“You know who I am.”
“Rafe Montana, bounty hunter? Son of John Montana, the billionaire?” She gave a snort heavy with skepticism. “Is that even your real name?”
“It is. And yes, that’s my father. But I get my other abilities from my mother.” He started walking again, his stride stiff.
Cara wanted to kick herself. She’d ticked him off, and that was no way to get answers. She hurried after him. “Look, I’m sorry for the snark. Really. But this is all kind of overwhelming for me. I mean, power crystals, psychic abilities, someone trying to kill us … This may be just another day’s work for you, but it’s completely foreign to me.”
He stopped and bent his head. “You’re right.”
She came over to him. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said.” She laid a hand on his arm.
His head snapped up; his gaze locked with hers. Arousal roared through her like a brush fire—consuming, overwhelming. She sucked in a sharp breath. How could this be, after what had just happened behind that rock? But then she realized that while he’d taken the edge off for her, she had not returned the favor. And he’d apparently gone through that transformation of his twice today. The sexual attraction that had always simmered between them had morphed into a blazing bonfire, especially for him.
Slowly he took her hand. She quivered as flesh met flesh, and he gently removed her hand from his shoulder, lowering it back to her side. His fingers lingered a moment longer than necessary. Then he broke contact.
“The effects of the Hunter are very powerful,” he said. “It’s better if we don’t touch for a while, unless you want to—”
“—do it in the road?” she finished.
He chuckled at the Beatles reference. “Yeah. Basically.”
“Gotcha. No touching.” She took an extra step away so their bodies wouldn’t accidentally brush against each other. “So, what’s the Hunter?”
He let out a sigh, then looked her straight in the eye. “Me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You?” She waited a beat, then asked, “So is that your superhero name or something?”
He laughed, and the tension visibly left his body. He started walking again, and she fell into step beside him. “Sort of. It’s what it’s called. What I’m called. Hell, I don’t really know what to say about it. Except that it’s me, and not me. Maybe part of me.”
“Evil twin?” she quipped.
“Sure. Evil twin with superpowers.” He shook his head. “Look, I’m messing this up. I’ve never really had to explain this to anyone before.”
“Seriously?” It startled her—humbled her—that he was going to reveal secrets he’d never told anyone. “No ex-wife, fiancée, best friend?”
“No.” He tensed again, rolled his shoulders. “I haven’t been that close to anyone for a long time. Years.”
“Except your family. No, wait. You’re not on speaking terms.”
“Yeah. Listen, let me tell this from the beginning or else it’s going to get all messed up.”
“All right.” She could hear the stress in his voice. Had it been the mention of his family that had done it? For some reason, knowing he cared that much about the relatives he’d claimed to have cut out of his life, softened her lingering wariness. “You were saying you get your gifts from your mother.”
“Yeah. Well, this is going to sound crazy.”
“Crazier than everything else that’s happened over the past couple of days?” She laughed. “Go ahead, try me.”
“Just don’t make a run for it when I tell you this, okay? It’s the truth, I swear.”
“Just don’t tell me your mother is an alien from outer space.”
He chuckled. “No, but the truth is kind of close. My mother’s family is from Spain.”
“Shocking,” she teased. “Imagine, you grew up in the western United States and your family is from Spain. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“And before that, Atlantis.”
She hesitated in her stride, then picked up the pace again. “Atlantis, huh? I don’t suppose you mean the casino.”
“No, I mean the ancient city that supposedly sank thousands of years ago.”
“I see.”
He sighed. “This is what I’ve been told. My mother’s family is descended from the survivors of Atlantis. That’s where the powers come from. We’re Seers.”
“Seers, like seeing the future?”
“Some of us.”
“You saw that bomb exploding, didn’t you? Before it happened.”
“Yeah.” He hesitated. “I saw it the first day we met.”
She stopped. “You saw the bomb exploding the day we met? And you didn’t tell me?”
He halted as well. “Would you have believed me?”
She couldn’t pretend, even to herself. “No, probably not.”
“Well, then.” In unison, they began walking again. “Like I told you, sometimes I get flashes of things. It’s totally random.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“It’s all right. It’s more like frosting on the cake. It’s not my main power.”
“You told me that. Your main power is finding people, you said. But you couldn’t find Danny.”
“That’s right. And I have no idea why.”
“Has this ever happened before? Have you ever not been able to find someone?”
“Never. Well, except for my own family. Our abilities don’t work on each other.”
“Oh, well that’s interesting.” She shook her head, a smile tugging at her lips. “I can’t believe I’m calmly talking to you about Atlantis and psychic abilities. I was never one to buy into that kind of stuff.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s all real.”
“Yeah. Wow. My head is spinning just trying to wrap around all this.” She unscrewed the cap on her water, then took a sip and offered him the bottle. “So are there other people like you? You know, descendants of Atlantis? Besides your family.”
He shook his head before taking a swig of water. “Not that I know of,” he said, wiping the excess from his lips with the back of his hand. “I think my ancestor is the only one to have escaped.”
“That’s wild.” She took the water he handed her and screwed the cap on again. “So let me get this straight. You’re a Seer, and what you see is people’s locations.”
“Right.”
“And sometimes you see the future.”
“Sometimes. A lot of times I just know things about a person. Like the day we met, I just knew your middle name. It just popped into my head.”
“Handy. Any lottery numbers ever pop into your head?”
He laughed. “Nice try.”
She grinned. “It was worth a shot. So, tell me about this Hunter.”
His smile faded. “I’m not sure what to say about him.”
“You said he’s you, but you talk about him as if he’s someone else.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Is it you or isn’t it?”
“I’ve never been quite sure,” he said slowly. “My grandfather was the only other Hunter I ever knew, and he died when I was in grade school. He never talked much about it, and my powers hadn’t manifested yet.”
“So no one knew that you were one, too.”
“Right. And when I go full throttle, I never remember anything.”
“Wait, back up. What do you mean, ‘full throttle’?”
“Okay, I’m jumping ahead. The Hunter is what gives me power. It’s what I use to find people, and I can access that power at any time. But I have to be careful and only open myself up partway—I call it half throttle—or else the Hunter literally manifests. I become the Hunter—and the me that you see now, Rafe Montana, goes away.”
“Goes away? Goes away where?” She stopped and stared at him.
“I don’t know.” He looked down at the blacktop, kicked a rock into the brush alongside the highway. “It’s like I go to sleep, and then when
everything calms down, I come back again.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” She waved her hands in front of her. “This Hunter thing takes over your body?”
“Essentially.”
“You’re right, this is weird. And complicated. So, when you come back—you know, turn back into Rafe again—do you remember what happened?”
“No.” The word seemed to catch, and he cleared his throat. “I never remember. That’s why I never go full throttle unless my life depends on it. I never know what the Hunter will do, and I can’t control it.”
“So that was what I saw before the car exploded.”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t move, and I didn’t want you to die.”
“So you changed into the Hunter to save me. To save us.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” He looked at her then, regret and—was it fear?—in his eyes. “I hope I didn’t do anything … that is … well, the first thing I remember is my hands—”
“Yeah. Let’s talk about that for a minute.” Just the memory stoked the embers of desire that still glowed hot inside her. “You—he—didn’t hurt me. It’s like you were this kind of primitive version of yourself. You didn’t say anything, but your whole demeanor changed. Very alpha male, primal even. And your eyes turned pitch black.”
“Great. I turn into a caveman.”
“Not really. You were also very—um—turned on.”
“About that … I think you caught some of the backlash from the Hunter.”
“Backlash, huh?”
“Yeah.” He looked down, rubbed the back of his neck, then glanced up again. “There are side effects.”
“Keep talking.”
“When I allow myself to go full Hunter, after I come back to myself, I’m usually totally fried. I call it burnout. I pass out, sleep for a day or so. I’m no good to anyone for at least twenty-four hours. That’s what happened to me before, when I passed out in the truck.”
She frowned. “Then why aren’t you still snoozing?”
“Because of you. When you held my focus stone, it did something. Re-energized me. That’s never happened before.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” She shrugged. “You said something about the stone being drained, and I remembered that weird moment in the motel parking lot where both of us touched your crystal. For some reason I thought it would work.”
“And it did. Somehow you recharged my batteries. I still haven’t figured that out.” He started walking again.
“So wait a minute.” She hurried to keep pace with him. “You were just the Hunter like fifteen minutes ago when you saved us from the explosion, and you haven’t passed out yet.”
“That’s never happened,” he said. “I think that’s because of you, too. When I snapped back, you were holding my focus stone.”
“Yes, I was. But it was different this time. Instead of bright white lights, there was this dark shadow thing with streaks of silver. And it kind of soaked into me, made me—” She broke off.
“Horny as hell?” he finished.
“Yes.” Her face heated, and she didn’t think it was from the sun. “I’ve never felt anything like that before. Such … wow, I can’t even describe it.”
“You don’t have to. That’s one of the side effects.” He actually seemed a little embarrassed. “When I come out of burnout, I have to deal with that, too.”
“But we did … well, you did. Take care of it, I mean.” She shook her head. “This isn’t coming out right. You took care of me, but not yourself.”
He turned a serious look on her. “I didn’t want to take advantage. Neither of us was really ourselves.”
She kicked a rock in the road. “I don’t know whether to feel grateful or ticked off.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Don’t worry about it? She slanted him a look out of the corner of her eye. He had to have incredible discipline to even be walking upright if that kind of sexual heat was still raging under the surface. “Why does that happen?” she asked. “The sex thing, I mean.”
“You said the Hunter seemed primal,” he said. “What’s more primal than sex?”
“I guess.”
“I’m sorry you caught so much of it,” he said. “But you happened to grab my stone just as the Hunter was retreating, so the energy flowed mostly into you rather than me. And you don’t have the experience to deal with it.”
“Don’t blame me for hijacking your horniness,” she snapped. “I had no idea what was happening.”
“I’m not blaming you, just stating facts. And what happened back there didn’t dissipate all of it, just gave you a little bit of control back. The hunger is only going to grow stronger until we can take some time and get rid of all of it.”
“How long does it usually stick around?”
To his credit, he looked a little uncomfortable, though it didn’t soften the blow. “Takes me a good day or two to work it off.”
“A day or two? You think we’re going to stop and have an orgy when Danny is out there, and people are trying to kill us? Forget it. I’m not having sex with you again just because of some … some side effect!” She stormed off ahead of him, wishing a car would come down the road so she could hitch a ride. Get away from him, away from all this woo-woo weirdness. She was just a normal woman, for crying out loud.
He caught up to her, his long legs keeping up easily with her shorter, quicker stride. “You had sex with me before, remember? Back at the motel. What’s so different now?”
“What’s so different now?” She whirled to face him. “How do I know these are even my feelings?”
“Of course they’re your feelings. The stone only amplifies what’s already there.”
“So you’re saying I’m some kind of sex fiend now? That’s it. I am done with all this. I will not be railroaded into sleeping with you again, Rafe Montana. If I have an itch, I can find someone else to scratch it, thank you very much!”
“Are you saying you want to end our affair?”
Her righteous anger dimmed at the utter seriousness of his tone. “I’m saying this affair is more than I bargained for. You’re more than I bargained for.”
“Are you saying you want to end it? Yes or no?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything yet. I have to absorb all of this.”
“Fine, you do that.” He jerked his chin forward, indicating the sun-worn wooden building coming into view at the curve in the road. About a dozen motorcycles lined the parking lot, gleaming in the sun, and an old-style neon sign declared the place as MOTHER’S. “That’s where we’re headed. If you decide to end it between us, it looks like you’ll have your choice of itch scratchers.”
He headed toward the bar, not seeming to care if she followed or not.
She trailed after him, unable to stop herself from checking out his tight rear end as he walked ahead of her. Annoyed at herself, she jerked her gaze to the building in the distance. Crystals and psychic powers and manifestations of who-knew-what … her whole life had turned upside down ever since her plane landed in Vegas. She longed to get back to Jersey, where things made sense.
Part of her wasn’t quite ready to see the last of Rafe Montana, but another part thought she should end the romantic side of things and focus on what was important—finding Danny and saving her condo.
Someone had just blown up Rafe’s car, which told her more than anything that the people after them were serious enough to kill. Danny had clearly gotten in over his head this time. She had to find him and help him out of this jam … because no one else would. And her best chance of doing that was Rafe Montana. So she had to keep her eye on the goal.
Side effects or not.
* * *
Rafe approached the bar, aware of the scrape of Cara’s tennis shoes on the sand-dusted asphalt behind him. He shared the same throbbing hunger that she did, but he had more experience handling the effects of the Hunter. He was able to focus that energy on survival—another primal
directive. Good thing, too, or else he’d be chasing her like a stag in rut.
They couldn’t wander along the desert highway indefinitely. They needed transportation, and they couldn’t just call a cab or car service to come get them. Businesses kept records, even if you paid in cash. And he was trying to stay off the grid. Let the guys from Santutegi think they’d succeeded in killing them—at least for a while. By the time they’d discovered the truth, he and Cara could be long gone.
He entered the parking lot and stopped, perusing the various bikes. He found a likely candidate just as Cara caught up with him. Her scent—vanilla and brown sugar—drifted to him on the breeze, stirring up the urges he kept carefully at bay. He glanced at her. Blond strands glittered in her honey-colored hair beneath the sun. Her white, short-sleeved blouse hung open, revealing the matching skintight tank top she wore. The stretchy material cupped her breasts like loving hands, and her khaki shorts made her bare legs look like they went on forever. Sexual fever clung to her like perfume.
He was good in a fight, but he knew that if he went into the bar with her, he’d have a real battle on his hands. Not that the customers in there were criminals or anything, but the majority of them were men, and nothing stirred up male primitive instincts like a woman in heat. Too bad they’d only had enough time to take the edge off. He’d have liked to do more. Much more.
The image formed in his mind: stripping off those shorts and bending her over one of the bikes, then sliding into that slick, warm heat and driving hard and fast until one of them screamed.
A vision of the future? Just the notion made his hands shake.
No, just a normal male fantasy. Now get your head back in the game.
“This place had better have a ladies’ room,” Cara said.
“Of course they have a ladies’ room. Women ride bikes, too.”
“Good, because I drank a lot of water.”
She started toward the door, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back. Just the simple touch of flesh on flesh made her freeze. Slowly she met his gaze, her eyes wide with awareness, nostrils flaring. If she had been broadcasting sexual heat on simmer before, now it was at full boil.
“Cara.” He couldn’t stop himself from stroking her arm before dropping his hand. That bike was looking better and better, fantasy or not. “That place is full of guys, and you might as well be wearing a sign—”
Prodigal Son Page 18
