by Cara Summers
“Mr. Hunter and Mr. Tracker are in the study, I believe. They’re waiting for Mr. Lucas to arrive.”
Mr. Tracker, Mr. Lucas and Mr. Hunter, she thought. Odd that everyone called Mark Hunter by his last name.
“I’m going to put a bandage on this now,” he said. “And then I’m going to pour you some tea, and you’ll eat some of the cookies you like.”
Rory’s stomach gave a lurch. Then there was a sudden noise that sounded as if a tornado had just touched down. “What on earth—?”
“It’s just Mr. Lucas’s helicopter. Sometimes, it’s the most convenient way for him and Dr. Mac or Miss Sophie to get here.”
As the noise suddenly stopped, Rory imagined how it was going to be. Mr. Hunter or whoever he was would be closeted with his friend Lucas forever. “Are you finished?”
“Just a moment,” McGee promised as he smoothed down a bit of tape. “If you’re very careful and massage the salve in every day, you won’t have a scar. And now you can have some of those cookies.”
“Thanks.” Rory rose from the couch. “First, I need to talk to Mr. Hunter or whoever he is. I’ll be right back.” She made it to the door, but when she opened it, Natalie and Sierra rushed in.
“Are you all right?” Natalie asked, taking her hands.
“Is she all right?” Sierra asked.
“I’m fine.”
“She’ll be fine,” McGee assured them. “I’ve treated the wound. The bullet just grazed her skin. Would you like tea? I’ve prepared some of Miss Rory’s favorite cookies.”
Sierra studied him for a moment, then smiled. “Yes. Tea and cookies would be perfect.”
“We were so worried,” Natalie said, studying Rory closely. “Tracker said you were all right. But we had to see for ourselves. He arranged for Lucas to bring us.”
“I need to see Hunter,” Rory explained. “Or Jared. Or whoever he is.”
“Jared? Jared Slade is here? Tracker said you were interviewing this Hunter person,” Natalie said.
“I was,” Rory said. “But I’m pretty sure he’s really Jared Slade, and I have to—”
The deafening noise of the helicopter starting up drowned out her words and suddenly her stomach lurched again. She turned, rushed to the kitchen window and saw her worst fears confirmed. Hunter, alias Jared Slade, head bent low, was running across the lawn with Tracker at his side. He hadn’t even said goodbye. As she watched them climb in, she felt the same stream of sensations she’d felt years before when she and her sisters and mother had gone to the airport to say goodbye to their father.
Oh, Harry had said that he’d only be gone for a while, but it had been a lie, and she’d somehow known it. Men always lied to her when they were never coming back.
Behind her, Rory heard a cell phone ring. Then it rang again. Still, Rory ignored it.
“It’s not mine,” Sierra said. “Mine plays Chopin.”
“Don’t look at me,” Natalie said. “Mine’s on vibrate.”
Rory whirled then and dashed to the table where McGee had set her purse. Hunter was calling her. “Hello?”
“I’ll give you one hour. If you don’t deliver those pictures to me, you’re fired.”
“Lea?”
“Yes, this is Lea—Lea Roberts, your boss, the one who sent you on a very simple mission—to get a picture of Jared Slade. Do you have the photos?”
Rory drew in a deep breath. “No. I traded them for—”
“Sex. Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing. You’ve been holed up there with the man who now calls himself Jared Slade, and you’ve been sleeping with him. For your sake, I hope that he was as good in bed as he used to be because your little dalliance has cost you any hope of a job at Celebs. You’re fired.”
When the call went dead, Rory merely stared down at her cell phone. Whatever luck she’d once had—it had just run out.
13
“TRACKER SAID HE WANTS YOU to stay here until this is all cleared up,” Natalie said.
“I can’t,” Rory said as she led the way up the stairs to the room where she’d been staying.
“You’ll be safer here,” Natalie said. “They don’t know who’s behind these incidents yet. Your apartment was searched, you know.”
Rory turned to her sister. “No one told me about that.”
“Tracker thinks whoever it was might have been after the photos. Please. Someone’s already taken a shot at you. I’d like you to stay here where Tracker can protect you until this is over.”
Rory lifted her chin. “I can’t.”
McGee knocked on the doorjamb. “I thought you might like tea up here while I pack your things.”
“Yes…I mean no. I won’t be taking any of these things with me.” Rory took the pearls that she’d stuffed in her jeans pocket and dropped them on the dresser. She didn’t ever again want to see any of the things that Hunter had given her. She certainly didn’t need another dumping gift from Jared Slade, alias Mark Hunter.
McGee set a tray down on a glass-topped table near the windows and pulled up three chairs. “Things always seem a bit better after a cup of hot tea.” Then he left.
“I totally agree.” Sierra wrapped her arm around Rory’s waist and lead her to the table. “And look at those cookies.”
Rory sat down and let Sierra pour her a cup of tea. “I’m fine. Really.”
Natalie took one of her hands. “No, you’re not. I know just how you feel. I felt the same way when I came home from Florida last month and I learned that Chance had flown to England without saying goodbye. I wanted to kill him. But even more, I wanted to bury myself in a hole and never come out again. Men can be such jerks sometimes.”
Sierra passed Rory the plate of cookies. “Chocolate helps. There’s a lot of research supporting the fact that dark chocolate is a mood enhancer, especially for women.”
“No, thanks,” Rory said.
Sierra and Natalie exchanged a look.
“If you’re not eating, you must be in love,” Sierra said.
“No, I—” To her horror, Rory felt her eyes fill with tears. She rubbed away the one that escaped and blinked back the others. She never cried. Never. “I’m just not lucky that way. Even if I were, I just don’t have… I’m going to be fine. I’ll find another job and I’ll…” What? Find another man? Not likely. Jared Slade had even ruined any relationship she could have with a fantasy man—because her fantasy man was him. “I’ll…go home and just…”
Rory lifted her teacup and then set it down. She was thinking of doing what she’d always done. She was giving up and running away.
Suddenly, the advice her father had given her in his letter came back to her, almost as if he were sitting beside her, whispering in her ear. Trust in your luck…stay in the game.
Rory glanced around the room. This was the room where she’d seduced her Terminator—whatever his real name was. She’d driven him crazy. And she could do it again. She wanted to do it again.
“No.” Straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin, she faced her sisters again. “I’m not going home.”
“Good,” Natalie said with a sigh. “I’ll feel so much better if you stay here.”
“I’m not staying here, either. But I’m not going to run away and start over—looking for a new career and a new man. That’s what I always do. Lea Roberts isn’t the only boss in the world, and Celebs is not the only magazine.”
“Here! Here!” Sierra said, raising her cup again.
Rory was out of her chair and pacing. “And I’m not going to go looking for another man, either. Hunter—or whoever he is—is the only man for me.”
Natalie and Sierra exchanged another look.
“You’re right. She is in love with him,” Natalie said.
Rory raised a hand. “Maybe. I’m not sure. I—”
“She’s definitely in love with him,” Sierra said. “The confusion, the fear, the fact that she’s passing up food. Classic symptoms across cultures.”
&nb
sp; Rory clapped her hands over her ears. “I’m not listening. I’m not even going to think about that right now.” Then moving to the door, she called out, “McGee?”
“Yes, miss,” he said, stepping out of a nearby room with a suitcase in his hand.
“I changed my mind. I’d like you to pack everything, please.”
Nodding, McGee followed her back into her bedroom. “I thought you might. Shall I pack the bubble gum, too?”
“No, I’ll put that in my purse. And the cookies, too. Can you wrap them up, please? And one other thing. Why do you call Hunter Mr. Hunter?”
“Because that’s what Mr. Lucas has always called him—even back in the days when they went to college together.”
“Hunter might be his first name then,” Rory said, turning to Natalie. “I’m going to need your help.”
Natalie frowned.
Rory fisted her hands on her hips. “Don’t give me that look. If Chance hadn’t come back from London a few weeks ago, what would you have done?”
“She would have gone after him,” Sierra said when Natalie hesitated. “You know you would have, Nat.”
“You followed Dad’s advice,” Rory said. “Now it’s my turn. If I don’t take a risk, I may lose him.”
Natalie threw up her hands. “Okay. What do you need?”
“I need all of your research skills and the equipment at D.C. Metro. I want to know the hometown of a man—first name of Hunter, I think. He went to Harvard with Lucas Wainwright and he was accused of embezzling from his family’s bank about ten years ago. Can you get me that?”
Natalie smiled. “I’ll try. But you’ll have to help me out. You’re the one who inherited the luck genes.”
THE APARTMENT THAT TRACKER kept at Wainwright Enterprises offered a view of the Washington Monument and the Mall. But Hunter wasn’t seeing it as he gazed out of the window. He couldn’t get images of Rory out of his mind. Rory laughing in the sunlight as they rode. Rory, her eyes misted and locked on his, saying his name. Rory rushing toward him as the man standing in the sunroof pointed the gun at him.
He wanted her with him right now. His body was hard just thinking about her. And he was beginning to regret that he’d left without talking to her, seeing her. Touching her.
“Earth to Hunter.”
He whirled from the window to find Tracker standing in the doorway to his office. “I’ve called your name twice.”
“I never should have let you talk me into coming here without her.”
Brows lifted, Tracker studied him for a moment. “You’ve got it bad, pal.”
“What are you talking about?” Hunter asked.
Tracker grinned. “You’ve fallen in love with her. As a recent victim, I can spot the signs.”
Hunter frowned. “What signs?”
“For starters, you’ve been staring out that window for the past ten minutes. You can’t hear your name when it’s called and you can’t clear images of her out of your mind. Plus, you want her with you pretty much all the time.”
Since Hunter realized he was presently experiencing everything Tracker had just described, he didn’t comment.
“And even though you’ve spent your life doing just fine on your own, you’re beginning to see that a future without her in it would be empty.”
Was that true? No. Hunter sank down on the arm of a nearby chair. But hadn’t that been the very direction his thoughts had been taking in the woods right after they’d made love? Hadn’t he felt what it might be like to have her with him when they were old? And it had felt right somehow.
Tracker moved behind a sleek stainless-steel counter, pulled two beers out of a tall refrigerator, and handed him one.
Hunter twisted the cap off and took a long swallow. “Suppose all that’s true. It doesn’t mean I’m in love. I just never should have left without talking to her.” He rose and began to pace. “She doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence where men are concerned. She’s probably already convinced herself that I’ve dumped her, that I won’t come back. Hell, maybe she doesn’t even want me back. I’ve lied to her right from the start. She’ll think everything—everything we shared—was a lie.” Turning, he found Tracker regarding him steadily, a sympathetic look on his face.
“I’m not…” Hunter began. “I don’t…I never wanted to be this responsible for another person. I—”
Tracker lifted his beer in a toast. “Ain’t love grand?”
“It isn’t…” Hunter began. He wanted to deny that he’d fallen in love, but he was beginning to be very afraid that he had.
“I was in denial at first, too. I just didn’t think that people as different as Sophie and I were could ever make a go of it.”
“What happened to change your mind?” Hunter asked.
Tracker grinned. “She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. And you can make Rory Gibbs one just as soon as we figure out who’s trying to kill you.”
“Right.” First things first, Hunter thought as he strode to the large oak table where Tracker had spread out the contents of a file.
“This is what I’ve got so far,” Tracker said. “Michael Banks, Denise Martin and Alex Santos—our three prime suspects. I’ve run background checks on each one of them and I can’t connect them to Hunter Marks. Plus, everything on their résumés checks out.”
Hunter studied the faces of his three most trusted business associates. If he wanted to get back to Rory, he had to solve this problem first. “Okay. We’ve run into a dead end with who. Maybe we’ll have more luck with why. This has to go back to the embezzlement scandal in Oakwood. He or she knows what I did and wants to expose me and perhaps destroy Slade Enterprises, probably for revenge.”
“That may well have been plan A, in Atlanta and New York, but the threats got more personal once you arrived in D.C.,” Tracker said. “The question is, why?”
“Lea Roberts was here. With her help, Jared Slade could be exposed in the press as Hunter Marks—because she was the one who originally broke the old embezzlement story.”
“Why the bomb?” Tracker asked.
“A message to me along with the note that the exposure is only step one of the master plan.”
“And if the bomb in your suite had killed you?” Tracker asked.
Hunter shook his head. “It wasn’t meant to. It was set by someone who knew I was definitely out of the suite.” Reaching down, he turned Denise Martin’s picture facedown. “Which eliminates Denise. Now there are only two suspects.”
“Okay. The note and the bomb are delivered to let you know that the threat is personal and serious. Next in the plan you see Slade Enterprises ruined because it’s suddenly revealed that Jared Slade is none other than the embezzler who used to be known as Hunter Marks. Then you die.”
“But the plan goes awry. Rory doesn’t turn over the pictures on schedule, and her apartment is searched without success, and I go into hiding.”
“Panic sets in,” Tracker said. “And he goes to plan B—just shoot you. Which one of them is more capable of coming up with a complicated plan like that?”
“They both are.”
“Pick a favorite,” Tracker said.
Hunter stared down at the photos and finally shook his head. “I still can’t see either of them doing this.”
“Then we’ll have to find something that links one of them with your past as Hunter Marks.”
“You’ve checked places of birth?”
Tracker nodded. “Alex was born in New York City. I’m still checking on Michael.”
“Maybe we’re coming at this from the wrong perspective,” Hunter said. “Assuming it is one of these two, they’ve been working for me for some time. I covered my tracks well, but one of them somehow made the connection between Hunter Marks and Jared Slade and applied for a job with Slade Enterprises. Why wait three or four years to get revenge?”
“You’re wondering what happened to trigger the notes and the incidents in Atlanta and New York?”
“Yes.” The
n Hunter suddenly sank into a chair. “Of course. That has to be it. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Three months ago, I made plans to take over Marks Banking and Investments, my family’s company. Both of them worked on the research.”
Tracker nodded. “It started one of them thinking and they connected you with Hunter Marks.”
Hunter met Tracker’s eyes. “That’s why I have to go back there. There’s something that I’m not seeing, something that I don’t know about. No one was supposed to get hurt or lose any money. That’s why I let them make me the scapegoat.”
“Ah, the deep, dark secret at last. You’re not really an embezzler.”
“I’m going back there,” Hunter said.
“We’ll be there when the bank opens in the morning.”
“DAMN!” LEA ROBERTS SLAMMED on the brakes as she hit the bumper-to-bumper traffic that she’d have to battle all the way into D.C. She needed to get to her office and clear her calendar for the next few days. Her trip to the Wainwright estate had been a bust in all but one respect. She now knew that Jared Slade had been there. From the looks of the security, he’d been hiding out there. So there had to be some truth to the tip she’d received about the bomb in his suite at Les Printemps.
Frowning, she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. So Jared Slade, alias Hunter Marks, was under siege. By whom, was the question. Of course, it had to be her anonymous tipster. But who in the hell was that?
As if to join in on the little discussion she was having with herself, her cell phone rang. She nudged her car into a faster-moving lane, and then pushed the button on her speaker phone. “What is it?”
“I want you to run the story proving who Jared Slade really is.”
It was the same androgynous voice, and there was more than a trace of anger in it. Lea bit back her own temper. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I still don’t have the pictures.”
The voice swore. “You always were incompetent. Even years ago, you didn’t cover the story well. You covered up the harm that the Marks family did. You were on their payroll just like everyone else in town.”
Even as Lea blinked in surprise, the call ended. So it all went back to the original embezzlement. And there’d been a cover-up? Suddenly, she knew where she might find Hunter Marks. If she was right, the story was even bigger than she’d originally thought.