Mask of a Hunter

by Sylvie Kurtz

  He didn’t know squat that would help Rory put this mess behind and get her life back on track.

  With each detail he squeezed out, Rory’s skin got paler, the gold in her eyes flatter, the wall around her higher. Ace reached for her hand. It was ice cold in his. The hard hammer of her pulse beat into his palm. Her trembling arm rattled a tattoo against his. Her distress went straight to his gut.

  With the tape recording of Curtis’s confession, there still wasn’t enough to make a case against Mike. But by using the brother, there was still the hope to get Mike to make a mistake.

  “Can we leave now?” Rory said, so softly Ace had to tilt his head to hear her. He nodded, and with a hand on her stiff shoulders, led her back outside where dark clouds scoured away the blue of the sky.

  He understood her need for justice for her sister, but her detachment worried him. It wasn’t healthy. Instinct told him to draw her out, to force a fight, to get some sort of emotional reaction out of her. But if he gave in to instinct, chances were he’d lose control. And the situation was dicey enough without both of them losing it. All he could do was help her pack. Saying goodbye was going to hurt more than it should.

  Falconer dropped them off on a deserted stretch of road outside of town. They walked back to the apartment in silence.

  Rory didn’t climb the stairs to retrieve Hannah from Penny’s. She went straight to Felicia’s apartment, to the laptop on the coffee table, and booted it up.

  Ace knew this escape would only hurt more later. As much as he wanted to walk out that door, he pulled up a chair and stayed.

  NOW RORY KNEW for certain that Felicia was dead. Curtis had spelled it out. The plan: lure Felicia to the cabin, pop her, roll her car in the river with her body in the trunk.

  The first part of the plan had worked. Somehow Curtis had led Felicia to the empty rental.

  Part two seemed a sure thing. They were going to slam a tire iron against her skull, roll her up in a carpet and haul her body to her car. Curtis had left before the actual deed, but he’d heard her scream. He had no reason to lie about something that would bury him in jail for decades. Mike had taken care of the dirty laundry, Curtis had said. Washed it away. Rory swallowed back a growl.

  Now all they had to do was wait for the NecroLocation team—a group of scientists and lawmen who specialized in finding bodies—to arrive and dredge up the body. Sebastian had promised to get them on site as soon as possible. And maybe, just maybe, when they found her, Felicia could still finger her murderer.

  Body. Rory wrapped a hand around her neck to hold back the scream bleeding her throat raw. Dead.

  The knowledge hurt so much. She fled up the stairs to Felicia’s building. Her skin felt too tight, her heart too big, her mind too loose. If she didn’t do something, she’d fall apart. And she couldn’t do that. Not now. Not ever. There was Hannah to think of. And she couldn’t abandon her niece the way she had her sister. She glanced up at Penny’s apartment.

  First she had to catch her breath.

  As soon as she entered Felicia’s apartment, she tried to distance herself from the pain by disappearing into the safety of research. But even that was impossible. All she could hear was the crack of bone that spelled Felicia’s death. All she could smell was the coppery gush of Felicia’s blood. All she could see was the icy tomb of Felicia’s watery grave. The screen of her laptop was one big blur. The words on the pages turned into streaks. The neat lines of information became tangles she couldn’t unravel.

  With a snarl, she sprang up. She wanted to hit someone. She wanted to hurt someone. She wanted to scream out at the top of her lungs until they bled and burned and all the pain gushed out. This new aggressiveness knocked her off balance.

  She growled out her frustration and batted the perfectly stacked piles of information she’d collected to the floor. She didn’t like herself this way, so out of control, so blood-thirsty.

  And when she whipped around to the sofa to rip apart the maps that had led her nowhere, she found herself slamming into Ace’s hard body. She let loose every inch of mad trapped in her. Her fists pounded into his chest as if he were a punching bag.

  Ace trapped her wrists in the loose cuff of his fingers, holding them away from his chest. His dark gaze glowered at her. “You keep knocking like that, and I’m going to have to answer.”

  He was hot, dark, dangerous. That’s how he looked. That’s how she felt. Her eyes narrowed, primed for a fight. She needed this. It didn’t matter that he could knock her flat with just one shove. She knew he wouldn’t. He would take the blows, and she could spend all the fury, all the guilt, all the useless emotions cluttering her system. So she goaded him. “Oh, yeah?”

  He snapped her wrists close to his chest and stared deep into her eyes. Raw physical intensity and mind-blowing heat beamed into her. “Do you know where you’re heading with this?”

  Sex. He was offering sex. Even she understood the signals—the tight stringing of his body, the fast trip of desire in every beat of his pulse, the scent of something civilized turning primal. She’d read that sex was a healthy way to handle stress. It wasn’t as if she was going into this with fantasies of love and marriage. Soon the law enforcement task force would stamp the file on Felicia’s case closed. He’d move on, and she and Hannah would go back to D.C. This was just mindless escape, and she needed to get out of her own skin for a while. She would do this. She would purge her system. And then, she could go on and do what needed to be done.

  “Yes.” She grabbed his leather jacket, yanked it off his shoulders. The weight of it thunked on the rust-colored carpet. “I know where I’m going.”

  He pressed himself into her, let her feel his full arousal, let her taste the dark desire on his tongue, then he let her see she was free to call the next shot. He stood there, arms at his side, open, challenging. “Are you sure?”

  She stepped closer, drew one hand down the front of his jeans and flattened her palm against the ridge of his erection. She stroked him, felt a thrill when he sucked in a breath. “Yes.”

  Then she dragged her hand through his hair and crushed her lips to his. Her heart pounded heavy and loud in her chest. Her pulse thumped at her wrists, at her throat. She was fighting him. She was fighting herself. She was giving up, giving in, giving out. She was tearing down and building up. Then her brain finally shut down and all that was left was mindless sensation.

  HER ANGER TASTED HOT. He’d wanted to make her mad enough to spit. He hadn’t counted on her taking him from zero to sixty in two seconds flat. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up spinning out.

  She went to his head, clouded his judgment like smoke. Every part of him was on alert, ready, willing and able. He wanted to take her hard and fast. He stopped thinking. Dangerous. He didn’t care. He could finally fill his hands with the breasts that had taunted him for so long—firm, ripe, swelling for him. He scooped her off her feet. She clutched at him, wrapping her legs around him, and met him kiss for blistering kiss.

  As he made his way to the bedroom, he stepped on a rattle. The toy shattered beneath his boot. When she shifted toward the noise, he feasted on her neck. She moaned, leaned her head against his shoulder and flicked her tongue at the pulse thundering at his neck. Stifling a groan, he pressed his face to her hair and drew in her sweet cinnamon scent.

  “I love your hair.” The rich color of it, the texture of the curls, the soft feel of it around his fingers.

  Then just as he stepped into the shade-darkened bedroom, panic set in.

  This was Rory. He stroked her back with short, quick strokes as he tried to find his center. Soft, sweet, hurt Rory. He held her close and felt her desperation. She was cinnamon, for crying out loud. He didn’t do spice. Not when it had him thinking of kitchens. Mrs. Olivarez’s empanadas. Mrs. Kellogg’s pork stew. Mrs. Rennick’s cinnamon buns. Sunday funnies. Cozy. Warm. Safe.

  Sundays never lasted.

  Mondays always stormed in.

  Ties. Commitment. Responsibil
ities.

  As soon as this case was done, he was moving on. To what, he wasn’t sure. But he already had his hands full with Bianca. He didn’t need another powder keg of trouble. Not when she could send him up in flames faster than a match to paper. Not when she could make him forget his priorities.

  He set her on the bed and sat beside her, hands on her hips to hold her back, trying to catch his breath. “Rory…”

  Then her hands tugged at his fly, reason crumbled, and he forgot why this was such a bad idea, forgot everything but her.

  SHE TORE AT HIS ZIPPER, wanting, needing, to crawl right into him. She was selfish and demanding and just a little bit mean. And still she wanted more. The heat of his skin. She ripped his shirt. The fire of his touch. She tore at her blouse, sending buttons scattering. The brand of his kiss. She tugged at him, fitting him over her, trapping herself beneath his weight.

  He read her like a book, turning the pages of her needs at just the right time. And when a fear she couldn’t catalog rippled through her, he simply held her as if he would never let go. Safe. Cared for.

  That’s when it hit her that fighting Ace didn’t make her fall out of her skin, didn’t make her escape the pain, didn’t set her free. Every inch of her body came alive. Every atom of her being filled with heat. Life, she realized. This was life coursing through her. How long had she been dead?

  When she pulled away, when she looked into his eyes, hot and dark with lust, yet tender with concern, she knew she’d made a mistake. She was trying to outrun herself and had ended up running smack into what she most wanted to avoid.

  She rolled away, turning her back to him. But he didn’t leave. He snuggled around her, a protective dustcover to her ragged pages. She hadn’t taken a short cut to objectivity. She’d taken a slow, deep fall all the way into love with this impossibly arrogant man. Not now. Not today. But a little bit every day since she’d met him.

  Her heart skipped. She kneaded at the bruise in the middle of her chest. It hurt so much. Everything hurt. She shrank into the sheets.

  Where did that leave her? Broken in New Hampshire—just like when her parents were killed.

  She’d thought this physical outpouring would spend all the anger, all the guilt, all the feelings crushing her. It wasn’t. It was like walking into work and finding someone had rearranged every volume in the library backwards and upside down. Nothing made sense.

  How could she love this man? How could her heart swell with so much need for a man who was going to break it into tiny pieces and walk away? How could she feel safe, cradled, cared for in his arms when she could never hang on to him?

  Pressure built in her chest. She balled the sheet in her fist and pressed it against her mouth. A sob caught in her throat. Her knees curled up to her chest. Her bones rattled like a skeleton as Ace’s arms held her together.

  He touched her hair softly. He brushed his lips tenderly over the crown of her head. “Rory?”

  And the gentleness in his voice did what her parents’ murder, what Felicia’s death had not done. It broke her.

  She cried for her dead sister. She cried for her orphaned niece. She cried for the words she wished she could take back, for all the things she wished she could do differently, for all the times she’d needed someone to hold her and found nothing but empty air.

  HE’D BEEN THROUGH TEARS. Buckets of them. Carlotta’s. Bianca’s. Female tears in all shapes and sizes. But none like these. None that asked for nothing. None where he’d wanted to give everything.

  “Sweetheart.” He kissed her cheek, swallowed her tears. “Aurora.” There were no words in him: just an explosion of feelings tumbling by so fast he couldn’t label them. What he could not say, he expressed with his body. He would not let her curl up and die.

  The urgency left and behind it hid something…more. He stripped them both of boots, jeans and underwear. Tortured need transformed into tenderness and time and the connection of touch. He tasted. He cherished. He savored every inch of her—the curve of hips, the hollow at her neck, the smooth line of her spine.

  Slowly she came back to him. A kiss. A touch. A quickening that hit low and hard. Her fingers dug into his shoulder. Her hips pressed against his. Her golden eyes burned. “Now.”

  He smiled, strong again as he teased a hungry sigh out of her with a finger to her breast. “No.”

  She tried to guide him to her. Her breath was jagged. “No?”

  He shifted away from her tormenting touch, cuffed her wrists in his hands and brought them beside her head. There he tortured her with a long, slow, deep kiss. “No.”

  He’d never done drugs—not after watching firsthand how they destroyed lives, families, whole neighborhoods. But he imagined a high was something like this. Made you feel on top of the world. As if you could do anything. As if it would last forever. And suddenly he understood how once could set someone up for a lifetime of addiction.

  The feel of her crawled into his skin. The cinnamon scent of her scrambled his brain. The soul of her was… He froze, stunned. The soul of her was cradled deep in his heart.

  Damn.

  How had this happened? How had he let it happen? When?

  But like that addict—even knowing where this hit would lead—he could not stop himself.

  He sank into her. She was wet and warm and welcoming. No way once was going to be enough. He rode the high. Firecracker sparks zinged through his system as her orgasm pitched through her. He felt the shock waves of her release explode in his head, in his heart, in his loin and reached overload. With a shudder, he lost it.

  Breathing hard, he rolled off her and nestled her against his chest. All that wild red hair spread over his heart for his delight. He wrapped a curl around his finger, brought it to his lips. “You okay?”

  Shy now, she reached for the sheet and covered her beautiful breasts. “I’m fine.”

  Staring up at the ceiling, he let his fingers tangle in the red silk of her hair. This hadn’t exactly gone according to plan. He’d meant to shake her up, break the pattern of her downward spiral. He’d caught himself in a deadly spin instead. He didn’t like the way his tight control had vaporized in her arms. Allowing a woman in that deep caused scars—the kind he’d sworn he wouldn’t willingly take on.

  Taking the sheet with her, Rory slipped out of the bed, grabbed clothes as she escaped to the bathroom. “I have to go get Hannah.”

  Once was not enough. He wanted more. He wanted…cinnamon and Sundays.

  But they never lasted.

  He sat up and reached for his jeans. Already she was slipping away from him. They always did.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He didn’t spend the night. Not that she’d expected him to. But still. Rory had rebuilt her piles and the information was spread out around her on the rust-colored carpet in the living room. Frowning, she bent down to her task of rechecking every detail of the case she’d assembled so far. The real-estate connections. The mini family trees—genetic and gang-made. The maps with the colored dots that connected them all. But all those cold facts provided little comfort.

  She wanted nothing more than to curl herself around Ace’s big body, feel his warmth and pretend the intimacy was real. But she’d laid herself bare for him yesterday—inside and out. She wasn’t sure she could face him again. Not with her need written all over her face. Not with the shame of that awful torrent of tears. And the last thing she wanted from him was pity.

  She didn’t like this needy side of her personality. Didn’t like wanting someone this way. The only place it could lead was a heartache and she’d already had enough of those, thank you.

  She rolled her loose hair and stuffed it into a scrunchie to keep it off her face, remembered the feel of Ace’s fingers combing through the strands, and kicked herself mentally.

  Concentrate on what’s important.

  Mike had not dumped the car right in front of the cabin. That was too close. He wouldn’t risk getting his mother in trouble or having her lose the rent
on her property because of a police investigation. Even Curtis mentioned that Mike had driven the car away. He drove elsewhere to dump the car. But where?

  She pored over the map, looking for water access near one of the dots she’d drawn. Somewhere private enough to do the deed.

  “How long have you been up?” Ace’s voice startled her from her study of the map. She glanced at the door, and there he was, all six-foot-plus of him, crowding the doorway. He waltzed in as if he belonged, carrying a bakery bag and a fan. He headed for the lamp, plugged in the fan and blasted it right at the bug.

  She’d forgotten about it, forgotten someone was listening in to her every word. Good thing her thoughts were silent or she’d be in a lot of trouble.

  Weak sunlight shone through the picture window. The sky was streaked with pink and purple and mottled with dark clouds. She shook her head and turned her attention to the map on her lap. When had it become morning?

  Ace plopped the white bakery bag in her lap and sat next to her on the floor. Too close. She could smell the leather and wild honey scent of him. It made her want to lean against his shoulder. Wrap her arms around his waist. Kiss him. Oh, God, this was not good. Clearing her throat, she reached into the bag, brought out a huge cinnamon-raisin roll and took a bite out of it.

  “What are you doing?” His voice barely rose above a whisper. He took the bag from her and reached in for the second roll.

  The brush of his fingers against the waistband of her jeans made her stomach quiver with a different kind of hunger. Mimicking his low tones, she said, “Looking for the most likely spot where Mike might have dumped Felicia’s car. The NecroLocation team isn’t cheap, and I want them to have the best possible chance of finding the car.”