Bullseye

by Jessica Andersen

  Bullseye.

  He sent her a sideways glance. “You going to talk to me, or are you chicken?”

  When he turned his back to her and aimed again, she dug her fingers into her palm. No, she wasn’t a coward. But the questions and accusations cramming her brain weren’t productive. They were old history, old heart-aches. Not relevant to the present.

  So she pushed away from the bar and took a step forward. “I’m just trying to lull you into a false sense of security.”

  He grinned and turned back to the board. Lifted his second dart.

  “If you could go back to that night,” she said, and saw his shoulders tighten, “would you do it differently?”

  A muscle at his jaw bunched and flexed. He threw. Bullseye. He didn’t lift the next dart immediately. He stayed facing the board, but answered in a low voice, “I don’t know.”

  Her heart broke a little at that, though she wouldn’t have believed him if he’d said yes.

  Without waiting for her response, he continued, “You’d said something about a ring earlier that day, like you were expecting one for graduation. I pan icked. I got a little drunk and took Brandy Carlisle home with me.”

  Hearing the name after all these years fisted Isabella’s stomach, though she knew it hadn’t been about the girl. It had been about them. Specifically, about Jacob finding a way to leave her. But she forced her lips to twist into a half smile. “A little drunk?”

  “Okay. Real drunk.” His third dart buried itself in the bullseye so hard he had to tug twice to pull it free before his next shot. “I needed to be that drunk to invite her back with me.” He glanced at her. “I passed out before…you know.”

  She nodded. “I know. But that doesn’t make it any better.” He’d intended to cheat on her. After years of overhearing her mother accusing her father of roadside flings and her father saying she’d driven him to it, the intent to cheat was enough for Isabella.

  And Jacob had known it, the bastard.

  A low fire kindled in her belly, more wrenching than irritation, more all-consuming than anger. “You drove me away because you didn’t have the guts to tell me it was over, just like you didn’t have the guts to tell me all along that there wasn’t a future for us, that you’d planned on leaving just as soon as the ink dried on your degree.”

  He threw two more darts in quick succession, burying them in the red bullseye. Then he turned to her, eyes dark with anger, and maybe something else. “I didn’t plan anything, don’t you get it? I never had a chance to plan anything.” He advanced on her and gripped her upper arms in his warm, calloused palms. “It was all planned for me. I went to Georgetown because it was expected. I applied to law school because it was expected. I even had a summer internship lined up for me—all part of my parents’ plan to make me into my father. The next generation.”

  “Poor little rich boy.” At the flash of temper in his eyes, Isabella fell back a pace until the solidity of the bar pressed against her lower back, stopping her. Propping her up. Another set of headlights passed by, but neither of them watched.

  Instead he handed her the darts without touching her. “Your turn.”

  They traded places and she threw her five bullseyes. Then he threw his. The silence between them grew thick with unspoken accusations, unanswered questions, and over it all roiled the tense electricity that they couldn’t deny but chose not to acknowledge.

  She wanted him. He wanted her. But they didn’t want to want each other. Not again. Not now. Not this way.

  She waited until he’d raised his final dart in the set before she asked, “Did you love me back then? Or was that my imagination, too?”

  He cursed under his breath, not an angry word, but one filled with desperation. With denial. Without looking at her, he said, “I loved you. But I didn’t like who I was when we were together. I felt out of control. Short-tempered. Unbalanced.” He glanced over at her. “You made me crazy. I don’t want to feel that way again. Not ever.”

  He threw with an angry flick of the wrist. He missed.

  Badly.

  They both stared at the dart quivering in the faux wood paneling to the left of the bristle board.

  Numbed by the word crazy, by the way his comments resonated within her skull, Isabella stepped forward, retrieved the dart and took her place behind the painted line.

  The street outside was dark and deserted, the narrow space beside the garage hollow and empty even with Jacob standing no more than three feet away.

  Damn him, Isabella thought. Damn his ability to put her right back where she started. She should never have come to Big Sky for help. She would have been better off on her own.

  If a small voice at the back of her head said that wasn’t so, she ignored it and flung the dart with all her strength.

  Bullseye.

  “I win.” She turned to Jacob and lifted her chin in defiance, refusing to let him see that he’d aroused her, hurt her, stirred her up and made her question herself again, all within the space of a single, stupid dart game.

  “And I owe you a future claim.” He swallowed and shifted so his weight was balanced evenly on the balls of his feet, as though he expected her to throw a punch. “Do you want something from me?”

  Under any other circumstance, with any other man, the possibilities might be endless. But with Jacob?

  No. Never.

  So Isabella forced her lips into a flat line, not quite a smile, not quite a frown. “Not a damn thing.” She turned her back to him and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to bed. Be ready to leave at dawn.”

  If she spent most of the night reading a paperback until her eyes filmed over and her neck cricked in protest, he didn’t need to know. And if once the light was off she lay on her side and cursed him for being right, cursed herself for caring, he didn’t need to know that, either.

  They weren’t looking to rekindle an old, failed love affair; they were trying to rescue Cooper’s family and capture Boone Fowler and his associates. Once they managed that, she would be reinstated at the Service and she and Jacob could go their separate ways.

  Permanently.

  On that thought, she closed her eyes in weary resignation, only opening them once when she heard the hum of a car passing by on the road below.

  The morning, and their flight to California, couldn’t come soon enough.

  THEY WERE IN California. At least Hope thought they were. She’d pretended to be groggy coming off the plane—it hadn’t been much of a stretch, because she was certain Boone had dosed her coffee with something—and had pretended to fall asleep the moment they pulled out of the airport in the shiny SUV Kane had driven to pick them up.

  At first, she’d slitted her eyes and watched the passing signs of Los Angeles. But then she’d fallen asleep for real, and didn’t know how long they’d driven when the vehicle bumped and jolted her back to consciousness.

  She groaned. God, her head hurt. Then a second rush of wakefulness crashed through her and moved the pain to her heart.

  The girls!

  She sat up too quickly and nearly passed out, but clawed through the numbness. “My babies. What have you done with them? Where are they?”

  Neither Boone nor Kane answered out loud, but Boone reached forward, popped the glove compartment, and withdrew a sleek silver pistol. He lay it on his lap without looking at her, but she got the message as they passed a row of deserted storefronts and traveled higher into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

  Behave or else.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning Jacob and Isabella left the shot-up BMW in Lance’s garage and caught a cab to the airport. The air between them remained thick with tension—more emotional than sexual.

  Jacob had hoped that reminding themselves why it hadn’t worked before might help settle the unspoken push-pull between them. Instead it seemed to have made things worse.

  So much so that when he climbed into the cockpit, he didn’t feel the usual sweep of joy. Instead he felt jitt
ery.

  “You want to ride up front with me?” he asked, expecting her to take the farthest seat away from him, four rows back in the Citation’s tail.

  “Fine.” She brushed past him and took the copilot’s seat, leaving him to deal with their bags—little more than a change of clothing and the surveillance equipment they would continue to monitor in the hope of learning more about the meeting.

  Was it a ransom drop? A rendezvous of colluders?

  An execution?

  The image of Derek Horton’s bloody face and the single bullet hole between his eyes reached up and caught Jacob by the throat, reminding him that this wasn’t about sex, wasn’t about him and Isabella.

  It was about the job. The bounty. The hostages.

  And he’d do well to remember it.

  On a growl, he stowed the bags and shut the outer door before he joined her in the small cockpit. They sat mere feet apart, but an icy gulf seemed to stretch between them.

  He clenched his jaw, donned his headset and ran through a full preflight check before he asked for ground clearance. They were put through immediately, and he sent the jet down the runway a little faster than necessary, climbed a little sharper than needed, hoping the burst of adrenaline would clear her from his brain.

  But it was no good. She was still there. Her scent touched his nostrils and invaded the peace he normally found in the sky.

  He held out until they were an hour into the flight, some four hundred miles west of D.C. He turned down the gain on his earphones and looked over to where she had laid her head against the seat back and pretended to doze. “You want to talk about it?”

  She stirred, tipped down her reflective sunglasses and looked at him over the tops, her green eyes cool. “There’s nothing more to talk about, is there? We had a past. We’ve dissected it until it’s more of a bloody mess than it seemed back then. Do we really need to keep going? You wanted out. I didn’t. You got your wish and I learned my lesson.” She sat back and pushed her glasses tight to her face, so he couldn’t see her eyes anymore. “Let’s stop fooling with each other’s heads and focus on what we’re here for. Finding Hope and the girls. Capturing Boone and his men. Period. End of story.”

  Unwilling to let it end like that, Jacob reached out and touched her forearm where her turtleneck had pulled up to leave the soft skin exposed. “Is that what you want?”

  She angled her head as though looking at him, but the glasses shielded her expression. “I want my job back, and I want my normal, ordered, organized life back. Nothing more.”

  No chaos, he could almost hear her say, no craziness. Which was ironic, because that was exactly what he wanted, too.

  And it was exactly the opposite of what they had together.

  He held her gaze—or thought he did—for a moment longer before he nodded. “Okay. Consider the subject closed.”

  “Good.” She tipped her head back and folded her arms across her chest as though settling in for a nap. But her breathing remained wide-awake, as did the fine tension in her arms and legs.

  Jacob decided it would be best if they both pretended she was asleep. So he turned up the gain on his earphones and concentrated on flying, the one true love that had never challenged him more than he’d wanted to be challenged, never boxed him into a corner or made him feel out of control.

  In the air, he was in control.

  Then again, he thought as white puffs of spun cotton clouds reeled beneath the plane, flying didn’t send a hum of heat buzzing just beneath the surface of his skin and it didn’t make him want to laugh and howl simultaneously.

  No, he thought, glancing over and catching a glint of sunlight off her auburn hair, Isabella did that for him. Nobody else. Just Isabella.

  And the knowledge both humbled him and scared the hell out of him. He hadn’t been strong enough to handle it thirteen years earlier and he didn’t think he wasn’t strong enough now. They were too volatile together, too passionate. Too everything. He’d be better off without her, as he’d been in the past decade. He’d been stable, sensible, predictable, in control.

  But damn, he thought as he turned back to the instruments he knew he could control, he was going to miss the feeling of being around her again, the light touch of her scent and the raging, roaring rush he felt when she crossed him, or worse, when she agreed with him.

  Damn, he was going to miss her.

  ISABELLA WOKE when they landed to refuel, and was surprised to realize she’d actually slept. She felt more settled, more centered.

  A week earlier Jacob Powell had been nothing more to her than a memory, one that could be pleasant or unpleasant depending on which part of their time together she chose to remember. There was no reason she couldn’t put him back in that role once this was over.

  Even better, she’d thought through some of the things they’d discussed, and she’d decided she was the only one holding herself back. Once she was reinstated, she was going to make more of an effort to socialize. She would accept every invitation thrown her way and maybe offer a few of her own.

  Heck, Lance was single. Not precisely her type, but maybe worth practicing on.

  “You ready?” Jacob’s voice broke into her musings. She tried not to focus on the strength of the hand he held out to her, or the rough timbre of his voice when he said, “We’ve got maybe a half hour to stretch our legs and scrounge some lunch while they refuel the jet.”

  She gritted her teeth as they stumbled down the short ladder together and separated on the warm, open tarmac of the small middle America airport. When she thought he wasn’t looking, she scrubbed her hands against her jeans, trying to wipe away the warmth.

  Who was she kidding? She didn’t want to be with Lance. She wanted Jacob. But she didn’t want the craziness he brought out in her.

  Damn it.

  “You coming?” He jerked his head toward the main hangar as two uniformed, helmeted members of the ground crew advanced on the Big Sky jet.

  “Fine.” She followed him into the building and ordered fast food off a hanging menu.

  As she did so, she became aware of the near desertion of the airport and a tickle at the back of her neck. She glanced around and saw nothing suspicious. Were they being watched? Or was she looking for a distrac tion, any distraction that would shift her mind away from her flying partner?

  When Jacob rubbed the back of his neck, she wondered whether he felt it, too.

  “I’m going to call into headquarters,” he announced abruptly. He stalked away, leaving her with a half-eaten sandwich in her hand and the twitch of jumpy nerves in her stomach.

  She headed back out to the plane, thinking she should power up the receiver and download anything the sound-activated bug in Cooper’s office had picked up since takeoff.

  As she walked toward the jet, she saw one of the ground crew members emerge from the cabin. He waved and gave her a thumbs-up. “You’re good to go!”

  Jacob joined her less than five minutes later, locked the door and quickly ran through the preflight checks.

  Once they were airborne, he said, “I talked to the boss. They found a trailer in the woods that yielded some forensic evidence. It looks like several men, one woman and at least one child had been there. There were bloodstains, but they looked old.”

  Bloodstains. Isabella’s heart lunged into her throat and she dug her fingernails into her palm to smother a hiss.

  He glanced at her. “God willing, the blood is from a previous resident or an older crime by Fowler’s men.”

  She swallowed and pushed aside the images that threatened to overtake her. Hope bound and gagged. Her daughters lying nearby on a stained and soiled mattress, limp with drugs or worse. Louis Cooper tied to a chair, letters written on his chest in blood.

  She sensed Jacob had more that he didn’t want to tell her, so she forced the words through a throat that suddenly felt sore and scratchy. “What else?”

  “Not much.” Frustration laced his tone. “The cabin Cooper mentioned is h
igh in the hills, north of a ghost town called Devil Mountain. Most of the stores have moved out, and the few residents keep to themselves.” Jacob shifted in his seat and glanced at her. “Worse, most of Big Sky is hung up in Montana. Murphy says there was another incident at the Fortress—he didn’t give me the deets—and they’ve been called in to give testimony on the governor and the train crash. There’s no way he can get to Devil Mountain before Sunday night. He’ll do his best to help, but until the end of the weekend…”

  “We’re on our own,” she finished for him, feeling a low churn of nerves build over the hum of the jet engines.

  Then she realized it wasn’t nerves at all.

  It was the engines.

  Jacob’s low curse confirmed the sudden fear that sent spears of adrenaline through her chest and limbs. She whispered, “What’s wrong?” as though keeping her voice low would make the rough, shivering, clanking noise stop.

  “We’re losing power,” he said.

  She heard a faint drop in engine pitch, felt a slight loss of gravity that lifted her away from her padded seat and tightened the safety harness against her skin.

  They were falling.

  Heart thundering, Isabella dug her fingernails into the padded armrests while Jacob barked their coordinates and condition into his headset. When he fell silent, she asked, “Are we going to crash?”

  The fear of it, the final fatality of it, sang through her veins like ice. Like fire. Like disbelief. They were going more than four-hundred miles per hour, thirty-thousand feet above the ground. Now twenty-eight. Twenty-six.

  Fear paralyzed her limbs, and she thought, This can’t be how it ends.

  “The plane’s going down.” A muscle balled in Jacob’s jaw and his forearms knotted in sharp relief as the yoke pulled against him, the plane fighting to drop hard and fast. “But we’re not going down with it. Get the chutes.” He jerked his chin toward the back, where their luggage was strapped.

  The floor beneath her feet tilted, then tilted more as she struggled to walk the narrow aisle toward the parachute compartment.

  It was empty.