Going to Extremes
Page 1
He had the look of a man who could turn a woman inside out, and Kaitlyn’s stomach fluttered with awareness when their gazes met
A dozen images flitted through her head. His blue eyes staring intently into hers. His deep voice commanding her not to panic as she clung to the edge of the cliff. His calloused hands moving skillfully over her bare skin to warm her up.
“Kaitlyn…are you up to answering a few questions?”
The sound of her name on his lips sent another shiver up her spine. “You sound like a cop.”
He shrugged. “I’m just curious as to what you were doing out in the middle of nowhere alone in a rainstorm.”
“I can’t remember what happened after the storm hit,” Kaitlyn muttered. “I only have a vague recollection of the rescue. If you hadn’t come along when you did…”
“Actually, we were already out there searching for fugitives when we got the call that a woman was missing…”
Kaitlyn frowned. “But…you said you’re not a cop.”
“I’m not.” His gaze met hers. “I’m a bounty hunter.”
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
Summer’s winding down, but Harlequin Intrigue is as hot as ever with six spine-tingling reads for you this month!
* Our new BIG SKY BOUNTY HUNTERS promotion debuts with Amanda Stevens’s Going to Extremes. In the coming months, look for more titles from Jessica Andersen, Cassie Miles and Julie Miller.
* We have some great miniseries for you. Rita Herron is back with Mysterious Circumstances, the latest in her NIGHTHAWK ISLAND series. Mallory Kane’s Seeking Asylum is the third book in her ULTIMATE AGENTS series. And Sylvie Kurtz has another tale in THE SEEKERS series—Eye of a Hunter.
* No month would be complete without a chilling gothic romance. This month’s ECLIPSE title is Debra Webb’s Urban Sensation.
* Jan Hambright, a fabulous new author, makes her debut with Relentless. Sparks fly when a feisty repo agent repossesses a BMW with an ex-homicide detective in the trunk!
Don’t miss a single book this month and every month!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
GOING TO EXTREMES
AMANDA STEVENS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Stevens is the bestselling author of over thirty novels of romantic suspense. In addition to being a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist, she is also the recipient of awards in Career Achievement in Romantic/Mystery and Career Achievement in Romantic/Suspense from Romantic Times magazine. She currently resides in Texas. To find out more about past, present and future projects, please visit her Web site at www.amandastevens.com.
Books by Amanda Stevens
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
373—STRANGER IN PARADISE
388—A BABY’S CRY
397—A MAN OF SECRETS
430—THE SECOND MRS. MALONE
453—THE HERO’S SON *
458—THE BROTHER’S WIFE *
462—THE LONG-LOST HEIR *
489—SOMEBODY’S BABY
511—LOVER, STRANGER
549—THE LITTLEST WITNESS **
553—SECRET ADMIRER **
557—FORBIDDEN LOVER **
581—THE BODYGUARD’S ASSIGNMENT
607—NIGHTTIME GUARDIAN
622—THE INNOCENT †
626—THE TEMPTED †
630—THE FORGIVEN †
650—SECRET SANCTUARY
700—CONFESSIONS OF THE HEART
737—HIS MYSTERIOUS WAYS ††
759—SILENT STORM ††
777—SECRET PASSAGE ††
796—UNAUTHORIZED PASSION ?
825—INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE ?
844—MATTERS OF SEDUCTION ?
862—GOING TO EXTREMES
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Kaitlyn Wilson—An ambitious reporter who unwittingly stumbles upon the story of a lifetime.
Aidan Campbell—An adrenaline junkie with a savior complex.
Colonel Cameron Murphy—He intends to get Boone Fowler by using any means necessary.
Boone Fowler—An escaped convict who has a new boss…and a new agenda.
Dr. Phillip Becker—His bedside manner could use some work.
Eden McClain—Kaitlyn’s childhood friend has important connections and her own ambitions.
Allen Cudlow—A rival reporter with a chip on his shoulder.
Governor Peter Gilbert—A charming man with big plans for his political future.
Prince Nicholai Petrov—Rebuking his father on a world stage has turned him into a rock star.
Big Sky Bounty Hunters—Their search for the fugitives leads them back into the world of international intrigue.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
It was done.
He’d killed the woman and buried her body in a shallow grave in the Montana wilderness. The wolverines would be at her soon enough, and then the vultures. By the time her body was discovered by some errant backpacker or trapper, her face would be gone, and if luck held, her fingerprints.
A DNA analysis would be required for a positive identification, and that could take days…sometimes weeks in this part of the world. Even if the authorities were able to trace her to the Montana Militia for a Free America, it would be too late. She could not tell them anything now.
Jenny Peltier had paid the ultimate price for her betrayal, and as Boone Fowler followed the stream through the woods back to his encampment, he felt no elation or remorse at what he’d done. He didn’t particularly enjoy killing, although he was good at it.
In war, people died. It was as simple as that.
And they were at war. A war to take back the country from the corrupt bureaucrats who contaminated the American way of life as surely as the pathetic junkies who infested the American street.
They would all be dealt with in time, those soft, greedy ingrates who knew not the meaning of honor and sacrifice. They would have to learn the hard way.
The bombing of a government building by the MMFAFA had shocked the nation, but that would be only one of the many “shots” that would soon be heard around the world.
The day of deliverance had dawned over Montana, and the winds of liberty would sweep down in triumph across the prairie states and march, like Sherman’s army, through the South, conquering nearly sixty years of malaise, apathy and moral decay. The avenging angel of freedom would stand victorious on the squalid doorsteps of the eastern cities and level, in God-like fury, the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah to the West.
Fowler drew a deep, quivering breath. No matter how many times he delivered that sermon to the faithful, the message never failed to stir him. He had a gift and he knew how to use it. His mother used to say that when he spoke with such passion, he could make people follow him to the ends of the earth. He was counting on that.
Pausing, he knelt at the edge of the stream to wash the blade of the hunting knife he’d used to slit the woman’s throat, and then he scrubbed his hands, even though they were already clean. His soul was clean, too. Virtuous.
He was so caught up in the righteousness of his mission that he almost missed the telltale rustle of dead leaves upstream and to his right. The sound was slight, a mere
whisper in the wind, but it sent a chill up his spine just the same.
And then Fowler realized that he’d been vaguely uneasy for the last quarter of a mile or so. Even though his mind was preoccupied, his instincts had been warning him of danger.
He should have listened. Whoever was behind him had managed to get the jump on him, so that meant that the tracker was good. A professional. Someone who knew the Montana wilderness as well as Fowler.
He continued to rinse the knife as his senses came fully alert and his mind raced with possibilities. He had a semiautomatic tucked in his belt, but he’d have to wait for the right moment to draw it. A sudden move and the tracker might open fire on him.
From the corner of his eye, he scouted the terrain. When the sound came again, still to his right, Fowler pulled his gun and began firing in that direction as he simultaneously rolled to his left. Seeking cover behind a boulder, he unloaded his weapon without pause and then grabbed a fresh cartridge.
“Drop the weapon!”
Fowler froze. The voice hadn’t come from his right at all. Instead, the tracker was downstream and to his left. He’d circled his quarry and now he had Fowler trapped. The rustle of leaves had been a diversion. Pebbles tossed over his head perhaps. A trick as old as time itself, and Fowler had fallen for it.
It wasn’t like him to be so careless. While his guard had been down, the man who hunted him had moved in surprisingly close. So close Fowler could practically feel the bastard breathing down his neck.
“Drop the weapon or I’ll put a bullet through your brain.” The voice was deep, fearless, commanding. A man used to barking orders and having them obeyed.
To prove his point, he fired off a round, blasting to kingdom come a pinecone that had fallen not ten feet from where Fowler hunkered.
Fowler threw down his weapon.
The man came out of the woods then, a tall, powerfully built warrior with the darkest gaze Fowler had ever looked into. He’d killed before. It was there in his eyes. In the steadiness of his hand on his weapon. He’d kill again, too, if he had to. Without hesitation.
He was a military man. His bearing gave him away, and his tracking skills suggested someone with a Special Forces background.
“Who are you?” Fowler asked. “What do you want?”
“I want justice, you son of a bitch.” As he walked to ward Fowler, rage contorted the man’s features, and in the split second it took for him to get his emotions under control, Fowler whipped the pistol out of his ankle holster and fired.
The punch of the bullet knocked the man backward, and he fell with a hard thud to the ground.
A clean shot, right through the heart.
His muscles began to twitch, and Fowler walked over to put another bullet in his head to finish him off. Kicking the man’s weapon aside, he lifted his own gun and took aim.
“For the Cause!” he cried in triumph.
Montana State Penitentiary
Monday, 0400 hours
BOONE FOWLER CAME AWAKE slowly. For a moment, he thought he was back in the Montana wilderness, facing off against an old nemesis, but as his mind began to clear, he realized that it had been nothing more than a dream. A recurring nightmare of being hunted. The scenery and the enemy sometimes changed, but the outcome was always the same. It was he who stood victorious under a clear Montana sky—not the hunter.
In reality, it hadn’t gone down that way, and now Fowler found himself confined to a six-by-eight prison cell. As he swung his legs over the cot and sat, head in hands, everything came rushing back to him. His cap ture. The trial. The past five years of his life spent in a hellhole called the Fortress. A maximum-security prison from which no one had ever escaped.
And all because of a man named Cameron Murphy.
While Fowler had rotted in prison for the past half decade, Murphy had recruited what was left of a Special Forces team he’d once commanded and turned them into the most successful bounty-hunter organization in the country. Although Murphy was the only one Fowler had met face-to-face, he’d made a point of finding out the other men’s names. He knew their backgrounds, their specialties, what made them tick.
But it was Murphy alone that Fowler still saw in his nightmares at night. Murphy’s face he saw when he’d beat another inmate almost beyond recognition.
His hatred of Cameron Murphy had helped him survive nearly nine months of solitary confinement in the Dungeon, and his thirst for revenge had kept his rage in check when he’d been placed back into the general population of the prison.
He’d kept his nose clean all these years because he had a plan, and for that, he needed his friends, contacts with the outside world. He needed money for bribes and favors he could call in. He needed all the help he could muster in order to accomplish what had never been done before: escape from the Fortress.
And thanks to a generous benefactor with an ambitious agenda, the moment was finally at hand. Tonight, at lights out, he would instigate a riot, the likes of which the prison guards had never before seen. During the pandemonium, Fowler and his compatriots would be led off to the Dungeon, where they would lay low until the plan could be set in motion.
If all went well, they would soon be free men.
And Cameron Murphy would soon be a dead one.
God help anyone who got in the way.
“For the Cause!” Fowler whispered as adrenaline surged through his veins.
Chapter One
Tuesday, 1400 hours
“Ken, you’re breaking up! I can barely hear you!” Pressing the cell phone to her ear, Kaitlyn Wilson tried not to panic. Rain beat like a war drum on the roof of her SUV as she slowly made her way west on Route 9. She’d turned the windshield wipers on high speed, but she still couldn’t see a damn thing. “Are you still there?” she asked desperately.
“Major flooding…highway closed…”
Static crackled in Kaitlyn’s ear. “Should I turn back? Dammit!” The phone went dead and she swore again as she frantically tried to call her boss back. But it was no use. She’d lost the signal.
Okay, situation not good, she summarized as she tossed the cell phone onto the seat and clutched the steering wheel with both hands.
Since she’d set out for the prison less than an hour earlier, Route 9 had been transformed into a lake. Kaitlyn could no longer even see the pavement. It was only by instinct and sheer dumb luck that she hadn’t yet driven off the road.
She could feel the swirling water sucking at the tires as she slowed the vehicle to a crawl, trying to decide what to do. Keep going…or turn back?
Did she really have a choice?
With near-zero visibility, turning the vehicle around without sliding into a ditch would be no easy feat, and besides, she had no way of judging whether the road conditions behind her were any better.
She was in the notorious dead zone on Route 9 where cell-phone signals from the nearest tower were blocked by the mountains. And now static had overpowered the radio so that she couldn’t even pick up a weather forecast. She was, in effect, cut off from the rest of the world.
And the water continued to rise.
Why, oh why, hadn’t she listened to Ken when he’d cautioned her not to start off alone in the downpour?
“Are you crazy?” he’d shouted. “In case you haven’t been paying attention, the entire county is under a flash-flood warning.”
“I’ll be traveling on high ground for most of the way, and Route 9 never floods.” And by now Kaitlyn knew her way to the prison with her eyes closed. “If I leave now, I can get to the press conference before the heavy stuff hits.”
“Oh, you think? And just what would you call that? A drizzle?” Ken had cast a wary glance out his office window, where rain continued to fall steadily from a bleak, gray sky. It had been coming down nonstop all day.
Kaitlyn had breezily waved off his concern. “You worry too much. Besides, if I don’t get to the press conference, we’ll be scooped by the Independent Record, and you know you do
n’t want that,” she said, naming a rival paper.
Ken scowled. “I also don’t want the Highway Patrol having to fish you out of a ditch somewhere.”
At least he was gracious enough not to point out that it wouldn’t be the first time. “I know what I’m doing, Ken.”
His patience finally worn down, he sighed. “Okay, at least take someone with you. Let me get Cudlow on the horn—” He had reached for the phone, but Kaitlyn’s outraged screech stopped him.
“Cudlow?” She spoke the name with such utter disdain that Ken gave her a disapproving look. Kaitlyn didn’t care. There was no way she’d allow Allen Cudlow—the man who had almost single-handedly derailed her career at the paper five years ago—to accompany her to the warden’s press conference. No way in hell.
Her feud with Cudlow had started long before Ken Mellon had been brought in when the previous editor in chief had finally retired nine months ago. Kaitlyn had been ecstatic at the prospect of new blood at the Ponderosa Monitor because she and Cudlow, who was once the golden boy at the Monitor, were finally on equal footing.
“If you truly want to avert a tragedy, you’ll put down that phone,” she’d warned Ken.
He’d run his fingers through his thinning hair. “Okay, okay. I get it. You and Cudlow hate each other’s guts. I don’t know why and I don’t much care as long as it doesn’t interfere with your reporting. A little professional rivalry can be a good thing. Up to a point.” He gave her a warning glare over the top of his bifocals. “But don’t carry it too far.”
She shrugged. “Just keep him out of my way and everything’s cool.”
“And anyway,” Ken continued as if she’d never spoken, “I really can’t spare Cudlow this afternoon. If you insist on attending Warden Green’s press conference, I’ll have to send him to the state capital to cover Petrov’s arrival tonight.”
Kaitlyn’s mouth dropped. “You can’t do that! I’ve been working on the Petrov piece for weeks!”
“Both stories are breaking and you can’t be in two places at once.”