Eye of a Hunter

by Sylvie Kurtz

  “Okay. I hear you. No Seekers.” A faraway siren warbled through the night. “Now get back in the car before the state troopers get here and we have to answer questions.”

  There was enough doubt rolling around in his head about Harper that he could give her a temporary reprieve until he checked out the situation. He weighed his options and came up with an intermediate plan. “We’re going to Boston.”

  He offered her his hand once more. This time she took it. He used up half a lifetime of restraint to control his urge to wrap her in his arms and blister her ears with how much she’d scared him. But he couldn’t let her see how much she’d shaken him. Never let them see you sweat.

  “What’s in Boston?” she asked as she stepped shakily back into the car.

  “Relative anonymity.”

  ABBIE STUDIED GRAY’S EVERY move. She watched for surreptitious advances to his pocket, where he could slyly signal someone from his team. When he noticed her preoccupation with his hands, he tossed her his cell phone and continued driving. She held on to the slim phone with both hands, as if it were a symbol of his trust. Would he do as he said? Would he take her somewhere else? Or was this a long, circuitous road to Seekers? She wasn’t sure how far she could trust him, and the uncertainty plagued her with an odd mixture of guilt and regret.

  The first thing Gray did when they got to Boston was arrange for a parking stall for his Corvette. He paid for a month in advance to ensure its safety and mooned over his goodbyes to the pile of steel as if he were abandoning a child. What was it with guys and their cars? Next they took the T to the Aquarium stop and hoofed it to the King’s Arms Hotel on Rowes Wharf five minutes away. At the marble and brass-trimmed registration desk he asked for Joanna Kingsley.

  “Who’s Joanna Kingsley?”

  “Noah Kingsley’s sister. He’s a fellow Seeker.”

  The architects and decorators had worked hard to imbue the lobby with the rich feel of an old castle. The reds and golds and greens of carpets and tapestries and the soft lighting were supposed to lend gilded warmth. But her gaze focused on the facing made of unyielding square stone blocks and the steel bars over decorative crenelles. “I don’t think this is a good idea. She’ll tell him where we are.”

  “Not if I ask her not to.”

  “But—”

  “I trust her and I trust Noah.”

  “I can’t afford to trust anyone.”

  He leaned against the desk, giving the impression he was a patron with time on his hands. She imagined that beneath his mirrored glasses he assessed everyone in the lobby. “It’s temporary, Abbie. We have to stay somewhere tonight. We have to make a plan. We can’t go running willy-nilly.”

  “That way we’re unpredictable.”

  “And a moving target. Right now we can’t use a credit card. We don’t have much money. We—”

  “Okay, I get it. We need a plan.” A hitch of hesitation had her flipping open and closing the cover to Gray’s cell phone. “What if she’s not here?”

  Gray flashed her a heart-stopping smile. “Noah jokes that his sister is too married to her job to find a human companion. What a pity. If Kingsley’s a golden retriever, then Joanna’s an Afghan hound—sleek, sexy and sophisticated.”

  “I heard that,” an amused voice said.

  Gray turned and beamed his charm at the tall woman who materialized behind the desk. Her long hair was the color of pulled taffy—the highlights no doubt salon bought. Her hazel eyes gave the impression of both no-nonsense sharpness and an eccentric sense of humor. Leaning across the desk, she pecked a kiss on Gray’s cheek. “But since it’s coming from you, I’ll take it as a compliment.”

  “I meant it as a compliment. How are you, Jo?”

  Her smile lit all the way to her eyes. “Married to my job and too busy for a human companion.”

  Gray leaned in to Joanna as if she were the center of the world, and Abbie tried to brush away the unwarranted barb of jealousy. How well did Gray know this Joanna?

  “What a shame,” Gray said. “Still riding?”

  “Every chance I get. I recently bought a new Hanoverian from Germany. Coal-black. Strong, athletic and energetic.”

  Much like his mistress, Abbie surmised.

  “You’ll have to let me know next time you enter one of those musical horse-dance things.”

  “Dressage freestyle? Two weeks from Saturday.”

  “It’s a date. How’s Meredith doing?”

  “My darling sister is still driving herself crazy trying to prove she’s the perfect Realtor, perfect wife and perfect mother.”

  “And your folks?”

  “Hiking through the wine regions of France.”

  “I hope I have as much energy as they do when I get to that age.”

  Joanna’s laughter was as rich as her hotel. “I certainly hope not or there’ll be no safe place on this earth. What can I do for you? Somehow I get the feeling you didn’t come all this way at this hour just to chat with me.”

  His lips brushed much too close to Joanna’s ear. “We need a room and some silence.”

  Joanna’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean I get to know something that Noah doesn’t?”

  “Something that Noah can’t find out.”

  “Ooh,” she crooned, as if having something on her brother was a mouthwatering treat. Her long fingers flew over the keyboard of the reservation computer. “We’re pretty full up, but I can stash you in one of the smaller suites. It has one king bed and a separate sitting area with a pullout.”

  “That’s perfect, Joanna.”

  His smile practically made Abbie gag. Pouring it on a little too thick, aren’t you?

  “My treat, of course. I’ve entered you as Mr. and Mrs. Franklin.” Joanna’s smile glowed with delight. “Not quite as suspicious as Smith.”

  “I owe you.”

  “Big-time.” Joanna emerged from the back of the registration desk and crooked a finger at them. They followed her dignified couture-enclosed derriere to the elevators. She escorted them to the ninth-floor room, trying to pump Gray for information. He poured on the charm and gave her enough to think she knew more than she did but not enough to give Abbie’s plight away.

  Was he manipulating her, too? Was this another ruse? Get the runaway witness all nice and comfortable in a luxury hotel, then—wham—she’d wake up in protective custody in some underground secure room at Seekers, Inc.

  She should make plans, too. When he was sleeping, she could slip out and disappear in the city. She could wander the subway and bed down in a homeless shelter. Seven more days. She could do it.

  After a few more syrupy exchanges, Joanna gave Gray her personal number, told him to call if he needed anything and said goodbye. At the end of the hallway the elevator carrying her away binged. Gray turned around to face the inside of the room but didn’t come in.

  He stood in the doorway, a hand wrapped around each side of the frame as if he were holding himself back. The expression on his face was blank—as if talking to Joanna had used up his quota of charm for the day. His jaw sported a flinty set she hadn’t noticed before, making her wish he’d take off his glasses so she could see some sort of softness in him.

  “Are you going to stand there all night?” She gestured to the vast suite. “There’s enough room for both of us.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched.

  He couldn’t come in. The realization jolted through her, and she dropped onto the foot of the bed.

  If he did, he couldn’t go back. She was asking him to divide his loyalty. Seekers or her. He’d remained loyal to the mother who’d abused him. He’d remained loyal to the sister who’d denied him. And now by refusing to go to Seekers, Inc. with him, she was asking him to give her the one thing that wasn’t an obligation but a passion of soul.

  “Go home, Gray. You don’t belong here.”

  He flinched. Of course, that was the wrong thing to say. He thought she meant here in this fancy hotel room. She’d meant in the magnet of
death she seemed to attract. No matter how good he’d made himself look on the outside, the little boy in him still wore thrift-shop clothes and lived in the tired house on Peanut Row. None of that had mattered to her, but he’d never quite believed her—especially after she’d refused to go away with him thirteen years ago.

  “You know I can’t,” he said. “I promised to bring you back and keep you safe. If you won’t go to Seekers, someone has to watch out for you.”

  And Grayson Reed always kept his word.

  She didn’t want to see him hurt. She didn’t want to need his help or his protection. But she did. Having one hunter on her trail was hard enough to deal with. Two equally determined ones would be too much.

  Which left her no choice at all. She had to be sure of something, of someone, or she wouldn’t get through this with her sanity intact.

  She stared at Gray, at his ramrod-straight body, at his unflinching determination. At his unseen hesitation. Did he feel loyalty to her because he still had feelings for her? Did it matter?

  A stab of sorrow bit into her breastbone. Absently she rubbed at the deep ache.

  The trial started in seven days. Seven more days to hide. Seven more days to stay alive. Please, for once, if someone has to die, let it be me. “Come on in, Gray. Close the door.”

  He let go of the door frame. His hands hung at his sides for a long moment, then he stepped inside the room.

  She wanted to cry.

  Chapter Six

  Gray would have to call in, of course, but he wanted a firm plan of action first—a way to let Falconer know that he was still performing his duty to Seekers, Inc., still a team player. The important thing was to keep Abbie alive to testify. In the larger scheme of things, the where and how of that wasn’t as important. Falconer would understand.

  Say that often enough and maybe you’ll believe it.

  He hadn’t lied to Abbie when he’d said he’d found what he needed at Seekers. What was important to him was important to them, too. They shared the common goal of recapturing fugitives and putting them back behind bars where they belonged. Bending rules and cutting corners came with the territory. Something the Navy and the Service didn’t always understand.

  Seekers, Inc. had a ninety percent capture rate when the industry average hovered around fifty percent.

  They were doing something right.

  To buy himself some time, he ordered soup and sandwiches from room service. Abbie wasn’t going to like the next part of plan B any more than he liked the idea of leading her through it.

  While they waited for the food, Abbie puttered around the room, gazing at the original oils of knights and their ladies bolted to the walls, trailing a hand over the polished mahogany arm of the gold-upholstered sofa and opening the doors of the solid-wood armoire hiding the big-screen television set.

  Out of habit he snagged two empty glasses from the quartet on the silver tray on the coffee table, placed them on the windowsill and closed the curtains, shutting out the view of the harbor. Not that anyone would scale the smooth outside wall to get to set off his cheap alarm.

  After room service left, he threw the security bolt and posted the trash can by the front door. No connecting doors, so he didn’t have to worry about intrusion from the adjoining rooms. He turned to the inside of the room again. Maybe not such a good idea. The world now contained only him and Abbie. The fact she was sitting on the king-size bed, with its pile of gold and red pillows, wasn’t helping any. He could tell himself all day long that Abbie was just a friend, but his body wanted her in a way that had nothing to do with friendship.

  As if sensing the treacherous turn of his thoughts, Abbie got up and wheeled the room-service cart to the sitting area. She lifted the silver domes off the plates and placed them on the desk. “Where do we start?”

  “With Vanderveer.” Gray took a seat at the opposite end of the oblong table.

  She munched on a long, skinny French fry that couldn’t possibly have come from a real potato. “How is that going to help us with a plan to hide for the next week?”

  Might as well plunge right in. “We need to know who’s running after you.”

  “Easy. Rafe.”

  Potatoes—fried, baked or mashed—were to Abbie what chocolate was to most women. He pushed his toward her. “He’s not working alone, though. He’s behind bars. Someone has to be doing his dirty work on the outside.”

  “How do we find that out?”

  “Tell me about him.”

  She stared at him long and hard with her big honey eyes. Her trust didn’t extend more than arm’s length. She was still pissed at him for trying to bring her to Seekers. She feared betrayal. Used to be a smile would chase the shadows from her eyes and set their gold on fire. Now the look in them told him not even the most sophisticated of lie-detector tests would make anything he said sound like truth.

  “I need to understand what Vanderveer’s capable of,” Gray said. “What Vanderveer’s comfortable with.”

  She picked up another fry. “You want the whole sordid mess.”

  “Something like that.” Gray concentrated on his sandwich. How could the chef have managed to turn something as simple as two slices of bread, roast beef, provolone and spicy mustard into something that needed a road map to figure out?

  She swirled her fry in a blob of mayonnaise for a long time. “I don’t know him that well.”

  The creep of red along her neck, her reluctance to look directly at him and her jerky movements denied her words. “You were never any good at lying.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Tell me what you know. It’s the details that can make or break a case.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Relationships never are.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  Was that regret in her voice? Was she thinking back to when she’d walked away from him? He hadn’t expected her to remain single or pine away for the one true love that got away. Not when she’d made it clear he wasn’t the one for her. But he thought about her. Often. Too often. “I’m not here to judge, Abbie, only to understand.”

  She pressed her lips tightly together, and the crackle and pop of tension flickering in her eyes shot through him like a thousand honed knives. He didn’t like feeling so damned twisted around her. Come here, Abbie, let me hold you. Everything’s going to be all right. I promise. But of course he couldn’t—hold her or make that promise—so he forced another bite of sandwich into his mouth.

  Finally she blew out a breath and shook her head. “Rafe wants…I don’t know. It’s more than money. It’s more than success. It’s…” Frowning, she picked at the leaf of lettuce sticking out from the crust of her whole-wheat bread.

  “It’s what?”

  “I don’t know, okay. Stop bullying me.”

  Bullying? Where was she getting that? He was asking questions. Simple ones at that. They were nowhere near the hard part yet. “How did you meet him?”

  Their stares met across the table. She needed someone to yank her out of the whirlwind her life had become, and he was only dragging her in deeper.

  Her fingers squashed the soft bread of her sandwich nearly flat. “I didn’t meet Rafe until after his father, George, died. He was at the funeral. His father wasn’t even in the ground yet when Rafe informed my father that he was taking over where George had left off.”

  “Why didn’t your father just tell him it was a no-go?”

  “Money.”

  The root of all evil, if the catechism nuns were right. “So what happened next?”

  “Rafe wanted a more hands-on approach. He wanted changes that would bring on short-term gain but would hurt the company in the long run. The cuts would affect the people who trusted Dad. Dad saw the potential damage and argued against the changes. But in the end there wasn’t much he could do. Dad needed Rafe’s money. Rafe knew my father’s loyalty to his employees was his weakness and he worked it for all it was worth. The government contract was g
oing to put Holbrook Mills on the map again and give Dad a chance to buy out Rafe.” She made a face and pushed away the sandwich. “Then everything fell apart.”

  “How?”

  She shook her head, sending the gold feather earrings at her lobes swinging in alarm. Tears were brimming, and her mouth opened as if breathing had suddenly become an arduous task.

  When in-your-face didn’t work, there was always the back door. “Bryn mentioned that your father died to protect you. What did she mean by that?”

  “Not long after Rafe took over George’s office, he decided he wanted me.”

  That piece of garbage had made advances toward her? His blood pressure spiked into the unhealthy range. “How?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “You know.”

  Gray was going to strangle the scumbag the first chance he got. He ripped into the roast beef as if it were prey. “Sexual?”

  She sighed and dunked an infuser of chamomile tea into the silver teapot. “He was charming at first. He made me smile, you know. But…”

  “Go on.”

  “I’d just ended a relationship and didn’t want to start a new one, not when my photography was finally taking off.”

  “He couldn’t take no.” Gray shoved aside the thought of Abbie in someone else’s arms, someone else’s bed, someone else’s heart. She wasn’t his. She’d never been his.

  She dropped her gaze. “When I kept turning him down, he tried to intimidate me into marriage. He could make my father hurt, he said, turn him into dirt in his employees’ eyes, drag his good name and reputation through the mud. He could make sure no client ever visited my studio. That…” She shrugged and her voice trailed.

  “I get the picture.” Gray sensed what was coming but couldn’t help himself. He had to ask. “What did you do?”

  “I agreed to an engagement.”

  Gray swallowed a vicious string of curses. Of course. Abbie hated conflict, hated causing waves, hated disappointing anybody. Especially her parents. How could she have offered herself to that piece of pond scum?