by Lee Taylor
She dropped the phone.
“I’ve got him!” she shouted.
Butch didn’t seem to hear. He aimed his shotgun at Lionel’s head and cocked it. “Bastard.”
He’d said the word in a deadly calm that froze her blood. Butch was planning to fire whether she got out of the way or not. Moving fast, she kicked the shotgun’s barrel, sending its wide spray of bullets into the air.
“Have you lost your freaking mind?” she ripped the shotgun out of Butch’s hands and tossed it to the ground.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze was locked on Lionel. An expression, soiled with hatred, wrinkled his nose and tightened his mouth into a set sneer. “Filthy scum. Scum like that doesn’t deserve to live.”
Chapter Two
“I thought Butch was going kill Lionel last night.”
Vega ducked a flying kick and then somersaulted into a crouch prepared to spring back into an attack.
“He’s a hothead,” Fiona said. She landed with a kitten’s grace. Her brown hair flowed about her face as she easily deflected Vega’s forward attack. “I’ve never liked him.”
A short hand-to-hand sparring followed. Fiona was the one to retreat to the edge of the mat.
Vega gave her sister a moment to catch her breath. “I like Butch. He’s a challenge, not some namby-pamby momma’s boy like your man.”
Fiona erupted with a little roar and charged back into action. Vega was impressed. Her little sister was beginning to improve. Her moves were fast, consistent and focused.
At the dojo where Vega trained for at least an hour each day, they were taught a mixture of the highly disciplined Tang Soo Do mixed with no holds barred street fighting. She trained hard, but with Fiona, she always pulled her punches.
Vega parried and blocked without committing herself to a full counter-attack. The quick sidekick was easy to deflect. Fiona always followed the move with a slicing right hook. Vega raised her arm in anticipation when from out of nowhere a thunderbolt struck the left side of her face, hurling her to the mat.
Pain coursed through her cheek. She closed her eyes and imagined that last move, mentally taking apart her action, Fiona’s surprise thrust, and her own sloppy reaction.
“Off your game today?”
She grimaced and opened her eyes to find Jack’s lovely mug. He offered her a hand up while Fiona danced around the mat with her arms in the air acting like the spoiled brat she could be.
“Lucky shot,” Vega grumbled, rubbing her stinging cheek.
Jack tossed her a towel. A wide grin brightened his gently aging face. That grin always made her edgy. And she didn’t need help feeling edgy today, not after she nearly blew her pickup yesterday. Her lack of preparation had almost gotten Lionel killed. Maybe she was off her game—losing her edge.
She wiped her face on the towel and tossed it aside. “Don’t let one win get you cocky, Fiona,” she warned.
Fiona wasn’t listening. She’d pulled Mike, one of the instructors, aside and was showing him her new moves, her slender body replaying the lucky strike. Vega could only shake her head. Fiona had inherited the Brookes’ family curse: a swaggering conceit. It was their father’s legacy, of course.
Their father, Detroit’s Police Chief David Brookes, had longed to train a son to be a tough-as-nails SOB. But his wife had given him nothing better than two daughters.
“About yesterday,” Jack said, running a hand through his full head of gray hair. He followed her into the dojo’s small, unisex locker room. “I promise it won’t happen again. I’ve been on the phone all morning giving everyone a headache that can’t be ignored.”
She stepped into a changing stall and pulled the curtain closed. “You get Butch fired?” She didn’t want Butch jobless, just pulled back a little until he learned to control his anger.
“Butch? No, I was talking about that stupid Tyler Bonding secretary. She won’t be sending two different bounty hunters after the same prey again, that’s for damn sure. About Butch, from the sounds of it, he lost his head. He’s got a mercenary mentality I wouldn’t allow at Skip Tracers, but then I demand a higher level of professionalism than most.”
“He nearly killed Lionel in a blind rage.” She still couldn’t believe how his anger had transformed him. She’d nearly had to attack him just to get him to back down. “I don’t understand what happened.”
“Push hard enough and,” he snapped his fingers, “can happen to anyone,” Jack said from the other side of the curtain.
“Not me.” She wiped the sweat from underneath her breasts. “I would never—”
“Vega,” Jack’s shoes scraped on the concrete floor as he left the locker room. “That’s a dangerous attitude. Everyone has a breaking point. Deny it, and you’ll blind yourself to knowing when you’ve reached yours.”
Jack was probably right, but she wasn’t ready to face it. For years, she’d honed her physical and mental abilities with one goal in mind: control. She might never match a man’s physical strength, but she could push her own limits by maintaining a steady focus and by always keeping her head.
She stepped into a nearby shower and stood under the steaming stream of water unable to peel her mind from the unsettling thought Jack had planted. What would happen if she were pushed to the edge? How would she know what the edge even looked like?
“Meet me at the office in an hour, Vega. I’ve got a new project.” Jack called out from the dojo’s main exercise area, his voice echoing through the empty locker room. Leaving her alone to wash away her sudden encounter with uncertainty.
* * * *
It took a little less than an hour to clean up, change, and drive back downtown. The snow had stopped falling the night before and the main roads were clear and easy to drive.
Fiona had somehow finagled a ride back to the office with Vega. She sat in the passenger seat talking nonstop. That one lucky punch had gone straight to her head.
“You should take me with you on your next assignment. I’m ready, you know. I have my license. I’m bonded and everything. Didn’t you just love how I surprised you with that left? I was planning…”
Vega stopped listening somewhere near the Chrysler Expressway. Nothing could convince her to trust Fiona to keep her head in a real-life situation. Fiona was so not ready for bounty hunting. Her bout of bragging only proved it.
“Oh damn, look. I broke a nail today,” Fiona complained while the elevator rushed them to the sixteenth floor, adding more strength to Vega’s point. Her little sister was fretting over a broken nail, for goodness sake.
Once on the sixteenth floor, Vega pulled a small pile of messages from the box sitting on the receptionist’s desk at the entrance of Skip Tracers suite of offices. Two were from Butch, no message other than his phone number. The rest were from her mother, wanting to have dinner on Friday.
“Jack, I hope this next assignment takes me out of town,” she said as she dropped into her desk chair and shoved the messages into a cluttered drawer. “Mom must have found a new bachelor to parade in front me. She’s called three times this morning alone.”
Jack frowned. “She won’t be happy till her girls are settled, married and following her to all those society events she likes so much. Perhaps you’ll take her seriously one day.” His frown deepened. “I’d hate to lose you, though.”
“I’d hate to lose me, too.” She kicked back in her chair. “What’cha got for me?”
“It’s a real challenge. You’re my best, Vega. You’re the only one I’d give this to.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She dismissed Jack’s compliment. He was just buttering her up, which could only mean this new assignment was a real winner. “Get to the details.”
“Grayson Walker.” Jack tossed a picture along with a thick file folder on her desk. “Big reward, bail’s set at five million. He was a top executive for Six-Star Enterprises.” Jack paused, as if expecting a reaction.
He should have known better.
“Six-Star,” Jack said w
ith a huff. “Based in Atlanta. They’re one of the newest and wealthiest Fortune 500 Companies. They’ve been in the news almost constantly for the past several years with announcements of the small industries they’ve been acquiring…quite hostilely.”
Vega raised her head from the photo on her desk and stared blankly at Jack.
“You really need to break down and buy a television,” he muttered.
“What did he do?” She didn’t care to listen to the details about the company Grayson worked for. At least not until after she agreed to track the guy down.
“Murdered a partner in the company. Gruesome killing. Nothing is as simple as a gunshot in the head anymore. These damned crazies have to get creative.”
“A shame,” she said with a deep sigh. She stared at the photo of her quarry again. The men she pursued could rarely be called even passably good-looking. But the man who stared into the camera for this picture was unquestionably handsome. His hair was dark, short and a little tousled. His bronze skin gave his chiseled features a healthy glow. The photo certainly wasn’t from the police file. The tailored dark business suit did wonders for his full frame, for one thing. He was smiling, for another. This man, this Grayson Walker, could melt a woman’s heart with a smile like that. It was a crying shame that someone with those kinds of looks going for him could turn out twisted.
And unfortunate, for Vega’s task at least, the brown eyes she saw staring up at her were sharp and dangerously intelligent.
“How long has he been loose?” she asked.
“Six months.”
She flew to her feet. “Six months? He’s been missing for six months and the bonding company is only now getting around to looking for him?”
Jack murmured something under his breath.
“What?”
“You won’t be the first bounty hunter to go after him,” he said louder this time. “Three others have already failed to bring him back. He killed the last one. But, I know you. You could get this guy without even trying.”
“He’s had plenty of time to bury himself into a damn deep hole, Jack. I don’t know.”
“Houdini couldn’t hide from you.” He waved his hand at the high-tech computer taking up half her desk and most of the adjacent computer table. “Work your magic. It’ll be an easy five hundred thousand if he’s still in Georgia, a million if he’s fled the state.”
Though the money was enticing, the challenge of succeeding where three other top bounty hunters had failed was what really snared her.
The photo of her father sitting high on a nearby shelf caught her eye. He was dressed in his everyday police uniform and wearing his usual stern expression. He’d died only a week after the picture was taken. Maybe if she succeeded where three others had failed, she’d finally be able to imagine him with a look of pride for her.
“Okay Jack,” she said with a deep sigh. “I’ll find him.”
* * * *
Early the next morning Vega pinned the photo of Grayson Walker to her bulletin board. “Where would a twisted mind like yours go?” She flipped open the police file and began the long process of digging into a fugitive’s head.
Days passed without much progress. The file was thick, but it didn’t have much in the way of useful information. His childhood was a mystery. No birth records could be found. Vega decided to work backwards, beginning with his arrest.
“This guy is sick.” Vega nearly lost her lunch when she finally got a copy of the crime scene photos. There wasn’t much left of the man Grayson was accused of killing. This crime really drove home the term ‘hack job’.
His best friend? That was always a good place to start. Unfortunately, the man Grayson allegedly killed, Greg Harper, was also the only man Vega might consider calling Grayson’s close friend.
Girlfriends were usually great sources of information. She spent days on the phone trying to track down a steady girlfriend, a one-night stand, or a whore.
Nothing. The guy must have been celibate.
Or really good at covering his tracks.
He’d helped build the lucrative Atlanta based Six-Star Enterprises with two other men, Joshua Whitfield and Greg Harper. Joshua Whitfield was the money behind the company, a titan in the investment-banking world who appeared to have very little involvement in the day-to-day operations of Six-Star.
The dead Greg Harper and Grayson were the brains behind the corporation. She couldn’t figure out exactly what Six-Star did besides acquire smaller corporations. But whatever it was, Greg and Grayson worked closely together. She traced their friendship all the way back to when they were roommates at the University of Georgia through their college years.
Something between the two must have gone sour in those last few days. Something that pushed Grayson so far over the edge, he saw nothing wrong with hacking his best friend into tiny bits. But Vega wasn’t interested in motive; she just needed a clue to Grayson’s whereabouts. Any crumb would do.
She was finally making some progress tracking down Greg Harper’s pre-college history—hoping to find a continued link between the men—when the phone rang.
“Hello?” she nearly shouted into the phone, desperate to hear good news from one of the hundreds of contacts she’d made in the past several weeks.
“Lower your voice, Vega,” her mother said with a stern clip. “I can’t understand why you insist on speaking with that bold voice. It scares away men, you know.”
Wonderful, her mother must have found yet another eligible bachelor. She’d just finished dodging that last one. “I’m really busy with a case right now, Mom. I’ll be staying at the office until very late every day this week.”
“You can spare a moment for your mother.” It wasn’t a request. Vega swallowed hard. He must be a real winner this time. “Tonight. Eight o’clock. I’d like you to meet Mrs. Byers’s son, Kyle. He’s a doctor.” Her voice literally sparkled on the word, doctor.
“I don’t know. I’m already seeing someone.”
“Oh, and wear something appropriate. I certainly don’t want Kyle scared away by those dreadful army boots, horridly baggy cargo pants, and one of those ill-fitting black t-shirts you insist on wearing.”
Vega looked down. That was exactly what she was wearing. Was she becoming predictable?
“Well, it’s practical. You can’t expect me to apprehend a fugitive in high heels and long skirt. I wouldn’t be able to defend myself. I’d break an ankle.”
“I don’t understand why you insist on dressing like you came from poverty. Your father was the city’s police chief for heaven’s sake. A very respected position. We have a duty to his memory to always look respectable. I about died the last time you showed up for lunch with me at the club.”
“I explained that. I…”
“And another thing, Vega. Your job. It’s unseemly. I’d rather you didn’t talk about it with Kyle. You’re not a kid anymore. It’s time you started acting like a woman. It’s past time you got married.”
“I have no interest…”
“You have a duty. Just look at the example you’re setting for your sister.”
This was a new argument in her mother’s repertoire. It stung, too, because she agreed. Fiona had no business following in her footsteps.
“I’ve tried to talk to her, Mom. She won’t listen.”
“She’d follow your example if you grew up and acted like a lady once in a while.”
Vega listened patiently as her mother continued to lecture. Her duty as a daughter was to listen…not to agree. Though by the time she hung up the phone, she’d agreed to meet this new bachelor her mother had selected. Some family obligations simply had to be endured.
At five o’clock, she decided to call it a day. Fifteen minutes later, she found Butch Polsen’s well-used Ford Crown Victoria parked at the curb of her apartment building. Butch was waiting for her at the door, his snakeskin boot propped up across the frame, his blond hair shimmering in the streetlight. He tipped his battered cowboy hat. “You w
on’t return my calls.”
“Do you blame me?” She crossed her arms and stared at him. She wasn’t exactly disappointed to see him.
He might be an uneducated brute with a short fuse, but he was still the safest man in her life. Probably because he wasn’t the type of man who could tempt her heart. Or make her long for his love. Love was for powder puffs like Lila Crafter and her mother. No way would she end up like one of them, loving a hard man like a brainless ninny.
“I won’t apologize, if that’s what you expect,” he said. “That scum deserved to eat some buckshot after attacking me like that. You shouldn’t have stopped me.”
“You’re a menace, Butch.” She pushed him aside and unlocked the door. “Might as well come in since you’re here.”
He greedily accepted the invitation to invade her quiet space. “So, this is where you live?” He whistled through his teeth. “It’s so bare…depressing.”
Her second story apartment was furnished with natural woods: bamboo and maple. A few black crystals and polished ebony stones populated the tops of the furniture, creating a stark contrast to the whitewashed walls. A tall bamboo plant grew in a bubbling water garden beside a bank of windows. This was her sanctuary.
“I’m not going to argue with you, Butch. Not tonight.” She closed and locked the door behind them. “I’ve been summoned to my mother’s for dinner.”
“Another bachelor?” A spark of anger flashed in his eyes. He grabbed her by the nape of her neck and pulled her hard against his body. Her senses exploded with the memory of their past physical encounter.
His lips covered hers. With adept skill, his fiery kiss teased her mouth open. His tongue encircled hers, enticing her to surrender.
A thoughtless tumble with him would do wonders for her nerves. The elusive Grayson Walker had haunted her day and night. His stunning smile even dared to intrude into her dreams. She deserved a break.
Her body turned tingly, alive in Butch’s hands. He deepened his kiss, leaving her breathless. He’d already worked one hand into her shirt, arousing a nipple into a hard peak with those magic fingers of his. A hot gaze pinned her to the wall. A feral wildness she almost feared swirled deep in his blue eyes. His gaze pressing deeper, he peeled her khakis open and buried his hand in her panties.
