by Kim Baldwin
Synopsis
When the hunter becomes the hunted…do you trust your instincts or your heart?
A killer for hire, Katarzyna Demetrious has grown weary of her violent and solitary life. Contemplating retirement, she has gone into hiding in her remote bunker home as a blizzard rages outside. But her seclusion is shattered by the appearance of a mysterious stranger, and, with a price tag on her head, Kat is thrust into the most perilous situation she has ever faced. Can she outwit the assassins on her trail? And could the woman she rescues…and is unexpectedly attracted to…be the deadliest of them all?
Hunter’s Pursuit
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Hunter’s Pursuit
© 2005 By Kim Baldwin. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-296-2
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: March 2005
This 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 persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Executive Editor: Stacia Seaman
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
By the Author
Hunter’s Pursuit
Force of Nature
Whitewater Rendezvous
Flight Risk
Focus of Desire
Breaking the Ice
With Xenia Alexiou
Lethal Affairs
Thief of Always
Missing Lynx
Acknowledgments
I’d like to express my appreciation to several dear friends who read along as I wrote this manuscript and offered their ideas, encouragement, and tactful feedback: Linda Harding, K.L., and Kat Yancey Gilmore and Marsha Walton, who contributed their copy-editor skills early on and deserve special thanks.
I must also acknowledge Margaret A. Helms, whose insights and suggestions made Hunter’s Pursuit a much better book; she taught me lessons about writing fiction that will last a lifetime. I’m deeply grateful.
Most of all, my heartfelt appreciation goes out to Radclyffe and Lee, the forces behind Bold Strokes Books, who made my first novel the book I always wanted it to be and opened the doors to an exciting future and long association. I hope I do you proud! And also many thanks to my wonderful copy editor, Stacia Seaman, whose attention to detail is absolutely unparalleled. And last but not least, to Sheri for a killer cover. I’m extremely fortunate to have been invited to be among such a talented bunch of women.
Finally, to my soul mate and partner, M. This book would not have been possible without you, and is dedicated to you with all my love.
Kim Baldwin 2005
Dedication
For M.,
My Kindred Spirit
Chapter One
Hunter hated the smell of blood, the pungent, metallic scent that seemed to creep into her skin and linger there for days. But experience had taught her how to deal with it. She took shallow breaths as she stood over the chrome kitchen sink, searching the bloody clothes she’d cut off the young woman now lying unconscious in her bedroom. She was looking for a wallet, some ID, some hint to her patient’s identity, but there was nothing to indicate who the woman was or what she was doing way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. In the pockets of the woman’s jeans, shirt, and coat, Hunter found a few bills, some coins, and a small plain key ring containing three keys. Nothing else. She checked the labels on the clothes. No help there. The first person Hunter had ever brought to her underground bunker was a mystery. The only clue was a license plate number.
She wanted to berate herself for rescuing the woman, an action contrary to her better judgment. A lot of people wanted Hunter dead. Bringing an outsider to her hideaway was an unnecessary risk.
But she found it hard to feel threatened by the stranger who lay unmoving in the next room. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t just because the woman seemed harmless and was currently incapacitated. Hunter had exceptional instincts for danger, honed by years of training in the martial arts. And she knew better than anyone that appearances could be deceiving. But despite all the unanswered questions surrounding the woman, Hunter wasn’t unduly alarmed by tonight’s turn of events. She couldn’t explain it. It was just a feeling.
In her line of work, gut feelings could save your life—or get you killed.
Hunter was not her real name, but it was an apt pseudonym. A freelance bounty hunter and assassin for hire, she was a gifted chameleon, fluent in several languages and renowned for her resourcefulness.
She had an exotic but indistinguishable look about her. Her even features and lightly bronzed complexion could suggest a Mediterranean heritage, or Latin, or maybe even Native American, and she used the ambiguity to her advantage. Last month, her hair was black and she spoke Spanish. This week it was medium brown. Very close to her natural color for the first time in a long time. She used to like the challenge of becoming someone new, but she found she missed recognizing the face that looked back at her in the mirror.
Hunter discarded the bloody clothes, washed up, and went to her desk to fire up her computer.
The bunker had a simple floor plan. The main living area was a 30 by 30 foot concrete room, with a kitchen in the northwest corner and a desk in the southwest corner. The living room took up most of the eastern half of the room. The eastern wall consisted of built-in bookshelves, all jammed with books, beyond which lay a hidden room where Hunter stored her weapons and surveillance equipment. Two doors in the southeast corner led to a bedroom and bath.
Her desk faced the room. Behind it, set into the wall, was a trio of security monitors. All were dark at the moment. Hunter hacked into the state police database and typed in Michigan License MAK 214. While she waited for the registration information, she rubbed her eyes and went over again the bizarre turn of events that had touched off her current situation.
The safe house was well hidden, cut into a hillside in an unpopulated region of northern Michigan just a few miles south of the Lake Superior shoreline. The densely wooded area was hilly and pocketed with small bogs, which made overland travel difficult even under the best circumstances. And fierce nor’easters sweeping down from Canada the last two weeks had created whiteout lake-effect blizzards that made negotiating even short distances impossible.
Tonight had been Hunter’s first opportunity to go outside in many days, and she had relished the chance to venture out into the clear, cloudless night despite temperatures near zero. She’d decided to cure her cabin fever with a hunting expedition and had been successful—the body of a small deer rested on the sled she pulled behind her.
On her journey home, Hunter paused on a high ridge. As she rested, she spotted lights in the valley below on the only road in the area, a two-lane going north/south. North, it led to a small village—Wolf Point. But the village’s antique stores and restaurants, motels, and boat rentals were shuttered up from Labor Day to Memorial Day, so the road was unused this time of year except by the occasional snowmobile venturing out of Tawa, a city thirty miles to the south.
Hunter raised her rifle to one shoulder and peered through its high-powered scope. Thes
e weren’t snowmobile headlights. It was a car—traveling impossibly fast in the deep snow of the unplowed road. In another minute it would pass just below her. He’ll never make the curve at that speed, Hunter thought as she watched the sedan’s progress.
The car careened past, fishtailed, and clipped a tree before flipping twice and coming to rest at the bottom of a small ravine. One headlight canted crazily upward. The other was dark.
Almost before it stopped, Hunter tossed down the rifle and pulled the deer’s body from the toboggan. She jumped aboard the sled and sent it hurtling down toward the wreckage. Flames erupted from the vehicle’s engine just as she dug in her heels to brake.
It took a couple of minutes to douse the fire with snow. One or two more to get the door open. A woman, unconscious, was pinned in the driver’s seat. You can’t afford to get involved, Hunter’s instincts screamed, but the woman’s face was bleeding and one arm was turned at an unnatural angle. She would probably freeze to death unless Hunter intervened.
Hunter leaned into the car with her small pocket flashlight, looking for a way to extricate the driver. She could smell a musky perfume mixed with the acrid scent of blood. The woman stirred and cried out in pain, and the sound pierced Hunter’s armor. She had to help.
She bent back the mangled steering wheel and managed to get the driver out, cradling the woman in her arms to move her the short distance to the sled.
As soon as Hunter lifted her, the woman sighed and buried her face in Hunter’s neck. She reached up with her uninjured arm and touched her rescuer’s cheek. It was like a lover’s caress—so sweet and gentle and so unexpected that Hunter froze for a moment.
No one ever touched her like that. Or at least, no one had for a very long time.
She was surprised to discover what a lasting impression that brief caress had made. You liked it, didn’t you? You liked it very much.
Hunter glanced at the photograph on her desk, studying the faces of the happy family pictured there. You used to pet my cheek like that, didn’t you? She felt a twinge of regret for the choices she’d made. It was an emotion she rarely allowed herself to feel but was growing increasingly familiar with. She’d been thinking a lot lately about the past, and about retirement.
There was really no reason for her to work anymore. She had plenty of money and nothing to prove to anyone. And her conscience was beginning to nag at her after remaining mostly dormant much of her adult life. Even the righteous kills no longer held any satisfaction. And the worst parts of her past—the jobs she’d hated but had been forced to take—those kills had begun to give her nightmares.
A soft chime from her computer drew her back to the present.
In her haste to get the stranger back to the bunker, Hunter had given the wrecked sedan only a cursory inspection, but she’d seen no purse and the glove compartment was empty. The license plate was all she had to go on in trying to establish her patient’s identity.
It told her the car was stolen.
According to the Michigan State Police database, the car had been reported stolen in Detroit on 2/24/05. The blue Sebring sedan was registered to a sixty-nine-year-old Ann Arbor man named Douglas Dunn. It had been taken from a gas station while its owner was inside paying for his tank of gas.
The car had been stolen a week ago, hundreds of miles away. Curiouser and curiouser, Hunter thought, frowning. She rose from her chair to check on her mysterious patient.
*
The injured woman stirred, caught halfway between sleep and wakefulness. Something seemed to be holding her down, pressing against her chest. It cut into her side with every breath. She felt too warm and her body ached. But the worst was the shooting pain in her head. She tried to force her mind to a place without pain. An impossible task. But after a time, she fell back into the black void of sleep.
*
Hunter touched her hand to the woman’s forehead. Feverish. She backed away and settled into an overstuffed chair she’d pulled beside the bed and studied the woman who lay unmoving under a heavy fleece blanket tucked around her like a cocoon.
Her patient was 5 foot 4 or so, with a firm, well-toned body. She looked to be about twenty-five, ten years younger than Hunter, and she was probably quite attractive, but it was hard to tell for sure at the moment. Bandages hid much of her face and the areas that were exposed were puffy and bruised. Her nose had been broken, blackening both eyes, and there was a small lump behind one ear. Her shoulder-length blond hair was matted with dried blood, and a three-inch gash on her forehead had been closed with several neat stitches of dental floss. Her left arm was set with a makeshift splint, her left knee was wrapped in an Ace bandage, and her rib cage had been tightly taped when Hunter felt at least two, and probably three, cracked ribs.
Hunter had taken several classes for paramedics. She’d received a multitude of injuries over the years in her job, sometimes in countries where doctors were scarce, other times in places where stabbings and gunshot wounds required physicians to contact law enforcement. So she treated her own injuries when she could.
But it had been quite another experience altogether to treat this stranger. She’d tried to be clinical about it. Detached. Detached was something she was normally very good at.
But she couldn’t help but notice when she stripped off the woman’s clothes what soft skin lay beneath. Pale and fair, where Hunter was dark. The silky flesh unmarked, except for two scars. One an inch long, above her right eye, and a raised, jagged one on her abdomen that Hunter found herself lightly tracing with a fingertip, as if by doing so she could discern the injury that had caused it.
As she gently probed the stranger’s ribs for injuries, Hunter’s eyes strayed to the woman’s full, round breasts, nipples pink and hard in the cool bunker.
She took her time examining and treating the woman.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been quite this turned on.
*
Something brought the injured woman back to the edge of consciousness, a murky place where the relentless drumming in her head overshadowed the pain elsewhere in her body. She struggled to open her eyes, fighting hazily to learn the circumstances of her pain, but she could see nothing.
All was black. And still. There was only the pain. Horrible, horrible pain. Dear God, make it stop! She couldn’t move. Where am I? Her mind was unable to tell her where she was or how she got there. A rush of panic washed over her. Am I dead? Can you be in pain when you’re dead? Am I in hell?
She had to move her body. To connect again with the real world. She tried to raise her arms to throw off the confining covers, but the effort brought a sharp new pain to her left forearm, momentarily eclipsing the throbbing in her head. She gasped aloud, a raspy sound that seemed to come from very far away.
“Can you hear me?”
A voice! A human voice! A woman, very near. I’m not dead. And someone is with me. Knowing she was not alone, wherever she was, pushed back the panic a little.
“Can you hear me?” the voice asked again. It was low and melodious. Soothing.
She wanted to answer. The voice was a lifeline. A beacon in her black world. But it was an effort. “What?” The word came out as a croak. “Where...?”
“You’re safe,” said the voice. “Everything is all right.”
The words had a calming effect. The panic receded somewhat. Hospital. Must be in the hospital. What happened? She wanted to talk, but her throat was swollen and dry. Her tongue was made of sandpaper. “Can’t...” she tried again. Her head pounded away, relentless.
“Try to drink a little. I’ll help you.”
Gentle arms lifted the woman’s head and shoulders—a movement that amplified her pain.
“Stop!” she screamed.
Her upward progress was halted, and the low voice spoke again, a whisper close to her ear. “Try to relax and focus on your breathing. It will help against the pain. In...and out. In...and out. That’s good. Now I’m going to give you some water. You must t
ry and drink some.”
Slender fingertips gently parted her swollen lips and guided a plastic straw between them. She sucked on it and felt cool water flood her mouth and throat, relieving a bit of her discomfort. After a few sips, she released the straw and was laid gently back against the mattress.
“What happened?” Speaking took tremendous effort. The sound seemed to reverberate in her head.
“I know you must feel like hell,” said the voice, suspended in the darkness to her right. “You got banged up pretty good. A broken wrist, some cracked ribs, maybe a concussion.”
“Where am I?” Another wave of pain assaulted the woman’s already throbbing head.
“You’re in my home...a long way from the nearest doctor, and it’s impossible to move you. There’s no phone here, but I really think you’ll be fine. You need to rest now.”
“Can’t...see,” the woman rasped. She tried to swallow. Coughed.
The gentle hands cupped the back of her head, bringing it up very slowly, and reinserted the straw between her lips. She sucked eagerly on it. The cool water seemed to dull the throbbing in her head.
“Your eyes are swollen shut, and the room is dark to help you sleep. Don’t worry about all that now. Give the swelling time to go down. Get some rest,” the voice urged before moving away.
Wait! Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone! What’s happened to me? Who are you? But she was alone again, she could feel it. Silence. Darkness. The fear began to creep back in, just a little.
Focus on your breathing, the voice had said. And so she did. In...and out. In...and out.
