The Hunter

by Gennita Low

  They both eyed each other for an instant before Brad inclined his head. “I hear you’re after Dilaver. That’s one thing we have in common.”

  “Not the only thing,” Hawk said, keeping his voice bland. He didn’t like the way Brad smiled at Amber. “I’ve heard that you can’t seem to put him behind bars.”

  He enjoyed the sight of Brad stiffening his shoulders. Hit a hot button there, hadn’t he?

  Amber moved in between them. “Sit down, both of you, and please, my place is too small for all this testosterone. Can both of you stop baiting each other while I get us something to drink? We’ll talk like adults, and then we’ll eat.”

  Hawk sat down again. Either something was very odd, or Brad and Amber had one of those very open relationships. Talk like adults and eat….

  Amber came back with three glasses. “Open the bottle of wine, Brad, and pour us some.” She flipped open her cell phone. “I think Lily’s not going to show. I see a message from her.”

  Lily was coming to dinner, too? So this wasn’t a twosome thing? Hawk relaxed a little. She listened intently to the phone as she and Brad exchanged glances, her expression unreadable. Brad turned and filled the glasses, giving one to Hawk.

  “Thanks.” He really didn’t want to talk like an adult and eat. Maybe he hadn’t gotten the violence out of his system for the day because he was feeling like beating someone up again. Hawk scowled. That brought his mind back to how he had come here and what he had been doing with Amber. Brad sat down at the table, too, seemingly unperturbed that Amber’s hair appeared a little damp, like Hawk’s. Maybe the man wasn’t as perfect as he looked; he was probably nearsighted.

  “Lily has an emergency,” Amber said after she had sat down between them, “but she says she’ll try to make it. If not, she gave me some details to pass along.”

  “Do you believe her?” Brad asked. There was something in the tone of his voice that made Hawk study him closely.

  “You know how important this project is to her, Brad. She wouldn’t not show up when the interview can help the girls.” When Brad didn’t say anything, Amber turned to Hawk. “This isn’t as complicated as it looks, although your being here does add one complicated factor. Brad and I are seen as an item by some people. Since I deal with information, it’ll be reported to certain ears if he goes home without dinner, or doesn’t stay his usual length of time, or if you were to go down and have dinner with us in our private booth.”

  “Okay.” Seen as an item. Her choice of words was peculiar. Hawk drank down his wine. “But Dilaver knows I’m here.”

  Brad’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you report your whereabouts to him?”

  “He dislikes you,” Hawk said, and looked at both of them, “so anything to do with you interests him.”

  “So he must have told you Amber and I are more than friends. Did he set you up to come between us? Are you reporting back to him?”

  Hawk stared back at the other man, challenging him silently.

  “Brad…” Amber cut in. She put her glass down. “Why don’t I do the talking for now, hmm? This is…awkward.” She turned to Hawk. “Brad and I are just friends, but it helps me to let Dilaver and various other gangs think I’m dating the chief of CIVPOL.”

  “I see.” He didn’t have time to wonder about the odd sense of release washing through him at the revelation. For some reason Amber wanted to include him in this secret and he was hoping to find out more. “Then you’re sort of a couple so Mr. Sun can protect your outfit and you can give him information. Very good front.”

  “He’s got some brains,” Brad remarked wryly. He looked at Hawk again and added, “Don’t think I won’t check up on you when I get back to my office.”

  It was a small warning that he hadn’t earned Brad’s trust yet. Fair enough. He didn’t care, either. As long as Amber wasn’t really going out with the man, who cared what Bradford Sun thought of him? “Dig away.” Hawk shrugged. “Why don’t you spend some time going after Dilaver instead?”

  “Brad raids Dilaver’s kafenas whenever he has reliable information from me,” Amber said, “but Dilaver, as you know, is very hard to catch.”

  What, the man couldn’t speak for himself? “All you have to do is raid his compounds with a bunch of peacekeepers and shoot a lot of bullets,” Hawk said very politely.

  “We’re under NATO and international laws, Mr. McMillan,” Brad said equally politely. “And, if I may also point out, Dragan Dilaver appears to be under the protection of the United States government.”

  “Certain sectors of the U.S. government,” Hawk swiftly corrected. Not his. He had never pretended to understand all the political games played back home, but since going under training with GEM and the COS organizations, he had a better picture of how many covert operations crisscrossed each other. Dilaver was a useful asset for now and that was why he was alive. He didn’t agree with the reasoning behind it, but he was under orders and he would do his best to make sure everything went as planned.

  “Nevertheless, he does have his connections,” Brad said. “I arrest his minions, but that’s nothing. Even if I managed to lock him up, he’d be freed too soon.”

  “You don’t have a lot of confidence in the justice system around here.”

  “Hawk, you know very well there isn’t much of one around Macedonia and the former Yugoslavian states,” Amber said quietly. “There are a hundred kafenas here alone, run by a dozen or so pimps who are under the crime organizations. Human and drug trafficking are businesses around here, and the United Nations turns a blind eye to some of it because they are busy rebuilding nations.” She made imaginary quotation marks to the last two words, then added, “Many UN officials have been eliminated by assassins since the war. The last chief of CIVPOL had a bomb scare before Brad was appointed.”

  “You don’t have to make him feel sorry for me, Amber,” Brad said wryly. “I think he doesn’t care, as long as I’m not sleeping with you. Right, McMillan?”

  “Right,” Hawk agreed.

  Amber’s fair skin betrayed her discomfort. He supposed she had to tell Brad about why he was upstairs, and the chief probably wasn’t too stupid to put two and two together. He had heard about the assassinations in between his own deployments overseas, of course. He supposed being a CIVPOL official would make Brad a big target. Dilaver had expressed his dislike for the new chief, saying that he had been targeting his holdings. If nothing else, Hawk respected Bradford Sun for causing the kingpin some grief.

  “You two are determined to have a pissing contest over nothing,” Amber said quietly.

  “Nothing?” Hawk asked, raising an eyebrow. Her blue eyes flashed at him in answer.

  “I have to make sure he’s worth all the trouble he’s going to cause you,” Brad said, looking from one to the other. “Besides, if Lily were here, I wouldn’t feel as if I were intruding.”

  Lily…Hawk remembered the tall, dark-haired woman he had met. So Brad was interested in another woman. Good. One problem eliminated. He could concentrate on more reasonable things now.

  “I can talk like an adult and eat,” Hawk said softly to Amber.

  “Oh, goodie,” she said sarcastically. “I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake.”

  Where was Lily? Amber wished her friend hadn’t left her in this predicament. Brad was playing protector and Hawk was…well, she didn’t know what Hawk was doing. She wasn’t even sure why she felt she had to explain the situation to him. She didn’t owe him anything.

  But she didn’t want Hawk to think that she was the kind of woman who would play around. Somehow, it was important that he respect her. It suddenly struck her as odd that she wanted him to meet Brad and Lily, her two close friends, and get along with them. It was so totally out of character for her to do this, and Brad knew because he was looking at her like she had grown another head.

  She couldn’t explain it to herself, so how could she do a good job of it for Brad? She did the next best thing—let Brad and Hawk meet. So far
, Brad had been predictably careful, almost like a big brother giving subtle warnings. Hawk—she had to hide a smile—didn’t seem afraid or care about making any impression. In fact, he was acting like he had the right to be in her kitchen, eating dinner here. He looked too comfortable sitting there, wearing her T-shirt, one that looked big on her but fit him snugly, stretching over those broad shoulders that she knew were corded with muscles, fitting around that hard body that had been on top of her own not too long ago. Damn, why did she have to think of that now? The man looked too good in that shirt. And she wanted it off.

  The glint in Hawk’s eye told her he knew what she was thinking about. He had accepted the story about her and Brad’s façade as a couple without making any personal comments, and throughout dinner he sat listening quietly as she gave a brief outline about what she and Lily were doing. She didn’t give the full version, just enough details so that he understood where she stood as far as Dilaver was concerned.

  “That’s why I’ll help you locate the item you want,” she said. “Anything that will eventually bring an end to Dilaver’s control of this region is good.”

  “Is that a yes as my guide, then?”

  Amber nodded. “That’s also why I need Brad and Lily to know what’s going on. I’m the facilitator to both operations and when I’m gone with you, someone will have to take over certain details. We’ll have to make up some story about my being missing at the same time that you are. This is where Brad comes in.”

  Hawk looked at Brad. “How?”

  “I’m slated to go on vacation in about ten days,” Brad told him, “and I’ll take Amber with me. At least, that will be what Dilaver will think. If you take off a week after that, Dilaver won’t suspect Amber’s in on this.”

  “A little over two weeks,” Hawk said, thinking quickly. “That should be enough time to get all the coordinates of his dropoff points and map out his gunrunning routes.”

  “I’d like you to give me details of the latter,” Brad said. “If your people can’t stop him, I’ll get him for illegal arms-dealing.”

  “How about illegal human-trafficking? From what Amber’s saying, I’m assuming you’re helping her because you can’t get him through your laws. Can’t be easy, what with all those peacekeepers being Dilaver’s customers and all.”

  This time, there wasn’t any sarcasm in the tone of Hawk’s voice. Amber couldn’t help but admire how quickly he read between the lines and saw the situation for what it was. But she had to defend Brad, who didn’t seem inclined to explain that his hands were tied. “He arranged the interview so an outside party can report the extracurricular activities of some of the peacekeepers, Hawk,” she said.

  “It’s a good strategy,” Hawk said, finishing the last of the roast from his plate. “I think it would be even better if you could arrange for an interview inside the kafena. Say, the interviewer poses as a client. He’d get firsthand experience.”

  “That’s risky to the girls and the interviewer,” Brad said.

  Hawk shrugged. “There’s always risk in our chosen line of work. If that guy wants a truly hot story, he’d want to go undercover and take some on-the-scene photos. Technology is so remarkable now, one can use any number of ways to get a photo and put it online.” He drank down more wine and his smile wasn’t very pleasant. “I’ll take great delight in taking some risk and getting the interviewer inside as my friend. That way he’ll have a before-and-after kind of story and perhaps there will be more international outrage to help your cause. I hate that…asshole.”

  Amber sat back, a little stunned at how quickly Hawk had taken over. He was volunteering to put his life in danger to help those girls inside the kafenas. The other night, when he had persuaded her not to shoot at those men, she’d thought that he didn’t want to make waves and disrupt his covert operation, but now she was no longer sure.

  Brad’s gaze was thoughtful. “So why don’t you get rid of him yourself?”

  “Why don’t you?” Hawk challenged back.

  “Ah…orders from above,” Brad said with a nod. “Looks like we’re in the same predicament. Something else we have in common.”

  “Unlike you, I don’t have a whole department under me whom I can send out and cause some havoc,” Hawk pointed out, then muttered, “Not right now, anyway.”

  “Meaning?”

  Hawk paused, then shrugged again. “I have my connections. Dilaver will be taken care of eventually. Right now it’s essential for me to get the coordinates. If he’s terminated now, I can’t do that, so, in CIA parlance, he’s still an asset. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do a little damage my own way.” He glanced at Amber. “I want to be part of this. Some of those girls are in really bad shape. I couldn’t see how I could get them out of there before without compromising my cover.”

  It wasn’t an exact revelation to Amber that Hawk had seen what went on in those places and hadn’t lifted a finger to help the victims, but seeing that look in his eyes, it suddenly dawned on her how much he had been fighting the urge, and the toll it must have taken on his spirit. She had seen the same look in Lily’s eyes, had watched her friend’s seething anger at her own inability to stop the crimes at their roots. Yet she and her friend had really only been standing at the edge, doing what they could. Hawk was in the center of it all.

  “All right,” she said quietly, “if Brad and Lily have no objections, and if those newspeople want the inside story, we’ll do it.”

  There was a short pause. Where the hell was Lily? Amber wanted to shake her friend, wondering whether there really was an emergency after all. This was so unlike her, especially when it had to do with the girls.

  “So we have the next three weeks’ agenda,” Hawk said. “I’ll zero in on the coordinates. Sun will set up the interviews. You and Lily will work out the times for both of them. I’ll bring the men into the kafenas at the proper time when Dilaver isn’t watching too closely. Meanwhile, I also suggest that we set up a love triangle of sorts so that it appears that you’ll have reason to spirit Amber away from Velesta. It’ll give me a chance to get a bit upset about it and appear to take off. That should give Amber and me a head start without Dilaver suspecting.”

  The man did love ordering people around, didn’t he? Amber looked at Brad to see how he was taking Hawk jumping in with all the suggestions. Not that she could tell. He had his poker face on, which meant he was thinking.

  She turned back to Hawk. He was looking around expectantly. “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Dessert,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

  Brad opened her back door and she stepped outside onto her deck before he joined her. He closed the door behind him. She had left Hawk on the couch, placing the remote to her television in his hand. He hadn’t said a word, turning the set on.

  “Are you sure he isn’t going to come out here just to make sure I don’t lay a finger on you?” Brad’s voice was amused. Their plan was to walk down to the parking lot together, like a couple on an evening stroll.

  Amber breathed in the evening air, enjoying its fresh crispness. “He’s got a remote, hasn’t he? I thought that’s supposed to turn a man into a happy control freak.”

  Brad laughed. “I’d never have thought you would get yourself a control freak for a love interest, Amber. You’re so damn organized yourself. How are you going to take someone else taking charge, especially during this sojourn into the wilds?”

  She frowned. “Love interest? Is that what he is?” she said it more to herself than to Brad.

  They walked down the wooden steps. “My dear, I have never seen you as flustered as you were when you came downstairs into your study, trying to explain the whole situation. I can see why you’re attracted to him, though. Good-looking, smarter than hell, and with great taste, I might add.” He turned and touched her arm, then added quietly, “He isn’t from the Agency, you know. I can tell.”

  Anyone working for Jed wasn’t exactly Agency, but she didn’t see any need to tell
Brad that. It was better to introduce Jed’s world to as few people as possible. “How?” she asked, curious as to how Brad came to that conclusion.

  “The way he took over and strategized. It’s very military, assigning different tasks to everyone. He’s used to ordering teams. He didn’t slouch once while he was sitting at the table, even when he was devouring you and your food with his eyes and mouth.” Brad laughed softly. “I’ll bet you a hundred Euros he’s watching from the window to see what you and I are up to.”

  Amber stopped herself from looking up to check whether Brad was right. “You’re silly. We’ve just met. I don’t know him that well.” She didn’t elaborate that they had met under very intimate circumstances and that she had flirted with the man through phone and on the computer. “He’s very unusual, that’s all.”

  “You know him well enough to trust him. You have been with him a lot more than you’re telling, Amber.”

  She knew that not much escaped Brad’s notice, especially when it came to details about people he interacted with. That was what made him an excellent bureaucrat; he studied the behavior of those around him to gauge things going on under the radar.

  “We’ve done a lot of unusual things that couples don’t normally do,” she admitted with a smile. He had been practically naked the first time they’d met. She had rendered him unconscious with a drug. His revenge. The romp around the city when she had spent hours chasing him up and down old walls and dark alleys. Their midnight chats. It seemed crazy, but she did feel closer to Hawk than to any man she had known. “But this is Velesta. It isn’t like anything around here is usual.”

  “I’m going to do some background-checking anyway,” Brad said. “He’s more than meets the eyes.”

  “But so am I, Brad.”

  “Yes. I must admit I felt a little envious tonight.”

  Amber stopped in midstride, curling a hand into the crook of his arm. “I’m sorry about you and Lily. But you both need to talk this out. I can’t seem to reach her.”

  “I can’t, either. What we both need is to make love the way you guys did upstairs today. Seemed to add a lot of private electricity in the air. From where I was sitting, I was afraid of getting zapped by all those sexy looks.”