Bullseye

by Jessica Andersen

  Lyle’s voice cracked from outside. “You bring it here now, or I’ll take those babies of yours and I’ll—”

  She was out the door before he could finish the sentence. “Here’s your ice.”

  The bastard’s thin lips curved in victory and he gestured with the shotgun he held across his lap. “Put it on my leg. Gently.”

  She did as she was told, overcoming the urge to jam the pack down on the half-doctored bullet wound he must have gotten during the kidnapping, and press until he howled.

  But Lyle had the gun, and he was in charge, at least until Boone Fowler returned. The militia leader had left hours earlier and put his second lieutenant in charge of the prisoners, with Kane Myers and Ray Fleming standing by as backup.

  It terrified her that she knew each of their names. Fowler had introduced them all one by one, staring at her with cold, black eyes and a sneer on his scarred face. The action had meant one of two things. Either they wanted credit for the kidnapping or they weren’t planning to let her live to testify against them.

  The very thought had her pressing down on the ice pack.

  Lyle shouted a curse. He leaped to his feet and the ice pack fell to the floor when he grabbed Hope by her throat.

  His fingers bit into her flesh. He dropped the shotgun with a clatter, pulled a semiautomatic pistol from his belt and held it against her temple.

  “I could do it, you know.” He stroked the gun muzzle along her cheek, pressing harder onto the bruises until she shifted with a whimper. “I could kill you and tell Boone you tried to run. Then I’d be all alone to look after those pretty girls of yours. Your husband would never know the difference. Never know what happened.” He pressed closer and lowered his voice to a lover’s purr. “I could do it.”

  No! Dread spiraled through her, mixed with desperation. Her knees threatened to buckle at the feel of the gun muzzle on her face, the sweaty, blood-tinged smell of the man who held her. She opened her mouth to deny him, to beg, but before the plea could form, the trailer door banged open with a sound like a gunshot.

  Lyle spun her around, clamped an arm across her throat and leveled the pistol at the sound. “Freeze or you’re a dead man!”

  Kane Meyers, a bull of a man sporting gray-shot hair and a grizzled beard though he looked shy of forty, froze. Then he chuckled—a dry, scratchy sound. “Chill, dude, it’s only me and Ray.”

  Lyle lowered the weapon and growled, “Don’t sneak up on a guy like that. You’re liable to get yourself dead.” He shoved Hope toward the trailer. “Get in the back. And keep those babies quiet, or else.”

  The threat hardly seemed necessary, but Hope turned and bolted into the trailer, wanting to be away from Lyle and his guns. Once inside, she banged the door shut, checked on the girls—still wide-eyed and too silent—and held a finger to her lips.

  Then she crept back and put her ear to the breezy gap in the sagging door.

  Lyle’s rough voice came first. “What did you see over at the resort?”

  “You were right,” Kane’s voice answered, “the bitch that shot you came back. She had three guys with her, and some equipment. They stayed in the place for an hour, maybe more, then left.”

  Isabella! Hope thought with a flash of excitement.

  She angled her face against the crack and peeked through. Lyle had his back to her, but she could see the other men’s faces. Kane seemed fine, but Ray’s lower lip was split nearly down to his chin, his clothes torn, his belt missing.

  Lyle leaned down, retrieved the shotgun and leaned on it like a crutch. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  The men exchanged a glance before Kane lowered his voice and said, “She heard us, or maybe the guy with her did. They chased us for a bit, but we got away. I took the car and circled back for Ray. No worries.”

  Lyle cursed. “Did they make you? And who were the men? Cops? Damn it, we told Cooper no cops!”

  Hope stifled a gasp of joy. Louis was alive!

  “No, not cops. They weren’t G-men. They were more like mercs,” Ray said, his higher-pitched voice scratching along Hope’s nerve endings like steel wool as she grappled with the information. No cops. So what was Isabella doing there? And who was she with?

  More importantly, where was Louis? Isabella never would have left her protectee unless he was hurt.

  Or worse.

  He’s alive, Hope told herself. He’s fine.

  But deep down inside, she wasn’t sure she believed it. If he was fine, why hadn’t he been with Isabella? Why wasn’t he tearing through the chalet, looking for clues as to where the men had taken her?

  Why wasn’t he looking for her?

  “Must’ve been one of those bounty hunters.” Lyle spat on the ground near Kane’s booted feet. “Damn. If they saw you…”

  His anger gave her hope. The trailer was smack in the middle of nowhere—thus the crushable insta-ice packs rather than the real thing. They had reached it via an overgrown access road that probably wasn’t even on any map, but it hadn’t been more than a half hour drive from the Golf Resort.

  Those bounty hunters might be close. They might even have followed Kane and Ray from the resort.

  Lyle cursed. “We’re going to need to move the woman and the brats.”

  “You’re right,” a new voice said, startling Hope and sending a bolt of fear through her chest.

  Boone Fowler had arrived.

  And if Lyle, with his guns and his too close interest in the little girls scared her, Boone, with his scarred face and dead black eyes, downright terrified her.

  Boone stepped into her view and glanced at the trailer as though he’d heard her thoughts, as though he knew she was listening at the crack.

  “We’re moving,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument. “I’ve sent the others ahead to secure our new home. We’ll travel in twos and threes to deflect attention.” He handed Lyle a thick envelope. “Your new name and info is in here. You take one of the girls and give the other to Kane. I’ve got some knockout drops that should keep them quiet for you.”

  “No! You leave my babies alone!” Without thought, without conscious decision, Hope burst from the trailer and flew at Boone, fingers curled into talons.

  He caught her and twisted her arm up high behind her back. Pain slashed through her body and she screamed.

  The sound was echoed from inside the trailer, then broke to rising wails from first one twin, then the other.

  Boone twisted her arm higher. Her vision grayed and she slumped against him, hating the feel of his lean, too hot body against hers. His voice sounded unaffected when he said, “I’ll take the woman and see that she behaves.”

  Lyle nodded, pocketed the tickets and fake IDs, then jerked his head in the direction of the Golf Resort. “And the Secret Service bitch and the others? What about them?”

  Boone shrugged and said with dead finality in his voice, “Don’t worry. They’ll be taken care of.”

  Now it was Hope’s turn to cry.

  OUT AT THE copper mines, Isabella found the bounty hunters’ vehicles without trouble, but only because Cameron had drawn her a map when she’d turned down his offer of an escort. He probably would have insisted, but with two of his men off checking the robbed clinic for evidence, and several others gone who only knew where, he’d been out of manpower.

  Which was just fine with her. She didn’t need a babysitter.

  A sense of watching eyes prickled the back of her neck as she walked the rubbled half mile to the abandoned mine, but after pausing to check her laces and surreptitiously scan the woods on either side of the washed-out road for the third time, she decided that any onlookers were of the four-legged, furry variety.

  Still, she was reassured by the press of her weapon at the small of her back.

  She paused at the mouth of the mine and looked back the way she’d come, but there was no motion. No sound. Just the feeling of watching eyes.

  She shrugged and ducked inside.

  The dank air w
as a fetid slap, but she ignored it and followed the sound of masculine voices. She immediately picked out Jacob’s low, carefully controlled tones and cursed herself for the instant flush of awareness.

  He was a means to an end, nothing more. She needed his help, his resources. More importantly, Hope and the girls needed all the help they could get. She couldn’t let personal feelings muddy that simple fact.

  She had a job to do, damn it.

  She took a dozen more steps into the cavern and her heart stopped at the smell of death.

  Hope! Becky! Tiff!

  Failure and fear were a double blow. Isabella swallowed the scream that threatened to press between her teeth and bolted toward the voices.

  She rounded a jagged rock outcropping and plunged into darkness, then back into light filtering from a collapsed spot high ahead.

  She saw the body.

  And was grabbed from behind. A heavy arm clamped across her collarbones and her arm was neatly twisted behind her back. Caught!

  She screeched and tried to twist away, nearly breaking her own arm in the process.

  Jacob’s voice cursed and she was suddenly free.

  She ignored the fine buzz running through her body at the rough touch of his hands. She spun and glared at him. “You could have just said hello.”

  “Yeah,” he returned, “and you could have been Fowler or one of his men.”

  She ignored him to stare down at the sad pile of human remains half propped against the cavern’s rock wall.

  The sad pile of male human remains.

  Her first emotion was blessed relief that it wasn’t Hope or one of the girls. Her second emotion was dull horror.

  The poor bastard had been shot neatly between the eyes, close enough to leave muzzle flash on the gray skin of his forehead.

  He’d been executed.

  Jacob shifted as though to put himself between her and the body. “You recognize him?”

  She shook her head, vaguely aware of the two other bounty hunters, Mike and Tony, standing in the shadows, watching the exchange. “No. Should I?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. He’s one of Boone Fowler’s men. One of the escaped fugitives. Derek Horton.”

  The body looked sunk in on itself in death. In Isabella’s mind, the corpse went instantly from poor bastard to simply bastard with the knowledge that Horton had helped kidnap Cooper’s family.

  Or had he?

  Moving no further into the shallow rock alcove—lest she disturb evidence the police would later process—she squatted on her heels and stared at the body, training clicking into gear when nothing else seemed to make sense. She sniffed. “He stinks.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said from his position nearer the main cavern, “he’s probably been here for a couple of days. Corpses don’t ripen quickly ’round here in the winter.”

  She wondered whether he was trying to frighten her or whether he was simply stating a fact.

  “Maybe less,” Tony countered. The geologist glanced around the cavern. “The air is…weird in here. Too warm. That could speed up decomposition more than we’d expect. I’d like to have a look farther into the mine to see if I can find the hot spring or whatever is generating the heat.”

  “No.” Jacob’s response was curt, his expression grim. “We head back down the mountain and call the cops. I don’t want any hint of an evidence problem when we get the bounty back in custody and they’re pulled up on the new murder charges.”

  There was a moment of silence before the other hunters nodded, a tense undercurrent that Isabella didn’t understand, wasn’t sure she wanted to. The bounty hunters were a tight-knit group of men who knew each other well. She didn’t do tight knit and she didn’t care to be known.

  “Let’s go,” Mike said, jerking his chin toward the mine entrance. “We can call the cops from headquarters and claim the bounty while we’re at it.” His lips tipped upward in a wry grimace. “We get paid dead or alive—this time we’ll collect on dead.”

  But as they emerged from the alcove into the main cavern, Isabella sensed their frustration. She hung back and let Mike and Tony move on ahead, then said quietly to Jacob, “There weren’t any other leads?”

  He glanced at her impatiently, as though he was in a hurry to get to headquarters, or maybe to get away from her. “Signs of a campfire and a couple of latrine pits. Some garbage, most of it older. The crime scene people will have to tell us what it all means.”

  But she’d already seen the bounty hunters process Cooper’s chalet and knew darn well they didn’t need to wait for any crime scene report. Ergo, they already knew there was nothing to find beyond a corpse and more questions.

  “Why did you come out here?” he asked abruptly.

  Because I needed your help, she almost answered before she realized that he was asking why she’d come to the mine, not why she’d come to him in the first place.

  She clenched her teeth against the old insecurities and told herself to get a grip. “Because I made some calls.” Once she’d woken from five badly needed hours of sleep. “Secretary Cooper is back in Washington, and the story is already breaking.”

  “He’s told the media about the kidnapping?” Jacob asked quickly.

  “No.” She shook her head. “He’s reversed his position on sending troops into Lunkinburg. Now he says we should wait and try more diplomatic approaches.”

  “Whoa. Wait.” Jacob stopped dead near the mouth of the cave, where the other hunters waited. He dragged a hand through his hair and looked, for a frozen instant in time, like the younger man she remembered, angry and a little confused.

  Like the man she’d fallen in love with.

  Isabella swallowed hard and jammed her fists into the pockets of her jeans. She felt the bulge of her gun at her waistband and used the sensation to drive the memories away.

  That naive girl had wanted a home and family, not guns and action. She’d changed. Jacob had changed.

  There was no going back, and she was smart enough not to want to go forward. If they had been headed in different directions during college, they were even further apart in their goals now. She wanted to do her duty, to be the best and to move up within the Service. Jacob…he hunted men for money.

  She was a patriot. He was a mercenary.

  Even as the thought formed, she felt faintly ashamed, as though the word couldn’t possibly encompass the man beside her. But before she could reconsider the definition, Mike waved from the cave entrance.

  “Hey,” he called. “You two coming?”

  “In a minute. We’ve got some new info.” When the others came back inside the cave, Jacob briefly repeated what she’d told him about Cooper’s flip-flop on the Lunkinburg issue, finishing with, “But that makes no sense. The letters written on his chest suggest that Boone and his militia are the kidnappers. Derek Horton’s corpse proves it. The dirt in the chalet had to have come from this mine, and Horton’s body was waiting for us, almost as though…”

  He trailed off and Isabella saw the wrinkle just as he did. “Almost as though it was planted,” she finished quietly.

  “Yeah.” He glanced at her, then looked toward the trees outside as though searching for the same watcher she’d sensed earlier.

  “So what do we do now?” Tony asked.

  Jacob paused, then said almost unwillingly, “We split up.” He shot a glance back into the mine, then out toward the trees. “I want you two to stay here and wait for Murphy and the cops. Isabella and I will go down and call them now.”

  His actions told her that he felt it, too. The sense of being watched from all directions.

  “Then what?” The question came from the other man, Mike, who watched Jacob with an intensity Isabella found unnerving, as though there was an entirely separate conversation being held on a nonverbal level, one that she wasn’t privy to.

  “Then we chase the leads.” Jacob shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’ll need to follow up on the clinic robbery, and I’m going to ask the boss to have Blac
khaw bring in the dogs. It’s a long shot that they’ll be able to track anything beyond the road, but if anyone can coax them onto a scent, it’ll be Trevor.” The half-Cherokee ex-commando had a way with Big Sky’s animal partners. Jacob continued. “And we’ll want to look into everyone at the Golf Resort. They got in through Isabella’s motion detectors and security, which means they’re either very good or they had inside help.” He glanced at her almost in apology. “I’m betting the latter.”

  “I’m ahead of you on that,” she said evenly, feeling the sting of stupidity, of mistakes made, of time passing. “I went back through my files, and two individuals in and near Cooper’s chalet have tenuous ties to the MMFAFA. One is a young cop on the security detail. His sister’s husband is a gun dealer who was questioned about selling to Boone Fowler without proper docu mentation. The case was dropped.” And now it presented them a hell of a challenge. How could they question a cop about an abduction nobody official knew about? “And the other is a maid. Six or seven years ago, she was picked up with her boyfriend when a speeding stop turned into a shootout. The boyfriend was MMFAFA. He got three-to-five and she’s been clean since.”

  Jacob scowled. “And you didn’t think these were problems when you ran your background checks? Did it escape your attention that the MMFAFA is a priority around here right now, what with Boone and his men escaping from jail and killing the governor?”

  Frustration raked at Isabella with greedy claws. “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” She rounded on him and cranked her volume, more because she was angry with herself than with him. “Of course I was aware of the situation. But I was assigned to protect Secretary Cooper from the person or persons who had been sending him threatening letters about Lunkinburg, which has nothing to do with your fugitives!”

  Or so she’d thought. Now they had conflicting evidence, in the form of bloody letters and Horton’s corpse, pointing toward the MMFAFA, and the threatening letters and Cooper’s abrupt shift in policy, which aimed them back toward the Lunkinburg sympathizers.

  But she hadn’t known. She couldn’t have known. And she’d been alone in her assignment, so she’d had to vet her contacts as thoroughly as possible and then make a judgment call.