“Leave them alive for questioning,” she said quietly, her attention fixed on the tarmac ahead. “And whatever you’re going to do, do it fast. You’ve got about five seconds before I run out of pavement and we make a hard left.”
“Gotcha.”
“And don’t miss.”
He snorted. “Babe, I never miss.”
Incredibly she felt a little lift beneath her heart at the careless endearment. She squelched the feeling as quickly as it had come, but the fact remained.
She was coming to care what he thought of her again.
Or else she’d never stopped caring. And that was a hell of a thought.
Then she couldn’t worry about it, because the sedan’s driver, or maybe a passenger—she couldn’t tell through the tinted glass—opened fire.
Isabella screamed and jammed her foot on the gas, wanting out of here as fast as possible.
“No!” Jacob shouted. “I can do this!”
Then he had no choice. A line of bullets stitched its way across the trunk of the BMW and spiderwebbed the back window.
“Right! Turn right!” Jacob braced himself for the swing. “I need a clear shot!”
She yanked the steering wheel hard, cursing when the tires hit a patch of sand and slid. Bullets smacked into the side of her car—the one she’d scrimped and saved to buy—and Isabella set her jaw, waiting for the pain of a hit or for Jacob’s cry.
Instead she heard a single gunshot from the passenger side. A low word of triumph.
“Bullseye.”
The car lost its grip on the oily patch of sand and spun in a one-eighty that left Jacob and Isabella facing their pursuers.
The green sedan closed on them, racing for a head-on collision.
Then, incredibly, the car swerved sharply to the left and crumpled forward as the front axle snapped. The driver’s front wheel jammed, but the vehicle’s momentum continued.
Metal screamed and the vehicle exploded off the ground, the back end flipping up and over the front. Only one front wheel was jammed, and the resulting torque spun the sedan in an aerial cartwheel of crashing metal and flinging fragments. The green sedan flipped lengthwise and slammed into a half-wired lamppost, which folded with a snapping groan and landed on the car with a crunch of metal and safety glass, then lay still.
Dead still.
Isabella cut the BMW’s engine and winced at the sudden, deafening silence.
“What are you doing?” Jacob demanded. “We need to get out of here while the getting’s good!”
“What we need to do,” Isabella replied as she unbuckled her seat belt with adrenaline-numbed fingers, “is question whoever is in that car. If we figure out who they’re working for…”
She trailed off, but the answer crackled on the still air between them. If we figure out who they’re working for, we’ll know who to go after. Maybe even where to look for Hope, Becky and Tiff.
She swung out of the bullet-riddled car with Jacob’s soft curse following her. She hadn’t gone more than three steps toward the green sedan before he was at her side. He grabbed her elbow and hurried her along. “Come on, quick in and out. Or do you want to hang around and chat with the cops?”
She heard it then, the muffled rise and fall of approaching sirens. She tensed. “I’m not afraid of the police. I’m a Secret Service agent.”
Then she gritted her teeth on the slip. She had been an agent. Now she was nothing. Cut loose, cast adrift. Alone.
“Hey.” Jacob nudged her with his elbow and jerked his chin at the green sedan. It lay on its roof, three wheels still spinning gently, the fourth twisted and hanging from where his single shot had blown out the tire. “You coming?”
She focused on him, on the sweep of his jaw and the wide set of his shoulders, and felt for the first time since she’d knocked on the front door of the bounty hunters’ log cabin, that she’d come to the right place.
To the right man.
And that complicated more things than it solved.
Unable to deal with the thought just then, she nodded. “I’m right behind you.”
But when they reached the crumpled vehicle, Jacob stopped dead and cursed under his breath.
Isabella crouched, expecting to see that their pursuers were unconscious or worse, dead. But the sight that greeted her eyes was surprising and even more unsettling.
The green sedan was empty.
She stood and scanned the scene. Her stomach knotted at the sight of a blood trail leading to the deserted main road beside the parking lot.
There must have been another chase car. A backup. A getaway.
Which left them with nothing.
“Come on.” Jacob tugged at her arm. “Company’s coming, and there’s nothing more we can do here without getting involved with the officials.”
And that would just slow them down when they could least afford to be slowed.
Stunned by the chase, the accident and the fact that their pursuers had escaped, Isabella allowed him to point her toward the passenger’s seat. He took the wheel and they sped from the deserted parking lot moments ahead of the lone cop car with its flashing lights.
But though the single car was first on scene, Isabella knew the place would soon be jammed with personnel. Car chases and gunfights weren’t unheard of in the nation’s capital, but they were taken very, very seriously.
“We need to ditch the car someplace safe,” Jacob said, his thoughts clearly paralleling hers. “Between the bullet holes and the shot out back window, there’s no mistaking what we’ve been up to.”
“And she’s registered in my name,” Isabella said sadly, hating the mess the men had made of her pretty BMW.
The mess they’d made of her life.
Unexpectedly, Jacob reached across the space between them, took her hand and squeezed. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said automatically, even as warmth snuck up her arm and wrapped itself around her heart. “Turn here.” She indicated a back road that paralleled the main highway. “I know where we can go.”
She kept them on the quieter back roads and hoped nobody called 9-1-1 about the obvious bullet marks on the car. By the time they reached their suburban destination, it was midafternoon, though it felt as though a week had passed since they’d landed the jet that morning.
“Pull in here.” She indicated a generic two-level town house in the midst of a cookie-cutter development, where each house perched atop a two-bay garage. “I’ll get the door.” Without waiting for his answer, she hopped out—keeping a sharp eye on their surroundings—and punched in the door code.
Once the bullet-riddled BMW was inside, she closed the door and dropped the blinds on the high windows, just in case.
When she turned back, Jacob was standing too near, his eyes hooded. “Whose place is this?”
She fought the insane urge to step back, away from him and from the intensity that seemed to pour off him in waves. “It’s not connected to me in any way. They’ll never think to look here.”
He glanced around at the garage, and she saw his eyes linger on the sports equipment and the shiny chrome of a bike with a naked woman’s silhouette emblazoned on one side. His lips tightened. “Your boyfriend’s?”
She nearly snorted at the thought, but held it in, partly because it was none of his business and partly because it might be safer if he thought she was involved. Then she thought, Safer for whom?
She turned and popped the bullet-dented trunk. “This is Lance Drummond’s place. He’s Secret Service, and out of the country for another week. We’re…” Friends, she started to say, then stalled when she realized that wasn’t even close to accurate.
“Never mind. I get it.” Jacob reached past her to snag the two carry-on suitcases they’d brought with them.
“No,” she said quietly, “you don’t.” When his eyes met hers, she shrugged. “I wouldn’t even call Lance and me friends. His girlfriend dumped him just before he left. I was standing there in the hall
when it happened, and he…I…” She swallowed a bubble of nervous laughter because truth was so very pitiful, and rushed through it on a single breath. “He asked me to water his plants.”
And this had been the best place she could think of to hide. Jeez, she should’ve just tattooed “pathetic” across her forehead. She jammed her hands into her pockets and told herself to get over it. Since when did she care what anyone else though of her or the way she chose to live her life?
Since she’d gone looking for Jacob Powell, that’s when.
Instead of looking relieved, or pitying, he nodded. “Good. Then we should be safe.” He turned away. “Come on. We have surveillance to set up.” He hefted the silver suitcase that contained Big Sky’s bugging equipment. Then he paused and his eyes sharpened on her. “You planted the receiver before they chased you out, right?”
She thought back to those first few tense moments in the Secretary of Defense’s private office, when Cooper and Prince Nikolai had watched her so closely—
And she’d pretended to stumble and catch herself on the desk.
She nodded slowly. “The bug’s in place.”
“Good.” He grinned, a surprising flash of white against the dim light of the garage. “Then let’s get these bastards.”
ONCE THEY WERE INSIDE the six-room town house— Lance’s town house, Jacob growled internally, not sure that he bought the plant-sitting excuse and trying to tell himself it didn’t matter one way or the other—they set up the surveillance equipment they’d brought from Montana.
If they were very, very lucky, the bug in Cooper’s office would give them a clue as to where his wife and children were being held, where a ransom drop would happen…or even who was masterminding the plot.
Because the more Jacob thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Boone Fowler was acting on his own. It wasn’t just that the scheme had international implications, it was the feel of the incidents.
Boone normally worked near his roots in Montana. The danger had followed Jacob and Isabella to D.C.
The MMFAFA focused on domestic terror. Cooper’s flip-flop on the Lunkinburg policy suggested pressure was being applied from without.
And wouldn’t logic say that Boone and his men would lie low after escaping from The Fortress?
“Hell,” Jacob muttered under his breath. “It doesn’t add up unless there’s someone else involved.”
Someone like King Aleksandr.
“What did you say?” Isabella asked, reentering the room with a pair of sodas and an open bag of chips, which she placed on a nearby table.
“Nothing.” He deliberately turned his attention to the portable surveillance equipment, but his every sense was attuned to her presence, to her movements, to her small hiss of frustration when he shut her out.
Why didn’t she get that it was for both their protection?
He was in a good place now, a calm place both professionally and emotionally, and he’d worked hard to get there. And though he’d glimpsed a spark of loneliness or something darker in her eyes when she’d spoken of her work and her life, he sensed that prior to the incident with Cooper, she’d been content. Settled. Two things they had never been together, when they’d come together in flash and flame and all-consuming, greedy need. He hadn’t been able to handle the intensity as an almost college grad and he had no intention of finding out if he could handle it now.
He was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that.
“You all set up?” she asked from way too close behind him.
Jacob stiffened reflexively and stepped away from the bugging equipment, ticked by his body’s instantaneous response every time she came near.
“Yeah.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “We’re ready to go live.”
But live was an overstatement once they flipped on the receiver and heard only dead air.
They listened for a minute before Isabella whispered, “Do you think the bug’s malfunctioning?”
“It’s not a speaker phone, Iz. You can talk normally,” he said a little too loud.
She jumped, then chuckled at herself. “Right,” she said, not whispering now. “Sorry. I’m not usually asked into the surveillance jobs.” Before he could ask why, or why the fact brought a hint of temper to her expression…and a glimmer of vulnerability, she continued, “Can your equipment tell you if the bug’s functioning properly?”
“Yes, it can, and yes, it is,” he answered. “But we lost time with those bastards in the green car.” His gut clenched at the memory of what had happened. What could have happened if she’d been a less accomplished driver, or if he’d missed shooting out the sedan’s front tire.
It didn’t bear thinking about, because she was a good driver, and he never missed, and because of it, they’d survived.
This time.
“So Cooper’s gone home, or to his other office.” Isabella jammed her hands into her pockets, mimicking Jacob’s posture.
“Probably,” he agreed. “Surveillance can take hours. Days. We should hunker down and get comfortable.”
“You might have days to waste on this, but I don’t,” she snapped, yanking her hands out of her pockets and rounding on him as though looking for a fight. “Hope and the girls don’t have the time. We need a break and we need it now!”
His temper surged to match hers, just as it always had. “Then I’ll call the local sub shop and order you a break, how’s that sound? Maybe a pepperoni pizza with a side of confession?”
Even as he let the words fly, a part of him regretted it, knowing she would respond in kind and the fight would escalate from there. Granted, a good shouting match might clear the immediate tension between them, but it would only emphasize the problem.
They did everything with their emotions turned up too loud.
He braced himself for the explosion, for the fine whip of her temper and the glorious snap of her eyes and voice.
Instead, incredibly, she chuckled.
In her eyes, he saw…not temper, but a reluctant amusement. Something he’d never experienced from her.
Something he’d never expected to.
“Yeah, I guess I deserved that.” She picked one of the sodas and tossed it to him. “You’re right, it could be a long night. Let’s get comfortable.”
Jacob caught the can automatically, but his brain was jammed on the look in her eye. Humor, not anger. A hint of accessibility rather than a prickly barrier. Without thinking, he blurted, “Who are you and what have you done with the real Isabella Gray?”
She straightened abruptly and the amusement drained from her face, to be replaced with weary resignation.
“Jacob, it’s been, what? Twelve, thirteen years? Don’t think you know me now because we slept together for a few months at the end of college. I’m a different person now.” She took a step closer and lifted her chin in challenge. “Aren’t you?”
He thought about the work he’d done to control his temper and nodded. “Yeah, I’m different.”
“Good.” She dropped her chin a notch and linked her hands loosely in front of her, as though she wanted to do something with them but wasn’t quite sure what. “Then I think we should try to approach this as though we’d just met.”
“That’s not a good idea,” he said flatly.
“Why not?”
The devil possessed him, or maybe a saint, because when he answered, the words were the honest, unfettered truth. “Because if we’d just met, I’d want to seduce you, and we both know that’s a recipe for disaster.”
The bald statement hung between them for a long moment. The air seemed to thicken with it, but Jacob didn’t wish it back. Better to have things out in the open than festering and causing yet more tension.
Isabella blew out a breath. “Whew. Nothing like going for the jugular, eh, Jacob?” She gripped her hands tighter, her only outward sign of agitation. “And what if I said I’d probably seduce you right back?”
Jacob’s gut knotted on a flash of heat
and he swallowed. “Then I’d say it’s lucky that we haven’t just met, because we’re here to do a job, not…” He thought to make his point by using a crude word for the act, but couldn’t bring himself to do it, so ended with a lame, “Not become involved.”
“Lucky,” she agreed, but she didn’t break eye con tact, and he wasn’t sure what he read in the depths of her expression. It wasn’t vulnerability and it wasn’t a barrier of anger.
It was, perhaps, a challenge.
That, more than anything she’d said or done since reentering his life two days earlier, told him just how much she’d changed over the years. And damn, it confused him.
If she’d changed, maybe he had, too. Maybe he could handle it this time. Handle her.
He took a step toward her and lifted his hand, unsure what he wanted to say, unsure whether she’d want to hear it.
At that moment the bug crackled to life, making them both jump.
In the heavily charged air of a stranger’s town house, they heard the sound of a door open and close. The measured tread of footsteps on carpet and the creak of an office chair.
Isabella gestured, and when Jacob glanced at her, she pointed to the equipment and mouthed, Are we taping?
He didn’t bother to remind her there was no need to whisper, because he felt it, too. The expectant hush of a possible break.
So he nodded. Yes, they were taping.
The minutes ticked by in a frozen tableau. The silence in the town house was broken only by the pop and fizz of Isabella opening her can of soda. The silence in Cooper’s office remained unbroken until the phone rang.
Jacob covered a flinch. Isabella started and the air sharpened with intense focus. Jacob imagined she was thinking the same thing he was.
Let this be a break.
The phone rang a second time before they heard the digital beep of it being answered, then a deep, male voice say, “Louis Cooper here.”
Jacob stared at the speaker, willing the conversation to be important. Informative. He was conscious of Isabella at his side, barely breathing.
“Damn you,” Cooper said, his voice a tortured growl, “where are they? If you’ve even touched a hair on one of their heads…”
Bullseye Page 10
