Guilt scratched with the knowledge that she’d called it wrong.
After a long moment Jacob looked away. “What’s done is done. Let’s just fix it.”
His silent condemnation sliced deep and left her bleeding, but she lifted her chin. “I have a plan.”
“So do I,” he countered. He jerked his head toward the mine. “Mike and Tony will wait for the cops. Once you and I have made the calls that need to be made, we’ll head for Washington. I think it’s time to pay Cooper a little visit and find out what’s really going on.”
She wanted to curse at him, to swipe at him, to do something that would spark a fight and relieve the awful guilt, remove the memory of the smell of death.
Instead she crossed her arms. “I already snagged us tickets for first thing tomorrow morning.” So there, she thought, though she knew it shouldn’t feel like a competition between them when they were supposed to be working together.
He met her eyes for an instant and she read something unexpected in them. Regret, perhaps, or apology, neither of which she deserved. But his voice held no hint of either when he said, “Fine. Washington it is. But Big Sky has its own jet and I prefer to fly myself.”
JACOB, ISABELLA and another of the bounty hunters, Joseph Brown, arrived at the local airport early the next morning, only to find that the jet wasn’t quite ready for them. Still hungry after missing several meals the day before, Jacob aimed them from the small terminal to the main jetway so they could grab food.
The airport was crowded with an assortment of students coming and going for the new school year, early skiers headed north, and foliage watchers hoping for one last weekend. Or so he guessed from the outfits, which ranged from preppies wearing pressed flannels from trendy faux-lumberjack catalogs to impoverished ski bums hoping for one more season on the slopes.
And what was he hoping for?
A quick resolution to this mess, he thought, glancing at the woman beside him. A quick return to his normal life, which he liked just fine.
As though sensing the direction of his thoughts, she darted a look in his direction, and when the fast-food line next surged forward, she hung back to stand beside Joseph.
The younger bounty hunter—also a former Special Forces operative—was scowling, but that was nothing new. Ever since his three-year-old marriage had gone south for good, Joseph had been in a foul mood. Dark blond and strong as a steel bar, the expert tracker had followed his faithless wife halfway across the country for an explanation.
He’d returned a changed man. Quiet. Morose. Even angry. And though he’d eased up some over the six months since, he didn’t smile when Isabella said something to him, too softly for Jacob to hear.
Joseph merely frowned harder and shook his head.
“Sir?” a voice intruded, snapping Jacob from his too intense concentration on the man and woman at his back. “What can I get you?”
Jacob yanked his attention to the menu and ordered at random. Once they all had their greasy paper bags in hand, he gestured toward a bank of seats near one of the domestic gates. The digital crawl above the door advertised a flight leaving for Sacramento in under an hour. “Keep your eyes open,” he warned. “We’re not on vacation here.”
“Didn’t think we were,” Joseph snapped. He glared at Jacob, claimed a seat and crossed his arms over his wide chest. “I’ll keep my eyes open from here.”
Jacob scowled, annoyed with himself, with the situation. He glanced over at Isabella, at her heart-shaped face, auburn hair and take-no-prisoners, mossy-green eyes, and felt a tender, protective quiver run through his body.
Not good.
He cursed and pushed himself to his feet, needing to walk. But she was a step ahead of him, already moving across the nearby waiting area. She crouched beside a dark-haired, clean-shaven man holding a sleeping child.
Her eyes were haunted.
Caution prickled along the back of Jacob’s neck and he strode to join her, nearing them in time to hear her say, “Your son is beautiful. What’s his name?”
“Malachai,” the man replied quietly, so as not to wake the boy.
Jacob shrugged off the quick tightness in his shoulders and turned away, baffled by Isabella’s actions, annoyed that the maternal instincts she’d made no secret of years earlier still held power over her. Damn it, he was trying to be a professional, why couldn’t she?
She joined him a moment later and glanced up at him. No doubt his face looked as stiff as it felt.
She frowned. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.” When her eyes darkened, he cursed himself and relented. He gestured with his chin back toward the waiting area, which now stirred and buzzed with energy as the boarding orders went out over the loudspeaker. “Cute kid.”
She shrugged. “Cute enough. He reminded me…” She trailed off, took a breath and squared her shoulders. “He reminded me of Cooper’s little girls.”
“Oh.” Jacob winced at the pain in her voice and the dig of shame. Then suspicion pierced and he spun to glare at the guy. “Oh!”
“Don’t.” She touched his arm. “It’s just a single father and his son going to visit family. The security officers at the desk said his papers check out, and the child is drooling on his shoulder, completely at ease. It’s nothing.” She let out a breath. “Just wishful thinking.”
“Hmm.” He stared at the man a heartbeat longer, partly to buy himself time to buffer against her touch, and partly to compare the man’s face to those of the militiamen he sought.
The “father” was clean-cut where Boone’s followers tended toward unkempt beards, and that was part of the problem. A quick swipe with a razor could go a long way toward changing a man’s appearance, as could new clothes and a five-dollar box of hair dye.
“You guys all set?” Joseph glanced at his watch and pushed to his feet. “The jet should be ready by now.”
“Come on.” Isabella tugged at Jacob’s arm. “I told you, it’s nothing. They’re clean.”
But something nagged at the hard ball of instinct in Jacob’s gut, the one that had kept him alive through numerous official—and not-so official—airstrike runs in the Special Forces and made him a successful bounty hunter in the years since.
He watched as the man stood with the small child draped bonelessly—was the kid truly asleep or really drugged?—across his shoulder. The guy handed over his boarding pass and glanced around. His eyes caught Jacob’s, then slid away. Was that a flash of recognition? Of fear?
Hell, he didn’t know, not even when the father and son disappeared down the gangplank. So Jacob stood a moment longer, waiting for the sense of warning to fade. But it didn’t. Not even when he followed Isabella and Joseph out to Big Sky’s jets.
No, even then the tingle remained, telling him he’d missed something.
Or someone.
FROM HER POSITION in the waiting area of the next non-stop flight to Los Angeles, Hope watched Isabella and the two strangers walk away.
She wanted to stand and scream for them to come back, for them to rescue her.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Her daughters had flown out ahead, with Lyle and Kane, and Boone sat beside her with the men’s cell numbers on speed dial, nearly daring her.
Just try it, she could almost hear him think. Just try calling for help. Your babies will be dead before help arrives. I promise.
So she stayed quiet and still, and forced her eyes back to the magazine in her lap.
Boone chuckled quietly. “A wise decision.”
Then he rummaged in his carry-on and pulled out a second cell phone, different from the one he’d used to call his men. He hit a single button and angled his body away from her.
“Everything is fine,” he answered shortly when the call rang through. “The others are en route and my lovely wife and I will board our flight in ten minutes. However, I saw three friends of ours just now. Two boys from Big Sky and Ms. Isabella Gray.”
He paused and listened, an
d Hope saw a dull red flush climb his throat beneath the heavier, glue-on-beard he’d used as part of his disguise. After two days in his company, she knew him well enough to know that the color was anger, not embarrassment.
Which made her wonder who was on the other end of the phone. She hadn’t thought Boone was the sort to take grief from anyone.
“I don’t know where they’re going,” he answered shortly. “They went down into the private terminal. Small planes, corporate jets, that sort of thing.”
His eyes slid to her and locked on. His lips turned up slightly at the corners, twisting the makeup-covered scar tissue into something unseemly. “Good. I’m counting on you to take care of them. We can’t afford any interference.”
Chapter Six
Once the Big Sky jet was in the air, Joseph folded his arms across his massive chest, closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep.
Isabella had to believe it was genuine. Nobody would fake a snore like that on purpose.
Unfortunately she was too keyed up to sleep, which left her sitting just behind the empty copilot’s seat with a perfect profile view of the pilot. Jacob.
She tried not to watch his deft motions at the controls, tried not to strain to catch the sound of his familiar voice issuing unfamiliar call signs and cross checks.
Tried not to think of how sexy it was that he flew like a natural, as if the jet was a powerful extension of his muscled arms and legs.
Heat bloomed in her body and she turned away to focus on the paperback she’d jammed in her carry-on. Keep to yourself, Isabella, she told herself. It’s worked this long.
But a small voice deep inside questioned the mantra. If keeping to herself worked so well, how come she was cut off from the support of the Service? How come it had been so easy for her superiors to give Cooper a nod and a wink and dump her on administrative leave?
Had anyone at the home office fought for her? Had anyone even noticed she was off the active roster?
Depression settled around her like a wet, moldy blanket.
“What’s your problem?”
It took a moment for her to realize the question had come from the pilot’s seat, not her own mind. When it registered, her hackles rose. “I haven’t got a problem. What’s yours?”
“No problem. Just making conversation in my own half-assed way.” Jacob glanced back at her, then angled his head toward the copilot’s seat. “Want to ride up front?”
Why? she almost asked, unsure why he would choose that moment to talk to her when he’d made it darned clear he was avoiding deep discussions up to that point.
Maybe because they were thousands of feet above the ground, or maybe because they were alone save for Joseph’s snoring bulk.
So she didn’t ask why. Instead she took the copilot’s chair and strapped in.
She gazed out at the clouds for a moment in silence, glanced over at him to watch his strong, tanned forearms shift and bunch while he made adjustments she couldn’t even feel. His hair seemed more chestnut than brown in the afternoon sunlight above the clouds and his eyes glinted a green counterpoint to the blue sky.
Swallowing, she returned her attention to the world outside, the clouds below them. It was a strange, heady feeling to sit up front like this, she decided, and felt a flash of envy for his skill.
She pitched her voice to carry over the engine noise and through his headset. “You’re good at this.”
He glanced over, eyes unreadable. “It gives me a sense of control.”
At the word, the sentiment, her moment of contentment soured. “Right. Controlling your own life was always big with you.” She frowned. “Which is why you joined the army two weeks after we graduated.”
She instantly regretted the words and the sarcasm, knowing there was no need for them to go back there, but Jacob didn’t seem to mind. It was as though he realized they needed to have this conversation and had picked the time and place.
On his turf. The sky.
“Oh, yeah,” he answered. “The army was definitely about controlling my own life.” He punched a few buttons on the console, then leaned back and looked at her, green eyes piercing. “I don’t remember how much we talked about my parents and what they wanted for me. Conversation wasn’t really our thing.”
When he left the comment hanging, she nodded reluctantly and tried to keep her face from heating. “True.”
Their thing had been sex. Raw, primal, needy sex, the kind that had left her hungry again the moment the off-campus apartment door closed behind him, and had kept her thinking about him every moment they were apart.
Looking back, their brief relationship seemed almost unhealthy. But that many years ago, it had felt like everything and it had left her shattered when it was gone.
Luckily, she’d learned her lesson from past mistakes. She could ignore the warm flush shivering through her body at the conjured memories, and she could turn away from the ache that hit square in her chest at the sight of those agile fingers adjusting a lever here, a dial there.
She was a grown-up now. An agent. She carried a gun and had protected the First Lady of the United States. She was far removed from the needy girl who’d once hung on Jacob’s arm and begged him to stay.
Though silence had hovered between them, Jacob continued as though the conversation had never paused. “My father is a politician, my mother a politician’s wife. I was meant to be the next generation, maybe make a run all the way to the top. They had it all planned out. The poli-sci degree at Georgetown, law school, some tasteful networking…”
He trailed off and Isabella felt a low, angry burn. She thought of her mother, of the drugs and therapy that had been too little, too late. “Poor baby.”
A muscle in his jaw jumped and flexed, but he kept his attention fixed on her, his eyes on hers as though he was willing her to understand. “I know it sounds juvenile, and maybe now I’d do it differently, but back then I wanted to make my own choices, control my own decisions. The army was my choice. Special Forces was my choice. And when the Colonel left the unit…following him into Big Sky was my choice, too.”
“I get it,” Isabella said around the angry lump in her throat. “It was all about what you wanted. I was collateral damage.”
He nodded, and Isabella found herself wishing he would look away. His murky-green eyes were too direct, too honest. “I’m sorry about the way it ended. But I can’t say I’m sorry it ended. We were too much, Iz. It wasn’t healthy.”
Heat washed her cheeks at the reminder, at the truth, and she was the one to look away. She stared out the window, down where the clouds had gone from white to gray. “Lucky for us that was a long time ago. We’re not dumb kids anymore. Nothing like that could happen between us now.”
She meant it as a statement of fact. But somehow, once the words were out there, they sounded more like a challenge.
“Yeah.” He turned back to his flying. “Lucky for us.”
ONCE THEY WERE on the ground in D.C., Jacob put in a call to Cameron, as much to remind himself of the job as to catch up with any developments. While he waited for the call to connect, he tried to work through the hot burn in his chest.
Anger. He was used to it. He could handle it. Back when they’d been in the Forces together, right after Jacob had been rung up for yet another bar brawl, Cameron had sat him down and talked about anger management. Self-awareness. Control.
It was an odd lecture coming from their warrior of a leader, but it had resonated. And Jacob, who prided himself on control, realized he’d lost it somewhere along the line. From then on, he’d tried to master the quick slashes of temper, to redirect those energies into motion and action. Games. Sparring. Whatever it took. And for the most part, he’d succeeded in controlling his temper in the years since.
Until now. Sixty hours in the presence of Isabella Gray and he was ready to bite steel in two and howl at the moon.
If that wasn’t rage, what was it?
“Murphy.” Cameron answered the phone after w
hat seemed like twenty rings.
“It’s Jacob. We’ve landed fine and we’re on our way to Cooper’s office. Isabella thinks she can get past security.” When his boss didn’t reply right away, Jacob asked, “Anything on your front?”
“No, nothing,” Cam answered with a hint of frustration in his tone. “We got some prints at the clinic break-in. They’re a clean match to a pair of Boone’s men— Kane Meyers and Ray Fleming. But that’s all we’ve got. Wait…hold on a second.” There was the sound of a low, muffled conversation in the background, then Cameron’s voice returned, sharper now. “The bloodhounds hit on something just the other side of the ridge. I’m headed up there now, but I’ll get you an update as soon as I’m back in cell range.”
“Okay. Good luck,” Jacob said, trying not to feel cut off from the central action, the main hunt. He knew they needed to work this thing from both ends toward the middle, because there was no telling whether the blood- hounds’ scent would pay off. It usually didn’t, though Trevor Blackhaw handled the animals as well as anyone.
“You, too.” Cam cut the connection, leaving Jacob standing alone in the airport terminal while Isabella and Joseph held a cab outside.
He hesitated, thinking that stepping onto the curb would be like moving backward into the past. He’d spent a good chunk of his teenhood in D.C., after his father made the move to the national stage, and he’d stayed until two weeks after his graduation from Georgetown. After that, he hadn’t looked back, hadn’t returned except for the occasional holiday with his parents.
But it wasn’t their expectations, or their disapproval, that permeated his thoughts of the capital city now.
It was the woman outside. Isabella.
Jacob didn’t know what tricky twist of fate had landed them back in each other’s orbits, but he knew one thing for sure. Whether she liked it or not, whether he liked it or not, the thing that had once existed between them wasn’t dead yet. It was alive and well, as though it had simply been waiting all these years, biding its time, hiding until it could leap back out and take over his every rational thought, as it had once done.
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