Hot on the Hunt

by Melissa Cutler

  “We’re business partners, what did you expect?”

  “Business associates, was the term you used.”

  Yeah, okay. Rather than debate the semantics of being associates versus partners, she changed the subject. “What do you have in the bag?”

  “Colombo curry, the island’s specialty.”

  “Has the storm started ramping up yet?”

  “Still just light rain, but I talked to some old-timer locals while I was getting dinner. They said it’ll be here by midnight.”

  She tapped the top of her laptop screen. “I’m in the St. Croix Police Department network and it doesn’t look like they’ve figured out that Rory isn’t on their island anymore. The next place I’m going to look is the NSA.”

  “You can get into NSA’s secure network? I thought they’d outfitted it with an impenetrable force field, or whatever you computer geeks call it.”

  “You were close. It’s a firewall. And it’s not impenetrable because I made sure it wasn’t before I left ICE.”

  He set the food on the small round table near the far wall and fixed a curious expression on her.

  “What?”

  He shook his head, a bemused smile on his lips and, perhaps, a hint of admiration. “Way to go, partner.”

  * * *

  Not long after nightfall, John stared at the satellite image of Martinique that Alicia had pulled up on her computer, trying to use his knowledge of the island and Rory to figure out where their quarry had gone after landing the floatplane. The options were staggering. Even more so because John was familiar with Rory’s methods and knew he was a huge fan of misdirection. The plane’s location wasn’t going to lead them any closer to finding Rory than his boat did on St. Croix.

  John rested a hand on the back of Alicia’s chair, careful to avoid touching her hair or making the move overly familiar, despite that being overly familiar with her was exactly what his body and heart wanted to do at the moment. Good thing his head was back in control now, because finding Rory was going to take every bit of brain power he had.

  Alicia had transformed the narrow, wooden desk near the window into a high-tech surveillance headquarters. After tapping into ICE’s network, she’d made it look like child’s play to keep tabs on Martinique’s police department as well as all the traffic cameras and cell phone towers on the island.

  John was amazed, as he always was, by Alicia’s computer skills, the singular passion for and the creativity involved in her science. That alone would’ve been impressive enough, but she was also a lethal operative with a commanding physical power and weaponry skills that rivaled the most elite soldiers. He had no idea how many eighteen-year-olds got invited to join the CIA, but she had to be one in a billion.

  Maybe that was key. She was eighteen, a child still, when she’d thrust herself into a world of espionage, warfare and politics, where she was taught to doubt everyone, trust no one. Maybe he ought to cut her some slack about her lack of trust in him. She’d never had a normal dating or young adult life. No regular college experiences and friendships like John had enjoyed before joining the army as an officer.

  Her unique history and sharply honed genius were two of the things he’d always found intriguing and sexy about her, so he could hardly hold her extraordinary life against her now.

  What he really needed to do was stop thinking about that last kiss, about the way the flesh of her chest had felt to his lips and hands, so he could concentrate all his energy onto finding Rory, because the sooner they found him, the sooner they could each move on.

  Moving on. What a strange concept. How could he move on from Alicia when their relationship felt unfinished in every way?

  When she’d admitted that she wished he would have fought for her, it felt as if he’d grabbed hold of a live wire, it was such a shock to his system. Like his heart and mind finally woke up after hibernating for a year and half. She was right. How had he never seen the collapse of their relationship from her perspective? It was almost as if he’d expected her to turn him away and when she did, he gave up. Since when was he the sort of man who gave up? Scrappers didn’t give up. Underdogs relished the chance to prove people wrong. But he’d just up and left without a fight.

  What the hell had he been thinking?

  Even if she’d wanted to contact him, he’d totally checked out and went off the grid. He hadn’t given her any spare chances; he didn’t fight. She’d never even heard the truth about what he’d gone through and done on the day she was shot. He’d been devastated that she didn’t have blind faith in him, but she came of age in the CIA, for pity’s sake. She’d been taught not to have blind faith in anyone. Had he really expected a whole life of learning and conditioning would go out the window when it came to the way she processed their relationship and his motives?

  She still couldn’t admit out loud that he was innocent, but maybe it wasn’t too late for them. Just maybe. But nothing was going to happen until she could verbalize that she trusted him and believed in his innocence. And his gut was telling him that wasn’t going to happen as long as Rory was on the loose.

  This meant one thing: that finding Rory was no longer just about clearing John’s name. It was fighting to lay the past to bed once and for all so Alicia could move on. So she could be free from all the things that were weighing her down and poisoning her outlook on life and John could find out if there was something between them worth fighting for still.

  John paced behind Alicia’s chair. They’d spent hours at the computer but still hadn’t found the needle in the haystack that would lead them to Rory. While it was comforting to know that the hurricane would keep U.S. authorities off the island and Rory on, that same storm would eventually demand that he and Alicia hunker down to wait it out, rather than search for their quarry.

  Though they hadn’t discussed their strategy for surviving the hurricane, John knew they wouldn’t be able to do so in this hotel room unless they took up residence in the bathroom because one bad wind gust and flying debris could shatter the window in a heartbeat.

  He stopped walking and braced his hands against the back of her chair. “We’re not getting anywhere and our window to search before the hurricane hits is only getting smaller. If I were Rory, what I’d do is hole up and let my leg heal while I waited the storm out, betting on a power failure and general chaos in the days afterward, then take a ferry or hire a boat to take me to St. Lucia or Barbados. Or all the way to Panama or Colombia. From there, disappearing indefinitely would be a piece of cake.”

  “Any one of those plans would require a lot more cash than he could’ve found in those wallets and purses he stole from the Ammaly Bay.”

  Her voice faded off and he could tell a lightbulb had just gone on in her head.

  “That’s it,” she murmured, typing so fast that the click-clack of the keys mimicked the sound of the rain beating on their window. It was one of the most comforting sounds to John that evoked memories of lying in bed listening to her type—cracking codes, hacking into corporate networks, doing her computer genius thing.

  “Talk to me, Phoenix.”

  “Well, tracking petty theft is nearly impossible, especially in touristy places like the Caribbean where tourists are getting ripped off all the time, but I bet those people from the resort who got their purses and wallets stolen reported it to the St. Croix police. If I can find the police report, we’ll have a list of names and stolen items.”

  “Then what?”

  She twisted in her chair and smiled at him. “Rory needs cash, right? So what if he’s hitting ATMs here using the stolen debit cards? I can look for ATM usage by the names of the people who had their wallets stolen. Do you think Rory would remember the PIN code cracking techniques I taught our black ops crew during your first year with us?”

  Genius. No wonder she was smiling so big. This plan might actual
ly work. “Definitely.” Alicia had taught them all how to crack PIN codes in case they ever got in a pinch for cash while on a mission. More than 50 percent of people use the five hundred most common four digit PINs for their ATM cards, not just in the U.S., but internationally. Since Rory stole whole wallets, including passports, phones and photo IDs, he’d know people’s birthdays and names of family members, too, which were other common passcodes.

  “Good. That’s what I hoped. I’m already in the St. Croix police system, so now I’m just running a search for references to the Ammaly Bay Resort from today.”

  “I know you’re a genius and all, but I’m thinking that Logan’s crew is going to reach this same conclusion sooner or later, especially if Logan has a techie like you on his team.”

  “He does. I’m sure of it. How else could he have tracked me so efficiently?” A new window popped up on the computer screen. She scrolled through the new information, her eyes narrowed in concentration. “Most of the debit cards have been canceled, but I can work with that, too, because I can pull up the networks of different banks on the island and see if there’s a high volume of rejected cards at any one ATM.”

  After a few more minutes of furious typing, more windows popped up and John, who’d been attempting to figure out what she was doing, gave up and backed away from the computer.

  He lay sideways on the bed, hands threaded behind his head, and closed his eyes. He let the sound of typing and Alicia’s muttered words to herself carry him into the memories of how they used to be. From that rosy view that filled him with equal measures of peace and sorrow, it was impossible not to wonder what the future held for them after they caught Rory.

  What if he fought for her now? Would she let him in to her life? Did he even want to try? Could he be with someone who’d once thought him capable of plotting her murder and who still couldn’t admit aloud that she knew he’d never hurt her?

  The typing stopped, leaving the only sound in the room being the rain and wind against the window and creaks and footfalls in the building beyond their room. He waited for the typing to resume but it didn’t. As the silence stretched on, he opened his eyes and looked her way.

  She was looking at him and seemed flustered that he’d caught her at it.

  “I was trying to decide if you were asleep.”

  “Just resting my eyes.” He pushed up and sat on the edge of the bed, stretching his arms overhead. “What’s up? Did you find something?”

  “Not yet.” She picked up the now-cold takeout and lifted the fork. “I have all the data in place and all my search options open. Now, we just have to wait for Rory to make his first move. Who knows when that will be?”

  “Great. A digital stakeout. Your favorite.”

  “You remember that time in Lebanon when we were tracking those artifact smugglers? We sat in that gnarly, roach-infested room for three days waiting for a hit from all those different agencies I tapped.”

  “I thought you were going to shoot your computer.”

  Her expression morphed into fake incredulity. “Why would you think that? I mean, just because I was waving my gun at it, that doesn’t mean anything.”

  He fought a smile at the memory. “And yelling, ‘Chime, you bastard or I’m going to kill you and your brother!’”

  “Both my laptops were being difficult on purpose. And I thought threatening might help. I can be pretty persuasive when I want to be. I just wanted the damn thing to chime so we could get out of that nasty room.”

  “I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that you’re a very impatient person.”

  “Moi?”

  Reminiscing about old times, joking with Alicia—it’d been a long time since he’d thought about the past and his time on the black ops team with anything but bitterness. It was a shocking reminder that beyond lust or love, he liked Alicia. He liked the way she took on the world as if every new day was a problem to solve or a battle to fight. He liked her sense of humor, her impatience and her mind for totally random trivia.

  The good memories, the room, the reminder of how compatible they were, the sight of her wearing his shirt—on top of everything else that day, it was too much, especially after more than a year of feeling nothing at all.

  He couldn’t decide what he wanted to do more—storm from the room again or gather her up in his arms and carry her to the bed. Given the war of emotions battling inside him, it was even money, but either way, he wasn’t getting anywhere by sitting on the bed. He stood with a stilted abruptness, his composure so close to snapping that he couldn’t quite get his limbs to work right.

  Alicia drew up tall and stiff. Her expression shuttered except for the hint of anxiety in her eyes, as if she could tell how close he was to kissing her again. She might have even stopped breathing. That made two of them.

  He forced himself to draw breath. Don’t go there, man. Remember patience.

  “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Oh.”

  The part of him that was still a gentleman knew he should’ve offered her first shower, but he wasn’t feeling very polite at the moment. More like a caged animal. He ripped his shirt over his head and tossed it on the bed, then rubbed a casual hand over his chest and abs. He wanted her to look. It was vain and stupid, but so what? Let her see what she was missing because she was too proud and scared to admit that she believed in his innocence.

  Holding her gaze, he walked her way, toward the bathroom door to the left of her desk, unlatching the fly of his jeans as he moved.

  He stopped in the doorway, leaned his shoulder against the molding and grinned at Alicia’s flushed face and chest that wasn’t yet moving again.

  “Don’t forget to breathe, Phoenix.”

  Sucking in a breath, she offered him an almost convincing eye roll. Almost. “Oh, please. Egotistical much?”

  He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his briefs and pushed them and his jeans to the floor. “Little bit. Is that a problem for you?”

  She kept her eyes on his, matching his stare of challenge. “You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.” He could tell she was going for exasperated sarcasm, but he didn’t miss the thin unsteadiness of her voice.

  It stirred his body to life, knowing she was forcing herself not to look lower than his face. And knowing that as soon as he turned around, she’d drop her attention to his backside. Knowing that she wanted him and was having to hold herself back the same way he was holding himself back from giving in to his basest need.

  The animal inside him growled for release. Instead, he spun on his heel and walked to the glass shower. And yeah, he did feel her eyes on him. He never did know how long she looked, but after he washed his hair, he cleared the water from his eyes and turned to the door only to find it closed.

  Chapter 11

  By the time the cloud-covered sky lightened the next morning, John was ready to hold a gun to Alicia’s computer and threaten it with violence if it didn’t chime with news of Rory’s movement soon.

  Finally, at 0800 hours, while John was on shift in front of the screen, an alert chime sounded. He had no clue what he was looking at, but all he knew was that when a chime sounded, he needed to wake the sleeping beauty that was snoring in the bed.

  It had definitely been weird sharing a room with her, especially after he’d nearly lost control the night before and made love with her. He’d ruined her shirt, for pity’s sake. Then he’d paraded around naked on his way to the shower, daring her to look. As if he had zero command over his actions. As if he was back in college trying to get a squeal out of the girls in his dorm. He had to admit, it had been satisfying to watch Alicia try and fail to keep her eyes on his face.

  Her stubborn refusal to capitulate and admit he was worthy of her trust was getting old, and he was certain it would come up again real soon, but not this
morning. Because that alert chime meant they had a lead on Rory.

  When they were lovers, he used to kiss Alicia awake, but today he needed to concentrate on their mission, so he wasn’t getting any closer to her than the foot of the bed. Through the comforter, he wiggled her big toe until she roused.

  “We got a chime. Time to roll.”

  She flopped onto her back, let out a groan-slash-sigh that spoke to how exhausted she still was after the scant couple hours of sleep she’d allowed herself, then rolled out of bed to her feet.

  One look at her bed-tousled hair and soft-sleepy face and John had to avert his eyes before he did something stupid. Like kiss her or hold her. Or tell her how lovely and relaxed and real she was first thing in the morning and how much it made him miss seeing her like that when he was her man.

  He turned to the little table that served as a coffee station and prepared two cups while she plunked into the desk chair and squinted at the screen.

  “We have a hit. It’s one of the theft victims from the Ammaly Bay Resort who didn’t cancel their debit card. It was used four minutes ago at an ATM machine in Fort-de-France to withdraw two hundred euros. It’s across from the Catholic church along the harbor about four miles west.”

  “That’s where he is right now? Real time?”

  She stood and strode to the boots she’d lined up near the door. “Yep. I don’t have time to pack my computer because he’s not going to linger long. Are you ready?”

  Wow. She made illegal internet surveillance look like child’s play. “Go ahead and say ‘I told you so.’”

  She wiggled into her boot and looked quizzically at him. “About what?”