Книга - Bullseye

Bullseye
Jessica Andersen


TOUGH. TENACIOUS. TRUE BLUE.Secret Service agent Isabella Gray thought those traits described bounty hunter Jacob Powell to a T. When the secretary of defense's family was ambushed on her watch, she knew she needed to recruit the sexy ex-Special Forces soldier for help. Isabella recognized all too well the shot of adrenaline that pulsed through her former lover upon learning that Big Sky's quarry–militia men on the lam–were behind the abduction. Forced to rely on each other after their rescue mission led to a harrowing plane crash, neither could resist the pent-up emotions churning between them. Once Jacob stumbled upon shocking evidence that an international mastermind could be pulling all the strings, would their red-hot passion chase away the chill of terror?









“It’ll be dark soon.”


Isabella cast her eyes upward, where the first hints of fiery gold touched the horizon, and set flame to her auburn hair.

“All the more reason to put some miles between us and our new friend,” Jacob replied.

She glanced back toward the cavern and the swept-bare sand between them. The black helicopter could return at any moment.

Jacob turned to assess the back exit of the cavern, toward the low, rocky escarpment. He tried to picture the land as he’d seen it in those last few minutes before the crash. His mental map, along with what he remembered from the flight charts, said that if they headed west and slightly north, a stiff three-day hike would bring them to civilization.

And between the crash site and civilization?

He would deal with the hit man as best he could. Capture him if lucky. Kill him if necessary.

Whatever it took to keep Isabella safe.




Bullseye

Jessica Andersen







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For Kim Nadelson,

an editor who knows how to make a story sing.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi”!




CAST OF CHARACTERS


Jacob (Bullseye) Powell—The sexy ex-Special Forces airstrike pilot is now a Big Sky bounty hunter and a confirmed bachelor. But does an old college flame have the power to change that when she finds herself in danger?

Isabella Gray—The no-nonsense Secret Service agent is all about her duty…until her protectees are abducted and she is forced to turn to the one man she’d hoped never to see again.

Louis Cooper—The U.S. Secretary of Defense will not negotiate with hostage takers. Or will he?

Boone Fowler—The head of the Montana Militia for a Free America has no problem with kidnapping Cooper’s family…or killing an interfering Secret Service agent.

Hope Cooper—When she and her twin daughters are abducted, Louis’s wife has only survival on her mind.

King Aleksandr of Lunkinburg—The despotic ruler of a small former Soviet bloc country has no apparent ties to Boone Fowler and his men.

Prince Nikolai—Denounced by his father for his patriotic ideals, the prince finds an ally in Louis Cooper, until the Secretary abruptly reverses his position on sending troops into Lunkinburg.

Lyle Nelson—After Isabella shoots him in the leg, Lyle wants revenge—the more painful, the better.




Contents


Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen




Prologue


Early September in Montana was chill and damp, like fear.

Derek Horton paused at the dark, rocky opening and a shiver crawled down his back. It’s just the drizzle, he told himself, but it was more than that.

The mouth of the abandoned mine beckoned with the promise of safety, of supplies and a place where the eight fugitives could light a small fire undetected. But the darkness beyond seemed to shift with something else.

A tall man with slashing scars on his face, a scruffy beard and his hair drawn into a warrior’s ponytail paused at Derek’s side. “Problem?”

Derek shook his head quickly, lest Boone Fowler think him weak or disloyal to The Cause, both of which could be fatal. “No problem. Just taking a quick breather.”

“Well, take it inside.” The leader of the Montana Militia for a Free America—MMFAFA—jerked his head at the six men strung out in a quiet line behind him. “We need to get out of sight. Those bounty hunter bastards might not be looking in the right places yet, but you can bet they’re looking.”

Boone’s command overrode Derek’s dislike of the cavern they had hidden in since their escape from The Fortress—the Montana State Penitentiary. He stepped through the gaping rock maw, into the strange warmth the cave seemed to ooze like sweat.

Rough hands grabbed him the moment he crossed into darkness.

Derek shouted and struck out, but missed. His brain shouted, Bounty hunters!

“Get in here, all of you!” a man shouted. “Now!”

His accent was clipped and foreign. Not the bounty hunters, Derek realized as dark-clothed men swarmed around Boone and the others.

Something far worse.

“Let me go!” Panicked, Derek thrashed, then gargled when his captor tightened the arm across his throat, cutting off his breath. His vision grayed, but not before he saw that the others had been similarly subdued.

Boone stood in the center of the small cavern, hands held away from his sides. Two black-clad figures held automatic weapons on him, according him the respect of a leader. Six other ninja types surrounded the remaining MMFAFA members. Derek saw Lyle, Boone’s second-in-command and the hothead of the group, spit at one of the gunmen.

The bastard rammed the muzzle of his weapon into Lyle’s stomach, sending him to his knees.

Another dark figure stepped into Derek’s view, this one unarmed, though he radiated power and grace. Leadership.

Derek held still, heart pounding. This had to be the man Boone had made a deal with, the man who had helped break them out of The Fortress in exchange for…favors.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Boone said, staring the cloaked figure in the eye and speaking leader to leader, even though he was being held at gunpoint. “We were unable to complete our first mission. But I have an idea about—”

“Your ideas don’t interest me,” the black-cloaked man interrupted with a vicious hiss. “I am here to tell you what you will do next. This time it will be done correctly, do you understand?”

After a cold, frozen moment, Boone nodded. “I understand. Tell me what you want us to do.”

“Not yet. First, I believe a lesson is in order.” The figure nodded toward the man behind Derek.

“No. Don’t…please don’t!” Icy fear splashed in Derek’s veins when the dark man’s cold gaze fixed on him. He struggled, but to no avail. His captor remained immovable, like the stone surrounding them. Derek reached toward the other militiamen, toward his leader. “Boone, don’t let them! Don’t!”

But the leader of the MMFAFA said nothing.

The dark figure gestured for Derek’s captor to take him deeper into the cavern and said, “You and your men have failed once. That cannot and will not happen again. Understood? If it does, you will face a fate similar to the one your friend is about to meet.”

“No-oo!” Derek thrashed madly as he was dragged backward, deeper into the shadows. His heels gouged the soft soil on the cavern floor, sending up a rotten, coppery smell.

“Quiet.” Derek’s captor tightened the arm across his throat. The lack of oxygen quickly brought dizziness, then the gray of tunnel vision.

Through his narrowed cone of focus, he saw the dark leader step into view, calmly screwing a silencer onto the barrel of a semiautomatic pistol. The man barked a few syllables in a harsh, unfamiliar tongue and tossed Derek against the rock wall with bruising force.

The gunman shrugged and answered in heavily accented English. “I do not wish to bring this whole godforsaken place down around our ears. I simply wish to teach these idiots a lesson.”

With that, he lifted the weapon and fired.

Derek heard the puff of a silenced bullet.

Then nothing.




Chapter One


“Bull!” Jacob Powell grinned and reclaimed his seat near the built-in fridge.

“Big surprise,” grumbled fellow bounty hunter Anthony Lombardi. He pulled Jacob’s dart from the center of the dartboard and took his place behind the tape mark on the floor. “We don’t call you Bullseye for nothing.”

The dark-haired hunter threw and hit the inner ring one step out from the center, eliciting howls of derision from the half dozen men gathered in the rec room of the Big Sky Bounty Hunters’ headquarters in Ponderosa, Montana.

The rules for Bull were simple. You had five shots. You hit five bullseyes or you lost. And Jacob never lost.

Though he’d earned his nickname in the Special Forces, where he’d been a fighter pilot with an airstrike hit record second to none, the moniker had stuck when he and the rest of the unit had followed their leader, Cameron Murphy, into the bounty hunting business. In his five years as a bounty hunter, as in his Special Forces career, Jacob almost never missed his target.

Failure wasn’t an option for Bullseye.

But at that moment, he wasn’t thinking about the past, or even about darts. His mind was focused, as it usually was these days, on the job. Though he’d instituted the game of Bull to give his ever-active hands and body something to do, his brain crunched the data he’d assembled on their current bounty.

Too damned little information as far as he was concerned. A few weeks earlier, eight prisoners had done the unthinkable and escaped The Fortress, the nearby maximum-security prison. Big Sky hadn’t recaptured them, and worse, the escapees had wreaked havoc, executing a German diplomat and engineering a train crash that had killed the corrupt governor of Montana. The incidents had almost upset months of delicate United Nations’ negotiations regarding the despotic king of a former Soviet Bloc country called Lunkinburg.

Almost.

“Your turn, Powell.” Tony clapped him on the shoulder. “And Bull.”

Meaning that Tony had gotten his five center hits. It was up to Jacob to finish the game with five of his own.

No sweat.

Jacob stood and stepped up to the masking tape line. A television babbled in the background, perpetually tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station. The Secretary of Defense’s familiar hangdog, bespectacled face filled the screen as Jacob took aim and buried his first dart in the bullseye.

“Turn up the volume,” one of the other bounty hunters ordered. “He’s talking about Lunkinburg.” Secretary Cooper, the President’s primary adviser on foreign affairs, was strongly in favor of sending troops into the small country.

Jacob sent his second dart whistling into the bull, but focused part of his attention on the secretary’s words. The Big Sky Bounty Hunters rarely worked internationally, but the Lunkinburg issue had become their problem the moment their bounty had started targeting diplomats.

Which itself was a puzzle, as Boone Fowler and his followers were strictly domestic hell-raisers. Their agenda was to overthrow the U.S. government in the name of The Cause, which was pretty much defined by Fowler himself and included a dizzying mix of xenophobia and anarchy. This was the first time the MMFAFA had dabbled in international politics, which begged the central question.

Why now? Why had they broken out of The Fortress and immediately changed their MO?

Secretary Louis Cooper’s televised voice said, “The United States military is not the world’s police force. However, there is a time and a place for us to say enough.” Cooper rested his hands on the wheeled podium in front of him. His faded blond hair was washed out by the lighting, his blue eyes emphasized by the subtle gleam of a navy tie. As Jacob watched, the camera panned out far enough to show brilliant fall colors and a familiar logo.

A quiver of interest ran through him at the sight. The Golf Resort. The Washington, D.C.–based Secretary of Defense was at a Montana vacation spot, not twenty miles away from the log cabin that held the bounty hunters’ offices on the main floors and a host of specialized, high-security rooms belowground.

In one of the aboveground rooms, Jacob threw. Bull. Three down, two to go.

Cooper’s televised voice continued. “The President, myself and the members of the United Nations have had enough. The atrocities perpetrated by King Aleksandr have gone on too long with no hope of change in sight. We must commit to overthrowing Aleksandr’s tyrannical rule—a goal that is strengthened by the support we have found within his family.”

Jacob focused. Threw. Bull.

On screen, Secretary Cooper gestured toward a mid-thirties, dark-haired man in a custom-tailored suit. “Please welcome Lunkinburg’s premiere freedom fighter. Disowned by his father for his politics, he only wants what is best for his people.” Cooper waved the man forward. “I give you Prince Nikolai of Lunkinburg.”

Jacob imagined teenage girls swooning all across America at the sight of the crown prince, whose camera appeal was second only to his patriotic fervor.

There was scattered applause from those assembled at the Golf Resort, and the cameras panned to track the prince as he made his way to the portable podium. The image swept over several navy-suited figures in the background. Secret Service most likely, Jacob thought, and ignored the quiver in his gut and the sudden desire to stare at the screen.

He focused instead on the dartboard, where he was one bull away from his usual perfect score. He lifted the missile and felt the click as he visually connected with his target. Measured. Pulled back.

A flicker of navy suit on the screen caught his peripheral view and yanked his attention to the TV in an instant. Images jammed his brain. An hourglass shape. A chin-length swing of auburn hair too vivid to be strawberry-blond, too rich to be brassy red. Flashing green eyes and mobile lips made for kissing.

Jacob’s stomach knotted.

He threw.

He missed.

The room stilled with a collective hiss of indrawn breath as the six other bounty hunters stared at the dart quivering in the outer ring of the board. A half an inch farther out and he would have missed the board entirely. In the game of Bull, that entitled the other player to a future claim.

In five years, Jacob had never given up a future claim. Shoot, he’d only missed the bull one other time—and then he’d had a bullet wound in his arm and a temperature well over a hundred and two.

But hell and damn, he’d missed this time. Missed big.

On the television screen, Prince Nikolai spoke of patriotism and human rights, and of how his pain at working against his father was offset by the knowledge that the people of Lunkinburg needed his help. But Jacob heard the words as background noise—his whole attention was locked on the woman standing behind Secretary Cooper with a clever communications device in her ear and an I’m-all-about-the-job look on her face.

His body flashed hot then blazed to nuclear temperatures as he took a second look and realized that, yeah, it was her, all right, a heart-stopping face and mind-blowing body straight out of his past.

Isabella Gray.



HER DAY HAD STARTED well before dawn and didn’t look as though it was going to be over anytime soon.

Special Agent Isabella Gray unobtrusively shifted on her aching feet, one level of her consciousness wishing for a shower and a couple of aspirin while another, deeper level scanned the crowd and monitored the low-level chatter on the airwaves. As the single Secret Service agent overseeing the Secretary of Defense’s vacation, she’d liaised with the Montana locals for backup and security when Cooper had announced he was holding an impromptu press conference at the resort.

So far, everything seemed under control.

It had better be, she thought with a frown. She’d been up at 3:00 a.m. overseeing the last of the details. It was her event, her security, and her reputation on the line.

They didn’t call her a cojone-busting nitpicker for nothing. She didn’t tolerate screwups, either above or below her position.

And certainly not from herself.

“And so,” Prince Nikolai said into the microphone from his position between two of his personal bodyguard/advisers, “It is with both sadness and joy that I proclaim my support of the UN resolution to send troops into Lunkinburg and remove my father, King Aleksandr, from his dissolute throne.” Nikolai glanced at Secretary Cooper. “It is my fondest hope that these actions will bring to my country the great peace and prosperity enjoyed by the people of the U.S., such as Secretary Cooper and his lovely family.”

At that, the two men shared a handshake while reporters shouted easily ignored questions.

Secretary Cooper shook his head. “I’m sorry, folks. No questions today. The prince has a prior commitment and I promised to have an early dinner with Hope and the girls.”

At the mention of his family, Cooper’s normally fierce expression softened so slightly that Isabella might have missed it if she hadn’t known to look. But in the past couple of weeks, ever since Cooper had received graphic death threats from King Aleksandr’s supporters and been assigned Secret Service protection, she had gotten to know her protectee and his family. For all that he was a political barracuda, Louis Cooper was soft as mush when it came to his young wife, Hope, and his twin, eighteen-month-old daughters, Becky and Tiffany.

Isabella motioned for the locals to flank her, guarding the secretary and Prince Nikolai while they walked from the front of the Golf Resort to the rear, where Cooper’s secure chalet was set back against the edge of the dense forest. While she scanned the crowd and the manicured lawns beyond, a small, not-so-easily ignored part of her felt a wistful tug at Cooper’s devotion to Hope and the girls.

Isabella had once dreamed of having a loving, stable family of her own, but it hadn’t happened. Now, at thirty-five, she protected other people’s families and considered it a patriotic trade-off. Even the low-grade maternal urges had mostly faded over the years. She told herself she was only feeling them now because she’d been spending so much time around Becky and Tiff. She told herself it had nothing to do with being in Montana, with knowing that the Big Sky Bounty Hunters were quartered nearby.

But she was lying to herself, and knew it. Damn Jacob Powell. Thirteen years later she still couldn’t stop herself from keeping track of him. She’d even located the Big Sky headquarters on a map and checked how long it would take her to reach the cabin.

Not that she’d drop in for a visit. No way, no how. Their relationship had burned comet-bright, and when it had crashed, she’d been left cratered. Nearly destroyed.

She had grown up and grown out of the breakup damn quick, but that didn’t mean she’d feel comfortable seeing him again. Besides, what was the point? They were different people now, with different agendas.

He probably barely even remembered her.

And heck, it wasn’t as though she thought of him on a weekly basis now, or even yearly. It was being in Montana that had brought him to mind. Montana and the little girls and the foolish dreams she’d once had.

Secretary Cooper and Prince Nikolai stopped on the wide pathway outside the Coopers’ chalet, bumping Isabella out of her unproductive, unprofessional thoughts.

“I will leave you here, my friend,” Prince Nikolai announced.

The men shook hands and parted, the prince returning up the walkway and passing near Isabella. She caught a faint whiff of his cologne, felt a whisper of his sheer animal magnetism and held herself professionally distant when he stopped a breath away and looked down at her with dark, almost ebony eyes.

“Keep him safe, Agent Gray,” the prince said in his trademark low, sexy voice. “I need him. My people need him.” He glanced back. “And he is a good man.”

“He’s my protectee,” Isabella said simply, refusing to credit the fine buzz running along her skin, which served only to remind her how long she’d focused on being a Secret Service agent rather than a woman.

The prince held her eyes for a moment more before nodding. “I leave him in your care, then.”

She watched him go. Part of her appreciated the aesthetics of his rear view while another wondered why the sexy prince brought nothing more than a pleasant buzz when Jacob—there he was again, darn him—had brought roaring heat that had charred her from the inside out and left her hollow and filled at the same time.

Irritated with her lack of focus, she followed Secretary Cooper into the chalet, scoped out the three-thousand-square-foot vacation palace and checked the perimeter motion detectors to make sure nothing had changed in the hour they’d been gone. As she did her job, she shoved the distractions to the back of her mind.

Nothing seemed out of place. When she returned to the stone-accented great room, King Aleksandr scowled out of the flat screen TV that dominated the opposite wall.

Secretary Cooper cranked up the volume.

“…a traitor to my blood and to my family,” the king shouted, red-faced. “The American people should be warned!”

A frisson worked its way through Isabella’s gut at the near-threat. The ornate stonework and tapestries visible in the background indicated that Aleksandr was still holed up in his palace in Lunkinburg, but too many incidents in recent years had shown that evil men could cause trouble from afar.

Aleksandr leaned close to the microphone, bringing his flinty gray eyes and heavily lined face into sharp focus. “If Louis Cooper brings war to my country, then his family and the American public will suffer the consequences.”

The shiver worked itself into full-blown battle readiness. Isabella locked eyes with Cooper, who warned, “That bastard better not touch Hope and the girls.”

“Agreed.” She reflexively checked the semiautomatic pistol she carried in a holster at the small of her back. “I’m going to call the Great Falls field office. To hell with them being short staffed, I need backup.” She frowned. “I think we should return to Washington. The Service can protect you and your family better there.”

God knows her hands were tied out here, with most of the active protection agents either overseeing the President’s fund-raising efforts or keeping tabs on the last of the UN diplomats as they left the country.

“Of course.” Cooper nodded shortly. “I hate to interrupt our vacation, but my family’s safety comes first.” He spun on his heel and left the room.

“Yeah,” Isabella said into the empty space. “I know.”

And she shouldn’t envy that. She had chosen her path, and though it might not have been the happily-ever-after she’d envisioned in college, the lifestyle fit her like a second skin now, one that she wasn’t sure she would want to peel off if offered the chance.

Frankly, she wasn’t sure she could.

Cooper returned moments later and gave her a sharp nod. “We’ll be ready to go in an hour. Hope is making the necessary arrangements.”

“Fine,” Isabella said, already forming a mental list of the calls she needed to make. “I’ll just—”

Boom! A catastrophic explosion ripped her words away and flung her across the room. She slammed into the wall and lost her breath, her senses. After a moment her vision came back, gray and fuzzy.

Louis Cooper lay flat on the floor, unmoving. Hope reeled from the bedroom, blond hair flying wildly, red-painted mouth open in an O of horror, hands outstretched toward her husband.

Percussion bomb, narrow focus, Isabella’s brain supplied, quickly naming the device. The ringing in her ears faded within moments and her arms and legs twitched with returning consciousness. Heart pounding, she dragged herself up and fumbled for the gun at the small of her back. She shouted, “Hope, get back! Get the girls!”

At least she thought she shouted the words. She couldn’t hear a thing over the buzzing and the rush of blood through her body.

Three men charged into the room, heavily armed and running low. Their faces were cloaked in rubber Halloween masks of former Presidents Johnson, Clinton and Nixon, which gave the scene a surreal feel.

Nixon and LBJ reached for Secretary Cooper.

“Get away from him!” Isabella yanked up her weapon and fired in one smooth move, but her target jerked aside at the last possible moment. The shot ricocheted off the fieldstone fireplace in the sunken living room and spent itself in a bullhide sofa.

She squeezed off a second round and hit Nixon in the leg. He cursed and went down as she struggled to her feet.

Clinton rushed at her. “Bitch!”

She spun in a dizzy circle and fumbled to bring her weapon up even as the knowledge beat in her veins— I’ve got to protect Cooper and his family.

Her third shot went wild. LBJ closed in from the other side, reversed his weapon and swung it at her head in a deadly arc. She aimed between his eyes and—

Blackness.



IN HIS SMALL OFFICE on the second floor of the Big Sky headquarters, Jacob scrubbed his hands through his short, spiky brown hair, hoping to take away his headache with the gesture. No dice, but maybe he deserved the pain. He’d pretty much pushed himself into the ground since that afternoon, first with a long, hard run through the woods, then with an impromptu sparring session in the gym that Cameron had finally halted due to one too many bloody noses.

Maybe it wasn’t pain he was feeling in his head, Jacob thought as he rolled the chair back to the computer and pulled up his e-mail messages, hoping for a lead. Maybe it was anger.

Over the past thirteen years he’d learned to keep his emotions in check, learned to—mostly—control his temper.

But one sight of Isabella and there it was, front and center in his soul.

Anger. Guilt. Regret. Relief.

He hadn’t seen her since the day after they had both graduated from Georgetown. The day he had ended a relationship that had been too intense, too overwhelming for him to stay in and not lose himself.

He cursed and pushed away from the computer and the pitiful amount of information he’d managed to amass in an evening of data mining and phone calls.

Why was he thinking of her at all? How could a single glimpse of her put him back in that roiling, all-consuming place where he barely knew his own name? A place he intended never to go again.

She was nearby. That was why he was thinking of her. It was bad enough he’d glimpsed her on TV and felt the lightning bolt hit his gut. It was worse to learn she’d accompanied the Secretary of Defense on his annual vacation, where Louis Cooper invariably rented the same chalet at the same expensive adult playground.

The Golf Resort. Half an hour away by Jeep, less by horse if he cut up and over the mine-riddled ridge.

Not that he would do any such thing. Why would he? They were nothing to each other now. Ancient history. A bad taste at the back of his mouth.

But damn, she’d looked good on that TV screen. Good enough that several hours, one run and three mock fights later, his body still revved on overdrive from the sight of her, from the memories he’d tried to forget over the years.

Memories of sexual delirium. Sensual oblivion.

The ding of an incoming e-mail message was a relief and Jacob swung back to the keyboard just as voices rose outside the small office. It sounded as though the other bounty hunters were starting a new game of Bull, but he wasn’t in the mood anymore. He wanted to work.

He opened a message from Aimelee, a friend at the dispatcher’s office. Though he’d flirted briefly with the busty blonde when she’d moved to the area, nothing had come of it. She didn’t do the casual thing and he didn’t want anything else. So they’d become, surprisingly, friends.



No sighting of the fugitives, her e-mail reported, but a small walk-in clinic was broken into a couple of hours ago. Normally we’d think drugs, but mostly bandages and supplies were taken. Maybe that’s something?



Maybe. Jacob typed a quick thanks while his mind poked at the new information.

The fugitives were still in the area—or had been a week earlier when they’d derailed a train carrying a handful of UN diplomats. He bet they were still in the area. Where else would they go? The Montana mountains formed their home base. But where were they hiding? And why the medical supplies?

Perhaps they were nursing wounded from the train sabotage. Or perhaps—

He heard a loud shout outside the office. Running footsteps. A barked command muffled by the closed door. His heart rate picked up.

What the hell?

He was out of the computer chair and halfway across the office when Tony Lombardi yanked open the door. “Get out here. Now.”

Jacob followed his teammate out to the main room. There were only a half dozen bounty hunters in the HQ at that moment, but the knot of men near the front door seemed made up of twice that. He paused at the edge of the crowd. “What’s wrong?”

Then he caught a glimpse of auburn hair and a softly rounded cheek. A flash of green eyes. Kissable lips tipped down in a frown of pain, of worry.

The air backed up in his lungs and something hot and mean and messy fisted in his chest. The others moved aside, but he remained paralyzed. “Isabella?”

Even as his brain grappled with her presence, he noted the dusky bruise spreading along her cheek, the unfocused glaze in her eyes. Her clothes were clean, as though she’d taken time to change before finding him. But someone had roughed her up. Hard.

Primal, pure rage roared through him at the sight of an injured woman. At the sight of this injured woman. He bit off a curse. “What happened? Who did this?”

Her eyes focused. Flashed. She reached out toward him, then hesitated and glanced at the others. She let her hand drop and said, “Jacob. I need to speak with you. Privately.”

Her voice was lower than he remembered. Huskier. Her face and slight body still held hints of the same arcs and sweeps of curve and line. But the edge was new. As was the strength that kept her upright against her injuries.

Aware of his teammates looking on, Jacob reached out and touched a spreading bruise. “Tell me who did this. I’ll kill them.”

In the moment of silence that followed his declaration, he realized two things. One, he meant every word of it. He’d gladly kill whoever had laid a hand on her. And two, the whip of heat and power that flared up his arm and exploded in his chest warned him that it was still there. The thing that had brought them together over a game of darts in Smiley’s Pub in D.C. hadn’t died.

God, he wished it had.

He yanked his hand away and scowled. “Names. I want names.”

Thirteen years ago she would have told him everything in a rush. He expected the same now, because when you came down to it, people didn’t change that much over time.

Instead she narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t for public consumption. Can we go someplace more private?” When he didn’t budge, she hissed a curse. “Why did I even bother? I knew I shouldn’t have come here.” She spun and took two steps toward the door.

And collapsed.

“Isabella!” Jacob caught her on the way down. When the others surged forward to help, he swept her up into his arms and tried to brace himself against the feel of her lithe, toned body against his chest. “Stand down, I’ve got her.”

“That’s the chick we saw behind the Secretary of Defense,” Tony said. “The one who made you miss the Bull.”

“No kidding.” Jacob carried her to the stairs and started up with no real plan.

“Has something happened to Louis Cooper?” Cameron Murphy asked, his voice carrying the weight of leadership and surprising Jacob, who hadn’t even noticed the boss’s arrival.

“You’ll know as soon as I do.” But the thought of it grabbed at Jacob’s guts and wouldn’t let go. If the Secret Service had been protecting Cooper, it was because he was in danger.

And given that Cooper’s protection agent was unconscious half an hour away from the resort—

It didn’t look good.




Chapter Two


Isabella couldn’t believe she’d fainted. How embarrassing. Worse, she was pretty sure Jacob had seen her hit the floor.

But that was nothing compared to the ultimate shame. She’d failed her protectee. She made a small sound of distress and clamped her eyelids shut against the remembered images.

“I know you’re awake.” Jacob’s low, half-familiar voice seemed to come from far away, making her aware of the yielding surface beneath her and the sense of being in a quiet space amid action. “You said you wanted to talk privately. So talk.”

She wanted to tell him to go away and leave her alone. But she had come to him, not the other way around, and she still couldn’t talk herself out of the logic.

Within an hour of the attack, she’d found herself kicked out of Cooper’s chalet and cut off from all the official options. Refusing to give up on her duty, she’d decided she needed an unofficial option. And Jacob Powell, ex-Special Forces airstrike pilot and current high-stakes bounty hunter was about as unofficial as it got.

More importantly, from what she’d heard over the years—not that she’d been keeping tabs on him, of course—having him on her side was like having an entire private army at her disposal. That, more than anything, had compelled her to make the drive to the bounty hunters’ headquarters in the mountains. If she could have avoided this awkward reunion, she would have. But duty—and failure—had made it a necessity.

So she opened her eyes and shoved herself upright on the couch in one smooth move that left her head reeling and her stomach fisting on a slap of nausea.

God, she hated percussion bombs. She’d caught the edge of a relatively mild flash-bang during training and her ears had rung for a week. The one in the chalet had nearly flattened her. Then LBJ had finished the job with one blow of a gun butt.

By the time she’d come to, it had all been over. Secretary Cooper had been unconscious, tied to a dining room chair.

And Hope and the twin girls had been gone.

Kidnapped.

“Isabella.” Jacob’s voice softened on the word, sending a spear of pain straight through her chest. “Talk to me.”

Because he was why she’d turned away from the airport and headed into the hills, she opened her eyes. And nearly closed them again.

He stood across the small office, shifting from foot to foot. When she’d thought of him over the years—and she’d thought of him as little as possible—her memories had been of constant motion and unflinching intensity. That hadn’t changed.

But other parts of him had. He was bigger than she remembered. Not taller, though at five-eleven, he’d always topped her by a good four inches, but broader. More solid. More muscular—and the Jacob she remembered had been plenty muscular to begin with.

Remembering those muscles, and the masculine skin that covered them, she twisted to put her feet on the floor, clutching the edge of the leather-covered sofa cushion for balance.

Jacob frowned. “You should stay down. You’re pretty banged up.”

“I’m fine.” In reality, she had a hell of a headache, but Cooper had begged her not to alert the resort’s medical staff. She glanced at Jacob. “I need your help.”

He stilled. “What happened?”

She fought the urge to close her eyes again, to block out the things she’d seen once she’d regained consciousness. The quiet chalet. Louis Cooper tied to a dining room chair with a message written across his naked chest in his own blood.

Images of failure. Of danger. Of a possible national crisis in the making that she was forbidden to speak of.

But damn it, she wasn’t going to let something like this happen. Not on her watch.

So she kept her eyes level on his and saw his body vibrate with the need to pace, to do something. Or maybe that was her body? How could she be this near him after all these years and not feel the pull?

She couldn’t. That was the simple answer. Just looking at him warmed her stomach and tightened her throat, and not only from the memories, but from his sheer presence. He seemed to fill the office, dominate it, possess it. If she could have turned and run, she would have. But Hope and the girls needed her help and Jacob was her only hope, damn it.

She took a breath, swallowed and said, “Louis Cooper’s family was abducted from the Golf Resort five hours ago.”

The sentence crushed her, as though saying it out loud made it more real. She half expected Jacob to shout at her, to panic, to tell her she was no damn good—because that was what she’d told herself, and that was the hair-trigger temper she remembered.

But he merely nodded and watched her from across the room. “Tell me everything.”

Something broke inside her, loosening the band around her heart. She almost told him how gut-wrenchingly, mind numbingly scared she’d been when she’d seen Louis Cooper’s body tied to a chair, limp and covered with blood.

She, who was never, ever, scared.

But telling him that would be leaning. Leeching. All those needy, greedy things he’d accused her of when they’d broken up and she’d realized that the things she’d seen as togetherness, as love, he’d seen as her being controlling. Clinging. Unstable.

Like her mother.

And, blast it, where had that come from? That whole mess was ancient history.

Isabella jammed her eyelids down, scrubbed vicious circles along her temples and shoved the memories clear out of her mind. She was a different person now. He was a different person. They couldn’t come at this from where they’d been back then. They needed to start fresh. Special Agent to local law, though he wasn’t technically the law.

Hopefully, he was still interested in justice.

“I was assigned to protect Secretary Cooper. He and his family have been threatened because of the Lunkinburg situation.” She glanced over and saw by Jacob’s faint nod that he followed the politics. He was standing across the room, back to the door as though he wanted to be anywhere else. The index finger of his left hand—he was ambidextrous in all ways that counted, she remembered with a faint wash of heat—twitched against his thigh. The rest of him was still, though leashed energy vibrated in the room.

His constant need for motion used to exhaust her, annoy her. Now she found it a comfort. If she could harness all that energy—

“If you were attacked five hours ago and Cooper’s family taken, the sooner you tell me—or the authorities—what happened, the better. The chances of finding abductees decrease exponentially with time.” His expression didn’t waver. It was locked between coolness and dismissal, both of which seemed at odds with what she remembered from that first moment their eyes had met downstairs. She’d felt the click of recognition, the hard wash of heat, and she’d seen the same flare in his expression, the same moment of hope, then memory.

What did it mean?

Nothing. It meant nothing. She wasn’t here to rekindle a former romance that had ended bloodily. She was here because she had no other option. Because Hope and the girls needed her.

“You’re right.” She took a deep breath, organized her uncharacteristically scattered thoughts and made her report, pretending she was speaking to one of her bosses rather than to her ex-lover. “Not long after the press conference, maybe five-thirty this afternoon, Secretary Cooper’s chalet at the Golf Resort was attacked. A percussion bomb stunned the occupants of the chalet.” Including me, she wanted to say, but didn’t because it was easier to report things this way.

She strove for the professional detachment she prided herself on, the lack of emotion so different from who she’d been, where she’d come from. “Three men entered the chalet wearing rubber masks resembling Presidents Nixon, Johnson and Clinton.” She pulled out the mental snapshot she’d taken of the attackers and compared them to each other, to the furniture and walls. Remembered them coming toward her. “Nixon was about five-ten and skinny as a rail. Mid-brown hair on his arms and hands. Johnson and Clinton were taller and more muscular, though still lean.”

She paused, remembering the blow, the unconsciousness and the screaming fear of coming around and not knowing what she would find.

Of finding three of her four protectees gone.

When Jacob remained quiet, motionless except for his left index finger, which continued to tap a complicated beat against his leg, she continued. “They…” She swallowed, realizing she couldn’t give the report from a distance now. “I missed with my first shot, hit Nixon in the leg and got off two more rounds before they rendered me unconscious.” There, that sounded more detached than clubbed me with a gun butt, more professional than knocked me out.

Being professional and unemotional was the key here.

She thought Jacob muttered something, but when she looked at him, the cool expression was firmly in place. “Go on,” he said. “Time’s wasting.”

No kidding. She could feel the minutes and hours slipping by as though they hid beneath her skin. So she plowed through the rest of the story and tried to put her mind on hold. “When I came to, the three men were gone. Secretary Cooper was tied to a chair, unconscious. They probably used chloroform, by the smell of it.” She sucked in a breath and said the rest in a rush. “His wife, Hope, and twin toddlers, Becky and Tiffany, were gone. I revived and untied him, but before I could search the premises, the Secretary directed me to play the answering machine back. There was a message.”

She paused and wrestled with the memory. No matter how far she detached herself, the low, gritty voice and the feeling of absolute failure cut through her defenses.

Jacob’s finger stilled. “Keep going.”

“The voice—male, no discernable accent—stated that Secretary Cooper’s family was safe for now, but would be killed if the kidnappers’ instructions were not followed to the letter.” She searched back, trying to remember the exact phrasing and intonation. “If Secretary Cooper alerted the authorities, his wife and daughters would die. Additional instructions would follow.” She remembered the beat of silence that had followed the kidnappers’ message, the absolute horror in Louis Cooper’s eyes, the cold spear of guilt in her heart. She swallowed. “That was all.”

“Did you follow the instructions?” Jacob asked, his whole body tense with its stillness.

“I wouldn’t have,” she admitted. “I wanted to call my superiors and the FBI immediately, but Secretary Cooper forbade it.” His eyes had been wild, his grip on her wrist too strong to deny. Nearly maniacal in his support of the U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists, Louis Cooper had crumbled at the threat to his young family. Not that she could blame him. The very thought of sweet Hope and the two eighteen-month old girls in captivity was enough to make her want to weep. Or scream.

“And you listened to him?” The faint bite underlying Jacob’s words scratched along Isabella’s nerve endings like an accusation.

“I had no choice,” she snapped. “He called my superiors and had me removed from duty. I’m off the active list until my next assignment starts in a month.”

And that was the cruelest cut of all. Though she was one of the most effective agents in the D.C. field office, she knew she wasn’t particularly popular. She just didn’t get how some of her co-workers turned their personalities on and off, how they went from goofy pranksters or sensitive touchy-feely types to hard-nosed agents in an instant. She couldn’t do that—it came too close to what she’d grown up with, a mother who was on top of the world one day, in the dregs of despair the next. Because of it, she’d gotten the reputation of being effective but not particularly friendly. All about the job. And if the labels had stung, she’d shoved the feelings aside because they were, after all, only feelings.

She knew that if it had been one of the other agents being shoved off the secretary’s protection detail, the bosses would have asked questions. But because it was her, the field office had shrugged and made the change.

Tears prickled out of nowhere and she catapulted from the couch to pace, not realizing until it was too late that her path between a set of wooden shelves and a paper-covered desk would bring her dangerously close to Jacob.

He grabbed her arms. The feel of his strong fingers raced through her like lightning and she reeled back, tried to break free from the heat and temptation.

“Isabella!” He shook her gently. “Iz, I know you’re hurt. I know you’re tired and shocky, but you’ve got to do better than this. Why didn’t you go to your superiors yourself? Why did you come here?”

How did you know where I was? The question hung unasked between them, but there was no way she was answering. He didn’t need to know that she checked up on him now and then, didn’t need to know that she’d tried to duck the Montana assignment, not wanting to be in the same state as the Big Sky Bounty Hunters’ headquarters.

Most of all, he didn’t need to know she had measured every man in her life since college against him and found them lacking in everything except kindness.

Because whatever Jacob Powell was, he wasn’t kind.

But she wasn’t looking for kindness now. She needed a warrior, and he fit the bill.

She pulled away from him and crossed her arms to form a pitiful shield between them. “Louis Cooper’s report to my superiors took care of that. He’s smart, he knew exactly how to make it sound like I’d gone mentally shaky and he was trying to cover for me. Thus, the month off.”

And that had galled her down to the bone. But her mother’s problems were in her record, and the condition was genetic. Add that to her reputation as slightly antisocial, and wham.

Instant paid suspension pending a psych eval. Even the thought fisted her stomach with memory and dread. But she didn’t have time for that garbage. Cooper’s family was out there somewhere and she was damn well going to find them.

“So why are you here?” Jacob asked again, his closed expression brooking no evasions.

“I need help.” It stung to admit it, but there was more. “And I think you’ll be interested in hearing who took Hope and the girls.”

“They left a name?”

“No.” She shook her head. “A calling card of sorts. Until I saw it, I thought the attack was linked to the Lunkinburg issue and the stand-up Cooper did with Prince Nikolai.”

“Logical enough,” Jacob agreed. “King Aleksandr’s statement after that press conference certainly wasn’t friendly.” His tone sharpened. “But you don’t think so now?”

She wasn’t quite sure what to think. It didn’t add up. “I said they left a calling card. A signature, in fact, drawn in Cooper’s own blood across his chest.” She glanced over at Jacob, found his eyes intent on her. “MMFAFA.”

Jacob’s disbelief vibrated between them for a split second, then he was in motion. He yanked the door open and bellowed, “Everyone to the situation room, now!” Then he slammed the door and spun toward her, eyes alight with excitement and a hint of accusation. “That’s our bounty. The Montana Militia for a Free America. Eight members of the group escaped from The Fortress last month and we’ve been on their trail ever since. If this is their work…” He trailed off, spun and yanked the door open. “Stay here.”

She grabbed his arm and felt him stiffen even as the sizzle of heat raced through her body at the contact. “I want in on this. I know your group was involved with the MMFAFA incident with the train derailment, and I know your bounty is still at large. We can help each other. Why else do you think I came here?”

He shrugged her off. “Because you didn’t have anyplace else to go.” She stepped back, stung, and he cursed at himself. “Sorry, that was nasty. And I’m grateful you brought me this information. But you have no idea who you’re dealing with here—it’d be best if you stay here while we take care of it. These men are dangerous. Violent.”

She grabbed his arm again when he tried to leave the room, and this time hung on when he brushed her off. She kept her voice low and urgent. “I’m a Secret Service agent, and a damned good one. You think I haven’t gone up against militias before? That I can’t handle myself in dangerous situations? Well, to hell with you. I’m in this thing all the way.” When he glanced down at her fingers on his arm and raised one eyebrow, rage flared and she snapped. “Don’t you dare accuse me of clinging or being irrational. It was my job to protect Louis Cooper. My duty. There’s no way I’m letting you take over. Not while there’s breath in my body.”

Jacob froze, even the background sparks of motion stilling as his eyes went dark. Isabella expected an explosion.

Instead his voice softened. “I wasn’t going to accuse you of being irrational.” He took a breath, then said, “I’m sorry about how I handled things back at Georgetown. You weren’t clingy or irrational, or any of the things I accused you of. You wanted a ring and I wanted an out, so I hit you where I knew it would hurt most.” Even as his words slashed through the years around her heart, his voice hardened again. “But that’s ancient history and this is today. I don’t want you anywhere near Boone and his maniac followers. Stay here and let us do our jobs.”

He squeezed her hand, removed it from his arm and slipped through the door.

Isabella saw it shut, heard a dead bolt slide and realized there was a lock on either side. Some office.

But even as her mind noted these details, her consciousness grappled with Jacob’s words. Perhaps it was way too little and thirteen years too late, but his apology left her shaken. It brought back a lurking tendril of graduation day when she’d accused him of being unfaithful and he’d thrown it right back at her, saying she had pushed him away with the very closeness she had so depended on, so wanted.

I’m sorry. His words echoed in her heart. I hit you where I knew it would hurt most. For a girl whose goal was to break free from her upbringing to hear that she’d gone right back there—

Yeah, it had hurt.

“But that’s neither here nor there,” she said out loud, wincing when her voice scraped on the words. “What’s important now is rescuing Cooper’s family.”

And there was no way she was leaving that solely to Jacob and his teammates, she thought, determination hardening in her soul. No way in hell.

She tried the door to confirm it was locked, then scanned the room. The desk held a nifty computer locked in wait mode—though she was pretty sure she could crack it if she took the time—and news printouts with cryptic notes in the margins. There were no photographs or personal items, but the air smelled of Jacob.

So why did he have locks on both sides of his door?

Masculine voices rose from downstairs, likely shock and excitement as Jacob revealed that the bounty hunters’ quarry had been involved in abducting the Secretary of Defense’s family.

Gritting her teeth with the need to be out there making her report, Isabella turned to the single small window. It wasn’t locked, but a bar prevented it from opening more than halfway. The gap was too small for a man to pass through.

But she was no man.



JACOB SCANNED the faces of the half dozen bounty hunters assembled in the situation room on the lower level of the headquarters. Away from the public eye, the “basement” contained a warren of interconnected rooms boasting weapons, interrogation rooms and more surveillance equipment than most Secret Service field offices.

Although Cameron Murphy was their leader, the former Special Forces colonel gestured for Jacob to proceed with the meeting. “Why don’t you fill us in on our mystery lady upstairs?”

“Agent Isabella Gray.” Preternaturally aware of the zing in his blood from where she’d touched him, Jacob cleared his throat, shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from twitching, and paced. “She was in charge of protecting the Secretary of Defense, Louis Cooper. Near dinnertime, three masked men disabled Agent Gray and Secretary Cooper with a flash-bang and kidnapped his wife and twin girls. A message on the answering machine warned of a ransom demand to follow.”

He grimaced. Saying the words out loud punched him below the heart. He might have learned long ago that just as he wasn’t going to be the son his parents wanted, he also wasn’t marriage-and-babies material. But the thought of a man’s family being taken brought a fierce spurt of anger. Quickly he sketched in the rest of the attack and the circumstances of Isabella’s suspension, ending with, “She says Cooper had letters written across his chest. MMFAFA.”

There was a collective hiss of indrawn breath. A quiet oath, though Jacob wasn’t sure who had cursed. He nodded. “Yeah. Boone Fowler and his boys are at it again. This might be just the break we need to catch these bastards.”

“Is Agent Gray going to be involved?” The question came from Mike Clark. Tall and lanky, brown-haired and brown-eyed, Mike read body language like it was vernacular English, which Jacob found vaguely creepy.

He shifted, wondering what Mike saw in him, what his body said about his relationship with Isabella. “She’s given me all the information she has. She’ll be safe here while we track the bounty.”

Cameron frowned. “She has training and experience, and if Cooper and his family were under her protection, she has major motivation to go after the kidnappers. You don’t think we should use her?”

“No, sir, I don’t,” Jacob said flatly. “She stays in my office. Period.”

At that moment he didn’t care what Mike was reading off his body language. He only cared that Isabella be kept as far away from Boone Fowler as possible.

Fowler and his men had killed hundreds of innocents over the years. They had killed Cameron’s sister five years earlier and shot Cameron in the shoulder. The leader of Big Sky Bounty Hunters still carried a scar and a grudge. Since their escape from The Fortress, the militiamen had murdered at least two others—a German diplomat and the governor of Montana.

Jacob would be damned if they got to Isabella.

A brisk knock at the door of the situation room interrupted his train of thought and had Cameron reaching for the lockdown button beneath the conference table.

Suspicion prickled at Jacob and he held up a hand. “Wait.” He reached over and flicked on the surveillance cams monitoring the hall. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Isabella stood outside the door, hands on her hips and a determined look on her bruised face as she stared up into the camera. A hidden microphone picked up her words. “Don’t even think you’re keeping me out of this, Jacob Powell.”

His quick surprise was followed by a spike of temper. He yanked the door open, pulled her inside and banged the door shut. “How did you get out of—” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “You climbed out the window? You’re insane. You realize that, don’t you? You’re insane!”

It wasn’t until he saw her flinch that he realized what he’d said and cursed himself inwardly. But just as the heat between them had always flared near uncontrollable bounds, he instantly aimed to wound when it came to her. He opened his mouth to apologize—again—but Cameron nudged him aside.

“Cameron Murphy.” He stuck out a hand. “I’m the boss around here, and Boone Fowler, leader of the MMFAFA, is my bounty.” His tone brooked no argument. “Big Sky is collaborating with the authorities on tracking the fugitives and we’d appreciate any information you could give us.”

Isabella shook hands with him, her expression tinged with wariness as she scanned the assembly. All ex-Special Forces, the bounty hunters were an intimidating lot.

But she stuck out her chin as though leading for a punch, and said, “I help you, you help me. Quid pro quo.”

“Meaning?” Cam asked mildly while Jacob shifted from foot to foot, suppressing the urge to toss her over his shoulder, carry her back to his office and lock the window, bar the door, and nail the whole thing tight.

“Meaning I’ll give you what I have and what I know, but I want in on the search. I’m quick, smart, trained, and I have a hell of a motivation. Louis Cooper, his wife and baby girls are my responsibility. That doesn’t stop just because the kidnappers have convinced him to block my official abilities.”

“Don’t do it,” Jacob said to his boss in a near growl, though he’d never dared tell Cam what to do before. “You know what Fowler and his men are like. What about your sister’s death? What about when Fowler almost killed your wife?”

The other men shifted and glanced at each other, obviously expecting Cam to blast Jacob. But instead the Big Sky leader said mildly, “Agent Gray isn’t my sister. Like Mia, she’s trained, and unless I miss my guess, Isabella has a weapon tucked at the small of her back. That goes a long way toward leveling sexual prejudices in my book. And—” his look was less forgiving than his tone “—if Mia ever heard you say that, she’d kick your ass. Don’t forget she was a bounty hunter when we hooked up.”

“That’s neither here nor there.” Jacob’s fingers worried a plastic dart flight in his pocket. “I don’t want Isabella involved.”

“I get that.” Cam turned to Isabella. “Without knowing what is—or was—between you and Powell, let me ask. Are you going to have a problem working with him?”

Expression flat, she shook her head. “Not on your life. Whatever was between us died a long, long time ago. Now it’s just leftovers, and I can deal with leftovers.”

Ouch. Jacob’s temper flared even before Cam cut a glance in his direction and asked, “How about you?”

She’s nuts, he wanted to say. Leftovers my butt. But over the years he’d thought long and hard about what he’d done to her, what he’d said, and he’d realized that cruelty was cruelty, whatever the provocation. And he tried not to be a cruel man.

So instead he fisted his hands in his pockets and felt the dart flight crumple into a ball. “No problem whatsoever, boss. It’ll be just like working with one of the guys.”

“Fine then.” Cam extended his hand for a second shake. “Welcome to the team, Special Agent Gray. Now, let’s get to work.”

But as the bounty hunters—plus one suspended Secret Service agent—sat around the conference table, Jacob knew it was anything but fine. He didn’t want Isabella near Boone Fowler and his followers.

And he’d be damned if he was a leftover.




Chapter Three


An hour later Isabella, Jacob and two other bounty hunters headed to the Golf Resort for a recon. She let Jacob drive her rented Jeep, not because she’d felt particularly shaky, but because she’d lacked the energy to argue when he insisted.

And because the situation was so damned weird.

In the first few years after she and Jacob had gone their separate ways, one part of her had hated him like poison while another had dreamed of their reunion, how he would one day realize they’d had something special together, something he couldn’t find with anyone else.

Unfortunately the reverse had been true. Over the months and years, Isabella’s hatred had dimmed and she’d come to realize that he’d been right about some of the things he’d said. They’d been too young, their relationship too intense to do anything but burn itself out. She’d forgiven him for that, but not for the way he’d ended it, the way he’d gotten drunk, picked a fight, picked up a girl, and the next day tried to blame it all on her.

He’d faded from her conscious mind as she progressed from the Criminal Investigations Training Program in Georgia to the Secret Service Training Academy in Maryland. By the time she’d gotten herself established in her first field office, Jacob had become little more than a memory of the all-consuming, scary emotions that she tried like hell to avoid.

And she had. For almost thirteen years she’d avoided emotional hot flashes and brain-scrambling entanglements. She’d built herself a solid, steady life. It wasn’t predictable—how could the Protections Division ever be that?—and it wasn’t always safe—but the danger she’d encountered had always came from without, never within.

Until now.

When she’d made the decision to drive to the Big Sky headquarters, she’d told herself she could handle seeing Jacob again. But she wasn’t sure she could handle the wild emotions that had bubbled to the surface the moment she’d seen him, the moment she’d touched him.

She was supposed to have outgrown those feelings, damn it.

“Your head bothering you?”

She jolted at the sound of his voice, then consciously smoothed out her frown. “No. It’s fine.” She pointed at a passing sign. “Turn in here, the resort is a mile and a half up on the left. Use the second entrance. Secretary Cooper stayed in the Presidential Chalet.”

Which was sadly ironic, given that men wearing ex-presidents’ faces had taken his family.

“No problem.” He threaded the Jeep through the winding roads as though he knew exactly where he was going.

Which he probably did, she realized with faint discomfort. He’d lived in the area for close to five years now, and undoubtedly knew these roads better than she did.

But he hadn’t snapped when she’d bossed him with the directions. He would have before, she thought, then cursed under her breath. She needed to stop comparing the Jacob of today with the one she’d known in college.

“Problem?” His single word settled between them, asking so many more things than it should have.

She let out a frustrated breath. “Yeah. Problem. But it’s my problem, not yours.”

He followed the signs toward the chalet where Secretary Cooper and his family had stayed. Isabella shivered when they passed between the monstrous stone pillars edged with copper filigree. At Jacob’s sharp look, she shrugged. “The last time I turned through here, Secretary Cooper was playing patty-cake with one of the girls in the back of the limo. Hope and I were chatting about the area. It was normal. Relaxed.” Or as relaxed as she allowed herself to be on the job.

Jacob parked the Jeep in front of the chalet and waited while the SUV containing the other bounty hunters parked off to the side. Then he turned, looked at her too closely and said, “It wasn’t your fault, Isabella.”

Something shifted in her chest and her eyes burned. She wanted to lean into him, to crawl against him. Weakness. He was her weakness, the man who brought tricky emotions too near the surface and made her want to burrow in and cling.

Hating the frailty, the temptation, she climbed out of the Jeep and slammed the door hard enough to attract the attention of the other bounty hunters. Rather than explain—especially since she couldn’t even explain it to herself—she said, “Right after he relieved me of my duties, Secretary Cooper made arrangements to return to Washington. The cleaning crew won’t be in until tomorrow, so everything should be undisturbed. But I didn’t find anything in the quick run-through I was able to make before Cooper kicked me out, and I’ll bet he picked the place up so there wouldn’t be any suspicion. He’s committed to doing everything the kidnappers have demanded, particularly keeping the authorities out of this.”

It tugged at her that a man of Cooper’s stature and conviction could be so badly compromised by a threat to his family. A threat that never should have come to pass.

“Let’s get on with it.” A dark-haired, heavily muscled hunter named Tony hefted a case that looked like a souped-up crime scene field kit. “We need to be in and out before dawn.”

Isabella nodded shortly. “Come on.” She unlocked the front door with her key and pushed into the chalet before the hesitation could form. She didn’t want to look at the bullet-stung sofa and imagine Hope and the girls, didn’t want to look at the dining room table, hastily righted and reorganized, and remember seeing Louis Cooper bound to a chair, unmoving. But it was those images that, hopefully, would provide a clue.

Mike and Tony moved into the chalet for a preliminary sweep. They didn’t touch anything right away, instead getting an overall feeling of the scene of the crime, which should have had technicians swarming over it with state-of-the-art equipment instead of one lame duck agent and three bounty hunters.

Isabella felt an uncharacteristic, unwelcome press of tears at how quickly this had gone down, how completely her work—and Louis Cooper’s life—had been derailed. She swallowed hard and flinched when Jacob touched her arm.

She glanced at him and saw that his eyes asked, Are you okay? But out loud, he said, “How did they get in? Break a window in the back?”

“No.” The bitter failure of it burned her throat. “I looked. They didn’t break a damned thing. One minute everything was fine and the next they were inside my perimeter setting off a flash-bang in the living room. How?” She spread her hands to indicate confusion. Anger churned in her gut. “Damned if I know. I had the locks changed last week, and motions set around the far perimeter. They shouldn’t have been able to get through.”

He stared past her as the two other bounty hunters moved from room to room, turning on the lights as they went. The illumination lent a strangely cheerful glow to the empty space. “Maybe they got the new keys from someone on the inside,” Jacob said.

“Probably. Damn it.” Isabella forced herself to move into the dining room and look around, though she’d done so not seven hours earlier while Secretary Cooper had made his travel arrangements with shaking hands, then made a second call that effectively cut her off at the knees by subtly claiming she’d been acting irrational.

Irrational, my ass.

She felt the old, familiar anger and gritted her teeth. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

They searched the chalet from top to bottom, but Cooper had been thorough. He’d removed the tape from the old-fashioned answering machine, wiped the flash-bang soot off the walls and even flipped the torn leather cushion, which set off soft warning bells in the back of her mind.

It seemed like awfully clear thinking for a man whose family had been kidnapped.

But what was the alternative? That the kidnappers had come back afterward to clean the chalet? Unlikely.

So, senses heightened, she moved from room to room, searching again and watching the men of Big Sky perform a thorough forensic scan. Cameron Murphy’s bounty hunters had the reputation of being the best at what they did—and their skills were many and varied.

Not that she’d checked them out, or anything.

Then again, who was she kidding? She was preternaturally aware of Jacob’s every move, his quiet words to the others.

And that just ticked her off more. No doubt he hadn’t spared her another thought after they split. He certainly hadn’t tried to get in touch over the years.

Cursing inwardly, she redirected her thoughts, tossed the bedroom as thoroughly as she could, and sucked in a breath when she unearthed a squeaky duck from behind the bureau. It was purple, which meant it was Tiffany’s. The twins were nearly identical in looks and attitude, but Tiff loved purple and Becky preferred yellow.

God, she thought, please let them be okay.

She wanted to throw the cheerful little duck against the wall and howl at the injustice. She wanted to cuddle it close and pray for the babies and their mother.

Instead she set the toy on the bed and kept searching.



“I’VE GOT NOTHING.” Jacob glanced over his shoulder at Mike, who was meticulously dusting the door handle that lead out to the back porch. “You?”

“Wiped clean.” The normally garrulous Clark straightened from his task with an it’s-late-and-I’m-tired groan. “This is a bust. Let’s get your woman and get out of here.”

“She’s not my woman,” Jacob snapped with a quick, vicious bite of temper toward a man he considered a friend—if a slightly creepy one.

“If you say so.” Mike shrugged, but his eyes were sharp on Jacob’s face. On his stance.

“And don’t try to read me, either,” Jacob growled. “I’m not a suspect.”

“I don’t try to read anyone, I read them. And do you want to know what I see right now? I see—”

“No!” Jacob leaned down and got in the other man’s face. “I absolutely don’t want to know. I don’t believe in that hocus-pocus cr—”

“Jacob?” Isabella said from behind him. “Am I interrupting?”

He spun toward the arched doorway and the anger morphed again, this time into something hot and greedy. Something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time and didn’t welcome. “Yes, damn it, you’re—” Interrupting, he started to say but made himself bite the words off.

It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t deal with seeing her again. But just as seeing her on the television screen had immediately jarred him out of whack, having her an arm’s length away was…too tempting.

He was trying to handle it. Damn it, he was handling it. But he wasn’t handling the quick return of his oldest enemy—anger. He hated that she’d brought back that same sense of being trapped, of being out of control.

God, he hated this. And it wasn’t even her fault. Hell, from the looks of her, cool as a Montana stream, she wasn’t feeling a tenth of what he was. Which made it his problem, not hers.

So he took a breath and leveled his tone. “No, you’re not interrupting. We’re finished in here. We’ve got nothing. You?”

She shook her head and her auburn hair followed the motion in a slide of color and softness. “I didn’t find anything, but Tony wants you two at the back door.”

“Let’s go.” Glad to have something to do, Jacob gestured for her to go first, a bit of manners ingrained by his mother—or rather by the fleet of nannies, dance instructors and protocol experts she’d hired to shape her son into a civilized man like his father.

It had all been another level of control, one he’d gloried at escaping in college and broken free of just after, though he’d left a part of himself behind.

And wasn’t sure how to get it back. Wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Yet at the same time, the mossy-eyed woman with the rich auburn hair pulled at him, made him want to be a different man than the one he’d made himself. Because he didn’t know how to deal with that, or with her, he ignored Isabella to crouch beside Tony in the foyer just inside the back door. “What have you got?”

The lean, black-haired bounty hunter used the blunt end of a scoopula—a tool that had a sharp blade on one end, a small rounded scoop on the other—to scrape a clump of dirt off the rattan mat. “Maybe nothing. But maybe something. I’m betting the latter.”

“Tell me.” Jacob gestured for Mike to join him and stiffened when Isabella elbowed her way into the huddle.

“Look at it very closely.” Tony held the small metal scoop up to the artificial light coming from an elegant chandelier above them. “What do you see?”

Jacob squinted. “Dirt?”

“Not just dirt.” Isabella pressed closer to the sample, nearly leaning across Jacob’s lap. “There’s something else in there. Something green?”

Jacob gritted his teeth and tried like hell not to breathe, but her scent enveloped him, swamped him, surprised him. It was nothing like the flowers-and-sun-shine perfume he remembered from before. This was a woman’s scent, sharp and spicy and take-no-prisoners.

Like Isabella herself.

“Exactly,” Tony said. “That’s oxidized copper ore you’re seeing, which means…”

Isabella leaned even closer, so her upper arm and the side of one breast pressed against Jacob’s shoulder. He ground his teeth and shifted away as she said, “Which means it could have come from one of the mining areas.” She sat back, frowning, and Jacob took a breath that was tainted with her essence, even though she wasn’t crowding his space anymore. “But how does that help us? There are hundreds of mines in this state.”

“True.” Tony smiled, his too handsome face folding into creases and dimples that never failed to attract the ladies.

Knowing it, and knowing Tony’s love-’em-and-leave-’em philosophy, Jacob angled his body between Isabella and the other bounty hunter and snarled, “So why are you grinning like this dirt is a clue?”

“Because,” Tony answered easily, “I’ve got degrees in geology and topology. I know my dirt. Copper was only mined in one area of the state, about two hours north of here. There are maybe a half dozen shafts, all within short drives of each other.”

“You think it’s worth chasing dirt?” Mike asked dubiously. “What if Cooper brought it in on his shoes? Or maybe one of the security folks? No offense, Agent Gray.” He nodded at Isabella.

She shrugged. “It’s Isabella, and no offense taken. But I can guarantee it wasn’t from the secretary or his family—they haven’t gone sight-seeing since we arrived. Hope…” Jacob saw her swallow after the name, but when she spoke again, her voice was firm. Unemotional. “Hope preferred to shop. And it wasn’t the local cops. They weren’t allowed in the chalet. I was the only one on internal security.”

Tony cut his gaze back to Mike. “So our best guess is that the dirt came along with the kidnappers. And if the kidnappers really do represent the MMFAFA…”

“Then our bounty could be hiding in or near one of these copper mines.” Jacob felt the beginning of a connection form in his brain. The beginnings of excitement. Hell, they might be onto something here.

“Bingo.” Tony dumped the sample into a small screw-top jar. “So the way I see it, we need to do two things. One, we head over to the mine area—it’ll be dawn by the time we get there—and search as many as we can. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If not, we can take samples from each site and I’ll run some basic comparisons. Once we’ve identified where the fugitives have been, we can plant some surveillance equipment.”

“Good idea.” Mike straightened to his feet. “Vermin usually return to their burrows.”

Jacob stood, as well, and offered Isabella a hand with his family’s good manners. She ignored him and rose unassisted. He scowled and told himself to focus on the job. Which reminded him of something. “And don’t forget about the break-in at the clinic.”

When the other bounty hunters turned to stare, he cursed. How could he have forgotten about that?

Isabella had arrived, that was how. Since the first moment he’d seen her that evening he’d been running on half a brain, with the other half stuck in remember when mode. Or, more honestly, remember when combined with a healthy dose of lust that had very little to do with past history and everything to do with the fact that Isabella had grown from a hot college babe to a striking woman who still had the power to unglue his brain.

And if he’d resented the power she had over him thirteen years earlier, he mistrusted it even more now. He was a grown man. She didn’t have the right to make him feel this way.

Yet in fairness, she had done nothing untoward. It was all him. His weakness. His anger. His lack of control.

“Jacob? You said something about a clinic?” Her husky voice cut through the confusion.

“Sorry.” He took a breath and forced himself to focus on the job. On his bounty. That was what he was now, a bounty hunter. He was proud of the work, and as an added bonus, his parents remained genteelly horrified by his career choice. “I e-mailed a friend over at the dispatcher’s office earlier tonight, to see if she had news on the fugitives. She said one of the local walk-in clinics was tossed earlier this evening. You add that to Isabella’s report that she shot one of the kidnappers in the leg, and we might have something.”

“You’re darned right we might.” Tony clapped Jacob on the shoulder nearly hard enough to send him flying. “Let’s head for the mines. I don’t think there’s anything else to see here.”

When the other men gathered their kits and headed for the front door, Jacob hung back. “You guys go ahead and update the others. I’m going to take Isabella to headquarters for some rest. I’ll meet you out at the mines.”

“The hell you will!” She rounded on him. “You’ve already been outvoted once on this issue. Do we really need to discuss it again? Like it or not, I’m working with you on this case. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t even have these leads if I hadn’t brought them to you.”

“That’s right.” Jacob scowled and stepped in until he could feel her body heat. “But let’s also not forget that you came to me. You’re cut off, discredited and counting on us for help. So you could try being a bit more cooperative.” She paled at his words and Jacob cursed inwardly. What was it about her that made him so mean?

Fighting the urge to grab on and shake some sense into her, he softened his voice, though he was acutely aware of the others listening with avid interest. “Be reasonable, Iz. You’ve had a hell of a day. You’re bruised, battered and probably concussed. And how much sleep have you gotten in the last couple of days? It can’t have been easy arranging the protection solo.” He continued before she could snap back at him. “You need rest and aspirin. You need to shut it off for a few hours, or you’ll be no good to us or to your protectees.”

He saw the war in her eyes, the need to dig her heels in fighting with the logic.

Logic finally won. Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right, but I don’t like it.”

“Nobody said you had to.” Jacob jerked his head at Mike and Tony, sending them on their way, and resisted the urge to reach out to Isabella when she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

“Every time I slow down, every time I blink, I see Hope and the girls. I see the look in Louis Cooper’s eyes when he woke up and realized they were gone. The expression on his face when he heard that message.” She pushed away from the wall. “But you’re right. I need to grab a few hours.” Her lips curved. “You won’t even need to lock me in while you and the others search the mines. I’ll sleep a bit on your couch, then call in a few favors I’m owed by people who might not have heard about my suspension yet.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He gestured her toward the front door and turned off the remainder of the interior lights. “And, Isabella?”

“Yes?” She paused just inside the front door and turned back to him. The outdoor light cast her in shadow, emphasizing the bruise on her cheek and the dark circles beneath her eyes that made her look young. Vulnerable. Sad.

He shrugged and felt his clothes bind as though they didn’t fit quite right. I’m glad you came to me, he wanted to say, because it scared him to think of her out there alone, searching for Boone Fowler and his men, who would skin her as soon as look at her.

Because of that fear, and because he was suddenly swamped with the irrational desire to pull her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, he scowled and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Never mind. Let’s get out of here. We can send someone back tomorrow to question the staff. There had to be an insider with access to the keys and the security system.”

She nodded and slipped through the front door as though grateful to be away from the emptiness of the chalet. He couldn’t blame her. It was damned eerie how all that violence had been wiped away with a hasty cleaning.

Feeling a small shiver prickle the nape of his neck, Jacob snapped off the last light to plunge them into deep darkness. He closed the front door, which locked behind them, and shivered for real as the September cold sliced through his leather jacket.

It might still be pleasant during the day, but the nights were getting harsher. Snow was on the way. Winter.

“Brr.” Isabella rubbed warmth into her arms. At least he thought she did. In the deep night before dawn, he barely saw the motion, though the cold and the dark seemed to amplify the sound of rustling cloth and the whisper of skin over skin.

“Here.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders, which were just barely visible as a lighter shape against the dark. He probably should have left the front light on, but they’d wanted to leave the chalet as they had found it—abandoned. “Don’t argue,” he said sharply when she protested. “Just take it, okay? It’s freezing.”





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