by Cara Summers
There was a knock at the door. Tracker, he thought as he turned. But it was Rory who rushed into the office. Tracker followed, talking on his cell, but Hunter couldn’t take his eyes off Rory. His first thought was that he’d conjured her up because he’d been wanting her with him ever since he’d left her at the Wainwright estate. She looked hot and sweaty and there was dust on her face and arms. Just seeing her made his mouth go dry.
“I think I know who’s threatening you,” she said as she placed an open book on the desk and pointed to a photo.
He didn’t glance down right away because he couldn’t stop looking at her. His heart took a long, slow tumble as he faced what he hadn’t been able to accept before. He was in love with Rory Gibbs.
“Look,” she said impatiently. “You have to imagine him with ten years added on. Do you recognize him?”
Hunter looked at the photo for a moment. Then, eyes narrowing, he leaned closer to study it more thoroughly. Finally, he straightened and turned to Tracker. “Mike Dennison’s son is my executive assistant, Michael Banks.”
Tracker conveyed that information to whomever he was talking to.
“Where did you find this?” Hunter asked.
“The library. Daisy Brinkman was very helpful.”
Carter’s intercom buzzed, and he pressed the button and picked up the receiver.
“I have a question, too,” Tracker said. “Just how did you manage to get away from both your sister and the man I had following you?”
Rory looked at him and shrugged. “I climbed out a window and cut through an alley to where I’d parked my car.”
Hunter couldn’t prevent a smile, but it faded when he saw the expression on his brother’s face.
“Miss Tolley says that there’s a reporter here asking to see you, Hunter. Lea Roberts.”
“I don’t like this,” Tracker said. “If she’s here and Rory’s here, can Michael Banks or one of his hired killers be far behind?” He glanced at Carter. “Is there a back way out of here?”
“Right through that door over there.” Carter dug in his desk and pulled out a set of keys. “Take my car. It’s a beige SUV right outside the back entrance. I’ll stall Lea Roberts.”
“I don’t want her to know that Jared Slade is really Hunter Marks,” Tracker said.
Carter grinned. “Don’t worry. I can handle her. I never did like her much.”
“C’mon.” Tracker urged them toward the door.
“I have a plan we can use to trap him,” Rory said.
“Good. You can tell us all about it once we’re safely out of town.”
HUNTER SHOVED A BASEBALL CAP down low on his forehead and scanned the dining room of the Blue Pepper again. He didn’t like Rory’s plan one bit, not even with the revisions that Tracker and Natalie Gibbs had insisted on making. And he hated the onlooker role he’d been assigned in the little charade they were going to play out.
Of course, he had to admit that the others were right. If he got too close, Michael could recognize him, and that would spoil everything. Plus, it might put Rory in even more danger.
So he was stuck sitting at the bar while Rad, one of the owners of the Blue Pepper, escorted Rory to a table in the upper-level dining area. After a glance at his watch, he took a sip of the beer in front of him. Rory had called Michael, inviting him to meet with her because she had proof that he was trying to kill Jared Slade. She was wired, so they could hear and record everything, and if she could get Michael to admit what he’d done, then everything would be over.
Tracker had explained to him what they needed on the ride back to D.C. Even though they’d discovered that Michael might have motivation, they still had no proof tying him to either the bomb or the shooting. Hunter shifted his gaze to the dining room again as Rory took her seat. She was wearing the red sundress that McGee had purchased for her. And she’d told him that she was wearing the red thong just for extra luck.
He wished to hell that he had some of her confidence that this was going to go well. The fact that Chance Mitchell and Natalie Gibbs were stationed at the table next to Rory’s eased his fears somewhat. But there were things that could still go wrong.
Tracker climbed onto the stool next to Hunter. “One of my men just spotted our friend walking toward the restaurant. He’s about a block away.”
Instead of easing the knot in Hunter’s stomach, the news only tightened it. Michael had taken the bait, but now the danger for Rory was real instead of theoretical.
“I still don’t have a good feeling about this,” he said.
“Chance Mitchell is the best. And the two other men I have stationed up there are top-notch, too. Ah, here’s our boy now.”
Hunter didn’t move his head, only his eyes, but he kept them steady on Michael Dennison Banks as he walked up the stairs and sat down at Rory’s table.
“HI,” RORY SAID as Michael Dennison avoided the chair that Rad was holding for him and sat in the one next to her.
He said nothing until Rad was out of earshot. Then he pitched his voice low. “What kind of game are you playing? I had nothing to do with the bomb at Les Printemps. I don’t even know anything about a shooting.”
Her nerves were jumping so much that Rory barely kept herself from blowing a bubble. She knew what she was supposed to say. Tracker and Natalie had taken her through the script over and over. She kept the bubble gum tucked in her cheek while she said, “I went to Oakwood, Connecticut, and did a little research. I know about your father’s suicide, but I haven’t told anyone yet.”
“So?”
The voice and the eyes were so cold that Rory barely kept herself from shivering. “So my sister Natalie is a cop with the D.C. police. There was a fingerprint recovered from the bomb. Once they discover it belongs to Michael Dennison, alias Michael Banks, how long do you think you can continue to play dumb?”
For a moment he didn’t say anything. Once more, she had to stifle the urge to blow a bubble. He was thinking, weighing the truth of what she was saying. Rory remembered Daisy Brinkman saying that she didn’t have the eyes for telling a lie. Could those cold blue eyes staring at her now see that?
She leaned toward him. “I can either tell them or keep your identity a secret. It’s up to you.”
“Tell anyone you want. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“HE’S NOT ADMITTING ANYTHING,” Hunter murmured. “He’s going to stonewall her.”
Tracker laid a hand on his arm when he would have moved. “Give her a few more minutes.”
Hunter took another drink of his beer as he watched Rory reach out a hand to keep Michael from rising.
“I can understand why you did it,” she said. “You blame him for what happened, don’t you? Everyone in town knew that he was reckless, the black sheep of the Marks family. And he’d certainly lived up to his name—gambling and then stealing money to cover his losses. Stealing your father’s money. Your money.”
“She’s off script,” Tracker murmured. “But she’s keeping him there.”
Yeah, Hunter thought. But the bad feeling he had wasn’t getting any better.
“You know nothing,” Michael said.
“I know you lost your father. I lost mine, too, when I was ten. He died in a car crash. The driver of the other car was drunk. He never even went to jail. If I could have, I would have gone after him and made him suffer for taking my father from me.”
Hunter stiffened then. “She’s lying. She can’t tell a lie to save her life.”
“Wait.” Tracker tightened his grip on Hunter’s arm.
“Hunter Marks deserves to die,” Michael said.
“See? She’s playing him just right,” Tracker said.
“I know just how you feel,” Rory murmured. “How did you ever find him?”
“Luck. I had no idea when I went to work for Jared Slade that he was really Hunter Marks. I only put it together when he told me to do the research on buying out Marks Banking and Investments. He was actually going to buy them out. I’ve
seen what he can do when he takes over a business. Within a year, he would have doubled their profits. And my father wouldn’t be there to benefit from any of it. I knew then what I had to do.”
Rory tried to suppress a shiver. She couldn’t take her eyes off Michael’s, and she was beginning to glimpse the madness just beneath all that ice.
“Oh, I would have found him eventually. I was saving every cent I made for that purpose. It was my mother’s idea. She always told me that I would have to track him down and make him pay. That’s why we stayed in town for so long. She was waiting for him to come back. And when I finally left for college, I promised her that I would carry out her wishes.”
Rory licked her lips. “Your mother wanted you to kill Hunter Marks?”
“He destroyed her one true love. The two men she married after that never loved her the way my father did. She depended on me to get her justice.”
“You changed your name.”
“My mother wanted me to use the name of her second husband. That way no one could ever connect me with the Marks family.”
When he paused to smile at her, Rory did shiver. But she made herself ask, “What is Lea Roberts’s connection to all of this?”
Michael shrugged. “She wrote the original story that told the truth about Hunter Marks. I thought she deserved to be able to write the final chapter in Marks’s life. But she proved to be incompetent. I’ll handle that, just as I’m going to handle you.”
Rory felt something hard poke into her side.
“I’ve got a gun. Get up slowly and smile at me. Then we’re going to leave the restaurant. If you try to signal anyone or give me any trouble at all, I’ll shoot some of the other customers.”
“Don’t use the gun,” Rory said as she rose. “You haven’t killed anyone yet. And Hunter Marks isn’t the monster you think he is. He’ll help you.”
“Shut up.” He took her hand and pulled her closer, pressing the gun in his pocket against her side. “Don’t you think I know that you’re his girlfriend? He’ll come after you, and then I’ll finish this.”
“EVERYONE STAY BACK.” Tracker spoke into his mouthpiece. “That includes you,” he added to Hunter.
“To hell with that,” Hunter said as he got off his stool. “I warned you that he was smart. He wants me, so he’s going to get me.”
Tracker grabbed his arm. “Let him get out of the building. If he’s that smart, he’ll know that he can hurt you by killing her.”
An icy knot of fear twisted even tighter in Hunter’s stomach as he edged his way through the crowd. It seemed forever before Tracker said, “He’s out and moving up the street.”
They began to move more quickly then.
“Can you keep your cool?” Tracker asked as they pushed out onto the street.
Hunter nodded. “I’m going to try to reason with him.”
Michael and Rory were halfway down the block. Salsa music blared from the patio, so Hunter didn’t bother to call out. He just broke into a run. He knew that Tracker had moved into the street on the other side of the parked cars, but Hunter kept his eyes on Rory. He was going to get her back safely.
When he was close enough to be heard, he called out, “Michael, it’s me you want.”
Michael turned then, but he kept his grip tight on Rory, and Hunter saw that the hand gripping the gun didn’t waver. “I want you both.”
Hunter raised his hands, palms out and prayed that the reasonable side of Michael Banks’s brain was still functioning. “You can’t have us both. The man in the street to my right will take you out before you can get a second shot off. It’s either me or Rory. Which one would your mother want you to shoot?”
When Michael took his hand out of his pocket and pointed the gun at him, Hunter began to let out the breath he was holding. It caught in his throat when Rory threw all of her weight at Michael Banks and two shots rang out simultaneously.
“IT’S A DAMN MIRACLE you didn’t get yourself shot,” Hunter said.
“It was luck,” Rory corrected. They were seated on the curb down the street from the Blue Pepper with a blanket wrapped around them. She hadn’t been able to stop shaking after the shots were fired, so one of the policemen had dug a blanket out of his trunk. It was only after Hunter had joined her beneath the warm folds of cloth that she’d begun to get warm again.
Michael Banks was being loaded into an ambulance. Tracker and Natalie were talking with the detectives who’d arrived on the scene. Two uniformed policemen were encouraging the Blue Pepper patrons to go back inside and enjoy the evening.
Rory blew out a bubble, then sucked it back into her mouth. “My knees are like jelly now. I’m not sure I can walk.”
“Yeah. I’ve got the same feeling in mine. Maybe we’ll have to stay here all night. Are you warm enough?” He slid his hand up her side and drew her closer.
“I’m warmer now.”
The doors of the ambulance swung shut and Rory said, “I feel sorry for him. He lost his dad, and he had a wacko for a mother.”
“Seems that way,” Hunter said. “I’m going to hire him a good defense attorney.”
She turned to stare at him then. “You’re the sweetest man I’ve ever met. You took the blame for your brother and your father all those years ago because you didn’t want anyone to be hurt. Never mind that you lost everything.”
Hunter smiled. “I haven’t done so badly for myself. And my brother’s done a good job with the bank. He told me today that the merchants in the town have rallied behind him to prevent Slade Enterprises’s hostile takeover.”
“Maybe it’s time for the whole story to come out,” Rory said.
“That’s what Carter would like. But he stonewalled Lea Roberts because I told him I happen to have this other reporter in mind,” Hunter said. “She has good instincts, and I think she’ll tell the story well.” He lowered his mouth to hers, and then he said against her lips, “I’m going to offer her an exclusive interview if she’ll give me just one kiss.”
She wanted to laugh, but she was already sinking into the kiss, and his hands became very busy under the blanket. When one of them parted her thighs, she started to protest. “Hunter…”
“Shh,” he whispered. “You’re wearing the thong.” He traced his finger down the little red lace triangle that covered her cleft, and she shuddered.
“I can never look at you without wondering if you’re wearing this.”
“You have to…” Stop. That was the word she should say, but he was moving his finger over her again, and she could feel her insides heating and melting.
“Do you know how long I’ve been thinking of doing this? That whole long drive back to D.C. with Tracker.” He stroked his finger down her again, and Rory bit down hard on her lip. “And all the time that he and Natalie were prepping you, I was thinking that I just wanted to hold you in my arms like this and make you come.”
She had to fight the moan back when he slipped two fingers into her, then curved them and began to rub them on the spot he’d found before.
“You…can’t,” she whispered.
“Yes, I can,” he murmured against her ear. “And I can do this, too.” He continued to move his fingers inside of her, while he found her clitoris with his thumb and began to rub that also.
Blending with the murmur of nearby voices and the sounds of the salsa band at the Blue Pepper, Rory could hear her own breath coming in pants.
“I love to hear you breathe like that. You have no idea what it does to me,” Hunter whispered.
A flood of sensations moved through Rory. She had a feeling that they were heightened by the fact that they were seated in the shadows between two parked cars. At any moment, someone could turn and look at them. “We’re…on a public street.”
She could feel his lips curve against her ear.
“That means you have to be very quiet when you have your orgasm,” he said. “And you can’t move, either.”
She should stop him. But her body had become swam
ped by the pleasure he was giving her. The fact that she couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound sharpened each response that was streaming through her.
As if he could sense the moment that the first wave of the orgasm moved through her, he took her mouth with his while she rode it out. Then he continued to hold her tight even after the last little shock wave passed.
It might have been minutes or hours before Tracker came over and said, “Hey, I’ve been sent over to break this up. They don’t allow necking on one of the main streets of Georgetown.”
RORY BLEW OUT A BUBBLE as she stepped off the elevator into the reception area of the offices of Celebs magazine. Hattie Miller, a perky blond receptionist who’d always been nice to her, beamed her a smile. “Ms. Gibbs, congratulations on your story.”
“Thanks, Hattie.” Her story on Hunter Marks, alias Jared Slade, had appeared in an edition of Vanity Fair that had hit the newsstands the day before. As she neared the desk, Hattie winked and pitched her voice low. “It’s caused quite a stir around here. Some of the suits flew down yesterday from the NewYork office. Word is that heads are going to roll and you can name your price if you’ll come back to work.”
“I think Ms. Roberts is expecting me,” Rory said.
Hattie nodded. “Yes, sirree. You can go right on back.”
Rory walked down the short hallway to Lea’s office. On the way, she passed her temporary desk. It looked the same as it had the last time she’d been here—as if it were just waiting for her to return to work.
The phone call from Lea had come that morning shortly after Hunter had left for Dallas on business. It had been thirteen days since Michael Banks had been arrested, and ten days since she’d sold her story to Vanity Fair. But the time had flown by, and Hunter had spent more time in Dallas and Oakwood than he’d spent in D.C.
That was beginning to worry her a little. Pausing before the door to Lea’s office, Rory drew in a deep breath. She hadn’t wanted to agree to meet with Lea. The old Rory never would have. But the new Rory had questions and something to say to her old boss that had to be said in person.