Survival Instinct

by Doranna Durgin

  They made it to the car in a silence that Karin didn’t mind at all. Not on a beautiful spring day with the zing of job planning rushing through her body. In the real grift, Longsford would purchase land that Karin had no right to sell, and his deed would be worthless. And even though this one wouldn’t get that far…

  Yeah, there it was again.

  She could still feel it.

  Karin easily spotted Dave’s Maxima and pulled out to reach it before he did, waiting for him to pop the trunk with his remote. The car beeped in response, and Karin quickly rearranged their purchases so they could smooth the suit along the top of the rest of it. Dave straightened, one hand on the lid and ready to push it back down, hesitating long enough to say, “I’m not sure where I fit in that plan. Or do I?”

  Karin grinned, and he gave her a wary look. He’d figured out that grin already, had he? “Plenty for you to do,” she assured him. “For starters, I need you to find someone we can trust for the inside man. And I need to know Longsford’s friends, his party circle, his hangouts. I especially need to know which of those friends is close enough to see that I get a special invitation to one of his parties, but it’s got to be someone who’s also conveniently off on a cruise somewhere. And that’s just for starters. I’ve got legwork to do, and I want you there for most of it.” She caught the question in his eyes, and said, “I don’t know this city well enough. It’ll go faster if I have help from someone who does, and backup along the way. I’m going to be poking my nose into nastyville in order to get some of this stuff set up.”

  He shut the lid. “And you’re sure—”

  “I’ve been to nastyville before, Dave.” She gave him her flattest voice, the one that meant this conversation had been over the last time she ended it.

  He shrugged and let it go, coming around to open her car door out of what seemed to be undeniable force of habit. “Okay, then. We’ll start with the safe house. We’ve got maps and phone books there, and you can scope out the city while I see about your inside man. As for the rest of it…I’ll follow your lead.”

  Yes, she thought. That you will. Let’s just hope I don’t take you too close to what I really am.

  Late afternoon found them at the safe house, tucked into a little neighborhood of cul-de-sacs on the southern edge of Alexandria. Total urban-suburbia, with minivans, cultivated landscaping and a high school behind them. The house itself was a modest Victorian with a corner turret and an unusually open first-story floor plan. The upstairs held three bedrooms and a huge bathroom, but Karin dumped her stuff in the smaller middle room, deliberately avoiding the master bedroom, a room that pushed into the turret space and boasted three large windows.

  Dave tossed his stuff into the third bedroom in the back corner, then came to her door.

  Karin looked up from where she tested the twin bed. She sat on the edge of it. “I won’t share my closet, but I never did need much space in a bed.”

  He didn’t say anything, but she saw his eyes change. A smile hinted in the corners, and she thought he might come to her then and there. Eventually he said, “Good.” And then he glanced over his shoulder toward his bedroom. “Done booting up. I can start in on that research for you right away. There are take-out lists in the kitchen if you want to pick your favorite.”

  “Humph.” Karin leaned back on her arms, sinking into the bed. “And what do your neighbors think of this little house? Occupied by a stream of different people, sometimes vacant, and lots of takeout. Doesn’t exactly fit into the neighborhood.”

  He shrugged. “Ostensibly, this place serves as temporary dwelling for travelers coming in for training and special projects out of D.C. It works. By the way, you’re a civilian worker with the Army Corps of Engineers, contracting on a land-assessment project. I thought it might fit your sense of irony.”

  “Yes indeed.” Smart-ass. She gestured him away. “Go play with your notes. I’m going to take a shower, and then I’ll order something pizza-ish. I’d like to get an early start tomorrow.” If she could locate the right printers…if Dave could locate the information to put the finishing touches on her approach…

  By all rights she should have had weeks to gain Longsford’s interest and his confidence. But this was the time to strike. Longsford was at his most reactive, his most vulnerable. And she had an ace she could play any time she wanted.

  Ellen.

  With this new makeover she didn’t truly resemble Ellen anymore; he’d probably see nothing in her but a puzzling familiarity. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t let Ellen’s mannerisms peek out. Puzzling him. Enticing him. Reeling him in.

  Now that was a line she didn’t intend to tell Dave she’d walk.

  She waved him out, then dumped her purchases from the morning—underwear, a slew of casual shirts, a lightweight hooded jacket. She plucked up a few items and headed for the shower. She could hear Dave tapping away, but when she looked inside his room she found he’d forgone the small desk to sit on the floor, his back to the wall and his feet braced high against the side of the bed. Total guy mode. He’d pulled the pillow from the bed for a lap desk and now was frowning in concentration over the laptop display. Upset about something, she would have said.

  Longsford, no doubt. But this research was the one thing he could do, quickly and extensively, better than she could. And it left her free to concentrate on her own role. She walked Brooke’s walk down the hall to the bathroom. A saucier walk than her own, yet not slutty. No, not at all. More a runway walk than a street walk.

  She showered as Brooke would do…as Karin herself might have chosen, before a year of living on a farm where the well water sometimes ran low. Luxuriating in the halfway decent hand lotion, using the provided blades and shaving cream on her legs. She let her hair air-dry in a tousled bed-head look and left the Brooke makeup unused on the sink counter, ready for the morning.

  She emerged from the steamy room to the enticing odor of pizza and followed her nose down the stairs. The formal dining area had been converted to a small but completely functional office, and the desktop computer now hummed to itself along with the printer. Dave and his notes had been busy.

  She found them all—Dave, the notes, the pizza—at the back of the house in the kitchen breakfast nook. A pizza slice hung crookedly in his grip, looking forgotten. The papers spread out over the small table, pushing the box into a precarious position at the edge. When he saw her, he dropped his piece back into the box and pulled it to a safer spot, making way for her to sit opposite him. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t wait. But you said pizza-ish, so I hope this is okay. It’s their meaty version.”

  All perfectly normal. Dave, deep in thought, surrounded by his notes in hard copy, ordering the pizza he thought—rightly so—that she’d like.

  Then why had something inside her stumbled when he looked up at her? Why did she have that little warning trill in her head, the one that always told her when a scam was going off course? The difference being, this time she didn’t try to hide it. She didn’t try to smooth things over or retreat to reassess. She didn’t try to pretend nothing was wrong at all. She asked, “What’s up?”

  He didn’t quite look at her. “Just wishing I could have caught this bastard years ago. Looking at him in the society pages, living his privileged life…” He shook his head. “There’s nothing right about any of it.”

  Uh-huh. Very true. But not the reason for his change in demeanor. She told him, “Well, we’re here to change that,” and slipped into a chair to help herself to a couple of pieces of pizza. He nudged the notes her way and she glanced at them with approval. Just what she needed—a neat list of contacts with details. Dave had highlighted two couples who were currently out of town, but who usually appeared in Longsford’s personal orbit. She ran her finger over the green highlighter. “You’re such a nerd,” she said. “This is great.”

  “Good,” he said, but his voice was studiously neutral.

  She looked up at him, eyes narrowed. This was more t
han anger at Longsford. Definitely more. “If you’re thinking I can’t carry this off—”

  He shook his head before she even finished. “I have no doubt you can do this,” he told her. “I’m not so sure I can do it.” He scraped his chair back and took the pizza box, stuffing the leftovers into the fridge.

  He’s not just talking about the scam.

  She couldn’t even remember a moment when there hadn’t been some sort of spark between them, from the first moment she’d watched him deal with Ellen’s dog. Sometimes it flared to rocket-fuel intensity, sometimes it merely glimmered. But it had always been there.

  Not now.

  “You’ll do fine,” she said. Lame, so lame.

  “I’m headed up for bed.” He gestured toward the front of the house. “We’re all locked up and the alarm system is engaged, so don’t go for any midnight walks if you have trouble sleeping.”

  “You’re—” she started, and again he didn’t let her finish.

  “Early day tomorrow, you said. Let’s be ready for it.”

  “Okay. Sure. That makes good sense.” Lame and lamer. She should have been demanding to know the problem, digging away at it.

  But she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  Chapter 15

  Son of a bitch.

  Dave looked at himself in the mirror over the small dresser in his bedroom. His hair was gold-bright even in the low-wattage light, and the shadow of his eyes looked more haunted in contrast. I’m talking about you, Hunter.

  Back at that farmhouse, he’d talked himself out of believing that his response to “Ellen” held no conflict of interest. That he could make love to her right on the floor of her office. Make love, hell. More like wild sex. Great wild sex.

  Turned out there was a conflict of interest after all.

  He hadn’t expected these knotted results. Knots that blurred the lines between right and wrong and for the first time in his life left him unable to see where one turned into the other. Left him with a big bewildered empty spot where she’d so quickly made herself a part of him.

  But then, that was what she was good at, wasn’t it?

  It hadn’t taken his L.A. friend long to get him background on Karin Sommers. Her stepfather, Gregg Rumsey, had had early arrests and then seemed to have cleaned up his act. Dave knew he’d only hidden himself behind a little girl. No doubt he’d also finally gotten some good fixes in the local law agencies. Either way, he and his stepdaughter had kept a low profile until just over a year ago.

  Until the elderly Vasilkovs. Irene and Earl. Shortly before their deaths, their retirement savings had dwindled significantly. Friends, interviewed after their deaths, were certain they’d been investing in some secret scheme. They’d left a joint suicide note, but nothing that convinced the M.E. to ignore the evidence of homicide. They’d closed in on Rumsey.

  But Rumsey, with much beating of breast and teary regret, had provided an alibi and pointed the finger at his missing stepdaughter.

  Karin Sommers.

  Evidence was forthcoming. A warrant issued.

  A warrant Dave would honor, as soon as he was done here.

  So what did that make him?

  A son of a bitch.

  And what did it make her? The woman he’d come to know and admire in these past intense days, so composed that she could make up her absurd Mad Sheep disease while clinging to the side of a mountain? She’d meant to run, sure, but she’d also changed her mind when she’d realized she could help.

  Or maybe she simply planned to complete the scam to finance another run for it. Because she was far deeper underground than she’d let on. Not just running from her nasty stepfather, oh no.

  Running from a murder conviction.

  He snorted at the man in the mirror. The Hunter family’s fair-haired boy, the youngest brother with so much potential who’d never lived up to expectations. No, he was too tied to his own goals, too attached to an honor that was more about helping the helpless and hopeless than hitting the international scene for the high-concept spy gigs. Satisfied to get his criminology degree and his investigator’s license and to poke around in the bones of tragic cases, trying—and often succeeding—to make everything turn out right for that one child, that one family.

  He had no excuse for leaving Karin free to run this scam. No excuse for hiding his knowledge from her, except that he wanted to use her before he turned her in. He’d finally become willing to trade his pristine honor intact for results. I want Longsford. And to get the man, Dave was scamming a scammer.

  At least he was fully aware of his own price.

  And, thinking of Karin’s quietly stricken expression, her tacit acknowledgment of the change between them…of that bittersweet empty spot among the knots in his stomach…

  He also knew the cost.

  Karin woke to an unfamiliar ceiling, a tingling undercurrent touching her thoughts. Familiar enough, but not something she’d felt for a while. Mixed in was a sadness, and though she’d felt plenty of that since Ellen’s death, this was different. More sorrow and regret than outright grief.

  She stared at the ceiling fan until the details trickled in. She was building a scam, that was what. She was in Alexandria, in Dave Hunter’s borrowed safe house, and she was building a scam. The jazz. Oh yeahhh. She’d learned to embrace it—to focus on it, so she wouldn’t focus on the other aspects of her work. Just as she’d learned to embrace the complicated scams, to bury herself in the challenge.

  Rumsey was the one who worked the easy marks. The elderly, who were often gullible and just a little confused, and who could be beguiled by the thought of leaving a fortune to their children. There was no jazz in that. There hadn’t been for a long, long time.

  But those who were rich and in the prime of their lives, they made their own choices. Like Longsford, their greed was their weak spot. And constructing a deeply layered scam that could hit that weak spot dead on…

  That was Karin’s weak spot.

  But now there was sadness weighing against the building thrill of this scam.

  Dave.

  He’d figured her out, it seemed. Seen too much.

  So she stared at the ceiling fan, and she realized the most important thing: he hadn’t changed his mind. He might not like what he saw anymore, but he would still work with her. They’d still go after Longsford. Ellen’s revenge.

  Yes.

  And the second important thing: she could deal with his change of heart. She’d expected it. She knew better than most not to take anything for granted. And what they’d experienced together…

  She’d miss it, be sad for it…but never regret it.

  Do what you have to do. Take what you can get.

  It had worked before. She’d make it work now.

  She breezed down into the kitchen to nab leftover pizza for breakfast. A glass of orange juice washed the pepperoni down with a nice zing. Dave appeared not long afterward, fresh from the shower in the worn black jeans and a charcoal tee and looking wary. Wary of her, wary of himself…even in her regret, she felt a little sorry for him. Of the two of them, she’d known what she was doing when she reached for him in the tiny dormer office of Ellen’s house. He hadn’t a clue.

  Still wouldn’t have a clue, if she hadn’t done a true confessions on him.

  She pulled the sadness inside and covered it up with the jazz. “Ready to get started?” she asked him, leaning back against the counter to watch him take out three eggs and a bowl, cracking the eggs with practiced efficiency.

  His glance turned into something longer, a hesitation as he searched her face—long enough so she wondered just what he was looking for. He nodded abruptly and took a fork to the eggs, whipping them with vigor. “What’s on the schedule?”

  “Depends how much we get done, how fast.” She squelched the urge to wipe away the tiny dab of shaving cream by his ear and held out a closed hand, unfolding her index finger as she spoke. “One, we get me into a hotel. Something truly nice but sti
ll practical.”

  “I know a place on King Street near the river,” Dave interrupted, then softened—or tried to—the words by adding, “I’ve gotten to know this place pretty well in the past couple of years.”

  “Good.” Dammit. Maybe this wouldn’t be quite as easy as she thought, the pretending it didn’t matter. “Then you know where to look for good printers. Expensive printers who think much of themselves and their clientele. And also the pawnshops. Skanky ones.”

  He poured a dollop of milk in with the eggs and briefly whipped them together, then went hunting for a frying pan. “Interesting combination.”

  “We’ll be changing roles on the fly. You’re my driver and my boy toy. You’ll handle my suitcase and open my door, and when I’m dealing with business transactions, you’ll stand decorously in the background. If you cast an admiring look at my ass now and then, that would be good, too.”

  He fumbled the frying pan on the way to the stove, caught it, and turned to give her a skeptical look.

  “We’re playing my game,” she said. “Trust me to do it right. I retired free and clear, after all.”

  “Did you?” he murmured, as if that was supposed to mean something.

  Impatience flashed through her. “Are we doing this, or not?” she asked. “Because I’m good to stay here until Longsford forgets about Ellen. But I won’t run this con if you’re going in half-assed. It’s all or nothing.”