U.S. Marshals: Hunted (U.S. Marshals Book 1)

by Laura Marie Altom

  Only the image behind her mind’s eye wasn’t Kent, but Joe. Dark and brooding. Crushed beside her in inky black so complete she couldn’t see her own fingers.

  Eyes open wide, she deeply exhaled.

  She was tired. Aching and hungry. A shower and nice, hot meal would clear her head of such ridiculous—not to mention inappropriate—thoughts.

  From out of nowhere, a cloud of emotion rained behind her eyes, causing her to blink to hold back pending tears.

  What was she doing here?

  She should’ve stayed in LA, where it was safe. Not that she feared for her physical safety, but emotionally, coastal Oregon wasn’t a good place. When she’d left here, she’d sworn to never come back.

  There was a reason Joe Morgan had run off and left his little girl—he was messed up in the head. Just as she soon would be if she didn’t keep her wits about her and remember not who she used to be, but who she currently was. She hadn’t returned to the shore to dredge up bittersweet memories of her mom or stifling memories of her overprotective father and big brothers, but, plain and simple, to do her job.

  5

  * * *

  Joe looked out at the seamless Pacific and sadly laughed. Wasn’t it just his luck that on the one day he was in the mood for a fierce gale, not a breath of air stirred the sea oats, or even his hair?

  He knelt to pick up a smooth black stone, and skipped it over the water. One, twice, three times it hopped before finally sinking. It’d only been that many times, possibly a handful more, that he hadn’t dreamed about Willow. Three, maybe four times in all those years. Yet last night it’d happened again.

  Squeezing his eyes shut until they stung from the pressure, he willed a certain marshal to vanish from his life and prosper elsewhere. She was ruining everything. Making him think he wanted to talk when all he really wanted was to…There she was, walking along his shore.

  Jean hems rolled up. Jacket tied around her waist. Hiking boots hanging by the laces over her right shoulder. Dark blue T-shirt clinging to her curves.

  She caught sight of him and half waved. “You shouldn’t be out in the open like this. Especially without me. Could be dangerous.”

  He shot a look at the vacant sea. “You expecting Rambo to pop out of the water in scuba gear?”

  “It could happen.”

  He snorted.

  Bud sledded on his butt down the embankment upon which he’d been chasing small rodents. In his limping flurry, he sent stones clattering, all the while barking his hello.

  “Well, good morning to you, too,” she said. “Looks like at least one of us got a good night’s sleep. You must already be feeling better.” She knelt, giving the dog a good rub and a hug. While she inspected the healing gash on his leg, Bud wagged and wriggled to the point where if he didn’t knock it off, the dog’s rear end would need an alignment.

  Joe tried looking away, but Bud yelped, dragging his attention back. Only instead of finding an injured mutt, Joe found Gillian tossing a piece of driftwood for the dog to fetch.

  Something about the way she put her whole body and soul into the simple act…The way her toothy smile lit not just her eyes, but her entire face…

  Joe stood there, hands in his pockets, utterly incapable of looking anywhere but at her. After he’d spent years living in self-imposed darkness, she was light.

  “Bud, no!” she cried out with a laugh, chasing after the dog into the surf, where he’d apparently found something more interesting than a stick. To Joe, she said, “Your dog fancies himself to be a fisherman. I wonder how you teach the hazards of catching crabs?”

  Joe dragged in a deep breath.

  I’m sorry, Willow. God, I’m sorry.

  Gillian’s smile pulled him like Bud was pulled to the rabbit family that lived in the fallen fir just beyond the glade where blackberries grew. She waved him over, and Joe stiffened, forcing himself to ignore her, to steel himself to her softness. But it was no use. He was trapped.

  Trapped in a fantasy world where the feminine voice catching a ride on clean, crisp, briny-smelling air didn’t belong to a woman named Gillian, but Willow. And she was here with him now, with their daughter. And life was good, and—

  “What’s for breakfast?” the marshal asked.

  He wanted to hate her for yet again interrupting one of his fantasies, but couldn’t. Her smile was too genuine. Unlike those women who’d come on to him after the trial, she wasn’t out to snag a rich, tragic widower, but to do her job.

  He shrugged. “I usually have a Pop Tart.”

  “Which flavor?”

  “Cherry.”

  “Cherry, huh?” She cast him a playful pout. “I’ve always been a blueberry girl. How about French toast instead? Then I should start briefing you on—would you look at that beauty?” She dipped down to peer into a shallow tidal pool at a brilliant orange star. The water’s reflection cast a silvery shimmer across her face and body. “It’s so pretty,” she said, her voice sounding more like an excited kid than a supposedly hardened marshal.

  Gently, with just the tip of her index finger, she stroked the creature, and in doing so broke all illusions Joe might’ve had of her being childlike when her T-shirt rose. Baring her back. Giving him a glimpse of purple thong panties just above the waistline of her jeans.

  Good grief.

  He looked away. “Yeah. French toast. Sounds good.”

  “Great.” She was smiling again, while quietly, almost secretly, crouching low, tipping her face to the sun. She closed her eyes and slowed her breaths, trailing just the fingertips of her left hand through the pool’s mirrored surface. “Mmm,” she said with a quiet sigh. “I thought I hated this place, but I’m thinking it was the people who live here that bugged me, not the actual place.”

  Eyebrows raised, he asked, “You’ve been here before? To my island?”

  “No. But I grew up in Desolation Point. That’s what? Only ten, fifteen miles from here—at least once you get back on dry land.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s partially why I was chosen for your case. My familiarity with your location.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Lucky break. Want details?”

  “Sure. Shoot.” They began the long walk back to the cabin.

  “My brother’s a marshal—well, all three of them are, actually. But the oldest, Caleb, dated this girl from Newport. She lives in Portland now, but used to be a bank teller for Oregon Coast. One night before a date, he had a couple things to finish up at his office. Had the girl meet him there, and she happened to see a photo of you on his desk. She said the guy looked familiar. You can pretty much connect the dots from there.”

  Joe shook his head. “Incredible. I’ve been to that bank exactly twice, and I get recognized.”

  “If it makes you feel better, she said you were hot, which was why she’d paid such close attention.” Gillian gave him a good-natured nudge. “Really ticked my brother off, how she kept repeating that in interview after interview. I loved that—seeing unflappable Caleb good and ruffled. Thanks.”

  Joe’s only response was a snort.

  “If you knew my brother, you’d understand.”

  Without being rude, how could he make it clear he didn’t want to know her, let alone her brother.

  “Sometimes he could be such a tool. Constantly in my business. Drilling me about everything from what I’d had for breakfast to asking if I flossed my teeth. Drove me—”

  “Don’t you ever shut up?”

  She stopped on the dirt trail, staring up at him with a look he couldn’t begin to decipher. Was she hurt? Angry? Both? Even if she was, what did he care?

  He cared, because as she’d pointed out the previous day, she was here to help nail the bastard responsible for his wife’s death. “Sorry,” he said, determined to at least try civility if not all-out cordiality.

  “It’s all right. I was trying again to make small talk. You know, help you feel more at ease, but I guess I went ove
rboard.” She shrugged. “This is my first field assignment, so I’m kind of on edge, what with already having flubbed my first night.”

  “You did okay—hell, more than okay, judging by the fact that my dog’s still breathing—and barking.” Joe managed a half grin, nodding toward the baying going on somewhere over the next hill.

  “Thanks, but still…Considering what you’ve already been through, I should be more professional and keep my personal woes private.”

  “No. My past is no excuse for my lousy behavior. I’ve just become so pessimistic, that I don’t know…” He looked away. “Guess I live every day expecting it to be my last.”

  “Look, this is probably easy for me to say, but you’ve got to stop this downward spiral.” She cocked her head, staring up at him with sincere brown eyes. “Back in L.A., you’ve got a daughter who I’m sure misses you very much. Not to diminish your own grief, but Joe, husbands lose wives every day. Wives lose husbands. Granted, most die of cancer or car wrecks, they don’t get gunned down, but it wasn’t your fault, any more than it was the fault of the marshals who died trying to protect Willow. And now, for better or worse, the two of us have been thrown together. Until it’s over, what do you say? Let’s just try making the best of it.”

  He shrugged.

  “What?” she asked in a half sarcastic, half amused tone, thrusting out her chin in an obvious challenge. “Mean Joe Morgan isn’t going to fight that suggestion?”

  “Know what?”

  “What?” A sudden breeze whipped strands of her hair across her cheeks and eyes. In a movement beautiful in its simplicity, she raised her small hands to brush it away. Those delicate hands had no business holding guns or chasing bad guys, yet she’d been the one sent to protect him. Oh, he didn’t believe for a second she was the only one, but still, suddenly he felt as if he should be protecting her.

  Shaking his head, he said, “I forgot. Anyway—and I can’t believe I’m even saying this—but after last night, I’m too tired to fight anything. Let’s just go home.”

  For a split second, he toyed with the idea of offering her his hand as a sort of peace offering, but then he came to his senses and shoved the almost traitorous appendage deep into his jeans pocket.

  In companionable silence, the threesome trudged back to the cabin. Man, woman, dog, all a little sore, a little sluggish, but none the worse for wear. It’d been a long night, but in the end, a surprisingly good one.

  * * *

  Home. He’d said, Let’s go home.

  Gillian stood at the big picture window in the cabin’s kitchen, racking her brain for an answer to the question of why that one simple utterance meant so much. After all, it wasn’t as if Joe had meant going home in the sense that it was hers, so why the tug on her heart when the word had hung in the air on the trail between them?

  “Need anything else?” he asked. He stood before two upper cabinets, each hand on the knob of an open door. The pose emphasized his sheer breadth, the muscular ridges of his shoulders and back. Joe was a big man. Powerful. Yet for all his physical strength, he was a self-admitted mess inside.

  Obviously, he’d never be able to forget what’d happened to his wife, but what would it take for him to at least resume his normal life? Return to L.A.? His daughter?

  The few photos Gillian had seen of his little girl broke her heart. The day her grandparents had brought her to the courtroom had been even worse. The prosecution had shown grisly crime scene photos. Meghan’s stoic grandparents had whisked her out of the filled-to-capacity courtroom, while Gillian hoped that the girl hadn’t understood what the photos had even been about. But she’d known, as had everyone else.

  Joe had never once looked away. Hadn’t even flinched. He’d just sat there, vacant. Much as he’d been yesterday, when she’d arrived. Gillian had wondered if he’d recognize her from the trial, but at the time, he’d been so out of it, and she’d played such an occasional, peripheral role, that she’d deemed it highly unlikely.

  “Gillian?” he asked. “Need anything for the French toast?”

  She’d been still staring at his shoulders, and looked away. “Thanks, but, um, I’ve got everything out in my tent.”

  “You really planning on bunking out there?”

  “Unless you plan on sending me an engraved invitation to bunk with you.”

  After a second, he said, “Guess it’d be okay. I don’t sleep all that much. You take the bed. I’ll just crash on the sofa.”

  “No. I’ve got my sleeping bag and everything. Maybe it’d just be best if I stayed outside. That way I can keep a closer eye on things.”

  “Give it to me straight,” he said, closing the cabinet doors before pulling out a chair at the table. “How many other marshals are out there right now watching over me?”

  “N-none.” God, she was a lousy liar. Kavorski had told her as much when she’d given him her latest report, telling him that start to finish, the evening had been uneventful.

  Lips pressed tight, Joe sighed. “Even after last night, that’s how it’s going to be?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to—”

  His expression turned hard. Like her ridiculous company line was just one more reason he’d stopped believing in all things real and good.

  “Okay,” she said. “Truth. There’s a patrol at the north end of the island and the south—strictly on boats, though. Nobody wants you spooked.”

  “And the fact that you didn’t call in last night?”

  She looked down. “Minimal contact unless there’s trouble. My boss wants Tsun-Chung bad. Meaning he wants you in the right frame of mind for the trial. Which is why he was willing to go to these kinds of lengths to insure you don’t vanish again.”

  With one hand tucked in his pocket, the other clenching the back of the chair, Joe nodded.

  “What’re you thinking?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  To me it does. This all started out as just her first field assignment, but after meeting Joe, talking to him, spending the long, dark night beside him, waking up to all that healing sun… “Yes.”

  “All right, then, I’m thinking this whole setup is a crock. You all treat me like some kind of schoolgirl—like I’m gonna pee myself at the sight of a gun.”

  “No, Joe, that’s not it at all.” She crossed to him, wanting so badly to reach out to him with at least a comforting touch, but was that sort of thing done in the field? Just how close was she supposed to get?

  “Right.” He sharply looked away.

  She stood her ground. “Can you honestly say that given the chance, at the first sight of me—or any other agent—you wouldn’t have run?”

  Silence.

  “But don’t you see, Joe? You can’t go on hiding any more than you can run again. Tsun-Chung has to be dealt with.” As did the other abandoned areas of Joe’s life. What was he going to do about Meghan? What would he say when all of a sudden she was graduating from high school and he didn’t even know her best friends’ names?

  Shooting her a bone-chilling look of what she could only guess was disgust, he said, “I’m going for a walk. Is that allowed?”

  “Not without me going with you.”

  “Am I allowed to take a piss by myself, or you wanna be with me then, too?”

  “There’s no need to be crude. Just let me check out the bathroom first. In your current frame of mind, I wouldn’t put it past you to try climbing out a window.”

  For the longest time, he just stared at her, then laughed. A first since she’d been on the island. It was a wonderful sound. Deep and throaty. Unpracticed, almost as if it had caught him off guard, too.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “If you’d seen my bathroom window, you’d know.” Sitting down hard on the chair he’d pulled out at the table, he rested his elbows on his knees, cradling his forehead in his hands. “I give up. Just fix me some French toast and I promise to be good.”

  “This sudden turnaround ma
kes me suspicious.” Eyes narrowed, she asked, “You planning to lull me into a false sense of security by swooning over my cooking, then making a run for it once I’m too full to chase you?”

  “Not a half-bad plan.” He raised his eyebrows. “Think it’d work?”

  She shook her head. “I’m small, but speedy.”

  * * *

  While Gillian manned the stove, waiting for the bread to brown, she was acutely aware of Joe standing beside her.

  He took three peaches from a pottery bowl on the counter. Held them under the faucet. As cool water ran over his hands, her fingertips tingled. After turning off the faucet, then drying the fruit with a worn red dishrag, he grasped the peaches with just the right amount of strength to hold them steady while he sliced them. Gillian wondered if he’d hold a woman like that.

  Strong, but not crushing?

  Swallowing hard, she focused on the toast.

  He reached into the cabinet for two plates, then divvied up the slices between them.

  The French toast was soon done, and after heating syrup in a small saucepan, then dashing out to her tent for the bag of powdered sugar she’d added to her supplies at the last minute—despite knowing the ribbing she’d get if her fellow marshals ever found out—they finally sat down to eat.

  One bite, and Joe was gone.

  He closed his eyes and groaned.

  Whenever he stayed on the island, his diet mainly consisted of canned goods, and stuff like macaroni and cheese that he could make with canned milk. The wife of the guy who stocked and cleaned the cabin occasionally threw in extras like the peaches. Carl—that was the guy’s name—had once said his wife worried about Joe, being all alone out here.

  Joe looked up to catch Gillian smiling. “What?”

  “You. You finished your plate and all but licked it clean in, like, ten seconds. Hungry?”

  “I didn’t think I was, but yeah. Guess so.”