Moving Target

by Rosalie Stanton

  “Hasn’t anyone tried to kill you?”

  He barked an appreciative laugh. “Loads of times.”

  “What happened?”

  “They weren’t successful.”

  Anna licked her lips and decided not to press the issue further. Instead, her mind drifted back to Monroe and the files she had stored on her flash drive.

  “So,” he said, dragging out the word, “one more time. Do you know anyone who would want you dead?”

  Another silence. Anna tore her gaze away from his and fixed it on the empty parking lot ahead of them, her temper falling. He could have killed her a thousand times by now. He could have but he hadn’t. He’d gone out of his way to save her life, and stalker or not, creep-factor or not, he was right. She was in trouble—the sort of trouble no one would believe, and even if they did, she couldn’t expect help from anyone she knew. Not for this.

  But if she threw all in with a stranger, she needed to know least one thing. “What’s your name?”

  He blinked at her. “What?”

  “Your name. You know, what people call you? Or should I just call you Scary Man With Gun?”

  His lips quirked—his too-perfect lips that had recently peppered kisses along her throat. Anna flushed and glanced down. She had no idea what his motives had been for earlier, but in the midst of absolute madness, those stolen moments kept bubbling to the surface, giving her something tangible, something she knew to cling to, no matter how humiliated she felt now.

  “Wolf.”

  “Wolf? That’s a name?”

  He scowled. “Better than Anna, that’s for damn sure.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous!”

  “It’s a cheerleader name.”

  “It is not!”

  “Or Little House on the Prairie.”

  Anna blinked at him. “Yeah, because those two things go hand-in-hand.”

  “Just telling you what I think.”

  “Well, spare me. Cheerleader name my ass.” She paused. “And hey! I suppose you think there’s something wrong with cheerleaders?”

  Wolf turned to her and arched one of those perfect brows. “You were one, I gather?”

  “For two years in high school.”

  “Mmm. Don’t guess you still have the outfit, do you?”

  Anna fidgeted, her cheeks warming. It seemed simple to forget how up close and personal he’d been just a little while ago, though not when his voice went low. Not when his gaze flickered and ran over her body. “There’s nothing wrong with my name, damn it. At least it’s an actual name.”

  “Nathan’s my actual name.” His tone was conversational and overly helpful, like a damn Boy Scout. “Nathanial Thornton.”

  “And you go by Wolf?”

  “Nickname.”

  “Gee, you don’t say?”

  “‘Cause I’m an animal in the sack.” Wolf’s eyes brightened with challenge, and when she blushed, the smirk returned with a vengeance. “There you have it. Let’s go, then.”

  He’d already made it halfway out of the car before she remembered he’d been telling her something important. “Hey.” Anna scurried out after him. “You asked—”

  “Who wants you dead. I remember.” Wolf glanced at her, tossing his cigarette butt to the ground and stomping it out. “Any hints? How about it?”

  Anna licked her lips and followed him up the outer staircase to a room on the north side of the building—the side perfectly adjacent to where she lived. She stopped before entering the room, not wanting to look but needing to know exactly how good a view he had of her apartment. And it was a good one—a tragically good one. She could see into her bedroom, could see she’d left the light on, could see her cat waiting for her on her bed, could see things no one should see.

  Good Lord. Her apartment sat on the second level of the complex, and it always felt like a sauna, even in the dead of January. She couldn’t afford to run the AC unless it was too frigid for a cracked window and too hot without one. When she’d opened windows, she immediately raised the blinds as she found it allowed for better circulation. “This is so gross.” Anna made a face, straightening her skirt. The damn thing kept riding up, though as she was sitting, she didn’t know how. Perhaps she kept fidgeting without realizing it. “You can see everything from here.”

  Wolf offered a half shrug. “Yeah, well, gotta keep tabs. This is how I know who’s bad and who’s not. You are on the snow white list of purity.” He winked, nudging his motel door open. “We’ll only be here for a sec. Can’t leave my goodies behind.”

  “You really only go after the bad guys?”

  “I don’t kill anyone who doesn’t deserve it.” His voice was low and filled with quiet self-loathing she knew he didn’t intend to convey. It felt abrupt and powerful, and it provided a glimpse into his psyche she hadn’t wanted. He made her feel for him, forced her into a place where she knew he’d fallen victim of circumstance. His story was likely warped, like hers. In a simple tone, she knew more about him than she’d known about anyone outside her family—and the realization terrified her.

  Anna licked her lips. “And I don’t deserve it.”

  “Hardly. But someone thinks you do. Who, Anna?”

  “The US Secretary of Agriculture.”

  Wolf blinked. “Say again?”

  “My former boss, Richard Monroe. I was, essentially, a copy girl in his office. Shredded files, brought the coffee, answered phones, yadda yadda.”

  “This is in DC?”

  She nodded. “Right.”

  “Never would’ve pegged you for that kinda work. Seems a bit dull.”

  “For you, maybe. I like dull.”

  “Not half as much as you think you do. You just haven’t had the right kind of fun yet.”

  Anna decided to ignore his observation. She wasn’t about to take career advice from an assassin. “The pay was good, the benefits were fantastic and I really needed the money. My friend had pulled some strings—”

  “A friend in Washington?”

  “Right. Molly. We went to high school together and now she’s got a job on the Hill and everything’s going great for her. Really great.” Anna hated the envy in her stomach, but she couldn’t help it. Perhaps it was retribution for being popular where Molly had been brainy, even though Anna’s high school popularity hadn’t done much for her in college. For Molly, life couldn’t seem to get better. “But she got me the job in Monroe’s office, and everything was great for a while, but—and I can’t tell you when because I don’t know—I started dreading going to work.” She licked her lips. “It just got suffocating, if that makes sense.”

  Wolf nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Three weeks ago I overheard something I wasn’t supposed to overhear.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He and a couple of his staff members were talking about political moves, stuff that honestly doesn’t interest me, but it was weird, the way they were talking. Like the stuff they discussed wasn’t anything special, but their tones were all cryptic, you know?” Anna shivered, familiar discomfort wrapping around her insides. It seemed a difficult sensation to describe. It had no place within the confines of logic, only she knew when something felt off, which it did now; she didn’t know how else to phrase it. “This happened a lot. I’d hear things and brush it off, make an excuse or something, but then I heard them talking about the State of the Union.”

  “The presidential address?”

  “Yeah. It’s in two nights, I think. I can’t remember.” She shook her head. “And something about how Monroe needed to be the one picked by the president.” She made a face. “I have no idea what that means, but it freaked me out. It sounded too sinister to be something like ‘picked to be Ambassador of Quebec.’”

  Wolf smiled softly. “Quebec’s a city, kitten.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever it was, it wasn’t good.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because then they started talking about what would happ
en after Monroe was president.”

  He perked a brow. “Doesn’t mean anything by itself. Just that your former boss intends to run for office in three years.”

  “Governors and congressmen run for president, Wolf. Not secretaries of agriculture.”

  “Didn’t say he’d be successful.”

  Anna shook her head. “I don’t think that was a concern. And it didn’t sound like he planned on running for the White House so much as taking it.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “He plans on being in the Oval Office sooner than the next election cycle.”

  “How much sooner?”

  “Like within the next four weeks.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  Anna nodded. “Even if there were anything to impeach the president over, it couldn’t happen in a month.” She paused and pursed her lips. “Monroe wants power, and he’ll take it any way he can get it.”

  Wolf studied her for a second, as though gauging whether she spoke the truth or if she was crazy. It was the same look Molly had first given her, and though Anna didn’t appreciate it, she certainly understood.

  It took Wolf six seconds longer than it had Molly to determine Anna hadn’t lost her marbles. At least, that was the conclusion at which she hoped he arrived. She wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, but she knew how her allegation sounded. “Well,” he said, “that’s a horse of a different color.”

  “Needless to say, Monroe was furious when he saw me. I was fired on the spot.”

  “And that’s it?”

  She couldn’t help but fidget a bit more. “Well, I kinda took some stuff.”

  “Define stuff.”

  “All the info on his personal hard drive.” She threw up her hands under Wolf’s incredulous stare. “Look, I didn’t know what all was there. I haven’t even looked at it, but I knew something freaky was going on, so I decided leverage wouldn’t hurt. I had Molly—she’s a computer nut—walk me through how to access encrypted files, get past firewalls, and those are the only two computer words I know, but she did other stuff too.”

  Wolf’s brows hit his hairline. “I’d think scoping out a big shot’s hard drive would be easier than a how-to manual.”

  “Do a lot of computer hacking in your line of work?”

  “No, but I’d think it’d be a bit harder than all that.”

  Anna had to give him that. “Were it anyone but Molly instructing me, you’d be right. She’s a wiz, if ever a wiz there was.” She expelled a deep breath. “But I didn’t want her to get in trouble and DC had just turned sour, so I came home to good ol’ Springfield and that’s everything.”

  “So Monroe figured it out then.”

  “It looks like.”

  “And being picked by the president is…”

  Anna shrugged. “No clue, but it’s something he really wants. Badly.”

  “I’d say so if he plans on being in the White House before the end of the month.” Wolf expelled a deep breath. “Well, then.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Depends. Where’s the stuff you swiped from Monroe’s computer?”

  “In my purse.”

  Wolf’s gaze landed on the small bag hanging at her side. “Flash drive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Better hold onto it. We’re hitting the road.”

  Anna blinked. “We? You and me? Together?”

  “Unless you’d rather me leave you to the other bounty hunters, yeah, that’s the general idea.” A slow smirk spread across his face, his eyes taking a leisurely stroll down her body. “‘Sides, we got interrupted before. Looking forward to getting to know you up close and personal like.”

  Her cheeks burned and she tore her eyes away. “I… That wasn’t me. That was… I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t me.”

  “Looked like you. Sounded like you.”

  “I don’t act like that.”

  “A shame, that is.”

  Anna’s blush deepened and she suddenly had nowhere to rest her gaze. She’d found herself in strangest of all situations, knowing what those hands felt like on her skin, knowing how he manipulated her body, how close to orgasm she’d been before they were interrupted. He’d barely touched her and she’d felt she could touch the stars. But the spell had ended and she wouldn’t revisit it, not when she knew his name and why he’d approached her in the first place.

  The silence might have lasted all night had her cellphone not chirped, breaking into the air with awkward shrillness. She flashed Wolf an apologetic smile, then fished out her mobile and flipped it open without checking the caller ID. “Charity?” Her shoulders fell slack. “Oh, hi, Molly. No, not a bad time… This… Oh. Oh… Okay. Yeah, thanks. I’ll call you.” She snapped the phone shut. “It’s Monroe.”

  “What’s Monroe? Be more specific.”

  “He’s it. He got it.” She licked her lips. “What he wanted. He’s the one that’ll sit out of the State of the Union.”

  Wolf frowned. “Sit out?”

  “Right. Every time there’s a big congressional thing, someone sits out. You know, in case something happens and everyone croaks, there’ll still be someone in charge who’s in the line of succession.” Anna shuddered. “That person is Monroe.”

  Her eyes met his and all fight abandoned her body. He was right. She needed him now.

  Wolf expelled a deep breath. “That’s a whole new thing, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “He’s going to kill everyone.”

  “That’s a drastic leap.”

  “Look, you do the math. He wants me dead.”

  “The client’s anonymous. We don’t know for sure—”

  “Wolf, look at me.” Anna spread her arms. “I’m not Lara Croft. I’ve never even had a speeding ticket, and suddenly I have assassins after me?”

  “Nothing’s for certain. And even so, killing you isn’t the same thing as blowing up the Capitol building.”

  “But I told you what I heard!”

  “Maybe you heard wrong.”

  “And he’s sent you and your friends after me because of it?”

  “Again, we don’t know that for sure.”

  “I do know.”

  Wolf nodded at her purse. “Those files could be anything.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not. If it wasn’t Monroe, it was someone in his office. Come on, Wolf!” Anna shot him her iciest glare, the one held on reserve and typically only called upon when Misty turned up with her grade report. “These things just don’t happen, and they sure as hell don’t happen to me. Survey says when a psychotic madman fires you for finding something out, and then you end up with a bounty on your head, the incidents aren’t isolated.”

  He stared at her for a minute before the tension in his shoulders rolled away. “Right. The most obvious answer’s typically correct.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But jumping to conclusions doesn’t do anyone any favors.”

  Anna’s hands flew up. “Hey, you wanted me to get chatty. You’re the one with a gun. I’m just telling you what I know. Monroe’s seriously whacked. I mean, seriously. If you knew him, believing me wouldn’t be an issue. You’d just know.”

  He broke off, apparently without argument, and again stared at her. The “loony or liar” look surfaced once again, but it was short-lived. Weighing the odds seemed a bit unnecessary given the circumstances, and Anna figured Wolf knew it just as well as she did.

  “You really think he has the balls?” he asked.

  “Wolf, you don’t know this guy.”

  “You just said that.”

  “And I’m saying it again now.”

  “I got the memo. Don’t say anything else.”

  “Then stop asking redundant questions.”

  Wolf shook his head. “We gotta get moving.”

  Her heart jumped. “You believe me?”

  “You said it, kitten. I’m standing here for a reason. It won’t be long before your trail heats up now that someo
ne’s taken a swing. And sorry to say, this place is one of the first they’ll look.” He ran a hand over his head. “Give me ten to bag up my junk.”

  “And then?”

  Wolf paused, shrugged a shoulder and favored her with a speculative grin. “Fancy a road trip?”

  Anna swallowed hard and nodded tentatively without thought, at once exhausted but wide awake. She doubted she’d get rest anytime soon.

  Chapter 3

  They’d been driving for more than an hour without much in the way of conversation. By virtue of a phone call, Anna had discovered her friend from the club had made it out all right, but she hadn’t wanted to talk about it, or anything, for that matter. Wolf didn’t like the quiet. He didn’t like guessing at what thoughts tickled her brain or what fears her imagination entertained. He didn’t like not knowing, period, and he couldn’t take much more of the silent treatment, not with his car stereo busted and nothing but miles of empty road ahead. Not with the tension between them thick enough he could choke.

  Wolf needed her to talk or else he’d start yammering and end up sacrificing a precious piece of information she needn’t be privy to—like he felt certain the past two weeks had rendered him a new man simply by watching her, by seeing there were still people like her in the world. He’d nearly lost faith—he had lost faith—and she’d sent him a lifeline without realizing it.

  Anna couldn’t know how lost he’d been before her.

  Thankfully, she opted to end the silence the next second, her voice worn with fatigue. “Why do you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill people.”

  Wolf’s hands tightened around the wheel. He’d seen this question coming some time back, though it didn’t make it any easier to answer. “Pays the bills.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “How do you figure?”

  Anna made a face. “Because if that was it, you wouldn’t discriminate. You’re not that cold. I’d be dead right now if you were.”

  He had to hand it to her. At least she didn’t condemn him with every other breath, though he wasn’t unrealistic. He could easily see her taking a dive down a path of righteous indignation, calling him everything from a creep to a monster. It’d be natural, after all. Men in his line of work weren’t the sort one brought home to meet the folks.