Deadly Hunter

by Rachel Lee

  In a moment of brutal self-honesty, it struck him that he might be the cork in the lines of communication here. He’d told her little enough about himself, all of it superficial. That couldn’t possibly encourage her to share anything really personal about herself.

  But that cork had been part of his nature so long, he wondered if he could get rid of it. With so much of what he did classified, it was sometimes hard for him to remember that not all of it was off-limits. Easier not to talk at all.

  Yeah, that would inspire someone to share confidences.

  When she didn’t seem to need any help, he poured them both cups of coffee and carried them to the table. She joined him a few minutes later. The laminated map with his markings still lay between them.

  Back to business, he thought, and that was directly where she headed, rebuilding a barrier. It was a barrier, he realized, that he might have to find a way to dismantle himself. If he really wanted to. If it would be good for her. Hell if he knew.

  “I wish I knew when we’d get the results on last week’s samples,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “I mean, if the toxin is dissipating, and we don’t find any of it in the woods on the mountainside, then this incident will probably be closed. We’ll have to conclude that something must have gone wrong.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, someone could have buried the toxin, and weathering could have exposed it. Although I’d expect a much bigger mess than a dead raccoon and two cows. Or some coyote could have bitten a collar and the raccoon ate the meat.”

  “Wouldn’t you know who around here is using these collars?”

  “Not necessarily, although I guess the sheriff is asking around.”

  “Okay.” He waited as she looked down again.

  “This isn’t working,” she said finally.

  “What isn’t?”

  “I’m going in pointless circles, covering the same ground repeatedly. We either find signs of the toxin spreading or we don’t. We finish looking tomorrow. There’s just so far one person can look.”

  “Why do you think you’re going in circles?”

  “Because I am. I keep jawing about the same things over and over, as if it’s going to release some wholly new ideas.”

  “It did today. You thought that someone might still be using the poison.”

  “But I’m not sure where that gets us, honestly. And you’d already thought of that, anyway.”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “You should have said so.” She rested her chin in her hand and sighed. “I want to solve this. I want to be able to tell the ranchers their herds are safe. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do that. We may be testing water for a while, and keeping an eye out for a long time. We’ll probably never really know what happened. When some of these animals get poisoned, they can travel awfully long distances before they die. I heard of a case of a wolf a few years ago where she traveled maybe a hundred miles. How do you trace that back?”

  “Hard to do.”

  “I’m looking for a needle in a haystack,” she admitted. “I was all hot to trot because this is important, but beyond making sure how far that toxin is spread, I can’t do a damn thing.”

  “That’s important, though,” he reassured her. “Very important. You’ve got a rancher who has a whole big section of his ranch off-limits. He’s probably going to need to know if it’s safe come spring.”

  “He will. But still.” She drummed her fingers briefly, her chin still resting in her other hand. “I guess this stuff just appalls me beyond belief. I don’t get why we manufacture such deadly things and then go ‘Oops, we made a mistake.’ And even after that, we bring it back in what we think is a safer form. There are toxins every bit as bad that have been created since, all in the name of getting rid of vermin. Too bad if we poison everything else in our rush toward bigger crop yields.”

  “People have to eat,” he reminded her. “It may be easy to forget that, especially in this country, but I’ve seen rampant starvation. I’m not saying we don’t need to find better ways, but I can sure understand how we get into this trouble.”

  “I suppose.” She sat quietly for a little while, then jumped up. She went to stir her sauce again, but he sensed agitation in her. What was going on?

  All of a sudden she asked, “Do you believe that some people are just lousy lovers?”

  In an instant he felt his mouth grow dry and his palms grow damp. Shock hit him. The last time he had felt this way was when he had discovered he had walked right into a minefield without realizing it.

  That question sounded like a minefield of major proportions. And he sensed a single-word answer wasn’t going to suffice. She was worried about that? Why?

  He hesitated, choosing each word with care as if he were disarming a bomb. “That depends,” he said finally, then hated himself almost immediately. A waffle answer. He never would have tolerated it from one of his men, so why should he use it for escape? “I mean, I suppose someone could be a bad lover if they didn’t care enough to try to be a good one.”

  Her back remained to him, but it suddenly looked so vulnerable. He closed his eyes and thought carefully. “A lazy lover could be a bad lover. One who isn’t willing to put any effort into it. And that could very much be a two-way street.”

  “How so?” Now she faced him, but her eyes were tight. This mattered greatly to her, but he sure wished he knew how.

  Picking his way through the minefield, he spoke slowly. “Well, say you have a guy who just wants to get himself off. He tells the woman what he wants. She does it. But what if he doesn’t give her what she wants? What if he never asks her, or never listens if she says? What if she’s inexperienced and just doesn’t know? She’d lose interest pretty fast, I would think, and probably wind up writing grocery lists in her head while he satisfied himself. He might be content with that, or he might notice her lack of interest and blame her. I don’t really know. I’ve never had a lousy lover.”

  Some of the tightness eased from around her eyes. “Never?”

  “Not once. Like I said, it’s a two-way street. You pleasure your partner, your partner pleasures you. You find ways to make each other content. You work at it a bit, like everything else in life.”

  She bit her lower lip and turned away. Had he blown it? He clenched his hands into fists, wishing he knew what was behind this, because he was sure he could be a lot more helpful with a little knowledge.

  “But most of my relationships were empty.”

  At that she turned to look at him again. “Really?”

  “Really.” It was about time he loosened that cork a bit, he decided. “When you do what I did, you walk into a bar near a military base and it isn’t long before women are all over you, you know? Some are hoping for the special guy to show up, but too many are looking for a notch in the bedpost. They get off on guys like me, on the feeling they’re playing with fire.”

  She frowned and slowly came back to the table to sit. “How did that make you feel?”

  “For a while it was fun,” he said with brutal honesty. “Then I got tired of it. It wasn’t that I was ready to settle down. I didn’t feel that way at all. But I wanted something that would last longer than a few nights or weeks, depending on when I next shipped out. It never seemed to work out that way. There was never the kind of click that said ‘this is the one.’”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.” He gave her a half smile. “Imagine what she’d be feeling right now with me so messed up and unsure of what I want out of life.”

  “Maybe she’d be right alongside you, trying to help as much as she could.”

  “Maybe. But I watched a lot of marriages go down in flames because guys were gone so much. And I saw others burn up when the guy was home all the time. The wife wa
sn’t used to having him underfoot and interfering. Which is not to say a lot of the guys don’t have good marriages, but while we were active, more ended than endured. And the ones that endured... Well, a lot of them didn’t work so well when the man retired. A lot of guys felt like a fifth wheel in their own homes. Some handled it better than others.”

  “I imagine.”

  “Regardless, I always felt it was wiser to stay single. I figured the day would come when I’d be ready to settle down and wouldn’t be gone all the time. The right wife for the right stage in my life.”

  “That actually sounds sensible.”

  “Does it?” He studied her and realized she no longer avoided looking at him. Apparently he had navigated the minefield well enough. But she’d also clued him in to something very important: someone had once told her she was a lousy lover. Apparently the scar cut deep and hadn’t gone away. In fact, she had probably never tried again.

  That pissed him off, but getting pissed wasn’t going to fix a damn thing.

  “This settling-down thing,” she said slowly.

  “Yeah?” He tensed again, wondering whether a bullet was headed his way.

  “You never really wanted to do it?”

  “Not like some. It wasn’t a goal. It was just something that I figured would happen eventually, or not. So far it hasn’t. What about you?”

  “I don’t think about it much, either. Oh, maybe in a vague way sometimes. But my mother once said something to me that I took to heart. She said you can fall in love a lot of times. But for it to work, it has to be the right person at the right time.”

  He watched her sherry-brown eyes lift again to him, and they almost looked tentative, as if she wasn’t sure how he’d react. Damn, what had he done to have her acting like a cat on a hot stove? She hadn’t been tentative around him before. “I’d agree with that.”

  Then she smiled, that breathtaking smile that he never saw enough of. Nor did he think it would ever be possible to get tired of it.

  Deciding that now might be a really good time to end this conversation, he rose. “I’m getting antsy. I’m used to a whole lot more physical activity. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go for a quick run before dinner. I’ll be back soon.”

  He didn’t miss the change in her expression, but he ignored it. So she didn’t want him to go, even for a little while. Okay, he got it. He didn’t really want to go, either. But he needed to run a bit, and they might as well both get used to him being gone. It was only a matter of time.

  Which, he supposed, using her mother’s maxim, meant she might be the right person, but this was definitely the wrong time.

  * * *

  Wondering if Jerrod had taken flight from her, or if he’d been honest about needing the exercise, Allison returned to her cooking. The chicken casserole needed to cool more before heading for the freezer. The marinara was coming along nicely, but that was meant to be used however she wished for a few weeks. She wouldn’t have made such a big pot otherwise.

  That left tonight. She decided on a whim to make chicken marsala, and defrosting a couple of additional chicken breasts for Jerrod would be no problem. He might not come back, of course, but all that would mean was that she’d have leftovers tomorrow.

  It sounded so simple, but something about it hit her hard and she found herself gripping the edge of the counter and squeezing her eyes closed against the huge wave of disappointment that ripped through her.

  Oh, no, she thought. No, no, no. She hardly knew the man. She’d met him, really, just over a week ago, and most of the past week he’d kept clear of her. How could she possibly give a damn whether he showed up for dinner tonight?

  He was planning to help her on her wild goose chase tomorrow. She’d see him again. But she would see him for all the wrong reasons, she realized. He’d be there to protect her, not because he wanted to actually be with her, and that was a whole different kettle of fish.

  This was crazy. How many ways had he basically told her that he was a rolling stone, at least right now? How unsettled he still was, how much adjusting he still had to do. He didn’t need to speak volumes. The little he’d actually said to her had painted a very clear picture.

  She had been avoiding involvement ever since her breakup with Lance. She never wanted to experience that kind of rejection again. She’d been so unprepared for the savagery of it, the way he had attacked everything about her. Not just a simple “This isn’t working, I think we should split,” but a full-on frontal assault on everything about her that had shattered her self-image until it lay like shards of broken glass around her feet.

  She had been in love. She had believed he was in love with her. Then that, following hard on the heels of the deaths of her parents, while she was still grieving and still full of guilt. He had turned on her, rather than supporting her, and had shredded her in the cruelest way possible, criticizing everything about her.

  It had taken time to rebuild her confidence. She freely admitted to herself that most of that confidence revolved around her jobs and friends. When it came to men, she still had none at all.

  Yet here she was, crazily attracted to a man who might well be capable of the same savagery that Lance had thrown at her. Who might be capable of cruelties she could scarcely imagine.

  A man who made her feel open and vulnerable and surprisingly safe simply by holding her and kissing her once. She ought to take that as a huge warning, but instead, she’d welcomed it.

  Dangerous, indeed. It ought to be as plain as day that this guy opened her in ways that could allow him to crush her. And she didn’t know him well enough to be sure he wouldn’t.

  She had believed she had known Lance, and look how wrong she had been. She hadn’t begun to know Jerrod, and wasn’t sure it would ever be possible, even if he remained right next door for the next thirty years.

  She needed to put the brakes on what was happening inside her, but she wasn’t sure how. The feelings kept coming with a mind of their own, yielding to no reason, no logic. Thinking about a fling with this guy... Was she crazy?

  If she could get this disappointed because he wanted to go out for a run, what made her think she could sleep with him for a few days or weeks and escape unscathed?

  Equally bad, what if he was wrong and there really was such a thing as a lousy lover, and she was it? Did she want to find that out? It was bad enough telling herself it had just been one guy. What if it was two?

  Damn, she wished she’d gone out for a run, too. Nerves fluttered in her stomach and made her feel jumpy all over, a feeling she wasn’t accustomed to.

  Ask him for dinner? Why? She could just say good-night and see him in the morning.

  But another thought wormed into her head, one she couldn’t ignore. If she remained a coward and avoided men forever, she would never know if Lance was wrong, and she might miss something wonderful.

  She also remembered what a friend had once said to her, a friend who was a psychologist. Your subconscious is pretty smart. Let it roll.

  So maybe she was having all this emotional uproar over a guy who might vanish with the morning mist in a few days because that made it safer. Having an affair go bad in this town meant you’d be seeing that person everywhere forever, and how much worse to have one go sour with a colleague.

  So maybe she was drawn to a rolling stone on purpose. She’d never have to see him again if it all went bad. Or if a few nights with him simply proved she was a lousy lover. She wouldn’t spend the rest of her life looking at a reminder.

  There were other, equally painful ways she could lose, but running away from the risk seemed like a cowardly thing to do. She’d been cowardly for too long now.

  Opening her eyes, she let go of the counter and pulled two more chicken breasts out of the freezer. Chicken marsala for two, coming up. She hoped he liked it.

 
* * *

  Jerrod ruminated as he ran. There was a time for thinking and a time for action, and the two rarely coincided all that much. Which was not to say he’d gone into trouble with his brain on hold, but that was not the time for deep thinking. Deep thinking came first, and after, but not during.

  Right now was thinking time. He hadn’t taken any irrevocable steps with Allison, but she’d just revealed a lot to him that made him feel like he needed to walk around her with caution. He didn’t want to hurt her, he didn’t want to trigger her mines and he wasn’t sure that he was the right guy to step into all of this.

  A fling might do her a world of good. Nothing about Allison suggested to him that she would be a lousy lover. Far from it. So a couple of nights might be enough to repair her self-image.

  On the other hand... It was that other hand that worried him more than anything. Women, most especially inexperienced women, tended to get emotionally involved very quickly with a lover. Since he didn’t know what, if anything, he had to offer in that department, he could wind up hurting her in another way.

  But the fact that he was even thinking about this gave him a vague sense of amusement. Never before had he weighed the pros and cons before taking a woman to bed. The women in his past had all been as savvy about this game as any guy, ready to move on when the time came.

  Allison was a whole new class to him. A woman who was as near a virgin as made no difference, he guessed. Although how could he be sure? She hadn’t come right out and said anything. He might be putting it together all wrong.

  But he doubted it.

  He started cussing with every step as he ran. The day was waning rapidly, and he figured running around the streets of this small town after dark might be problematic. Switching course, he headed back to Allison’s, still cussing with every exhalation.

  A wise man would back off, keep a distance and when this whole poison thing was settled, skedaddle from her life, if not this town.

  But maybe he wasn’t a wise man. He kept remembering hugging her, being hugged by her, and how it had seemed to fill some gaping hole inside him. Hard to walk away from that.