Hunter (Decorah Security Series, Book #20): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel

by Rebecca York

  “I—” He reached for her hand, drew her closer so that he could fold her fingers around his and bring her knuckles to his lips. Eyes closed, he kissed her hand tenderly, then carried it to his heart. Her vision clouded with moisture. She had never been so affected by a gesture, so affected by another human being. Silently, taking small steps, she moved closer so that she was standing with her cheek against his shoulder

  One of his large hands came up to stroke her hair, the other clasped her shoulder, and she stood with him, fighting tears. God, what a mess. They could hardly talk, and there was so much she wanted to say, so much she needed to tell him, she realized suddenly. Personal things. But the personal part would have to wait, she realized.

  Opening her eyes, she raised her head, brushed her lips against his cheek.

  “I have to tell you things that happened,” she mouthed.

  He nodded.

  After giving him a flicker of a smile, she cleared her throat.

  “Did you have dinner?” she asked in an almost normal voice.

  “They gave me a turkey sandwich. It was dry and—” He stopped. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, you can have dessert. Cherry pie with vanilla ice cream.”

  His eyes lit up.

  “Come into the kitchen and give me a hand.”

  He followed her toward the cabinets. Turning, she glanced at him, then opened the door where the gun had been and showed him the empty place behind the bag of flour.

  His face took on a questioning look.

  She turned her palms up and shrugged. “McCourt was here—officially,” she mouthed slowly. “Looking for a gun from the armory. He didn’t find it.”

  Hunter nodded his understanding.

  “When I got back after the fire, the house had been searched again.”

  His eyes narrowed but he said nothing.

  Turning, she opened the box of pie she’d bought and warmed a slice in the microwave before topping it with vanilla ice cream.

  “You have some, too,” Hunter said when she handed him the plate.

  Dutifully, she cut herself a small slice and added a dollop of ice cream, although she had almost no appetite. She started to say some more about McCourt’s visit, then caught herself. The strain of remembering not to speak aloud was getting to her.

  After a few bites, she gave up the effort to eat and simply watched Hunter enjoy the pie and ice cream. He looked like a little boy who can’t believe he deserves such a wonderful treat.

  She was too keyed up to do more than nibble at her food. When she couldn’t stifle a yawn, he nodded. “You. . . we. . . should sleep,” he amended.

  “Yes.”

  Standing, she started to carry the dishes to the kitchen, but he stopped her. “I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Go to bed.”

  She shouldn’t lie down, she told herself. But what good would it do the two of them to sit and stare at each other? Leaning over, she gave Hunter a small kiss on the cheek. She had intended it to be brief, but she clung for a moment, needing to hold him, touch him before she let him out of her sight again. Finally, she detached herself and headed down the hall to her bedroom.

  ###

  He prowled through the kitchen and felt a shiver of gratitude when he found the box of doughnuts she had bought. Slowly he ate two, savoring the sweet taste and the soft texture. He thought about finishing the box, then elected to save some for breakfast. He would eat them and drink coffee with a lot of milk and sugar, he decided as he licked his fingers.

  He had never chosen what to eat. When to eat. What to do. It made him feel strange as he washed the dishes. Turning, he looked toward the stereo, thinking he would like to hear The 1812 Overture again if he couldn’t hear Kathryn singing. But he didn’t want to wake her up, so he hummed the song she’d sung.

  A time for every purpose under heaven.

  He wished it were true.

  He knew it was a lie. For him. He had only one purpose.

  The song died in his throat as he began to prowl the house, checking to make sure no additional sensors were monitoring their activities. There were only the tiny microphones he’d found before and the recorder. He hoped.

  He had lain in his hospital bed thinking about what to do. Now he opened the utility panel, and went back through the recording, fast forwarded, stopping every minute to listen. He heard someone searching the house. Then the broken words and phrases from the frantic time in the hall when he had come home to her. He had to clench his teeth to get through that part. Methodically, he erased everything that had been said since he got home. The listeners wouldn’t know how much had been recorded because they wouldn’t know exactly when it had been activated by speech or other noises.

  After turning off the machine, he started down the hall. He and Kathryn had to talk. Now they could do it in privacy—at least for a few hours.

  Quietly he pushed open her door and stood looking down at her in the shaft of light that came from behind him in the hallway.

  She had fallen asleep on her back, with her flaming hair spilling across the pillow. The way he had imagined her.

  Well, not quite the way he had imagined. The covers had slipped down to her waist, and he saw she was wearing a tee shirt. Yet as he moved quietly closer and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark, he could see the outlines of her beautiful breasts against the fabric and the darker centers that had made his body tighten when he touched them.

  He pressed his hands to his sides to keep from reaching for her.

  “Kathryn?” he called out quietly.

  She stirred a little on the bed.

  “Kathryn?”

  Her eyes fluttered open. When she saw him looming over her, she gasped and tried to climb out of his reach.

  The terror in her eyes made him afraid she would scream and bring the security men. Flinging himself on top of her, he clamped his hand over her mouth.

  She kicked at his legs, struggled to tear herself from his grasp. All he could do was try and hold her still as he told her over and over, “I didn’t come to hurt you. I came to talk to you.”

  At first it seemed she didn’t hear him, didn’t even see him, for her eyes were glazed and her frantic struggles continued.

  Then, all at once, she focused on him. In the next moment, she went very still, except for the sobs that began to wrack her body.

  “I came to talk to you,” he repeated.

  She nodded against his shoulder but kept sobbing. When she clung to him, pulling him down beside her, he gathered her close and held her gently, wishing he knew what to do to make her feel better. He had frightened her badly, and sadness descended upon him. He had thought. . . well, it didn’t matter what he had thought.

  In that unguarded moment when she had wakened, he had discovered her true feelings.

  He felt her struggling to get control of herself. When she fumbled for a tissue on the bedside table and blew her nose, he eased away from her and sat up, moving to the side of the bed.

  “We can’t talk,” she whispered.

  “Yes, we can. I turned off the recording machine,” he explained. “Since it’s voice activated, they will think we are sleeping now.”

  She tipped her head toward him. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” He swallowed painfully, looking down so she wouldn’t see his face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come in. I frightened you.”

  She sat up and put her hand on his arm, squeezing gently. “It wasn’t you I was afraid of,” she said quickly.

  “Who?” he asked, hardly daring to hope he had been wrong about her terror.

  She sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I took the job Emerson offered me because I wanted to hide out from a man named James Harrison, who tried to kill me last week,” she said in a shaky voice.” Moving her hand to his, she held on tight.

  “Why would someone try to kill you?”

  Her grip was almost painful, yet he didn’t loo
sen her fingers.

  “One of my jobs is testifying in court—in trials—as an expert witness. Three years ago, I gave an evaluation of Harrison. He lived at home with his mother because he couldn’t sustain a relationship with a woman. He’d been fired from his job as a computer programmer, and he was depressed. His mother had a lot of money, and he wanted to get his hands on it. So, he was holding her captive—starving her. Hoping she would die.”

  “A person would do that to his mother?” he asked, hardly able to believe it.

  “Not usually. He was sick—mentally sick. The mother didn’t die, so he wasn’t charged with murder. And she wouldn’t press charges against him. I testified that he was a danger to society. Because of my testimony and another psychologist’s, he was confined to a mental institution.”

  He listened intently, not sure he understood everything, but getting the gist of it.

  “He escaped, but the authorities thought he was dead. He came to the apartment building where I live. He tried to kill me. I got away from him, but the police haven’t found him yet. And sometimes I dream about him. I dream he’s coming after me again,” she ended with a little gulp that made his heart melt.

  “Come here.” He held out his arms to her.

  She came into them without hesitation, and he felt a wave of warmth and protectiveness sweep over him as she nestled her head against his chest.

  On a deep sigh, he cupped his hands around her shoulders. He liked it so much when she gave herself into his care. It made him feel strong. Good. Able to protect her, although he didn’t know if he really could.

  “I thought I’d be safe at Stratford Creek. I didn’t know I was jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”

  He repeated the phrase. He’d never heard it before, but he understood what she meant.

  She burrowed closer to him. “It wasn’t you I was afraid of,” she said again, her warm breath seeping through his shirt to heat his skin. “I saw your shape in the doorway—a man’s shape—but I couldn’t see your face.”

  His hand moved to stroke her hair. He had told himself he wouldn’t touch her when he came to her room to talk. Still, it was impossible to deny himself the pleasure of running the silky strands through his fingers. He could feel his body getting hot and tight again. It was a strange combination of pain and pleasure that compelled him to seek more.

  Remembering the kiss in the hallway, he turned his head. She opened her mouth for him, and he gave a sigh of gratification at the soft touch of her lips and the sweet taste of her. Some part of his mind knew this was the wrong thing to do. He shouldn’t have come to her bedroom. Perhaps he had been fooling himself about his reasons.

  The pressure of his lips on hers made him dizzy, hot, achy. His fingers shook as they stroked the tender line where her hair met her cheek. When she made a little sound of wanting in her throat, he answered with a growl of satisfaction.

  Helpless to stop himself, he moved his hand, cupped one of her breasts, stroked his fingers over the tip.

  It was hard. Touching it made him harden in response, as if her body were giving a signal to his. The fabric between his hand and her flesh frustrated him. He wanted to pull the shirt over her head, push her down to the surface of the bed.

  Mate with her.

  He knew nothing of mating, yet the image was very vivid in his mind—his body joined to hers so that it would be impossible to tell where one of them stopped and the other began.

  He pulled her down, gathered her as close as he could with their clothing in the way. The tight, swollen part of him fit perfectly into the cleft between her legs. She must know it too, he thought, drunk with sensation as they rocked together on the bed. Blood surged through him in a roaring torrent. Need built, like a hot, raging river sweeping away sanity in its path.

  He was caught and held in a spinning whirlpool of hunger—held by the soft sounds she made, the woman scent of her, the frantic little movements of her hips against his.

  In a few moments he knew he would be unable to deny himself. Unable to think beyond physical need. He would have to give himself over to the blinding, deafening desire for her.

  But he couldn’t let that happen. He had come here for another purpose. He must talk to her. Find out about the gun. Protect her.

  That thought gave him strength he hadn’t known he possessed. With a strangled sound deep in his throat, he lifted his mouth from hers, moved a few inches away so that his aching body was no longer pressed tight to hers. Still, it was impossible let her go of her completely. His hand stayed clasped on hers as he spoke in a voice so thick that the words were barely articulate.

  “We can’t.” he said, then more strongly, as he sat up and moved to the side of the bed, thumped his feet onto the floor to clear his head. “We can’t.”

  Her eyes were dazed, her face flushed. The color deepened as she focused on him.

  “We have work to do,” he rasped, knowing that if she held out her arms to him, he would go into them. “We must look at the thumb—with the personnel files.”

  Kathryn blinked, sucking in a shaky breath as she struggled to remember where they were and why they couldn’t do what both wanted so desperately. Sitting up, she ran an unsteady hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face, buying a few moments to collect herself. He was right, she thought as she forced her mind to start functioning again.

  “The drive? You have it?”

  He nodded and pulled it out of his pocket. “I brought it out of the administration building. In the hospital, I folded it into my clothes when they had me get undressed.”

  “Did you set the fire?” she asked, her fingers digging into his hand.

  He kept his gaze steady. “Why would I do that?”

  “You said you’d get me information from the computer. Then you realized it was going to be impossible. But you did it for me, anyway, didn’t you?”

  A flush crept up his cheeks. “How did you know that?”

  “It was a guess. Knowing you. Hunter, you shouldn’t have taken a chance like that!”

  He shrugged. “It was like a field exercise.”

  She made a low sound of distress, and her fingers tightened on his.

  “It was all right.”

  “You could have gotten killed.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Before she could lecture him on taking unnecessary risks, he changed the subject.

  “McCourt was here? Tell me about that. And about the gun.”

  “He came in the morning after you left and said a gun was missing from the armory. He looked for it, but he didn’t find anything. Then when I got back after the fire, I could tell that someone else had searched the house. The gun and the silencer were both gone.”

  “He could have come back.”

  “Or it could have been someone else.”

  “I heard the sounds of searching on the tape.”

  She nodded tightly.

  “The gun may have come from the armory. Not the silencer.”

  “I—”

  “We must make the most of our time,” he interrupted. “You must read the thumb drive and then erase the data. It’s dangerous to keep the evidence if the house can be searched at any time.”

  She gave him a tight nod. Yes, the house could be searched. And men like Winslow and McCourt could burst in at any time. Yet that didn’t negate a basic fact that kept nagging at her. Why had she been given such unprecedented access to Hunter?

  He must have seen the question on her face. “What?”

  “The more I think about being left alone with you, the more I wonder why it’s been arranged this way.”

  “I heard Dr. Kolb and Dr. Swinton talking about it when I was in the hospital.”

  “They were talking in front of you?”

  “They were in the hall. I heard them. Dr. Kolb said this is the best field trial he could think of. If I pass this test, I’m ready to go off into enemy territory. Dr. Swinton thanked him. He said that he had thought Dr. Kol
b was fighting him. But now they were working like a team.”

  “Enemy territory? Where?” she asked, hoping the answer might slip out.

  “A country where Americans aren’t welcome. A country where one man might be able to slip in.” he answered evasively.

  “Who is funding Project Sandstorm?” she tried.

  “The Department of Defense.”

  She kept her voice neutral. “Um. And does the Department of Defense own Stratford Creek?”

  “Yes.”

  When she tried to ask another question about his mission, he stopped her with a quick shake of his head.

  “I can’t tell you any more about it.”

  “I want to understand.”

  “You have to read the computer data tonight,” he reminded her.

  She gave a little sigh, knowing he was right. They didn’t have much time.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Check the security at the motor pool,” he said

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask me that either.” He made a quick exit from the room, and she stared after him. If he was checking the security of the motor pool, he must be thinking about leaving the base.

  Could that really be true? Was he preparing to go against his training, after he’d told Winslow he wouldn’t run away?

  She couldn’t answer the question, and she knew she was wasting time speculating. Taking the laptop off the dresser, she brought it to the bed where she propped up the pillows so she could sit comfortably. On the drive were two files. One was labeled “pers.” The other “Olympics.”

  She ached to go right to the second file. But she knew the first one was more urgent. She had to see what she could find out about the men she was dealing with here.

  An hour later, her head was swimming with information—information that didn’t come entirely from reading dry personnel entries. Apparently, Bill Emerson liked keeping track of his staff’s peccadillos, and record the information in memos he’d attached to each man’s record. Kind of like the J. Edgar Hoover method of personnel control, Kathryn thought with a shudder. If your employees knew you had something on them, they were likely to stay in line.

  Among other things, she’d learned that Lieutenant Chip McCourt had a violent streak. He’d been thrown in the brig on several occasions. And he’d almost gotten himself court-martialed for assaulting a civilian worker on a tour in Germany. That time, Emerson had personally stepped in to get him off the hook. The lieutenant was allowed to leave the army with an honorable discharge, and he’d come straight to Stratford Creek to help set up Project Sandstorm.