“You think it’s worth chasing dirt?” Mike asked dubiously. “What if Cooper brought it in on his shoes? Or maybe one of the security folks? No offense, Agent Gray.” He nodded at Isabella.
She shrugged. “It’s Isabella, and no offense taken. But I can guarantee it wasn’t from the secretary or his family—they haven’t gone sight-seeing since we arrived. Hope…” Jacob saw her swallow after the name, but when she spoke again, her voice was firm. Unemotional. “Hope preferred to shop. And it wasn’t the local cops. They weren’t allowed in the chalet. I was the only one on internal security.”
Tony cut his gaze back to Mike. “So our best guess is that the dirt came along with the kidnappers. And if the kidnappers really do represent the MMFAFA…”
“Then our bounty could be hiding in or near one of these copper mines.” Jacob felt the beginning of a connection form in his brain. The beginnings of excitement. Hell, they might be onto something here.
“Bingo.” Tony dumped the sample into a small screw-top jar. “So the way I see it, we need to do two things. One, we head over to the mine area—it’ll be dawn by the time we get there—and search as many as we can. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If not, we can take samples from each site and I’ll run some basic comparisons. Once we’ve identified where the fugitives have been, we can plant some surveillance equipment.”
“Good idea.” Mike straightened to his feet. “Vermin usually return to their burrows.”
Jacob stood, as well, and offered Isabella a hand with his family’s good manners. She ignored him and rose unassisted. He scowled and told himself to focus on the job. Which reminded him of something. “And don’t forget about the break-in at the clinic.”
When the other bounty hunters turned to stare, he cursed. How could he have forgotten about that?
Isabella had arrived, that was how. Since the first moment he’d seen her that evening he’d been running on half a brain, with the other half stuck in remember when mode. Or, more honestly, remember when combined with a healthy dose of lust that had very little to do with past history and everything to do with the fact that Isabella had grown from a hot college babe to a striking woman who still had the power to unglue his brain.
And if he’d resented the power she had over him thirteen years earlier, he mistrusted it even more now. He was a grown man. She didn’t have the right to make him feel this way.
Yet in fairness, she had done nothing untoward. It was all him. His weakness. His anger. His lack of control.
“Jacob? You said something about a clinic?” Her husky voice cut through the confusion.
“Sorry.” He took a breath and forced himself to focus on the job. On his bounty. That was what he was now, a bounty hunter. He was proud of the work, and as an added bonus, his parents remained genteelly horrified by his career choice. “I e-mailed a friend over at the dispatcher’s office earlier tonight, to see if she had news on the fugitives. She said one of the local walk-in clinics was tossed earlier this evening. You add that to Isabella’s report that she shot one of the kidnappers in the leg, and we might have something.”
“You’re darned right we might.” Tony clapped Jacob on the shoulder nearly hard enough to send him flying. “Let’s head for the mines. I don’t think there’s anything else to see here.”
When the other men gathered their kits and headed for the front door, Jacob hung back. “You guys go ahead and update the others. I’m going to take Isabella to headquarters for some rest. I’ll meet you out at the mines.”
“The hell you will!” She rounded on him. “You’ve already been outvoted once on this issue. Do we really need to discuss it again? Like it or not, I’m working with you on this case. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t even have these leads if I hadn’t brought them to you.”
“That’s right.” Jacob scowled and stepped in until he could feel her body heat. “But let’s also not forget that you came to me. You’re cut off, discredited and counting on us for help. So you could try being a bit more cooperative.” She paled at his words and Jacob cursed inwardly. What was it about her that made him so mean?
Fighting the urge to grab on and shake some sense into her, he softened his voice, though he was acutely aware of the others listening with avid interest. “Be reasonable, Iz. You’ve had a hell of a day. You’re bruised, battered and probably concussed. And how much sleep have you gotten in the last couple of days? It can’t have been easy arranging the protection solo.” He continued before she could snap back at him. “You need rest and aspirin. You need to shut it off for a few hours, or you’ll be no good to us or to your protectees.”
He saw the war in her eyes, the need to dig her heels in fighting with the logic.
Logic finally won. Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right, but I don’t like it.”
“Nobody said you had to.” Jacob jerked his head at Mike and Tony, sending them on their way, and resisted the urge to reach out to Isabella when she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Every time I slow down, every time I blink, I see Hope and the girls. I see the look in Louis Cooper’s eyes when he woke up and realized they were gone. The expression on his face when he heard that message.” She pushed away from the wall. “But you’re right. I need to grab a few hours.” Her lips curved. “You won’t even need to lock me in while you and the others search the mines. I’ll sleep a bit on your couch, then call in a few favors I’m owed by people who might not have heard about my suspension yet.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He gestured her toward the front door and turned off the remainder of the interior lights. “And, Isabella?”
“Yes?” She paused just inside the front door and turned back to him. The outdoor light cast her in shadow, emphasizing the bruise on her cheek and the dark circles beneath her eyes that made her look young. Vulnerable. Sad.
He shrugged and felt his clothes bind as though they didn’t fit quite right. I’m glad you came to me, he wanted to say, because it scared him to think of her out there alone, searching for Boone Fowler and his men, who would skin her as soon as look at her.
Because of that fear, and because he was suddenly swamped with the irrational desire to pull her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, he scowled and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Never mind. Let’s get out of here. We can send someone back tomorrow to question the staff. There had to be an insider with access to the keys and the security system.”
She nodded and slipped through the front door as though grateful to be away from the emptiness of the chalet. He couldn’t blame her. It was damned eerie how all that violence had been wiped away with a hasty cleaning.
Feeling a small shiver prickle the nape of his neck, Jacob snapped off the last light to plunge them into deep darkness. He closed the front door, which locked behind them, and shivered for real as the September cold sliced through his leather jacket.
It might still be pleasant during the day, but the nights were getting harsher. Snow was on the way. Winter.
“Brr.” Isabella rubbed warmth into her arms. At least he thought she did. In the deep night before dawn, he barely saw the motion, though the cold and the dark seemed to amplify the sound of rustling cloth and the whisper of skin over skin.
“Here.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders, which were just barely visible as a lighter shape against the dark. He probably should have left the front light on, but they’d wanted to leave the chalet as they had found it—abandoned. “Don’t argue,” he said sharply when she protested. “Just take it, okay? It’s freezing.”
She was quiet a moment, then simply said, “Thank you.”
He wasn’t sure why, but it felt like a major victory, though now the cold bit through his shirt and sank down to the bone. “Come on. Let’s get back to headquarters.”
The short path to the parking area was open, lit with a fitful slice of light from a streetlamp at the end of the drive. Stone crunc
hed beneath their feet and Jacob moved closer to Isabella, more from instinct than desire.
He walked her to the passenger side of the Jeep, opened the door to hand her in—
And something moved in the brush nearby.
“Get in!” Knowing his gun was locked in the glove compartment, he yanked the gun from Isabella’s mid-back holster and pushed her into the Jeep. Cursing himself for assuming the scene was safe, he spun toward the noise thinking it might be a grizzly bear, but quickly realized that the noise was two-legged and receding with distance.
Someone had been watching the chalet. Watching them.
“Chase him, you idiot!” Isabella was past Jacob in a flash. She raced across the short stretch of lawn and plunged into the dense forest in pursuit.
Unarmed.
Heart pounding, gut clenched hard enough to tell him this was a really, really bad idea, Jacob sprinted after her, following the noise of crashing brush and footfalls when his dark-adapted sight failed him.
“Isabella, slow down,” he hissed, doubting she could hear him, but not wanting to advertise that a woman was in the lead.
But she heard. Without pausing, she called back, “I’ve almost got him. I’ve—”
Jacob heard a horrible crash. A scream.
Then silence.
Chapter Four
Isabella had been sure her quarry was up ahead, so when the man came out of the inky darkness to her right, she saw little more than a blur of motion and white cloth.
She spun with a scream of rage.
A heavy blow slammed the back of her head, sending the night into a spin. She fell to her knees on the frosty ground, scrambling for her wits and her gun as she realized there was more than one set of footfalls nearby. She opened her mouth, not to call for help, but to warn Jacob that there were two men, not one.
A hand clamped across her mouth with the strength of a warrior. In the darkness, she could only fight by feel, swinging and kicking, and hitting nothing as he dragged her off the ground by one arm, nearly pinning her inside Jacob’s overlarge jacket.
Fear ran a distant second to rage. These men, these bastards had taken Hope, Becky and Tiff. They knew where Cooper’s family was being held. They knew.
Isabella clawed beneath Jacob’s heavy jacket and grabbed for her gun.
It wasn’t there.
In an instant she remembered Jacob taking it from her, remembered the hot brush of his fingers against her lower back. Then she heard the rasp of metal on metal as her captor pulled a knife.
Panic clawed hard at her throat and she lunged away, knowing she was no use to Cooper’s family if she was dead. Her captor growled and grabbed for her. She felt his fist catch in Jacob’s jacket, felt the leather bind her arms and shoulders, felt the faint shift in the man’s balance as he brought the knife to bear—
And Jacob leaped into the fray with a roar.
He slammed into her captor, driving all three of them to the icy ground in a tangle. Darkness and dizziness confused Isabella. She ripped free of the heavy jacket and scrambled away from the men, who struggled in a silence punctuated by grunts and growled curses, some in Jacob’s voice, others low and guttural.
“He’s got a knife!” she called, both to warn him and let him know she was away from the struggle, that it was safe for him to shoot her assailant.
Assailant, she realized with a start. Singular.
Where had the other man gone?
Or had she only imagined him?
She lurched to her feet and grabbed for her temples when blood spun in her head from the insult of two concussions in one day. A footstep crackled off to her left, or maybe it was the wind. She followed, trusting Jacob to handle the first man while she tracked the second to his destination.
Maybe even to where Hope and the girls were being held.
That thought blotted out everything else in Isabella’s mind. She sucked in a breath and stumbled in the direction of the intermittent footfalls. If she found Cooper’s family on her own, rescued them before they were harmed…
Redemption. Maybe even acceptance.
The trees were blacker shapes amid the black night. Her footsteps sounded loud in her head as she strained to hear her quarry. Nothing. Then, up to the right, she heard the unmistakable sound of a car door. He was getting away!
She bolted toward the sound, tripped on a root and went down on her hands and knees. Heart pounding, she scrambled up as an engine fired to life and brake lights flashed cherry-red through the scrub.
No! He couldn’t escape—she needed to follow him, to find her protectees!
She burst from the scrub and found herself in an open, sandy strip beside a pitch-black road. The car was a dark, boxy silhouette rolling toward the blacktop. She flung herself in pursuit and the driver, nothing more than a black shadow against the faint gleam of dials, hit the gas. The car roared onto the road and skidded, and the brake lights flashed briefly, gleaming partway off a blacked-out license plate.
Then the car accelerated and was gone.
Heart pounding, stomach fisted on fear and failure, Isabella took two running steps after the man, then stopped. With no gun, no car, she had no way of stopping him.
She leaned her hands on her knees and gasped for breath, for consciousness against the encroaching dizziness.
And heard a noise in the woods behind her. A footstep, stealthy and quiet.
Images of Jacob injured—or worse—jammed her mind and sent her heart into her throat.
She brought her fists up in a fighting stance that felt pitifully inadequate as she stood alone beside the dark road. Hand-to-hand was a poor defense against knives, or a gun.
A shadow moved out of the deeper shadows, barely visible to her night-adapted eyes. A dark figure came at her in a rush and was inside her defenses in an instant.
He grabbed her and shook her. Hard. “Damn it, Isabella. What were you thinking?”
“Jacob.” The word burst out of her in a rush, shock tangling with confusion and a sharp flare of desire that didn’t seem as inappropriate as it should. “Did you let the other guy get away? What happened?”
Maybe a shaft of moonlight broke through the clouds, or her eyes had fully adapted to the pitch night. Or perhaps she was attuned to the man who suddenly loomed over her. Either way, she saw his eyes flash with anger. “What happened?” The words started on a growl and climbed from there, both in pitch and volume. “What happened?”
He tightened his fingers on her arms, making her acutely aware that she’d lost his jacket. The cold cut through her shirt, numbing except for the places where he touched her and heat flared.
He leaned down until they were nearly nose-to-nose.
When he spoke, his voice was low and husky with anger. “By the time I got him down, you were gone. I didn’t know whether you’d chased the other guy or been dragged off. I figured you’d been taken, because I couldn’t believe you’d be asinine enough—” he lifted her nearly to her tiptoes to punctuate the word “—to chase someone unarmed.”
“It wasn’t my fault I was unarmed,” she fired back. “You took my gun.” But the words seemed hollow and unimportant, mere sounds on the air between them, which suddenly thickened with sly, shifting warmth. She leaned away from him, feeling trapped when he didn’t let go, feeling the need to defend her strength when he didn’t ease up. “Besides, I’m a trained agent. I can take care of myself.”
“And did your training include basic concepts like never leaving your partner behind?”
His face was too close, his body too well aligned with hers, his presence too solid, too easy to lean into.
She set her chin. “We’re not partners.”
She could barely see the gleam of his eyes in the heavy darkness, but she felt an unfamiliar jolt of awareness shiver through her body, thought she felt an answering shiver in his. She half expected him to back off, to step away from the anger that sparked between them.
In college, Jacob had been known equally well for
the quickness of his temper and his laughter. The man she’d seen since arriving at the Big Sky Bounty Hunters’ headquarters was quick with neither of those things. He was tightly guarded. Ruthlessly even-keeled. In control.
But he surprised her by leaning in. He lifted a hand and settled it impersonally at the base of her throat, where she knew he could feel the mad racket of her heart.
He’d think it was from the chase, she told herself, he’d never know her body had kicked into overdrive at his nearness.
Heck, she didn’t even want to know it.
“No,” he said quietly, the words barely ruffling her bangs, “we’re not partners. But I didn’t know whether you’d followed him or he’d taken you.” His fingers tightened slightly on her throat in a flicker of anger, or maybe possessiveness. “I was worried.”
The three simple words, which seemed ripped from his gut, slapped straight through her defenses. When was the last time someone had worried, really worried about her? It certainly hadn’t been during her years at the field office, where she had the reputation of being cold and competent, or during training, where she hadn’t bothered returning the other trainees’ overtures, knowing that they’d all be separated by their assignments soon enough. And though her mother had certainly worried about her daughter until the day she died, that worry had been smothering, inconsistent, here today, gone the next. No, if Isabella were to look for the last time someone had truly cared enough to worry for her, she’d have to look toward…
Senior year in college, a sneaky voice said at the back of her mind, reminding her of everything that had happened back then, and everything that hadn’t. It had been Jacob who had, very briefly, worried for her. Cared about her. Loved her.
Or so she’d thought. But that, like her mother’s brief periods of calm, had been nothing more than an illusion. Grief hammered at Isabella’s head like pain, in time with the pulse of her heart at the base of her throat where his fingers rested, bringing warmth, bringing memories. Anger surged, muddied with embarrassment that she’d gone back there so quickly, so completely, if only for an instant. She wanted to back away, a mad part of her fearing that he could read inside her and know what she was thinking, what she was feeling, how completely his words and nearness had undone her.
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