by Paula Graves
“Left!” Susannah threw the word over her shoulder, letting the cold morning breeze carry the word back to Hunter as she jogged left, into a dense thicket of mountain laurel bushes. He had to fight his way through, with no time for stealth or hiding their trail. He wasn’t sure there was any way to sneak out of these woods without the Bradburys following them.
But apparently Susannah had a different idea. Almost as soon as they’d reached the middle of the mountain laurel thicket, she stopped, tugging him to the ground with her. They crouched there, trying to slow their breathing and listen for any sign of their pursuers.
After a long spell of silence, Susannah reached for his hand, closing her fingers tightly around his. In the pale light of predawn, her eyes reflected the first faint rose hues of sunrise, dark with emotion. “I was so scared,” she whispered.
He cupped her cheek with one hand. “I know. I’m sorry I let them take you, but—”
“But you came after me.” She slid her hand over his, holding it in place. “I thought I saw your eyelids move, when you were lying there, but I wasn’t sure. I started to second-guess myself. I was so afraid you were really hurt, and I’d left you there to die—”
He touched his forehead to hers. “I’ve got a hard head.”
She fell silent for a few moments, just letting him hold her. Finally, however, she pulled her head away from his, drawing a deep breath. “They’re out there. I can’t hear them, but I can feel them.”
“I know.” He felt them, too, like a gathering storm.
“You said you have backup?”
“They’re on the way. I called them in as soon as I spotted the cabins.”
“How did you know where to look for me?”
“Honestly? I didn’t.” He’d never felt more helpless in his life than he’d felt as he crouched there on the edge of the clearing, wondering how on earth he was supposed to find Susannah and get her away from the Bradburys without getting both of them killed. “I was sneaking around the cabin, trying to see if I could find any sign that you were even there, when I almost stumbled over the root cellar doors hidden in the high grass. The door itself was faded and weathered, but the padlock holding it shut looked shiny and new. Got me to wondering.”
She flashed him a quick smile. “Smart man.”
God, he wanted to kiss her. It was the worst possible time for sentimentality, but he was so damn glad to see her still alive and well.
“I think we’re going to have to make a run for it. Before they have time to surround us,” he said.
“What if we’re already too late?”
He brushed her jaw with his fingertips. “It’s a chance we have to take. Ready?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide and scared. But her jaw jutted forward, her expression made of solid mountain granite. She gave a short nod. “Ready.”
He pushed to his feet, tugging her up with him.
And six rifles cocked in a stutter of metallic clicks, their long barrels surrounding Hunter and Susannah on all sides.
Chapter Seventeen
“Take her back to the cabin.” Asa Bradbury spoke in a low, bored tone that sent a hard, racking chill down Susannah’s spine. “I’ll take care of her friend.”
“No!” She took a rushing step toward Asa, but Hunter’s hand closed around her arm, pulling her back.
“Go with them,” he said quietly.
“No!” She wrapped her arms around him tightly, trying to surround him completely with her body. “If they’re going to kill us both, then they can damn well kill us together.”
“Very touching,” Asa drawled, as tonelessly as if he were remarking on the weather on a mild day.
She shot a look at him over her shoulder, hating him in a way she never had before. She’d been running and hiding from Asa and his kin for years, but she’d never hated him the way she’d hated Clinton. She’d always seen Asa as collateral damage, the Bradbury who’d gotten sucked into this blood vendetta against his will.
But looking at him now, seeing how little he cared about her life, one way or another, she finally understood what the philosopher Hannah Arendt had meant when she wrote of the banality of evil. Under any other circumstances, Asa Bradbury might have been an ordinary man, living an ordinary life, not hurting anyone and maybe contributing something meaningful to the world.
But he’d taken the path of least resistance and let his family’s corruption swallow him whole. He wasn’t driven by greed or hate or any emotion that might make sense of his determination to see her dead.
He was driven by inertia. And that’s what made him truly frightening.
Hunter’s arms tightened around her suddenly, pulling her closer. He pressed his lips to her temple and let them slide lightly down her cheek to her ear. “Duck,” he whispered, and pushed her down to the ground.
“Drop your weapons!” The voice, hard and commanding, boomed through the woods around them, amplified by a bullhorn.
Hunter rolled over on top of her, pressing her to the ground beneath his body as chaos erupted around them. She heard a cacophony of shouts and curses, punctuated by a couple of gunshots, close by. Hunter tucked her even more firmly beneath him, whispering reassurances in her ear that she felt more than heard.
Over the bullhorn, the deep voice rang again. “You’re surrounded. Put down your weapons and no one has to die today.”
The chaos subsided into a strange, uneasy silence. Then she heard the sound of grass swishing, bushes rustling, and within her limited range of vision, she saw Kenny Bradbury bend and drop his Winchester to the ground.
A minute later, the voice she’d heard over the bullhorn spoke again, without amplification and so close her nerves jerked. “Situation contained, Bragg. You injured?”
Hunter rolled away from her and pushed to his knees. He helped her into a kneeling position as well, not answering his colleague as he looked her over with an anxious gaze. “You okay? Anything hurt?”
She shook her head, finding speech beyond her capacity at the moment.
The man who’d spoken earlier crouched beside her, flashing her a brief smile that displayed a set of dimples nearly as disarming as Hunter’s. “We’re going to have a talk with these folks, okay?” He waved one of the other agents from The Gates over, a slim brunette woman dressed in the same woodland camouflage pattern worn by the rest of the agents who were gathering discarded rifles and herding the Bradburys toward their cabins.
“I’m Ava,” the brunette introduced herself. She glanced warily at Hunter, as if she expected him to protest. When he remained silent, she ventured a smile at Susannah. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Hunter might not have resisted, but Susannah did. “Hunter—”
“Ava will take care of you. I need to stay here, just for a bit.”
She lowered her voice. “What are y’all going to do?”
A feral light gleamed in Hunter’s green eyes. “We’re going to let the Bradburys know just how things are going to go from now on.”
“It’s my fight. Don’t trundle me off like I’m the girl.”
“You are the girl.” He touched her face, his lips curving. “My girl.”
“Don’t make me go all Gloria Steinem on you—”
“If she wants in on this, let her in.” The man still holding the bullhorn shrugged. “She’s right. It’s her fight, too.”
Hunter shot the other man a frown that might have alarmed a weaker man, but the man with the bullhorn didn’t even react.
Signaling his surrender with a deep sigh, Hunter threaded his fingers through hers and nodded toward the line of agents still pushing the Bradburys through the woods ahead of them. “Come on, let’s get this over with. I’d like to get back to the hotel in time to watch your buddy Marcus get what’s coming to him.”
* * *
“THIS IS HOW it’s going to go.” Hunter stood in front of the group of disarmed Bradbury kinsmen, scanning the room carefully for any sign of impending insurrection bef
ore he settled his gaze on the Bradbury in charge.
Asa Bradbury looked for all the world like a slightly shabby accountant, all lean angles and a nebbish sort of averageness. His brown eyes were sharp but mostly devoid of emotion as he held Hunter’s gaze without speaking. There wasn’t even a hint of the sullen anger he saw in the faces of Bradbury’s kinsmen, only a tepid sort of resignation.
“Susan McKenzie is dead. She no longer exists. Your blood vendetta is over as of now.” Hunter paced slowly in front of the subdued group of Bradburys who now sat facing him, but his gaze never left Asa’s face. “Any attempt to cause any problem whatsoever for the woman named Susannah Marsh will be met with any and all force necessary to make you and yours wish you’d never been born. She’s under the protection of The Gates now. You do not want to test our resolve.”
Asa Bradbury’s gaze didn’t waver. He said just one word. “Understood.”
Hunter finally released his gaze and looked at Susannah, who stood next to Ava Trent a couple of feet away. Susannah’s winter-sky eyes glittered with an emotion that did more to make his knees quiver than anything that had happened to this point.
His fellow agent Sutton Calhoun stepped forward, still holding the bullhorn dangling from one hand. “Your weapons have been emptied of ammunition and left in the root cellar where you were keeping Susannah Marsh. Please don’t do anything foolish that might necessitate our returning here in the future.” He nodded toward Hunter.
Hunter crossed to Susannah and took her hand. “Let’s go.”
Flanked by Sutton and Ava, they left the Bradbury cabin and started the long walk back to the staging area.
* * *
SUSANNAH HAD NEVER felt more tired in her life than she felt at the moment, slumped in the executive chair in front of her desk in the office she’d called her home away from home for the past two years. The small clock on her desk blotter read 7:00 a.m.
Marcus Lemonde should be walking through the door any minute.
“You don’t have to be here. I’m not really sure you should.” Perched on the edge of her desk, Hunter slanted a worried look in her direction.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she assured him.
Alexander Quinn was seated at Marcus’s desk, his posture relaxed. He was conversing quietly with the fourth person occupying the office, Ridge County Sheriff’s Department lieutenant Hale Borden, a tall, lean man in his early forties, with thinning flax-colored hair and sharp blue eyes. He was in civilian clothes, but there was no missing the bulge of his service pistol tucked in a holster at his hip, ill-concealed beneath his suit jacket.
Quinn had called in a favor from the Ridge County sheriff himself, using the county’s crime lab to rush the testing of the spice jars Hunter had handed over. “There were several ounces of belladonna leaves in the basil and the oregano that was slotted for the wine reduction the caterer was going to use for both the chicken and mushroom dishes,” Quinn had told them as soon as they drove up to the hotel. “Enough to make everyone extremely sick—or worse. They executed a search of his desk a few minutes ago and found what looks like more belladonna leaves. I think we’ve got him.”
There were four deputies, also dressed as civilians, waiting for Marcus Lemonde’s arrival. They would follow him to the office to make sure he didn’t give Lt. Borden any trouble.
Across the office, Borden’s cell phone hummed. He checked the display screen and nodded at Quinn. “Showtime.”
A couple of minutes later, the office door opened and Marcus Lemonde entered, his gaze lowered, focusing on the cell phone in his hand.
The look of dismayed shock on his face as he took in his four unexpected visitors was everything Susannah had hoped for.
“Marcus Lemonde, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder,” Lt. Borden informed him cheerfully.
Marcus turned to run but the four trailing deputies blocked his exit, pushing him back into the office.
Wild-eyed, Marcus looked back at Susannah, then noticed Hunter sitting on the edge of her desk. His eyes widened with surprise.
“Hi again,” Hunter said with a satisfied smile. “Remember me?”
* * *
“ARE THE CHARGES going to stick?” Susannah’s voice was thick with weariness.
She’d been silent for most of the drive to Quinn’s cabin, so her sleepy question came as a jolt to Hunter’s nervous system. He glanced at her, taking in her heavy-lidded gaze. “Quinn thinks so. The lab didn’t get any prints off the bottles, but the search of Marcus’s desk yielded more belladonna leaves. Since the police didn’t use our testimony of finding the leaves in the drawer to get the warrant to search the desk, it should stand up to legal scrutiny.”
“Do you think the BRI will target you for your part in the sting?”
“Spoken like a woman who’s spent the past twelve years running from a blood vendetta.”
Her lips curved slightly. “Well, if you need me to go all commando on the BRI for you, you know where to find me.”
“Will I?” he asked, almost afraid to hear her answer.
She turned her gaze toward him slowly. “You think I’m planning to go to ground again? Change my name, cut my hair, find a new place to live?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” She leaned her head back against the seat. “But I like it here in Ridge County. I missed the hills when I was gone, and I’m getting too old and too settled in my ways to keep running.”
“Are you worried about the Bradburys?”
She shook her head. “Asa’s heart was never really in it, you know. And I think you and your pals at The Gates made your point.”
Quinn’s cabin came into view, and Hunter fell silent the rest of the way, pondering how to bring up the next question he wanted to ask. Getting her to agree to stick around Ridge County had been easier than he’d anticipated, given her past. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d wanted a fresh start.
Hell, he might have offered to go with her.
She staggered a little as she started up the porch steps. Hunter caught her before she fell, closing his hands over her elbows as he walked her to the door. He still had Quinn’s key in his pocket—the Bradburys hadn’t bothered to take it from him when they patted him down. He unlocked the door and nudged her inside ahead of him.
She made it as far as the sofa before she slumped onto the plush cushions and gazed up at him, bleary-eyed. “I could sleep for a week.”
He settled next to her, nudging her shoulder with his own. “Before you drift off, Sleeping Beauty, there’s something I need to ask you.”
Rolling her head onto his shoulder, she looked up at him. “I hope it’s not an overly complex question.”
“It might be,” he admitted, nuzzling his nose against her forehead. “It’s about the future. Specifically, your future. And mine.”
She sat up and looked at him, her eyes sharpening. “Is this a question or a proposition?”
He couldn’t quell a grin. “Possibly both.”
Her lips curved slowly in response. “Well, the proposition part might need to be tabled until I get some sleep.”
“I think we have something between us. Something good.” He grimaced, feeling inarticulate. “I think maybe I’m in love with you.”
The curve of her lips deepened, and her soft gray eyes flashed a hint of fire. “Maybe?”
“Probably.”
“That’s marginally better.”
“Most likely?”
She bent toward him, brushing her smiling lips against his. “Getting warmer.”
Definitely, he thought as her kiss sparked a thousand little fires along his nervous system.
Her fingers playing at the back of his neck, she tugged him closer, her lips parting to deepen the kiss. Her tongue tangled with his before she slowly pulled away to gaze up at him with desire-drunk eyes.
“Lucky for you, I’m most likely falling in love with you, too.” She plucked l
ightly at the top button of his shirt, stopping tantalizingly short of pulling it out of the buttonhole. “And I will definitely prove it to you soon.”
“After you sleep for a week?” he murmured against her temple.
“See?” She smoothed her fingers over his chest, making his heart pound. “It’s like we can read each other’s minds.”
She settled in the curve of his arm, warm and sleepy and perfect. After a few minutes, her breathing slowed and deepened as she drifted to sleep.
Relaxing deeper into the sofa cushions, Hunter let himself watch her for a few moments before he eased from beneath her and stretched her out on the sofa, covering her with the fuzzy brown blanket draped over the arm. She made a soft grumbling noise but curled up under the blanket and went back to sleep.
Hunter walked quietly into the kitchen and pulled out the burner phone Quinn had given him back at the hotel before he and Susannah had left for the cabin. “I think there’s a call you need to make. Don’t you?” Quinn had asked.
Settling in one of the kitchen chairs, Hunter punched in the number and made himself push SEND. A couple of rings later, he heard the familiar timbre of his sister Janet’s voice. “Hello?”
“Hey, Jannie,” he said. “It’s me.”
“My God, Hunter! I’ve been so worried about you! Are you okay?”
Tears pricking his eyes, he smiled at the warm autumn sunlight drifting through the kitchen windows. “I’m fine,” he answered. “Just fine.”
“Where are you? What have you been doing?”
He couldn’t hold back a watery laugh. “That’s a long, interesting story, Jannie. You got a minute to hear it?”
“Are you kidding? Of course I do.”
In her voice, he heard a hint of worry and a lot of curiosity, but not a single ounce of censure, even though he had been out of touch for far too long and, as far as she knew, doing something she hated. Her love for him was unconditional, and most of the time he felt entirely unworthy of it.