Pride of a Hunter

by Sylvie Kurtz

  “Ah.” Hands tented over his lap, chin resting on his upraised fingers, Falconer rocked his chair back and forth. “I can send someone else.”

  “No, I’ve got this guy’s number.” Dom had seen the havoc the con man had wreaked. Cuffing him was personal by now.

  “What’s the problem then?”

  “Luci.” Dom would be a reminder of everything she’d left behind, of everything she’d lost. He’d watched her for the past few days. Her routine was her comfort—the mornings spent in her fields, the afternoons in her barn, the mad rush of late afternoons taken up by her son’s needs. The master sniper had turned herself into the picture of a suburban soccer mom. She wouldn’t appreciate him showing up on her front steps.

  But making peace and putting criminals behind bars where they could hurt only themselves had been his mission since his seventeen-year-old brother had been killed by a small-time con man. He couldn’t stop now just because his pride might get dinged. “She’s not going to like having anyone mess with her piece of paradise.”

  “She doesn’t have to know.”

  He’d thought of that, but once he put the plan through its paces, he figured trying to get one past Luci would bring more conflict than it would resolve. She might think she’d left her sniper days behind, but her warrior’s instincts were as sharp as ever. Twice, she’d nearly caught him following her as he’d tried to establish Jill’s habit pattern. “I need her help to get close to Swanson so he doesn’t feel threatened.”

  “You can’t have it both ways.”

  Dom pushed away the plate. “I know.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “I need cover. He’s bound to check me out and it looks like he can do it, too, since he’s got Jill’s numbers all lined up. Leave the football history there for common ground. Swanson’s sporting a Super Bowl ring. Not his, mind you, just part of his cover. A salesman, maybe. That wouldn’t be a threat to him, especially if I’m not so good at it.”

  Falconer’s grin slid sideways. “That’s going to be hard to do. You could sell manure to a pig farmer.”

  “Aw, shucks, Falconer, I’m just a redneck from down Brazos County way. I couldn’t sell a plug nickel to a leaking dam.”

  Falconer chuckled. “I’ll have Kingsley fix you up.”

  “I’ll need data support.”

  “You’ve got it.” Falconer gathered up his files. “Anything else?”

  How about a face Luci wouldn’t hate on sight? “I’ve got everything covered.”

  Everything but his dumb heart, and he couldn’t let Luci know she still had it in her back pocket. Not if he wanted her help.

  “BRENDAN!” Luci Taylor bowled through the creaking back door of her Victorian fixer-upper, walked out of her garden clogs and into the kitchen without breaking stride. The room was a chaos of half-finished jobs, but she didn’t have time to worry about the cupboard doors waiting refinishing in the barn or the last wall of wallpaper waiting to be stripped. “We’re going to be late for soccer practice.”

  “I can’t find my shoes.” The small voice came from somewhere in the front. She suspected the living room where her six-year-old son had surely parked his butt before the forbidden television. Her five minutes of picking basil leaves had turned into an hour of weeding, and he’d taken advantage of her distractibility.

  Luci stuck her hands under running water and washed off the rich garden dirt with a homemade cake of rosemary soap. “They’ll be much easier to find once you turn off the TV.”

  “Aww, Mo-om.”

  “Come on. We have to pick up Jeff.” Jill’s carnival committee meeting was running late—as usual. On the positive side, if Jill hadn’t called requesting a ride for her seven-year-old son, Brendan might have missed practice altogether. Again. Luci still had summer’s unstructured time on her mind and, one week into school, she hadn’t quite gotten into the fall routine yet. She had to learn to wear a watch and not let time get away from her. Other moms managed to keep a regular schedule. She should be able to also.

  “Do we hafta? He’s such a baby.”

  Like a six-year-old was all grown-up. Luci transferred the cell phone from her sweatshirt pocket to her purse, then collected the storage bag of oranges she’d quartered earlier from the fridge. “He’s your cousin and you’re to be nice to him.”

  “He’s a dork.”

  “A dork who fixes your computer games.” That Jeff wasn’t athletic wasn’t his fault. His talents had a more intellectual bent—something she’d wished for her own son. To her utter devastation, Brendan had inherited his father’s craving for risk. She’d spent enough time at the local emergency room to be on a first-name basis with both first-shift and second-shift personnel.

  Luci strode into the living room, flicked off the television and urged her son off his nest of plush pillows and toward the kitchen. Maggie, the brown-and-blond mutt seemingly put together from spare parts, jumped off the couch with a guilty look and slunk into the kitchen, wagging her tail warily. Luci didn’t have time to care about dog hair, so ignoring the transgression seemed best for her sanity at the moment. “Come on, Brendan. Your shoes are by the door where they belong.”

  “Can we stop at the playground on the way home?”

  “Not today.” Luci ruffled her son’s shock of dark hair.

  “How come?”

  “We don’t have time. I have a batch of pesto to get ready for the country club restaurant by tomorrow morning.” Not to mention the herb logs or the herb vinaigrette. And that didn’t take into consideration the gardens that needed cleaning up or the goats that needed feeding and milking on a regular basis. She loved all of it, really she did. She just needed a few more hours every day to make it all work out.

  “Aww, Mo-om.”

  “Aww, Bren-dan.” She grabbed her purse and the bag of orange sections. The dog danced all around her, wound up by the buzz of energy Brendan and their lateness created. Surveying her son, she noted the shin pads loosely cuffed around his lower legs and mouth guard dangling from a finger. “Do you have water?”

  Brendan lifted his Nalgene bottle from the deacon’s bench by the door. “And my ball.” He scooped the black-and-white ball out from under the bench with his sock-clad foot.

  “Let’s go.” She slipped on a pair of felt clogs, grabbed the cleats, opened the back door and shooed out the dog.

  Just as Brendan maneuvered the ball out the back door, the strangled sound of the bell on the front door rang. Not now. She snagged her van keys from the horseshoe-shaped holder by the door. “Get in the van and wait for me. Don’t touch anything. And we’re not taking Maggie, so don’t let her in.”

  As Luci pounded to the door, she juggled everything in her arms to free a hand. She opened the door, ready to put her ill-timed visitor off. Whatever word had meant to cross her lips remained locked in her voice box.

  “Hi, Luce. Can I come in?”

  The sight of Dominic Skyralov, big as life and broad as a bull, knocked her back two steps and seven years. His blond hair had darkened to caramel. But otherwise, nothing much had changed about the smooth-talking cowboy. His blue eyes still matched the well-washed denim of his skin-hugging jeans, still could read right through her, still made her want to confess her deepest sins. He’d been her best friend for four years. Then everything had changed. Now the sight of him called back her darkest memories and the nauseating disorientation that came with them.

  “No.” She hung on to the brass doorknob as if it could save her from the flood of pain that rushed through her. “You can’t come in.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head, trying desperately to break apart the image of blood, of horror, of Cole dead on the floor, of red staining the dirty boards of that bleak North Texas shack. “I’m on my way out.”

  Dom nodded. A good-old-boy gesture that was as part of him as his inbred politeness. “I’ll come back, then. When would be good for you?”

  Ne
ver. Her ears rang. Her vision narrowed and blackened. Oh, God, no. Him coming back would make this even worse. She’d have all the time in between to relive her worst nightmare over and over again. Cole falling, bleeding, dying. Closing her eyes, she swallowed hard. “Say whatever you have to say and leave. I’m in a hurry.”

  “It’s a nice place you’ve got here.”

  “No, Dom, don’t.” Her voice strained between clenched teeth. “I know how you work. Put your subject at ease, then slip in the punch. Just get to the point, okay?” She couldn’t take his smooth negotiator’s voice, that slow Texas drawl, chipping away at her calm until he found her soft spot and bored in for the kill.

  “There’s a con man in town. He marries divorcées and bleeds them dry. I need you to help me gather evidence and provide me with some cover.”

  Why don’t you just take a knife and twist it in my guts? “You are not bringing trouble here. Do you hear? You are not bringing trouble to this family. You are not bringing trouble to this community.”

  “He’s engaged to your sister.”

  The soft punch of his words knocked her breathless. “Now I know you’re lying. My sister isn’t seeing anyone.”

  Then Luci remembered Jill’s bubblier-than-usual voice this morning as she’d issued a dinner invitation for Saturday and added she had a surprise. Luci had assumed Jill had scraped up another blind date to force on her. Jilly, what have you done? “I’m leaving now. And when I get back, I don’t want to see you or your truck in my driveway. Is that understood?”

  Another nod. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t leaving. His big body became an iceberg she feared wouldn’t melt away until he’d done what he’d set out to accomplish. “Thing is, Luce, whether you want it or not, trouble’s here and it’s not me. The last woman this con man married died. You don’t want that for Jill. As much as you two rub each other raw, you love her.”

  He shrugged as if he weren’t ripping the world she’d worked so hard to create to shreds, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. But he did. Dom had always cared too much. That’s why she couldn’t bear the sight of him. “You want to see trouble go away, Luce. You want your neat little life to go on. Then you need my help.”

  Shaking her head, she snorted. That was just like him, turning this whole thing on her, making it her fault, her failure. She didn’t need this. She was already serving her time in hell. She was doing her penance. She deserved her small corner of peace and security. And even if she didn’t, Brendan did.

  “I’ll take care of Jill myself. Goodbye.” Heart pounding, tears clawing up her throat, she slammed the door in Dom’s face and ran out the back door to the minivan where her son waited unaware that a monster worse than any video game’s had just invaded their bright little world.

  Chapter Two

  The horror Dom had resurrected by his presence clung to Luci’s skin like a disease and had her even more distracted than usual. At every stop sign, at every red light, her mind conjured up images that flowed and mutated in nightmarelike exaggeration from Cole’s dead body, lying in that forsaken shack in Texas seven years ago, to the possibility of Jill’s body, lying in a pool of blood in her own home. How could Dom do this to her? He knew her secret, had to know it still ate at her and always would, no matter how far she’d run from it.

  Her family was all she had. She couldn’t let anything happen to them. And the last thing she needed was Dom there in Marston reminding her of her guilt.

  By the time Luci reached the recreation fields on Depot Road, the lot was filled and she had to squeeze her minivan in a slot that was too small. To make things even more stressful, practice turned out to be a game and Howie Dunlap, the coach, wasn’t too happy that Brendan, his star player, was late. Luci refrained from pointing out he was lucky they’d showed up in the right place.

  Entreating Jeff to come out of the van and put on his cleats took another ten minutes of trying patience. The boy wasn’t an athlete and knew it. He played soccer only to please his mother and spend time with Brendan, whom he adored. And although Brendan often complained about his cousin’s klutziness, he always included him in whatever game they played and bopped anyone who tried to make fun of him. Not Luci’s favorite manner of conflict resolution, but explaining why this method was the last resort fell short of logical to Brendan when it solved his problem so neatly.

  The moms were already gathered along the sideline, the brisk breeze barely moving their styled locks. They sat in a row, roosting and clucking, on their folding red canvas chairs like brooding hens. Only Luci’s blue chair stood out. She didn’t see the point of buying a new color chair every time Brendan graduated teams.

  “Late again, Luci.” Sally Kennison, in her perfectly pleated trousers and polished loafers, looked down her long nose as Luci struggled to free the chair from its carrying case. “You really ought to treat yourself to a watch.”

  “Goats don’t run by a clock.” Luci had to let pop out the one wrong thing to remind the country club set that she was an outsider who worked a lowly farm for a living. Hard to believe she’d once had iron control over every cell of her body. But August always shook her up and shredded her focus. Getting back in sync took more time every year.

  Sally’s perfectly manicured nails waived down the sideline. “Yes, well, you obviously aren’t late because you took the time to clean up. Sit downwind, please.” A few of the other moms sniggered and the gossip turned back to who was doing what to whom. Luci tuned them out and focused on the kids.

  On the field, two teams of six- and seven-year-olds mobbed the ball and somehow moved it up and down the field. Pacing each of the sidelines, the two coaches barked suggestions that were mostly ignored as the kids concentrated on kicking the black-and-white ball toward the goal.

  At halftime, Luci distributed the orange slices and the kids turned them into orange-peel smiles.

  That’s when Jill showed up, hurrying in high-heel-induced ministeps toward the field. As Luci watched her baby sister, Dom’s voice came back to haunt her.

  There’s a con man in town. He marries divorcées and bleeds them dry.

  The last woman this con man married died.

  He’s engaged to your sister.

  Jill couldn’t take another heartache. Not after the way John Jeffery Courville the Second had left her for an older woman. She was just now rebounding from the messy divorce.

  Jill had the pert and sassy disposition of someone who would appear young even when she was gray and wrinkled. Her hazel eyes tilted up and crinkled at the corners as if she were always smiling—even when she cried. Her blond-highlighted brown hair was cut in a bob she styled up or down, depending on her mood. Today, she’d had the carnival committee meeting, so she’d gone for the messy bun look—half intellectual, but still showing she could have fun. Her beige linen pants were too light, her strappy heels too high for soccer field sidelines, yet somehow, Jill pulled off the look and fit in more with the Marston mommy-crowd than Luci did with her jeans and sweatshirt.

  One of life’s little jokes.

  Jill fit in without trying; Luci never could, no matter how hard she tried. She should just stop caring, but somehow she couldn’t.

  She’d robbed Brendan of his father. She’d do everything she could so Brendan could have as normal a childhood as possible. She’d come back to Marston because her sister and her parents lived there. She’d grown up there. She felt safe there, even living on the periphery. And she wanted this safe, secure, small-town life with roots and family and community for Brendan. She wanted to raise her son out of the shadow of violence that tainted her past and had stolen part of his future.

  “Who’s winning?” Jill asked, plopping down her red chair, which opened for her as easily as an umbrella.

  “It’s a tie. One each.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  “How was the carnival committee meeting?”

  Jill cringed and shook her head. “Who would have thought that putting on a one-day fun
d-raising event at an elementary school would take such sharp negotiating skills? If we pull this off by next weekend, we’ll be lucky.”

  Luci hooked an ankle over a knee, going for the relaxed look. “Hey, so I hear you have a new boyfriend.”

  Jill snapped up straight. “Who told you that?”

  Shrugging, Luci pretended rapt attention at the game. “Sally Kennison.” A small lie, but one Jill would believe. Everyone knew that Sally Kennison somehow funneled every scrap of gossip in town and dispersed it as freely as dandelion seeds.

  “How could she possibly know?” Jill asked, narrowing her gaze at the woman in question, who was too busy gossiping to notice the deadly look spearing her.

  “So, are you?” Luci asked, keeping an eye on Brendan’s forward rush and her peripheral vision on Jill. Luci might have lost proficiency with a weapon, but other skills remained.

  Jill stuck out her bottom lip. “Well, there goes my surprise.”

  “I thought your surprise was another blind date for me.”

  Jill snorted in an unladylike manner. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Luci.”

  “Tell me about it.” Lately her world had seemed to spin totally out of control. And Dom’s arrival, with his warnings of doom and gloom, certainly did nothing to slow down the crazy tilting. “So, who is he?”

  Jill’s face transformed into pure sunshine. “Oh, he’s the most wonderful guy.”

  “Where’d you meet him?”

  Jill giggled, making her look twelve. “It was such a coincidence. I met him at the club.” Meaning the Marston Country Club on Flint Bridge Road, where all the who’s who went to be seen. The only time anyone saw Luci there was when she delivered her organic vegetables, herbs and sauces—at the rear entrance, of course. “He was meeting a client for lunch and we literally ran into each other.”

  A five-alarm warning jangled in Luci’s head. Oh, Jilly, how could you fall for the oldest trick in the book? “How long ago was that?”