Hunt Her Down

by Roxanne St Claire

  “You got a lot of sun today,” Maggie said, sitting on the queen-size bed and reaching out to brush honey gold hair back from Quinn’s brow.

  He wrinkled his nose. “Doesn’t hurt, though. Don’t make me put that aloe sh . . . stuff on it.”

  She just narrowed her eyes; it wasn’t the time for a language lecture. “Did you have fun?”

  “Are you kidding? This place rocks.”

  She surveyed the sharp angles of his face, the full shape of his mouth. How could she not have seen the resemblance the minute Dan Gallagher walked into her bar? How could Quinn not see it now?

  Because when you’re not looking for something, you can miss it.

  “So, you okay?” she asked, hoping to get something more than a monosyllabic answer.

  He shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Come on. Talk to me.”

  “Nothing. It’s all good.”

  “Quinn,” she said. “Come on.”

  He exhaled and shook his head. “All right. I mean, the whole boat thing still kind of creeps me out, but . . .” He plucked at the silky comforter on the bed, averting his eyes.

  “But what?”

  “I know why I’m here.”

  Her heart fluttered. “You do.” How much did he know?

  “It’s like protective custody. Witness protection. Whatever you call it. You ever gonna tell me what’s going on?”

  Eventually. “We’re trying to figure that out.” “Mom, who are these people?” He waved a hand at the room that dwarfed the one he had at home in scale and decor. “We don’t have friends like this.”

  “Honey, a long time ago I . . . I knew that man, Dan. And . . .” Oh God, was it the right time? Should Dan be here when confessions were made?

  She never wanted to lie—it was her ruling mantra of motherhood. Yet his entire conception was built on a lie.

  “Well, duh,” Quinn said. “It’s pretty obvious you guys were tight.”

  “Really?” Were they that transparent?

  Before he answered, Goose’s head shot up in alert, followed by his bark and a soft tap on the door.

  “How’s it going?” Dan asked, stepping in. “You hanging in there, Quinn?”

  Their smiles kind of matched, and Maggie’s chest tightened.

  “Yeah, I’m cool,” Quinn said. “Can’t believe there’s no flat screen TV in the guest room though. It’s so ghetto.”

  Maggie laughed at his sarcasm, and caught the spark of something in Dan’s eyes as he said, “Yeah, call the management and complain, will ya?”

  Connection—that’s what that look was. They thought alike, made the same smart-ass comments. Dan had just realized it, and so did she.

  “So when were you guys going to tell me that you two already knew each other?” If Quinn’s question threw Dan, she couldn’t tell.

  “Soon,” they replied in perfect unison.

  “How ‘bout now?”

  “All right,” Dan said. “Now’s good.” He glanced at Maggie, a question in his eyes as he gave Goose an easy scratch and took over his chair. “It was before you were born, when your mom lived in Miami.”

  “When you were a waitress there?” Quinn asked. “Before you moved to Marathon?”

  Damn. She hadn’t had a chance to tell Dan the story Smitty had made up.

  “How’d you meet?” Quinn asked.

  Maggie stayed silent, heat warming her cheeks. It wasn’t just Quinn’s conception that embarrassed her; it was how she lived. That dark and degrading part of her life when she chose to sleep with one criminal to keep a roof over her head, and screw around with another one because she found him irresistible.

  “I was an FBI agent,” Dan said.

  Maggie managed a breath, and Quinn’s eyes widened as Dan’s cool quotient rocketed into the stratosphere.

  “Seriously?” He sat up straighter in bed.

  “And I interviewed your mother for a case involving one of her . . . customers.”

  God, he lied so smoothly. How could she forget that? And why wasn’t she contradicting him?

  “At the deli?” Quinn asked.

  Dan glanced at her. “It was someone I was trying to arrest.”

  This was her opportunity to set the record straight. To tell the truth, and teach her son what his mother was really made of. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

  Gutless.

  “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Quinn looked from one to the other. “I heard you guys talking in the car about someone in jail. That’s who tried to kidnap me, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said quickly, gratefully. “We think there might be a connection. That man recently got out of prison and Dan came to warn me. Then those men took you in the boat, so until we know who it is and why, you’re staying here.”

  “Can you figure it out and get them?” he asked Dan.

  “Probably. That’s what I do, and I work for a company that excels in precisely that sort of thing. In the meantime, you’re safe here.”

  He grinned. “In the ghetto.”

  Maggie forced a laugh, but Dan’s chuckle was genuine as he stood. “And you haven’t even seen the garage. Prepare for major Ferrari action.”

  “No way!” Quinn almost popped out of bed.

  “Not now,” Maggie said, pushing him down, along with her shame and guilt. “Tomorrow. Now you have to sleep.”

  Dan reached for her hand. “And you have to go back to the war room, Ms. Smith,” he said. “I think we’re close to a breakthrough. Can you talk to Max? I’ll be right there.”

  Was this just an excuse to be alone with Quinn? What would he say? Did he feel it was his job to tell Quinn the truth? Would he think that would be sparing her somehow?

  She kissed Quinn on the forehead, and slipped out of the room. When she stepped into the wide hallway she paused, leaned against the wall by the door, and listened.

  “Are you serious about the Ferrari?” Quinn asked.

  “Yep. A cherry red Testarossa. Max’ll take you for a ride. Guaranteed.”

  “Oh, man, that is so fuckin’ cool.”

  Maggie cringed at the curse.

  “Hey,” Dan said sharply. “No ride if you talk like that. It doesn’t impress me, and it makes you sound stupid.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He actually sounded contrite.

  Maggie closed her eyes, fighting an unexpected wave of emotion. This is what Quinn needed. A man to tell the truth. A father figure.

  Not a father figure. His real father.

  “Listen, I want to talk to you about something,” Dan said. “About your mom. When she was younger.”

  Oh God. For a moment, there was just silence. Maggie ignored the thump of her heart, breathlessly waiting for the next word.

  “What?”

  “I liked her. A lot.”

  “Yeah? So why you telling me?” Quinn asked.

  Was she imagining sharpness in that question? Had he just looked into Dan’s matching green eyes and figured it out?

  She fisted her hands, ready to respond or be there for Quinn.

  “Because I want you to know that I still like her. A lot. Even after that conversation we had the other night.”

  What conversation?

  “Dude. As if I couldn’t tell. Your tongue hangs out like Goose’s when you look at her.”

  “It does not. Well, maybe a little,” he added. “ ’s cool, man.” Quinn was working so hard, trying to be this man’s equal, trying to be tough. “Just remember one thing. I get a learner’s permit in less than two years, and I heard you say you have a Maserati.”

  Dan laughed. “Is that blackmail?”

  “Just sayin’. You like my mom. I like your car.”

  “Cars. Plural.”

  “Oh, wow.” Quinn made a choking noise. “Shoot me now.”

  “Go to sleep.” Dan’s voice, still warm with laughter, was getting closer to the door.

  Maggie hesitated for just one second, just as Max’s large frame ascended
the stairs at the end of the hall.

  “The thing about Dan is,” he said quietly as he walked closer, “you don’t really have to eavesdrop to find out what he’s thinking.”

  “I’m not . . .” She smiled, admitting defeat. “All right. I am.”

  “All you have to do is give him an opening,” Max continued, “and you’ll know more about what’s going on in that deceptively complex head of his than you want to.”

  “Deceptively complex?” Behind her, Dan’s voice was rich with disgust. “Because I’m slightly more evolved than a caveman?”

  “And much prettier,” Max shot back.

  Dan closed the bedroom door and added a wink to Maggie. “He’s always been wildly jealous of me. What’s up, Max?”

  “I think you were right. I just ran every conceivable satellite coordinate, and guess what the latitude of a good portion of Venezuela is?”

  Maggie straightened. “Ten degrees, thirty-eight minutes north.” The very numbers on her fortune.

  “Exactly,” Max said, giving her an impressed look. “Did you know that?”

  “Not offhand, but my husband was an avid fisherman and we lived by GPS. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.” She looked at Dan, excitement shooting through her. “That can’t be a coincidence. If we put it together with the other numbers, I bet we get the longitude.”

  “I did,” Max said. “Come and see where that puts you.”

  “Let’s go,” Dan said, his hand on Maggie’s back as he lowered his head to whisper softly in her ear. “And you can thank me later.”

  Thank him—for lying?

  Maybe she should. Maybe she would.

  Several hours and what seemed like fifty-nine different permutations of possible GPS coordinates later, Maggie hit the wall. Max had long ago been sidelined by his wife’s request that he come to bed, leaving them to work into the night, a situation that didn’t seem to bother endlessenergy Dan, but left Maggie yawning and tense.

  They hadn’t discussed what transpired in Quinn’s room, too focused on all the GPS and satellite possibilities, mathematical and otherwise, nit-picking through every word on two fortunes, translating them into Spanish, searching for cryptic meanings, squeezing blood out of her gray matter to figure out a puzzle that seemed impossible to solve.

  She was a GPS pro from all those years on a fishing boat with Smitty, but that’s where her cryptography skills ended.

  “I can’t look at that anymore.” She waved a page of notes to the massive flat-panel screen with the satellite image of Venezuela, dropping her head back on the sofa. “It’s there, I’m sure of it, but we just don’t have enough to nail it.”

  “We’re so close,” Dan said, stabbing his hair with two hands. “There are only so many ways we can cut the numbers, so many different combinations of latitude and longitude, minutes and seconds, and possible directions. One of them has to be in Venezuela. One of them has to be the location of the money.”

  She sighed, curling deeper into a light cotton blanket he’d brought out a few hours ago from one of the bedrooms. “Let . . . me . . . just . . . think.”

  Dan sat at the end of the sofa, tucking Maggie’s feet behind him. From beneath closed lashes, she watched him, focused and strong and smart, and sexier than any man she’d ever known.

  She wanted so badly to move her feet to his lap. That’s all it would take. He’d be hard and ready and . . .

  He zoomed in on Maracaibo and squinted at the satellite image, and she watched his hands work the laptop on the coffee table. So masculine and capable. Hands that could do amazing things to her. That had done amazing things to himself that very afternoon.

  Her gaze drifted up to his bicep, tightening, relaxing, then tightening again. Her stomach did the same thing.

  “Of course,” he murmured, half talking to her, half to himself, “the latitude on your fortune also includes everything else six hundred miles north or south of the equator anywhere in the world, including the middle of Africa, the lower tip of Indonesia, and part of the Malaysian peninsula.”

  She knew he was right. Latitude and longitude coordinates of minutes only gave you a fairly large geographic area. But further divided into seconds, those coordinates were far more specific, right down to an actual street block.

  The numbers they had could be either minutes or seconds.

  “We have two sets of numbers,” she said. “And even though one of those sets matches a latitude across Venezuela, the other can’t be the longitude in minutes, because it isn’t anywhere near Venezuela. And if the numbers you got from the FBI files are the longitude in seconds, then it doesn’t really help us.”

  “There have to be more fortunes,” he said softly.

  Obviously.

  “Because this one,” he continued quietly, “could take us across the fattest part of Venezeula. But you know what’s in there?”

  He leaned forward, studying the screen on the wall, his jaw set and accented by beard growth. How would that feel against her thighs?

  It would feel scratchy and . . . good.

  “The Jimenez coffee plantation. Somewhere west of Maracaibo is a place called Monte Verde. What better place to hide your money than on your plantation?”

  She looked at his thighs, spread wide as he leaned over the laptop keyboard. She’d seen those thighs in the dark that afternoon. Watched him steal a secret release. It had taken everything in her to keep from helping.

  “And miles of impenetrable rain forest, fathoms of muddy rivers, and endless, rolling, impassible mountains.” He rubbed his beard, then turned to her. She closed her eyes tight. If she faked sleep, he wouldn’t talk… or touch . . . or test her control again.

  “A hundred million dollars could be anywhere in that country, Maggie. What we need is a short list of who could possibly have . . .” She felt him lean closer, could smell his scent as he got nearer, the weight and warmth of him over her body. “What you need is sleep, Maggie May.”

  His fingers touched her hair, brushing it off her face.

  Should she open her eyes? She knew what she’d see. Attraction in his jade green eyes. Desire. Arousal. The same stuff that was electrifying her own body. Everything she’d been fighting with common sense and bad memories.

  He grazed her lower lip with his fingertip, or maybe the pad of his thumb. It was just a little calloused and smelled clean and masculine.

  Then he was gone. She heard the table lamp click, saw darkness behind her lids, heard his footsteps around the counter that separated the living area from the kitchen.

  She stole a peek, catching his profile as he opened the refrigerator door and stood silhouetted in the light. One hand threaded his hair, the other reached in to get something.

  She heard the hiss of a bottle cap, and the scuff of his footstep behind the sofa where she lay. He put a hand on her shoulder, warm enough that it couldn’t be the one that held the beer or soda he’d just opened. Gentle enough that the touch was more tender than sexual. Long enough to make her ache to roll over and invite him to join her on the couch.

  He pulled the blanket higher and tucked it under her chin. She almost let out the little mew in her throat, the gesture was so sweet.

  Just as she nearly lost the battle and opened her eyes, he murmured, “You’re so different.”

  Different? Different from what she used to be? Different from someone else? Or just different . . . from what he usually liked?

  His footsteps headed to the front door. She peeked through her lashes again to see him stand for a moment in the darkness of the patio and unlit pool; then he closed the door and left her alone.

  She put her hands on the blanket where his had been, the need to have him near so powerful that it took her back to when that same man—with a different name, different face, different hair—did precisely the same thing to

  her body. Funny thing, that physical chemistry. It really must be pheromones or scent.

  Throwing off the blanket, she sat up. He couldn’t
have gone far.

  Outside, she stood in the doorway, scanning the dark, empty patio that easily sat thirty or more in various arrangements of tables, chairs, and chaises. She peered at the house, seeing one light—her room. Was he in there, waiting for her?

  “I’m over here.”

  She turned toward the shadows of a tiny cabana, where a double-width chaise was tucked under an arched overhang. A brown bottle was balanced on his stomach, his laser gaze sharp even from twenty feet away.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, walking toward him, the breeze in the palm fronds and the brush of her long cotton skirt the only sound. She lifted her hand to push her hair off her face, and Baba’s bracelets fell down her wrist, adding a ping of silver against silver, and a sexcharged memory, into the silent night.

  “Right now I’m counting stars.” As she approached, his perusal dropped to her chest, to the rhinestones flickering across her breasts. “Is that a dragonfly or a butterfly winking at me?”

  She ran a finger over the tiny pink and green stones sewn into her top. “You tell me. You’ve looked at it enough tonight.”

  He grinned, white teeth against tanned skin. “About a hundred times, I think.”

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, reaching the side of the chaise.

  “Having a beer. Want some?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” She gave him a nudge with her knee. “Scoot over.”

  She shouldn’t do this. She shouldn’t slip between the armrest and his rock-hard flank, shouldn’t let her flouncy skirt flutter over his khaki shorts and bare calf, shouldn’t share his beer and thoughts.

  But she did. He handed her the bottle and she took a solid swig, then returned it to his stomach, leaning back against the angled cushion. “Good, but not Heineken.”

  “What can I say? Totally ghetto.”

  She laughed softly.

  “I thought you were dead to the world,” he said.

  “I woke up when you left.”

  “Sorry. I thought you were asleep—I had a massive epiphany and you didn’t answer me.”