Mask of a Hunter

by Sylvie Kurtz

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Candace Wilson. Felicia gave me your number.”

  “Is Felicia all right?”

  “No clue. She had me sit for Hannah yesterday and told me to call you if she wasn’t back by the time her shift started.”

  This wasn’t good. Not at all. Why would Felicia leave Hannah with this sour-sounding woman and not return as fast as she could to her precious baby? “Where is she?”

  “Look, I don’t know. All I know is that Felicia didn’t show up for work, and I can’t afford to miss another one of my shifts. You’ve got to come up and get Hannah or I’ll have to call DCYF.”

  “DCYF?”

  “Division of Child, Youth and Family.”

  “No, don’t do that.” Felicia would never get Hannah back, not with her background, and losing Hannah could be the final cut that would send her reeling back to the wild life she was trying to tame for her daughter’s sake.

  “Today’s my day off,” Candace said, “but tomorrow I’ve got to go in.”

  “I’ll pay you. Or I’ll pay for a sitter. Please, just give me a chance to drive up.”

  Candace agreed she could wait one more day for Rory’s arrival.

  “I’m on my way,” Rory said, chewing on a thumbnail. “Just tell me where you are.”

  Candace gave her directions.

  “It’ll take me a day to get to New Hampshire,” Rory said. If she drove all night and stopped only for gas. Map. She would need a map—www.mapquest.com.

  “A day’s all I can give you.”

  Before she’d even hung up, Rory was drawing mental lists and letting the immensity of the task overwhelm her. Both hands on her desk, she closed her eyes and forced herself to draw in a calming breath. When she opened her eyes, the boy was still standing there, waiting mouth gaping open like a fish’s.

  “Christine?” Rory shifted to her friend at the next station. “Would you mind helping this gentleman? I have an emergency.”

  “Oh, sure.” Curiosity flickered in Christine’s eyes. The boy shuffled over to her station, and Rory hurried away to the library director’s office.

  After arranging for an emergency leave, she collected her tapestry tote bag from the break room and left. As she wound her way through the stop-and-go traffic of Maplewood, she dialed the number she’d hoped she’d never have to use.

  “Seekers, Inc., Liv Falconer speaking.”

  “Is Sebastian in? This is Aurora Cates.”

  “Rory! Nice to hear your voice again. He’s right here. Hang on.”

  Liv Falconer had sustained a brain injury over a year ago. Her recovery since then was extraordinary. She couldn’t remember anything from her life before her accident, but she’d created an exciting new life for herself as she’d helped her husband start Seekers, Inc. They specialized in finding people. Sebastian had once been the best manhunter in the U.S. Marshals Service. Rory hoped he hadn’t lost any of his edge.

  “Rory, how are you?” Sebastian’s voice sounded more relaxed than she’d ever heard it when he worked for the USMS. Being in charge of his own fate agreed with him.

  “I need a favor.” She winced.

  “I owe you one.”

  She’d helped Sebastian find the information he needed to help Liv after her accident, but this would take a whole lot more than perusing a few databases for articles dealing with coma, brain injuries and amnesia.

  “It’s my sister. Felicia’s missing.” Rory changed lanes to give herself time to make sense of the mess Felicia had dumped in her lap. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t worry.”

  Sebastian laughed.

  “Okay, I’d worry, but I wouldn’t call you. Since the baby she’d settled down, you know. She loves Hannah. She would never just leave her like that. She told me she was on her way here. And now she’s gone.”

  “Okay, Rory, take a breath and start at the beginning.”

  A red light registered on her unfocused mind and she pressed the brake. She gave Sebastian all the information she had. “I’m heading to Summersfield as soon as I can pack a bag. Can you check on the situation for me?”

  “No problem.”

  A horn honked and she realized the light had turned green. She shifted gears and turned left.

  Her fault. She shouldn’t have given Felicia a chance to say no. Not after their parents had died and Rory had escaped to a job in Washington, D.C. Not when Felicia had called to tell Rory she was pregnant. Not last month when fear had crept into her voice. But handling Felicia had always made Rory feel incompetent. Even though she could locate the epitaph on Max Planck’s gravestone or the fashion fads of the 1950s or the rules of Bunko without breaking a sweat, she could never find the right book or article or piece of information that would let her understand her sister. Giving Felicia a loose rein was easier than fighting against the sheer muscle of so much unbridled anger.

  “I have a man in Summersfield,” Sebastian said. “I’ll have him ask around.”

  Rory groaned as traffic seemed to grind to a halt for no reason. In her low-slung Beetle, she couldn’t see past the UPS truck in front of her and was boxed in on three sides by SUVs. It was only three o’clock, for heaven’s sake. Didn’t these people have jobs? “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Take it easy. You go home and pack, and I’ll arrange for a car to pick you up and a plane to fly you here.”

  She wanted to balk at the generosity, but she couldn’t. She’d let her wild-child sister down too many times. She had to hope that this time she hadn’t waited too long to rein her in.

  IF THERE WAS ONE THING Adriano Constantin Esteleone knew, it was how to survive. You weren’t raised by a woman like Carlotta Esteleone on the mean streets of the Bronx without learning how to think on your feet. To survive, you had to trust and act on your gut instinct before you could analyze the facts of a situation. Stopping to think could get you dead.

  He didn’t care what Sebastian Falconer said. Every fiber of his body told him a woman who looked like TNT was bound to detonate, and he couldn’t chance her blowing his cover.

  “No.” Ace left no room for disagreement. The conference room in the basement offices of Seekers, Inc., also known as the Aerie, was boardroom-comfortable with its cream walls, soft lighting, leather chairs and oval cherrywood table. It still smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. But stuck in this leather chair, Ace felt as trapped as if he’d walked down the wrong alley in the middle of the night with a posse of thugs hard on his heels. He gripped the arms of the chair and scowled at Falconer, sitting at the head of the table. “I can’t have my attention divided like that.”

  How could Falconer do this to him? He worked alone. Always had. It was part of the deal. As Ace Lyon, working as a grease monkey at Fletcher Automotive, he’d spent the last six months winning the Fletcher brothers’ confidence. And now Falconer wanted him to blow it all to bits for this woman just when the case was coming together? He couldn’t. This case was too important. It was scum like Fletcher who’d killed his mother and poisoned his sister. There was no way he was walking away. Not when he was this close to shutting down their corridor and getting his sister back on the right track.

  “He’s right,” the woman who was causing all this upheaval said.

  At least she was smart enough to know she didn’t belong in a place like Summersfield. She sat calmly across the table from him in her prim and proper green tweed suit. But all that wild red hair and those fire-gold eyes made her look as unstable as a homemade pipe bomb. That couldn’t be good.

  “I want to know what happened to Felicia. That’s all. I’m not an agent or an operative or whatever it is you call the people who work for you.”

  She was working as hard at ignoring him as Ace was at ignoring her. But it wasn’t happening. He was as aware of her as if she were a lit fuse and he was gunpowder. “Felicia’s hiding from Fletcher.”

  “Felicia wouldn’t have left Hannah behind.” Rory almost knocked over the mug of coffee in front of
her with her long fingers. “Something’s happened to her.”

  “She’d leave Hannah behind if she thought it was the best thing for the kid.”

  “She was leaving Summersfield,” Rory insisted, cupping curled fingers into curled fingers like two nested Cs.

  “It’s all tied together, Rory.” Falconer tented his hands in front of him on the table. A deep V creased between his eyebrows as he laid out the facts for the woman. His dark gaze tracked from Ace to Rory. “Felicia was involved in the situation in Summersfield. There’s multi-agency task force involved in breaking this case.”

  “Exactly,” she and Ace said at the same time. Finally Falconer was seeing the light.

  Rory’s spine lost some of its starch. “That’s why she was coming to live with me.”

  “Felicia was working for the ATF,” Falconer said.

  “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?” The healthy blush of Rory’s cheeks drained to the color of smoke. Her hands flattened on the table as if she needed the support to hold herself together. “Felicia? Undercover? No, she wouldn’t. Not with Hannah. Not after…” Fingertips red from the force of their pressure on the table, she stared at Falconer as if she were willing him to take back his claim. “No, Felicia wouldn’t do that.”

  Went to show how little she knew about her own sister. There were things he could tell her about Felicia Cates that would turn the fire in Rory’s hair to ash. “She was busted for selling meth a month ago.”

  Rory’s head snapped toward him, sending her hair whipping like flames in a draft. “No. Not with Hannah—”

  “The baby’s what got her the break,” Ace pointed out. “She agreed to wear a wire so she wouldn’t have to spend time in jail.”

  Pushing aside the plate of blueberry muffins and the bowl of fresh-cut pineapple, Rory practically crawled across the table and banged her fist in front of him. Her gaze scorched his, and its heat struck all the way to his gut. “I don’t believe it. She’s changed.”

  “She was under a lot of pressure—” But even Falconer’s cool words couldn’t douse the anger blazing in her eyes.

  “Felicia wouldn’t do anything to put Hannah in danger,” Rory insisted.

  “Well, she did.” Ace resisted the urge to look away from her scalding accusation. “And what you’re walking into is a finely tuned drug operation. Mike Fletcher runs the local distribution, but we’re after the guy who feeds him what he sells. There’s a regular alphabet soup of agencies wanting a piece of this.” As Rory slunk back into her chair, he turned to Falconer, focusing on the goal, not on the burn rising too quickly up his neck. “If she starts asking questions, she’ll mess up the groundwork I’ve set.”

  “She has a legitimate reason to ask questions,” Falconer countered. “Questions you couldn’t ask without raising suspicions.”

  “She’ll blow my cover.”

  Her eyes darkened to a molten gold as hot as embers. “As what? A long-haired, Italian pirate?”

  The leather jacket, chaps over jeans, engineer boots and bandana were part of what it took to fit in. If he knew nothing else, he knew how to fit in. He would not let her put a match to his emotions. He was better than that. “Fitting in is an art. One you can’t learn in books.”

  “I don’t have to fit in. I’m her sister.”

  “It’s not going to work.” She was going to fight him every step of the way, and he wouldn’t stand a chance to make his way deeper into the organization.

  “She knows how to find information.” The hard set of Falconer’s face told Ace he’d already made up his mind. “I’ve used her skills in the past.”

  Fighting this would get him a reassignment—or worse, dismissal. He needed the top-notch salary Falconer was willing to pay for his mastery at fitting in with the biker crowd. Ace swore silently, never letting the mask of control crack. He knew how to play the role. He’d done it all of his life. “This isn’t a book job, Falconer. These people aren’t the ROMEO club.”

  “Romeo club?” Rory asked.

  “Retired Old Men who Eat Out,” Falconer said. “A bunch of retired guys who formed a motorcycle club and meet at restaurants.”

  “The Sons of Steel don’t mess with paper and computers. They’re like old-time gunslingers. They live by the law of the meanest.”

  “There are triggers everywhere,” Falconer said. “Rory knows how to follow their tracks.”

  “That’s Kingsley’s expertise.”

  Falconer didn’t give. “I need Kingsley here. Rory will be on-site.”

  “She wouldn’t know a handlebar from a fender—”

  “—motorcycles.about.com,” Rory said.

  Ace ground his back teeth. “Or an amphetamine from an aspirin—”

  “—usdoj.gov.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That’s going to come in real handy when Mike and Curtis Fletcher come sniffing up your skirt.” He planted one finger on the table in front of her. “What web site are you going to look up to fight two guys who take what they want without caring who it hurts? They’re going to be all over you. Are you ready for that?”

  She didn’t even have the decency to flinch. She just sat there staring at him like a wick feeding on lamp oil.

  “That’s where you come in,” Falconer said. “Your job’s to see that that doesn’t happen. Anybody who tries to lay a hand on her has to go through you.”

  “I’d be fighting the whole gang every day.”

  “Make sure you win them all.”

  A baby-sitter. Falconer was asking him to become a friggin’ baby-sitter. Ace didn’t have time for that. Not when he was so close to shutting down this whole operation. “She’s a damned librarian. She doesn’t know the first thing about working in the field.”

  Rory picked up the laptop at her side and booted it up. Long fingers dancing on the keys, she worked as if no one else was in the room.

  Falconer peeled back the paper cup on a muffin. “She has a keen sense of observation.”

  Lip peeled from teeth in scorn. “Real keen. Her sister’s been eyeball-deep in manure for months. She only noticed when Felicia disappeared. And if you want my opinion, Felicia disappeared on purpose. She couldn’t take the heat and jumped out of the frying pan.”

  Rory glared at him. “No doubt because you’d turned up the pressure for her to wear that wire and made her jump right into the fire.”

  “She doesn’t know who I am.”

  “But you were still ready to sacrifice her for your case. Who, other than me, worried when she disappeared?”

  “I’m not ATF. I’m not FBI. I’m my own man.” Ace swore. She’d done it after all. She’d made him lose his cool. “She’s been gone only two days.” And he had noticed.

  “I don’t care if it’s two hours, two days or two weeks. She wouldn’t have left Hannah behind.” The cold withdrawal in her voice took him aback. What had he said? “I don’t care about your case. I just want to find Felicia.”

  “If we find Felicia,” Falconer said, “we can solve the case.”

  “And that calls for field work.” Ace’s hands curled into fists. “You know it’s going to go bad.”

  “Bad?” Rory said. “What’s he talking about?”

  Nobody was going to believe that someone like him had the hots for someone like her. And if Ace didn’t stake a claim to her, she was going to be fair game. “Sooner or later somebody’s going to get suspicious.”

  “Not if you keep your cool,” Falconer said. He turned to Rory. Her turn for the skewer. “If you find yourself getting up in the morning afraid, then pull out. That’s no reflection on you. Either way, we’ll find Felicia. I made you a promise, and I’ll keep it.”

  Rory nodded slowly at Falconer, then looked up at Ace. “I may not be an undercover ace, Mr. Esteleone, but information is my business. You moved to New Hampshire last September.” She punched the page-up button on her computer. “You placed your sixteen-year-old sister, Bianca, at the Cheshire Academy.” She raised an eyebrow in snoo
ty judgment. “Specializes in dealing with troubled teens, I see. Not cheap. Quite a coup for someone with less than five hundred dollars in his bank account. I’m guessing there was some trouble back in New York. Ah, yes, there it is. Shoplifting. Runaway. And not for the first time.”

  How had she found this information? Bianca’s records were sealed. Leaning back in the chair, he slung an arm over the chair’s back and gave her his best impression of aloof. Stay cool, Ace. Don’t let her get to you. What did she know about Bianca? About their lives? Facts only told one part of the story. Certainly not enough to pass judgment. “What does that prove? That you can find your way around the web? I already knew that. It’s all facts.” He waved his free arm toward the wide outdoors outside the reinforced concrete walls of the basement bunker. “Facts won’t keep you safe out there.”

  “Facts are what you’re looking for. I can find them.”

  “Evidence is what convicts. For that you need the ability to become whatever you’re hunting.”

  “Okay.” Falconer brushed muffin crumbs from his fingers. “This isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

  “You care for your sister,” Rory put her laptop back in its case at her feet, “so you took her out of a bad situation. That’s a fact. I’m trying to do the same.”

  “Then you’re two years too late. You should’ve yanked her out the moment she set eyes on Mike Fletcher.”

  “Enough.” Falconer pushed the plate in front of him. His dark glare demanded compliance.

  The flame completely fizzled out of Rory’s eyes, and Ace wondered why he’d thought of her as such a potent threat. She was nothing but a small woman who was bent on getting in a situation that would drown every last bit of the fire inside her. He turned to Falconer. “She doesn’t understand how dangerous Fletcher is.”

  “Then you’ll have to explain. Aurora is going to Summersfield whether we want her to or not. Legally, there’s nothing we can do to stop her. We might as well make use of her expertise. I want you to keep an eye on her. Make sure no harm comes to her.”