by Paula Graves
Though she wasn’t a hundred percent confident that he was telling her the truth about where his loyalties lay, he clearly wanted her to believe he was one of the good guys. So for now, she’d play into that conceit, she decided. What she needed most at the moment was more information, and she’d get it more easily with cooperation than conflict. “What you did for me blew your cover, didn’t it?”
He released a long, gusty breath. “I’m not sure.”
“They were pretty close when they started shooting.”
“They consider me a loser. It’s why they didn’t let me in on all their plans.” He turned to look at her. “You almost didn’t recognize me out there yourself, did you? And you were a hell of a lot closer.”
She hadn’t, she realized. Not at first. Of course, she didn’t exactly know him well. “I take it you like for them to think you’re not much of a threat.”
“It served my purposes,” he agreed. “If there’s one way they’re akin to a real military unit, it’s that the people in charge like to make sure there are plenty of warm bodies out there as cannon fodder while they plot world domination from the rear.”
Yup, she thought, former military. And not a big fan of authority himself. She filed that thought away and turned her gaze toward the glow of the space heater. Her feet felt as if they’d swollen to twice their normal size, and she didn’t look forward to putting her weight on them anytime soon, but the lure of heat proved too powerful. Nibbling her lip to keep from whimpering, she hobbled over to the fireplace and outstretched her hands toward the heater.
Hunter stepped out of her view, and it took all her willpower not to turn and watch where he went. But the whole point of this cooperative captive thing was to convince him it was safe to let down his guard.
She heard the scrape of wood against wood, and then Hunter’s big, warm hand flattened against her spine, sending shock waves rippling through her flesh. Clenching her jaw to control her body’s helpless reaction, she turned and found him eyeing her, his expression wary. He gestured with his free hand toward the ladder-back kitchen chair he’d retrieved for her. “Sit down. Let me take a better look at your feet.”
She sat as he asked, curling her fingers around the edge of the chair seat when he picked up one foot and propped it on his knee.
“May I?” He met her narrowed gaze before nodding toward her foot.
She nodded briskly, and he untied her shoelaces, easing the sneaker from her foot. Her feet had definitely swelled a bit, if the painfully tight fit of the shoe was anything to go by. The socks he’d provided were stained in places, sticking to her foot here and there where blood had dried. But she barely felt any pain, her nerve endings focused entirely on the light rasp of his work-roughened fingers against her bare skin.
He winced a little as he tugged the fabric away from a particularly large scrape. “Sorry.”
She took the chance to tug her feet away. “I can take it from here.”
He left the front room, disappearing somewhere into the darkened back of the cabin and returning a short time later with a wet washcloth. He handed it over, and she gasped a little at the coldness of the water.
“Sorry. It takes a bit for the water heater to kick in, and I didn’t want to make you wait. Warm it a minute in front of the heater if it’s too cold.”
She didn’t wait, welcoming the sharp bite of the cold cloth on her skin as a necessary distraction from her body’s troubling response to his touch. The last thing she needed to do was get sucked into some stupid Stockholm-syndrome crush on the man who was, for all intents and purposes, her captor.
No matter how sexy he looked when he watched her with those smoldering green eyes.
He passed her a tube of antibiotic ointment when she’d finished washing the scrapes and cuts on her feet. “Want me to make sure you got all the dirt out of those wounds?”
She shook her head quickly and took the ointment. “I’m good.” She slathered the ointment over the abrasions, rebandaged her feet and took the clean pair of socks he offered. “Thanks.”
He settled back on his haunches, looking up at her through narrowed eyes the color of the Atlantic in winter, somewhere between green and gray. “I know you’re scared,” he said in a low, gravelly tone that scattered goose bumps along her arms. “I won’t let anyone find you here. I promise.”
Pretend you trust him. Get him to drop his guard.
She forced a smile. “Thank you.”
He gazed at her for a long, unnerving moment before his lips curved at the corners and those incongruous dimples appeared in his lean, hard face. “I’ll go get the heater in the bedroom cranked up so you’ll be nice and toasty. Sit here a while longer and thaw out.”
She watched him until he disappeared through the door that led somewhere in the back of the small cabin. Releasing a gusty breath, she looked into the glowing wires of the heater and willed her trembling limbs to stillness. She wanted to believe him, she realized with alarm. She wanted the warmth and kindness she’d heard in his voice to be real.
But it couldn’t be. Even if he was telling her the truth, he had his own agenda and it had nothing to do with her. She’d be a fool to trust her life to him or anyone else.
If she’d learned anything in the last twelve years, it was that the only person she could depend on was herself.
* * *
SHE WAS GOING to run again. Hunter didn’t think it would be tonight, not after her close call in the woods. She might even bide her time here for a day or two, let her battered feet mend a bit more. Learn a little about the lay of the land, take time to formulate an actual plan, rather than act on impulse.
But she was going to make a break for it, sooner or later.
She wasn’t the pampered princess he’d thought she was. That much was certain.
But what, exactly, was she? Why was she hiding those gorgeous hazel-tipped gray eyes behind contacts? Why had he spotted in her dusky hair hints of blond roots gleaming like gold in the firelight?
And those scars he’d spotted, barely visible on her smooth, shapely legs, weren’t razor nicks. They were evidence of a hard-knock childhood spent doing things like climbing trees and skinning her knees and shins on rocks and roots.
So, a tomboy. And a mountain girl, too. Her accent was almost neutral, her vocabulary sophisticated, but he’d caught a hint here and there of her Appalachian roots.
And if he retained any capacity for reading people, the woman was hiding something. Something big. Important.
Life-threatening?
He wished he could get in touch with Quinn, but until he received some sort of all-clear signal, he had to assume that his available lines of communication were compromised. Ever since Quinn had involved himself in the currently dormant investigation of the Blue Ridge Infantry, the former spook had become downright paranoid about infiltration.
A few weeks on the ground with the BRI had convinced Hunter that his boss was probably giving the ragtag band of soldier wannabes and washed-out former grunts a lot more credit for cohesion and strategic planning than they deserved.
But maybe Quinn knew something Hunter didn’t. Hunter had been in the Army long enough to realize that sometimes in a war, the soldiers on the ground could see only part of a larger strategy playing out across a wide and varied battlefield.
Maybe Billy Dawson and his crew weren’t the tip of the BRI spear.
Maybe they were the distraction.
The hiss of the space heater near the bed wasn’t loud enough to mask the sounds of movement coming from the front room. For a second, his gut tightened as he feared he’d miscalculated the strength of her desire to get away from him, and he was halfway out of the room before he recognized what he was hearing.
She was turning on the lamps in the front room. He could hear the soft clicks of the power knobs turning. Even from here, he could see the glow of the lamp bulbs as they flicked on, one after another.
He supposed she’d had about all the darkness this
evening she could stand.
He had, too, he thought, reaching for the bedroom light switch and flicking on the light.
He looked the room over with a critical eye. He hadn’t had time to do more than neaten the place up before he’d had to head back to the hotel in hopes of getting her out of harm’s way before Billy’s men struck.
He heard footsteps approaching down the hallway, and he steeled himself for her appearance as he turned toward the doorway.
She stopped in the portal, looking past him briefly to take in the particulars of the room before turning her sharp eyes to him. She’d removed the other brown contact lens, he saw, receiving the full impact of those cool gray-hazel eyes.
He blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Fresh sheets.”
Her lips curved slightly. “Good to know.”
Well, now he felt like an idiot.
“Where’s the bathroom?”
“The door you passed to get here.”
“Thanks.”
“I guess I’ll go, then.”
She gave a little nod and watched him all the way in as he closed the distance between them, edging around her in the tight space between the bed and the door. Her body radiated heat and the lingering green-apple scent that had haunted him all afternoon, ever since he’d shared the elevator with her earlier.
Everything about this whole damn mission had gone belly-up, he thought as he rode a wave of frustration and testosterone into the cabin’s small front room. And he had no idea how to fix it.
But he’d better figure it out, and soon. Because this cabin might be well-hidden and reasonably well-fortified, but if the authorities weren’t already searching these woods for the pretty young event planner who’d just gone missing, they’d be crawling these hills by morning.
And they were the lesser of the two evils who’d be looking for them.
Settling on the sofa, he reached into his battered rucksack and pulled a slim leather wallet from a pocket hidden deep inside the pack. Flipping it open, he gazed at the photo tucked inside the first clear plastic sleeve. It had been taken almost a decade ago, just before his first tour of duty. His sister, Janet, and her husband, Dale, had driven to Georgia to see him off, and Dale had snapped a picture of Hunter and his older sister, all three of them aware it might be the last day they’d ever spend together.
They’d been right. But it hadn’t been Hunter who’d left the others behind. It had been his brother-in-law, who’d passed away from a burst aneurysm a year into Hunter’s two-year tour of duty, leaving Janet alone to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.
Hunter could have left the Army when his enlistment ended, but he hadn’t. By then, Janet had seemed to be recovering from her loss, working a new job in the county prosecutor’s office.
And Hunter had liked the Army, liked the camaraderie and the discipline, things he and his sister had lacked growing up with a good-hearted but soft-willed mother who’d been little more than a child herself. Hunter had never known his father, and even Janet had only fuzzy memories of the man who’d left when she was just four years old. And their mother had died in a car accident shortly after his sixteenth birthday.
For a long time, it had been just the two of them. She’d been part sister, part mother to him for most of his life, but when she’d needed him most, he’d let her down.
He had to figure out some way to make things up to her. He’d hoped his work with The Gates was going to be an answer, but he’d already blown his first assignment. What were the odds Alexander Quinn would ask him back for a second?
Footsteps on the hardwood floor behind him gave him a brief warning. He closed the wallet and turned to look at Susannah Marsh standing in the doorway.
“Is there anything to eat around here?” she asked.
He pushed to his feet. “Of course. Yes.”
He had to pass her to get to the kitchen situated at the very back of the cabin. It was one of the cabin’s roomier areas, large enough to accommodate a table near the back door and an old gas stove and oven. The refrigerator was small but still kept things cold and the freezer unit kept things frozen. He wasn’t sure how much longer all the original appliances would stay useful, but for now, they served the purpose.
“Want something hot?”
“Soup would be fine,” she said with a smile he didn’t quite buy.
He’d stocked the pantry a while back, long before he’d known he’d be working for The Gates. He’d figured on using the cabin as a place to get away sometimes, to hide from a world that had become alien to him in so many ways. The cabin had belonged to Janet, who’d inherited it from their mother when she died. Janet had handed over the keys to Hunter when he returned home after his injury.
He supposed she’d known that he’d need a place to hunker down sometimes. To lick his wounds in private.
He doubted she’d ever thought he’d be using it to practically keep a woman prisoner.
“I wish I could let you contact your family,” he said.
“Let me?” She shot him a look that stung.
“Bad choice of words,” he conceded. “I wish it was safe.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nobody to contact, anyway.”
He frowned. “Nobody will notice you’ve gone missing? I don’t believe that.”
“No family to contact,” she said with a shrug, looking through the freestanding pantry. “People at work will notice, of course. Especially this close to the upcoming conference....” Her voice trailed off, and her gaze rose toward the ceiling. “Do you hear that?”
Hunter listened. At first, he heard only the sound of wind whistling around the cabin’s eaves, and the faint whisper of rain drizzle. But slowly, the deep, rhythmic whump-whump sound of spinning rotors filtered through the ambient noise.
“Helicopter,” he said quietly, his gut tightening.
“Looking for me?”
“I don’t know.” He reached over and turned off the kitchen light, then headed through the house and extinguished the rest.
“They’ll find this place eventually.” Susannah’s voice was so close behind him he could feel her breath on his neck. “Won’t they?”
“Probably,” he admitted.
But he couldn’t let it happen tonight.
Chapter Six
The only light in the cabin came from the glowing red wires of the space heater, but it was enough to reveal the tense set of Hunter’s jaw and the dangerous glitter of his eyes as he peered between the drawn curtains over the front window. The helicopter had passed nearly a half hour earlier, but he was still on high alert, his ramrod posture and spare, deliberate movements convincing her all over again that he had spent at least some of his life in uniform.
“They’re gone,” she murmured.
His gaze cut toward her. “They could come back.”
“Meanwhile, we starve to death in the dark?”
For a second, she thought he was going to bark at her like a drill sergeant and tell her to shut up and fall in line. But then he visibly relaxed, a hint of a smile conjuring up one of those rare dimples she was starting to covet. “No. I think we can manage dinner without exposing our position.”
“It’s not going to be an MRE or anything, is it?” she asked. She’d tried one of those military dried-food packets once, the so-called “Meals Ready to Eat.” She hadn’t exactly been impressed.
He slanted a curious look her way. “Why would you ask that?”
“Well, clearly you’re former military.”
That statement earned her a double dose of dimples. “What makes you think that?”
She ticked off the clues. “You’ve approached this whole thing with the planning of a field general. You carry a military-issue rucksack. And use it to carry a field kit of necessary supplies. You know your way around triage first aid. And you have the posture of a bloody soldier.”
“I was a bloody soldier,” he admitted. “A lifetime ago.”
“How long a lifetime?”
/>
He sighed as he nudged her toward the back of the house. “A little over a year.”
The elusive half memory that had flitted through her mind earlier made another brief appearance before dancing beyond her reach once more. “That long, huh?”
He stopped in the middle of the kitchen and turned to look at her. “Like I said, a lifetime.”
Sore spot, she thought, her gaze dropping to the leg he favored. Encased in jeans, there was nothing obviously wrong with the limb, except the limp he couldn’t hide, not even here in the cabin, where the floor was level and there were no obstacles to navigate except for the occasional chair or table.
She’d never been the kind of woman who could resist poking at a sore spot. “War injury?” She nodded toward his bad leg.
The glare he shot her way would have scared a lesser woman. But Susannah had stared down her share of monsters over the span of her twenty-eight years. She didn’t even flinch.
He looked away and crossed to the pantry. “Yeah.”
She crowded him a little, earning another dark glare. “I should know you, shouldn’t I?”
“What makes you think that?” He pulled a can of chicken and dumplings from the pantry and made a show of looking at the expiration date printed on the can in the faint orange glow of the kitchen heater.
“Well, for one thing, I keep thinking I’ve heard your name somewhere. Hunter’s not that common a first name.”
“You don’t know it is my first name.” He held the can in front of her. “Dinner?”
She nodded impatiently. “Whatever. Hunter is your first name. And you’re a former soldier. And there’s something—”
“Don’t blow a gasket in there.” He tapped her head lightly with his forefinger. “There are a couple of bowls in the cabinet over the sink, and a saucepan in the next cabinet to the right. Grab them while I get the stove going.”
She fetched the stoneware bowls and a battered but clean two-quart saucepan while he lit one of the gas burners. Blue flames hissed to life, adding soft light to the warm kitchen. “Where’s the can opener?” she asked, scanning the bare counter.