Lawman on the Hunt

by Cindi Myers

  Breath hissed through his compressed lips as she fit the condom to him. She smiled, enjoying this moment of control and suspense, the trembling anticipation of the joy yet to come.

  Travis took her by the shoulders and urged her to lie down. He slid alongside her and pulled her to him. The sensation of his warm skin against her, the contours of his body so familiar and welcome, brought a lump to her throat.

  He nuzzled her neck and kissed his way across her shoulder, his hands skimming over her torso, like a blind man rereading a familiar text he had enjoyed many times. She arched against him, urging him on.

  His mouth closed over her breast and she lay back, eyes shut tight, losing herself in their lovemaking. He still remembered how to touch her, what she liked and what excited her most. And she hadn’t forgotten how to make his body respond to her touch—where he liked to be stroked, how he wanted to be held.

  They each moved slowly, deliberately, murmuring words of encouragement and endearment, their entire focus on pleasuring and being pleasured. And when he knelt between her legs, poised over her, she was trembling with need for him. She reached up and pulled him to her, welcoming him as if the months apart had never happened, all the hurt and shame burned away in the heat of their passion.

  Her fulfillment shuddered through her in a slow wave that left her gasping and grinning like a kid at Christmas.

  “You liked that, did you?” he asked, another thrust like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence.

  “Y-yes,” she said, her voice unsteady.

  “I liked it, too.” He thrust again. “A lot.”

  She squeezed her thighs around him and lifted her hips to meet his next advance. They fell into a familiar, urgent rhythm, her need for him spiraling upward once more, her breath coming in gasps. Somehow she had forgotten, or refused to let herself remember, how good they were together. How right.

  He came with a cry and reached down to stroke her, bringing her to a quick, second climax soon after. She was still shuddering when he withdrew, discarded the condom and lay down beside her, his head on her shoulder. She trailed her fingers across his shoulders and back, tracing patterns across his smooth, warm skin. “I love you so much,” she murmured.

  But her only answer came in a soft snore from her exhausted lover.

  Chapter Eleven

  Travis woke while it was still dark, the familiar yet unexpected weight of Leah against him disorienting him, as if their months apart had been nothing more than an unpleasant nightmare. Yet the hard ground beneath him and the chill around them reminded him of their circumstances, and the dangerous gauntlet they had yet to run before they could truly heal the wounds they had both suffered.

  “What time is it?” she asked, her voice holding no trace of sleepiness, though he would have sworn she wasn’t yet awake.

  “I don’t know. Early, I think.”

  “I slept well, considering.” She stretched, and he could imagine her smile, the one that had so often greeted him in the morning after those nights she had spent at his place.

  “Me, too.” Yet as slumber receded and alertness returned, the aches and pains of the previous days’ treks burned at his knees and hips and back. His stomach felt hollow, too. “We should set out as soon as it’s light enough to see,” he said.

  He found the flashlight and switched it on. The thin beam lit their tiny shelter like a candle flame. She sat up beside him, hunched against the tree branches that formed their roof, and efficiently plaited her hair and secured the end with an elastic band. She was naked still, her breasts luminous in the light, and he felt a fresh surge of desire for her. They were both hungry, dirty, bloodied and bandaged. Yet she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever known. He sat also and cupped one breast in his hand. “How are you feeling this morning?” he asked.

  “Hungry, thirsty and horny—not necessarily in that order.” She grinned at him. “If someone had told me I’d be sitting in a lean-to in the woods after a night of sleeping on the ground, not having had a shower or a decent meal in a couple of days, with a gang of sociopathic terrorists pursuing us, and the chief thought on my mind was how soon I could get you back in the sack, I’d have told them they were certifiable. Does that make me some kind of pervert? Or just really desperate?”

  “I think desperate circumstances force us to focus on elemental needs. The fundamental drives of our animal nature.” He bent to kiss the valley between her breasts. “Or maybe I’m the same kind of pervert.”

  She combed her fingers through his hair, then suddenly grew still.

  “What is it?” he asked, sensing a change in her mood. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I...” She bit her lip and shook her head. “No, I don’t have the right.”

  “The right to what?” He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Tell me what’s upsetting you.”

  She looked up at him through the veil of her lashes. “After I left you—were there other women? I don’t blame you if there were. You’re a good-looking man and you weren’t attached. I just...I just wondered.” Her voice trailed away and she stared at the ground between them, the picture of misery.

  He traced his finger along her jaw, her skin soft as satin. “There wasn’t anyone else,” he said. “Not in my bed. I couldn’t. Or at least, I didn’t want to.” He had been so angry, then hurt, then afraid of having to suffer those feelings all over again if he got too close to anyone else.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said. “I made what I thought was the right choice, but so much has happened that I couldn’t have foreseen.”

  He wished she hadn’t made those choices, too, but he thought he was doing a good job of handling those emotions. He kissed her forehead. “You were right last night when you said we couldn’t change the past.”

  “What about our future? I know I said I didn’t want to think about what I was going to do now that I’m free again, but ever since we talked about it up there on the mountain, it’s all I can think about. What are we going to do when we get out of here? I’m a wanted felon and you’re an FBI special agent.”

  “So you knew we were looking for you?” he asked.

  Her expression clouded. “Duane showed me on the computer—that I had made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. He seemed so pleased by the news, while I was horrified. Of course, that was the point—now that I was a wanted criminal, I had one more reason to stay with him. He convinced me that as soon as I left his protection I’d end up in prison, or even sentenced to death for acts of terrorism.” She rubbed her shoulders, as if trying to warm herself against a sudden chill. “All I could think was I was glad my poor parents didn’t have to suffer through that—one daughter dead and the other a criminal. And you.” She raised her eyes to meet his, their normally bright brown dull and bleak. “I wondered what you thought of me. Your whole life was about upholding the law. This seemed like the final betrayal.”

  It had felt that way to him, too. The day the bulletin was issued adding her to the list, he’d locked himself in his office and pretended to be engrossed in computer research. But all he’d done for hours was stare at the photo of Leah on the screen. It was the picture taken for her Senate identification badge, with her facing the camera, her hair tucked behind her ears, lips curved in a coy smile, as if she might burst into laughter the moment after the camera clicked.

  “Isn’t that the woman you were engaged to?” Luke had asked him when they left work that afternoon. It wasn’t a question he even had to ask. Like Travis, Luke was a super recognizer who never forgot a face. He’d been with Leah dozens of times over the past month and would never confuse her picture with anyone else.

  But Travis knew why his friend asked. This was his chance to either discuss the situation with someone who would listen and keep his confidences, or close off the subject forever. He looked Luke in the eye a
nd chose the latter option—the only one he could live with at the time. “It’s not Leah,” he said. “It’s just someone who looks like her.”

  Luke studied him a long moment, then nodded. “Okay. That’s what I’ll tell anyone if they ask.”

  “Are you going to have to arrest me when we leave here?” Leah asked. She attempted a smile, but failed. “But I guess you already have. Isn’t that what you said when you first dragged me out of the car? That I was under arrest?”

  “I’m not going to arrest you,” he said.

  “I won’t blame you if you do,” she said. “You’re doing your job.”

  “I was doing my job then. Now I know better. You were a hostage. The government won’t pursue the charges against you once they know that.”

  “I wish I believed that. Even if the government does drop the charges against me, there will always be people who see me as part of Braeswood’s group. A terrorist. Associating with me won’t be good for your career.”

  As much as he wanted to deny this was true, he couldn’t. Dating a woman who was currently on terrorist watch lists across the country, not to mention the Bureau’s own Ten Most Wanted list, could bring his career to a screeching halt, or even mean the end of a job he loved. He levered himself over her and stared down into her beautiful, troubled face. She wasn’t a terrorist. He was as sure of that as he was sure of his own name. And he was sure there was no point in wasting time worrying about what being with her might mean to his job. Not when they still had so much to get through to reach safety. “Right now, all I care about is making it safely through today,” he said. “And spending the hour or so before it’s light enough to start walking doing something a lot more pleasant than worrying.” He lowered his body, making sure she felt his arousal.

  Her breath caught and her eyes glazed. “Um, that sounds good,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close.

  He kissed her, a long, leisurely enjoyment of her sensitive mouth. His hands roamed her body, delighting in the feel of her. He skimmed along her ribs and traced the line of her hip. Then his hand stilled and he let out a groan.

  “What is it?” she asked, her voice full of alarm. “What’s wrong?”

  “We don’t have another condom.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “It’s okay. I’m still on birth control. It’s a hormone implant, so I don’t have to worry about missing pills or anything.”

  “That’s great.” He smoothed his hand down her shoulder, and tried and failed to keep the discomfort in his voice. “I haven’t been with anyone since you left,” he said. “So I know I’m healthy. But you...”

  She had been with Duane. He didn’t want to think about that, but there was no getting around the specter of the villain that in some ways was always between them. But he let her fill in the rest of his objection. He couldn’t say the words out loud.

  She bit her lip and turned her head away from him, a deep blush staining her cheeks. “He always wore a condom,” she said softly. “He was very fastidious about that kind of thing. But I understand if you’d rather not...”

  The pain in her voice and the realization that he was making her remember that horror cut him to the quick. He gathered her close. “I want you,” he said. He brushed his lips across hers, then drew her into his arms. “I’ve never stopped wanting you.”

  She dragged her gaze back to his, some of the light returning to her eyes. “There’s no one here but us right now,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “Only you and me, with nothing and no one between us.”

  He had made love to Leah many times, in apartments and hotel rooms and once, in a moment of daring, in a deserted conference room in the Senate building where she had worked. They had known the hesitant excitement of new partners and the frantic urgency of more experienced lovers. But none of those encounters had the intensity of these stolen moments in the pitch blackness of this crude shelter in the woods, when they relearned each other’s bodies by touch and taste, aching to fulfill a need that surpassed the fear and hunger and fatigue that was like a black cloud hovering around them. Making love to Leah kept that cloud from engulfing him, at least for a little while.

  They lay together for a little while afterward, dozing, until a dusky light began to breach the shelter, filtering down through gaps in the overlain pine boughs. They couldn’t put off the tough day ahead any longer. He sat up. “I think it’s time to go,” he said.

  Another woman—another person, he corrected—might have protested, begging for a few more minutes’ rest, or complaining of the predawn chill that stung them as soon as they pushed back the space blanket they had been wrapped in and emerged from the lean-to. But Leah only folded the blanket, put on her shoes, then rummaged in the pack until she found their last protein bar. “Breakfast,” she announced, holding it up as if she had unearthed a gold nugget.

  “You eat it,” he said, even as his stomach clenched painfully.

  “Don’t be so noble.” She broke the bar in half and handed him one portion. “If it comes right down to it, I ought to give the whole thing to you. If I grow too weak to walk, you can carry me. If you faint from hunger, I couldn’t do a thing about it.”

  “Who says I’d carry you?” he asked around a dry chunk of the stale bar.

  “You would. You’re wired to be a hero.”

  He grunted and reached for the pack. “I might surprise you.”

  “All right, then.” She stood and looked him up and down. “Maybe you’d just do it for the sex.”

  * * *

  TRAVIS DUG THE compass out of the pack and spent a little time orienting them toward the north. Leah looked over his shoulder. “I think they taught us how to use one of those at Girl Scout camp one year,” she said. “They took us out in the woods and we had to find our way to a meeting point using a compass and a map.”

  “Then maybe I should give this to you,” he said.

  “No way.” She held up her hands as if to ward him off. “I never did find the meeting point during that Girl Scout camp. I seem to recall they had to send out a search party.”

  He laughed and consulted the needle again. “I think I’ve got this figured out. At least I hope so.” He hefted his stick. “North, ho!”

  He led the way, pushing through the dense greenery and ducking under the low-growing branches of spruce and fir that crowded this part of the forest. He held the compass in one hand and his hiking stick in the other, using the stick to push aside tangles of vines or branches that blocked their way.

  Leah struggled along behind him. She hoped the compass worked and that he was reading it correctly. Everything about this thick, shadowed woodland disoriented her. Travis had shown her on the map how, if they traveled north, they would eventually intersect the Needle Creek Trail, a well-traveled path that led from the Needleton train station to the popular Chicago Basin backcountry area. “All we have to do is keep walking north,” he said.

  Right. So easy. She winced as yet another thorn-covered vine whipped back to strike her in the legs, the thorns biting through her jeans. She carefully picked the vine away from her, then hurried to catch up with Travis, who was stomping through the undergrowth with all the finesse of an elephant. “If anyone is following us, they won’t have any problem figuring out which way we went,” she said.

  “Braeswood and his men are most likely between us and the trail.” He slashed at another vine with his walking stick.

  She shivered. “How many men were in that group you saw yesterday?” She should have asked for the binoculars so she could see the hikers for herself. Even at that distance she might have recognized Braeswood or one of his inner circle of thugs.

  “I counted eight.” He held aside a leaning sapling and motioned for her to move past him. “They were fully kitted out with high-tech gear, too. Like a SEAL team on a mission.” He shook
his head. “Why is he going to so much trouble—spending so much time and trouble—trying to find you?”

  Did she imagine the annoyance in his voice? She didn’t have to be a therapist to figure out what had prompted the question. For a while last night and again this morning, they had both managed to put aside thoughts of Duane Braeswood and her complicated relationship with the terrorist. But he always lurked in the shadows, a phantasm poisoning everything good between them.

  As strong and confident as Travis was in every other aspect of his life, in these past few days she had discovered how deeply she’d wounded him. Doubts about her loyalty—and maybe about his own feelings as well—worried at him. He asked the same questions of her over and over out of the very human desire for a better answer, one that would explain the unexplainable. Had she really been Duane Braeswood’s unwilling mistress? Had she done anything to attract him to her? The things that had happened to her in the last six months had to have changed her, but had they changed her into a woman he could never really love? A woman who could never love him?

  She struggled to find the words that would assuage his fears and bolster her own confidence. “I don’t pretend to understand why Duane does anything he does,” she said. “There was never any emotional connection between us. People don’t mean anything to him. He used me the way he might use an inanimate object. I served some purpose in his twisted worldview, so he kept me around. I was someone he could manipulate and control. Someone he could hurt, and I think he got a kind of pleasure from that.”

  Travis stopped so abruptly she almost collided with him. He whirled to face her, his face a mask of pain. “He had better hope I’m never in a room alone with him,” he said. “When I think of what he did to you...”

  She grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into his rock-hard biceps. “Don’t do this to yourself,” she said. “Don’t dwell on it. It’s in the past now. All we can do is focus on getting out of here and doing everything we can to see that he is captured and punished.”