by April Hunt
HOT TARGET
April Hunt
New York Boston
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by April Schwartz
Excerpt from Heated Pursuit copyright © 2016 by April Schwartz
Cover design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN 978-1-5387-6247-9
E3-20180228-DA-PC
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by April Hunt
Excerpt from HEATED PURSUIT
Acknowledgements
You Might Also Like…
Newsletters
Prologue
Sandy Oaks Medical Research Facility
Eighteen months ago
The ants occupying Rachel Kline’s hospital bed won the battle against her sanity. Whipping off the heavy faux-knitted blanket, she dropped to her hands and knees and searched for the offending little creatures.
“You’ve got to be in here somewhere, you little bastards.” Seeing only the white starched linen, she tugged at the corners, thinking they’d sought refuge between the plastic covered mattress and metal bed frame.
“Well, well, well. Isn’t that a pretty sight. Gotta say that this view is even better than the one outside.” The low, slow drawl she’d grown accustomed to during the last month brought a sigh to her lips.
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been outside in a week.” Rachel abandoned her quest for the insects and flipped around, making sure her pajama bottoms covered her backside.
Logan, by comparison, made her feel frumpy. Tall, broad shouldered, and with a penchant for wearing inappropriate or lame-joke T-shirts, the man was always put together and never without a grin on his face—or his cowboy hat on his head. A few months ago, he would’ve been the exact kind of guy who’d catch her attention.
Now she forced herself to admire from an emotional distance. “Why is it that every time I turn around, you’re there?”
Logan’s mischievous smirk blossomed as he set a brown paper bag on the nearby table. “If I didn’t know how much you love my visits, sweetheart, my feelings would’ve been hurt just now. It’s a good thing you’re one of my favorite redheads.”
“Can you go visit the other one today instead of me? Maybe if you’re keeping Penny company, she’ll be less likely to make surprise drop-ins too.” Rachel slid out of the bed.
She hated being bitchy. She loved Penny like a sister and owed her, Logan, and his team everything, including her life. But she could sense the looming darkness that came at least once a week, and she’d rather not have an audience.
Unable to hold off anymore, Rachel scratched her tingling arms until red marks popped up over her skin. Logan’s gray eyes immediately latched on to the move, forcing her to stop.
He was right. With nothing much to do in Sandy Oaks, the government-run medical research facility she’d called home for the last month, she looked forward to his visits. But over the last two weeks, he’d formed a habit of popping up on her worst days. She’d first thought it a coincidence, but second-guessed it now.
She second-guessed a lot of things—especially herself.
And that was usually when Logan magically appeared.
“Seriously, Logan, can we not do this today?” Rachel fought against a sudden rush of woe-is-me. “I don’t have the energy.”
He leaned his jean-covered rear end against the table and never once took his eyes off her. “Rough morning?”
“Rough everything.” Her skin itched again, the ant-like sensation slithering its way down the back of her neck. Rachel shifted on her feet uncomfortably, trying to keep her involuntary jerks to a minimum.
Two days before her next dose of meds, her body waged war on itself, almost like clockwork. The doctors kept telling her that the frequency would lessen, but she was still waiting for that time to come, anxious to get back to feeling like herself.
“Why aren’t you going?”
“Because you want me to.” Logan moved to the reclining chair across from where she stood and leaned back, getting comfortable. “It’s been a month, Rachel.”
Rachel clenched her teeth until her jaw ached. “I’m fully aware how long it’s been.”
“Then why aren’t you cutting yourself some slack?”
“Would you be taking it easy on yourself if the shoe were on the other foot?”
He wouldn’t answer, but it didn’t stop him from glowering from a distance.
Four months ago, starry-eyed and eager to change the world, Rachel had traveled with a local NGO determined to bring education to rural Honduran children. Instead of her feeding the minds of youths, Diego Fuentes had fed her his latest drug cocktail. Kidnapped from her assigned village and experimented on as if she were a guinea pig, she’d prayed for death more times than she could count.
Even now, a month after her release, drug withdrawal hijacked her body. Her schedule revolved around medications and tests, not to mention therapy—all because of a drug that had been forced upon her. And that all revolved around the physical fallout of her imprisonment in Honduras. It didn’t touch the untold horrors that flashed through her mind in dark, enclosed places.
When Logan helped free Rachel from the Fuentes compound, he might have saved her life, but he’d also helped her exchange one prison for another.
Chapter One
Present day
No windows. No open doors. No way to prevent the walls from closing in. Rachel Kline shut her eyes and battled a looming panic attack.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Hold. And repeat.
The relaxation technique she’d learned in Dr. Hamilton’s office failed miserably, taken down by the severe stench blend of vomit and urine invading her nose. She gagged, barely fighting off a second gag as she shifted on the cold metal seat.
Rachel’s pink Converse slid into a gooey substance puddled on the floor. That summed up t
he last five hours—one big, inexplicable glutinous mess that had started with a Nevada-bound flight and ended in a cliché.
A Las Vegas jail cell.
Despite tight quarters, mysterious substances, and glares from her holding cell acquaintances, she’d do it all over again if it meant helping her friend.
“Are the accommodations not lofty enough for you, princess?” came the smoke-ravaged voice that had become like nails on a chalkboard during the last hour. “You want me to talk to the manager? Maybe they didn’t realize that they had royalty right under their noses. Go ahead and tell them again that you don’t belong here. I’m sure they’ll listen this time.”
The older woman’s chortle elicited a few snickers from the others. No fewer than twelve pairs of eyes watched the exchange, waiting for one of them to say or do something to offend the other, and take part in a wrestling match. Rachel didn’t plan on doing either.
She summoned the blank, dead stare that came all too easily and locked her eyes on the other woman. “You really like hearing yourself talk, don’t you?”
Rachel’s insulter jumped to stilettoed feet. Her red-stained lips pulled into a snarl, and she pointed her spindly, needle-tracked arm at Rachel accusingly. “You think you’re too good for the likes of us? Is that it, bitch? You think your shit smells like fucking roses?”
“I never said that, or anything close to it.” After a three-month imprisonment by the drug world’s Dr. Frankenstein, Rachel related better to the women in this holding cell than she did to her own family.
She got them. She understood them on the most basic level, including understanding how living in a drug-hazed cloud of no responsibilities, no inhibitions, and no regret made life pretty darn easy. Hard happened after the cloud disappeared and the guilt swept into its place.
Hard happened when you hadn’t been there for your friend when she needed you.
The woman stepped closer, her movement jerky. “Squeaky-clean, wholesome princesses don’t get swept up in brothel raids, and you got tossed in the back of the van just like the rest of us.”
“I told you once, and I’ll tell you again, I was looking for my friend.”
“We’re all looking for a friend, honey. It’s why we do what we do and who we do it for. Maybe that’s where your friend is…Did you ever think of that? Maybe she performed her duties so well that the higher-ups took notice. Or maybe she couldn’t hack it and she’s already gone.”
Rachel lurched to her feet, her earlier panic forgotten as she stood nearly nose to nose with the other woman. “She’s not gone.”
“Tone down the bickering.” A middle-aged guard appeared on the other side of the bars. His chunky fingers fumbled with his massive key ring until he slid open the door. “Rachel Kline. Let’s go.”
Rachel faced off against the other woman’s condescending glare, careful not to so much as bat an eye despite her heartbeat pounding in her ears.
“Don’t make me set the damn hose on the two of you,” the guard warned. “Dammit, Stella. Back the fuck off. I don’t get paid enough to deal with your shit.”
With a quirk of her red-stained lips, the other woman took a small step back, wiggling her fingers. “See you around town, princess.”
Rachel hoped to hell not.
At a hurried clip, she followed Officer Marrow down the long corridor and toward out-processing to collect her belongings. Not that she’d had much. After listening to Carly’s voice mail that morning, she’d barely managed to grab her driver’s license, much less anything else.
“One wallet. Six hard candies. And a buck seventy-five.” The out-processing officer crammed her things into the divot beneath the glass divider along with pen and paper. “Signature on the dotted line.”
“Did anyone find a small black backpack? I think I must’ve dropped it at the…uh…place.” Rachel signed for her items and slid the roster back into the hole.
“There was a whole lot of shit confiscated at that raid site, but no bag.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, and she couldn’t give a list of its contents because she didn’t know what was inside. Carly had left that bit of information out.
“I’m going to give you a bit of advice, hon. Go home,” Officer Tooley suggested. Except for the fact that she was decked out in the desert uniform of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the silver-haired officer could’ve easily passed for Sophie Hansen, the woman who’d practically raised her and Penny from the time they’d reached double digits. “A girl like you doesn’t belong in cesspools like we raided tonight.”
“We’re in agreement there, believe me. But I can’t leave until I know my friend’s okay.”
The older woman flashed Rachel a sympathetic look. “I hope for her sake, and yours, that you find her and she’s not someplace worse.”
Rachel hoped that too.
Carly’s not being at the brothel would’ve been comforting if she hadn’t said in her last message that she’d be there—and that if she wasn’t, something was wrong.
“If I’m not there, you need to get the contents of the black bag to the authorities,” Carly had instructed. “And you need to be careful, Rach. He’ll do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Carly hadn’t clarified who he was, or what was inside the bag. She’d hung up, and Rachel’s every attempt to get in touch with her had failed.
For the usually stoic, independent woman to admit that level of desperation, things had to be bad. Thanks to what they’d both been subjected to in Honduras, bad for them was pure hell on earth for others.
Stepping into the waiting room, Rachel looked around for the recipient of her one and only phone call. An eclectic array of people sat in the green plastic chairs, including a few handcuffed to the armrests, but no Charlie. And the pink-haired Alpha operative wasn’t someone who could be easily missed.
After a second scan, she opted to check outside. Warm desert air washed over her, a blessing after the putrid stench of the holding cell. Rachel savored the clean scent and leaned heavily on the front railing. Her hands trembled, her body showing its relief at no longer being trapped in close confines. The more violently they shook, the tighter she clutched the banister.
“If it isn’t the redheaded jailbird finally taking flight. Took you long enough to make an appearance, darlin’. I started to think you chiseled your way out instead of taking the easy route.” The familiar deep voice caressed Rachel like silk.
Keeping her back toward its owner, Rachel tried in vain to compose herself. Counting to a hundred and performing thirty minutes of meditative yoga wouldn’t do a damn thing when it came to Logan Callahan’s presence.
She mentally braced for impact and turned toward the flirty Texan.
Over six feet of solid muscle and southern charm, Logan leaned casually against the red brick of the police station. Worn blue jeans encased muscled thighs, and a red plaid button-up shirt, its cuffs rolled to his elbows, revealed strong, corded arms.
And his hands…
Rachel nearly drooled there on the walkway as his fingers massaged the brim of the black Stetson in his hands. Personal experience had taught her that those hands had more talent than most people had in their entire bodies—and not because he was an Alpha sniper badass.
For one blissful night, she’d experienced what it was like to be on the receiving end of those hands—and afterward, she’d woken to reality. It was hard to believe she’d slunk out of Logan’s bed a mere twelve hours ago—well, technically it had been her bed.
“Cat got your tongue?” Logan’s mouth lifted at the corners.
Gray and gleaming with mischief, Logan’s eyes never strayed from her face, but tingles erupted over every inch of her body. The same thing had happened last night, and, if she was honest with herself, every time they were within an eyeball’s glance of each other.
Rachel crossed her arms over her chest like a shield. “Charlie was my one phone call.”
Logan flipped his
hat and propped it back on top of his mop of wavy blond hair. “She’s on assignment.”
“She didn’t say anything about an assignment when I called.”
“Guess Stone must’ve assigned it to her afterward.”
“What about Penny?” Rachel challenged.
“Battling a serious case of morning, noon, and night sickness compliments of the little Ortega that’s taken residence in her uterus. And before you start running down the Alpha roster, I’m it, darlin’. I’m without assignment and happened to be in town scoping out the Mil-Tech convention for the boss man. Keep up this line of questioning and you’ll have me thinking that you don’t want me here.”
She didn’t.
She needed structure. She needed order. She needed to keep her head on straight if she was going to find Carly before it was too late. None of that would happen in Logan’s presence, and it had nothing to do with his abilities because, as with everyone else associated with Alpha, with him failure wasn’t an option.
The deficiency lay entirely with her.
“Do you want to tell me why you came all the way out here to take a walk on the wild side? Pennsylvania has jails that you could’ve visited without wasting your frequent-flier miles.” Logan’s tone remained light, but there wasn’t a doubt in Rachel’s mind that he knew the significance of her setting foot on a plane.
Confined spaces sent her heart into her throat. An entire plane ride trying to swallow around an organ? Not a pleasant experience. “I told Charlie—”
“That Carly was in trouble, but you were pretty vague as to what kind. Are we talking relationship issues, work problems, or a combination of the two?”
“It’s not something that you’d understand.”
Something flashed in his eyes, there and gone so fast Rachel didn’t catch it. Logan’s usual wide, easygoing smile tightened. False bravado. She’d perfected that technique too, so Penny and the others would stop worrying over her.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
Logan pushed himself off the wall and closed the six-foot distance between them. Stopping less than a foot away, close enough for her to see the slight tic in his jaw muscle, he drilled her with a fixed stare. “You’d be surprised at both the depth of my understanding, darlin’, and my observational skills. You came all the way out here to help Carly, yet you’re the only one I bailed out of the clinker.”
