to let the Service do the work, then steal their glory. This was not going to be fun. And it would mean putting Olivia on hold. Again.

  No wonder she’d left him.

  “One more thing, Falconer. The mutt slated for transport was Kershaw.”

  Sebastian went cold. “Is he one of the missing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dead?”

  “Won’t know till the toast are IDed.”

  One life deserves another. Don’t turn your back on that pretty wife of yours, Falconer. I’ll take from you what you took from me. Kershaw had made that promise five years ago and the cold determination in the snake-yellow eyes had matched Sebastian’s determination to put him behind bars. That’s why he still checked on Kershaw’s welfare once a month. “When were Greco and Carmichael killed?”

  “We found them a few hours ago.”

  “When were they killed?”

  “As best as the M.E. can make out, about four hours ago.”

  Four hours. Enough to get from Connecticut to New Hampshire. With time to spare. He dropped the phone and raced up the stairs, taking them three by three. “Olivia!”

  She jokingly called this place “Falconer’s Aerie.” He’d built it for her high on the mountain. To keep her safe. He’d vowed to her father on their wedding day that his work would never touch her. This house, this mountain, was a haven. For her. For him. And now she was out of his reach on the road on a dark night with a madman licking at her heels.

  THE NIGHT WAS EERILY CALM, making the car’s engine sound as if it roared. Thick and white, fog rose from the road and made the mountainside seem to smoke. To her right, the dark fronds of pines and winter-bare limbs of oaks and maples poked through the mist, reminding Olivia of ancient druids in ceremony. To her left, the meager shoulder dipped into a black abyss, making the scaly snake of road appear too narrow for her car. At odd intervals, runs of wet snow slipped from the mountain’s flank to slide under her wheels, making the steering feel sluggish. Each curve on the winding road flashed jagged arms of trees, points of rocky outcroppings or dizzying flirtations with the edge of the road. Olivia had never liked carnival fun rides, and this nightmar
e was no exception.

  Turn back, her weak side urged. No, not this time. This time she was going to be strong. “Stick to the plan.”

  Trying to stay on the road, she hunched over the steering wheel and peered through the wavering curtain of fog.

  The tears weren’t helping.

  Why was she crying when she was the one who’d chosen to leave? And this short separation was to strengthen their future. “For once in your life grow a backbone, Olivia.”

  She swiped at her eyes with the back of one gloved hand. She hadn’t known it would be this hard to walk away from him. That she would miss him so much in so little time. That the emptiness in her would feel as dirty and as desperate as the fugitives Sebastian chased.

  “You’re a fool, Olivia,” she told the haggard reflection haunting her on the windshield. She had a great home. She had work she loved and didn’t have to worry about making money from it to survive. She had a man who loved her and supported her. Security. “You have everything a woman could want.”

  But all of these chains of overprotection were sucking the juice from her creativity. She hadn’t painted in a month. Hadn’t felt the drive or the pleasure. Her next memory trunk still sat in her studio with only its priming coat on.

  And the last thing she wanted was to resent the only man she’d ever loved because she’d lost herself inside his strength. This quarter apart would give them both the needed distance to view their relationship more clearly.

  As she followed a curve, the slope of the mountain angled less sharply than before. The turn for the main road was only half a mile away. She eased her grip on the steering wheel and blew a small puff of relief.

  A deer jumped onto the road. Olivia gasped, jerked the wheel to the left and stomped on the brakes to avoid the animal. Mistake. The slush on the road became as slippery as oil. Her wheels churned. The car slid sideways. She lifted her foot off the brake, spun the wheel in the opposite direction and fishtailed.

  Smoke billowed up from the dashboard. The acrid smell made her choke. The black cloud blinded her. She tried to straighten, but the back end of the sedan kept going, then dipped over the edge of the road. There the car paused.

  Holding her breath, Olivia leaned forward as if her weight could counterbalance the downward pull and tried not to cough on the toxic smoke. The engine whined. The headlights swirled in the mix of black haze and white fog. The undercarriage creaked beneath her as the car sought its fulcrum.

  Please, don’t let me die. I promise I’ll go back. I promise I’ll try harder. I won’t complain. I promise—

  Gravity sucked the car down. Olivia screamed as she scratched at the dashboard as if she could escape her fate through the windshield. The car careened down the rocky slope, gathering speed. Boulders and trees didn’t slow the metal skeleton. It simply bounced from the obstacles in pinball madness, up and over, side to side, tossing her painfully around the safety harness. Wrenching metal screeched. The air bag deployed, burning her face and suffocating her for a desperate moment. As a branch thrust through the windshield on the passenger’s side, glass cracked and the blanket of crazed glass wrapped around the sprung mushroom of air bag.

  Then the right rear quarter panel smashed into a granite monolith, grinding the car to a sudden halt, canting it sideways, and sending her head crashing through the side window. She saw stars and a bright pinprick of light. A warm rush flowed over her brain, turning everything blood red, then black.

  Panting, she swiped at her eyes. If she couldn’t see, how could she work? How could she paint? How would she fill the endless emptiness of Sebastian’s absences?

  The car slipped again. A foot. Two. She stilled and bit back the scream clawing at her throat. Please…

  The car came to rest with the small bump of a landing elevator, bobbing her head. That gentle slap of her temple against the metal frame was the final insult.

  Like a light winking out, she fell backwards into the inky chasm fracturing her conscious mind. I don’t want to die! I don’t want to be alone. Panic made her fight the pull of darkness. Her arms reached forward. Her mouth opened for one last desperate cry, “Sebastian!”

  Chapter Two

  The red lights of the rescue squad turned the fog a bloody red. The slam of the closing ambulance doors cracked like a shotgun and thundered over the mountain. As the ambulance sped away, Olivia’s blood-streaked face colored Sebastian’s vision. Her closed eyes, her pale skin, the rip in her scalp, were a punch to the gut. The fading whine of the siren was a cry that swept him back too many years and pooled old dread into his boots like cement.

  He swallowed hard and shook his head. Don’t go there. It’s not going to get you anything. You have a job to do. Do it.

  Olivia was in good hands. Once at the hospital, he couldn’t see her right away anyway. Doctors would need to examine her and patch her up. What good would he do her pacing the hall? Here he could get a jump on Kershaw. He flexed his fists. She would be okay. But not Kershaw. Kershaw would pay. Sebastian cranked his gaze away from the disappearing red lights in the fog to the scars in the slush made by Olivia’s tires.

  Resolutely, he pushed Olivia from his focus. She crept back in on the next breath. He crouched by the side of the road. Read the facts, damn it. Pukes always leave a trace. If you let him get away, Olivia’s the one who’ll pay.

  He should be at the hospital with her. But in these weather conditions evidence would disappear fast. His gaze followed the run of the tire marks over the edge, and with each breath he got himself into Kershaw’s head. Kershaw had vowed revenge. Kershaw had escaped from a maximum-security facility. Olivia was hurt. Too much of a coincidence and he’d never liked coincidence.

  Concentrate. Feel what he feels. Fear what he fears. Trust what he trusts.

  Sebastian turned off the emotional switch and went into hunter mode. Catch the scum, then get back to Olivia.

  That was the plan.

  Always.

  With effort, he rose and strode toward Victor Denley, Wintergreen’s chief of police. Both the mustache, waxed Western-villain style, and the weapon, cocked at an odd angle from the chief’s belt, seemed out of place on the six-foot, barrel-shaped man. He looked more like a caricature of a cop than a figure of authority. But the accident had taken place in his jurisdiction and this was his scene. The Service prided itself on interagency cooperation.

  “How soon can you get the car out?” Sebastian asked.

  Denley snorted and shook his head. “I’m not sending anyone down there till daylight.”

  Sebastian bit back his temper. He needed answers now. “When you do, I want it gone over with a fine tooth comb. Anything and everything that might be out of place, I want to know.”

  “I don’t have that kind of manpower or budget. You know that, Falconer.”

  “Tow the car to Cyril’s and send me the bill.” Sutton was going to bust an artery over his next expense report, but screw him. He’d given his all for the Service. His job was never supposed to touch Olivia. They owed her.

  He hiked down the tailgate of his SUV and took a flashlight from his gear bag. “I forwarded a bulletin to your desk. I want your men—” All four point five of them. Cripes! This was a mess. “—aware of Kershaw.”

  “How serious is this guy?”

  “He’s armed and dangerous.” Sebastian clicked on a utility belt. “And he wants payback.”

  “Wish you hadn’t brought that kind of trouble to my neck of the woods.”

  In a town where the day’s highlight was a free cup of coffee at McGee’s General Store and writing a traffic ticket to an out-of-towner who strayed a mile over the speed limit, a cop’s edge dulled in proportion to the spread of gut over belt. Kershaw was way over Denley’s experience. “Trust me. That wasn’t the plan. He’s after Olivia. I want a guard posted by her hospital room.”

  “Budget—”

  “Frank’ll be glad for the overtime.” Frank Brandt was young and eager, even if inexperienced. He liked to re
lax at the local martial arts dojo and his edge wasn’t yet donut dimmed. Denley opened his mouth, but before a word could spit out, Sebastian repeated, “Send me the bill.” Let Sutton choke. Danger wouldn’t flirt any closer to Olivia than it already had.

  Sebastian strode toward the edge of the road.

  “Hey,” Denley called, “where do you think you’re going?”

  “Looking for evidence.”

  “You’ll mess up the scene.”

  Like that was going to make a difference with the way the EMTs had trampled it to rescue Olivia. “He already has a warrant out on him for the murder of two marshals. Whatever evidence I find here won’t change anything.” Cutting down the timeline was more important than preserving this scene—a scene that would melt away before morning. Sebastian headed into the fog that covered the black hole where Olivia’s car had plunged.

  Denley shone his flashlight at him. “You should get to your wife.”

  “If I don’t catch this puke, he’ll go after her again.”

  “He might not have anything to do with this. There’s deer tracks. The road’s slippery. On a night like this, could be just an accident.”

  No, Sebastian didn’t believe in coincidence. Not with someone as determined as Kershaw. “What if he did? You don’t want that on your conscience. To get what he wants, he’ll go through anything and anyone. He’s armed. He’s motivated. He has nothing to lose.”

  “Getting aggressive and imaginative at this time of the night won’t help you collar your mutt.”

  Aggressive and imaginative—cop-talk for breaking the law. This was for Olivia. He’d get as aggressive and as imaginative as it took to bring down Kershaw.

  IGNORING THE BEEPER vibrating at his belt, Sebastian placed a call. Working alone, he’d woven a wide network of contacts. The best way to information was knowing who to tap.

  “Felicia?” a sleepy voice greeted Sebastian on the other end of the line as he paced the hospital’s emergency-room waiting area.