Читать книгу Bullseye - Jessica Andersen - Страница 11

An hour later Isabella, Jacob and two other bounty hunters headed to the Golf Resort for a recon. She let Jacob drive her rented Jeep, not because she’d felt particularly shaky, but because she’d lacked the energy to argue when he insisted.

And because the situation was so damned weird.

In the first few years after she and Jacob had gone their separate ways, one part of her had hated him like poison while another had dreamed of their reunion, how he would one day realize they’d had something special together, something he couldn’t find with anyone else.

Unfortunately the reverse had been true. Over the months and years, Isabella’s hatred had dimmed and she’d come to realize that he’d been right about some of the things he’d said. They’d been too young, their relationship too intense to do anything but burn itself out. She’d forgiven him for that, but not for the way he’d ended it, the way he’d gotten drunk, picked a fight, picked up a girl, and the next day tried to blame it all on her.

He’d faded from her conscious mind as she progressed from the Criminal Investigations Training Program in Georgia to the Secret Service Training Academy in Maryland. By the time she’d gotten herself established in her first field office, Jacob had become little more than a memory of the all-consuming, scary emotions that she tried like hell to avoid.

And she had. For almost thirteen years she’d avoided emotional hot flashes and brain-scrambling entanglements. She’d built herself a solid, steady life. It wasn’t predictable—how could the Protections Division ever be that?—and it wasn’t always safe—but the danger she’d encountered had always came from without, never within.

Until now.

When she’d made the decision to drive to the Big Sky headquarters, she’d told herself she could handle seeing Jacob again. But she wasn’t sure she could handle the wild emotions that had bubbled to the surface the moment she’d seen him, the moment she’d touched him.

She was supposed to have outgrown those feelings, damn it.

“Your head bothering you?”

She jolted at the sound of his voice, then consciously smoothed out her frown. “No. It’s fine.” She pointed at a passing sign. “Turn in here, the resort is a mile and a half up on the left. Use the second entrance. Secretary Cooper stayed in the Presidential Chalet.”

Which was sadly ironic, given that men wearing ex-presidents’ faces had taken his family.

“No problem.” He threaded the Jeep through the winding roads as though he knew exactly where he was going.

Which he probably did, she realized with faint discomfort. He’d lived in the area for close to five years now, and undoubtedly knew these roads better than she did.

But he hadn’t snapped when she’d bossed him with the directions. He would have before, she thought, then cursed under her breath. She needed to stop comparing the Jacob of today with the one she’d known in college.

“Problem?” His single word settled between them, asking so many more things than it should have.

She let out a frustrated breath. “Yeah. Problem. But it’s my problem, not yours.”

He followed the signs toward the chalet where Secretary Cooper and his family had stayed. Isabella shivered when they passed between the monstrous stone pillars edged with copper filigree. At Jacob’s sharp look, she shrugged. “The last time I turned through here, Secretary Cooper was playing patty-cake with one of the girls in the back of the limo. Hope and I were chatting about the area. It was normal. Relaxed.” Or as relaxed as she allowed herself to be on the job.

Jacob parked the Jeep in front of the chalet and waited while the SUV containing the other bounty hunters parked off to the side. Then he turned, looked at her too closely and said, “It wasn’t your fault, Isabella.”

Something shifted in her chest and her eyes burned. She wanted to lean into him, to crawl against him. Weakness. He was her weakness, the man who brought tricky emotions too near the surface and made her want to burrow in and cling.

Hating the frailty, the temptation, she climbed out of the Jeep and slammed the door hard enough to attract the attention of the other bounty hunters. Rather than explain—especially since she couldn’t even explain it to herself—she said, “Right after he relieved me of my duties, Secretary Cooper made arrangements to return to Washington. The cleaning crew won’t be in until tomorrow, so everything should be undisturbed. But I didn’t find anything in the quick run-through I was able to make before Cooper kicked me out, and I’ll bet he picked the place up so there wouldn’t be any suspicion. He’s committed to doing everything the kidnappers have demanded, particularly keeping the authorities out of this.”

It tugged at her that a man of Cooper’s stature and conviction could be so badly compromised by a threat to his family. A threat that never should have come to pass.

“Let’s get on with it.” A dark-haired, heavily muscled hunter named Tony hefted a case that looked like a souped-up crime scene field kit. “We need to be in and out before dawn.”

Isabella nodded shortly. “Come on.” She unlocked the front door with her key and pushed into the chalet before the hesitation could form. She didn’t want to look at the bullet-stung sofa and imagine Hope and the girls, didn’t want to look at the dining room table, hastily righted and reorganized, and remember seeing Louis Cooper bound to a chair, unmoving. But it was those images that, hopefully, would provide a clue.

Mike and Tony moved into the chalet for a preliminary sweep. They didn’t touch anything right away, instead getting an overall feeling of the scene of the crime, which should have had technicians swarming over it with state-of-the-art equipment instead of one lame duck agent and three bounty hunters.

Isabella felt an uncharacteristic, unwelcome press of tears at how quickly this had gone down, how completely her work—and Louis Cooper’s life—had been derailed. She swallowed hard and flinched when Jacob touched her arm.

She glanced at him and saw that his eyes asked, Are you okay? But out loud, he said, “How did they get in? Break a window in the back?”

“No.” The bitter failure of it burned her throat. “I looked. They didn’t break a damned thing. One minute everything was fine and the next they were inside my perimeter setting off a flash-bang in the living room. How?” She spread her hands to indicate confusion. Anger churned in her gut. “Damned if I know. I had the locks changed last week, and motions set around the far perimeter. They shouldn’t have been able to get through.”

He stared past her as the two other bounty hunters moved from room to room, turning on the lights as they went. The illumination lent a strangely cheerful glow to the empty space. “Maybe they got the new keys from someone on the inside,” Jacob said.

“Probably. Damn it.” Isabella forced herself to move into the dining room and look around, though she’d done so not seven hours earlier while Secretary Cooper had made his travel arrangements with shaking hands, then made a second call that effectively cut her off at the knees by subtly claiming she’d been acting irrational.

Irrational, my ass.

She felt the old, familiar anger and gritted her teeth. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

They searched the chalet from top to bottom, but Cooper had been thorough. He’d removed the tape from the old-fashioned answering machine, wiped the flash-bang soot off the walls and even flipped the torn leather cushion, which set off soft warning bells in the back of her mind.

It seemed like awfully clear thinking for a man whose family had been kidnapped.

But what was the alternative? That the kidnappers had come back afterward to clean the chalet? Unlikely.

So, senses heightened, she moved from room to room, searching again and watching the men of Big Sky perform a thorough forensic scan. Cameron Murphy’s bounty hunters had the reputation of being the best at what they did—and their skills were many and varied.

Not that she’d checked them out, or anything.

Then again, who was she kidding? She was preternaturally aware of Jacob’s every move, his quiet words to the others.

And that just ticked her off more. No doubt he hadn’t spared her another thought after they split. He certainly hadn’t tried to get in touch over the years.

Cursing inwardly, she redirected her thoughts, tossed the bedroom as thoroughly as she could, and sucked in a breath when she unearthed a squeaky duck from behind the bureau. It was purple, which meant it was Tiffany’s. The twins were nearly identical in looks and attitude, but Tiff loved purple and Becky preferred yellow.

God, she thought, please let them be okay.

She wanted to throw the cheerful little duck against the wall and howl at the injustice. She wanted to cuddle it close and pray for the babies and their mother.

Instead she set the toy on the bed and kept searching.

“I’VE GOT NOTHING.” Jacob glanced over his shoulder at Mike, who was meticulously dusting the door handle that lead out to the back porch. “You?”

“Wiped clean.” The normally garrulous Clark straightened from his task with an it’s-late-and-I’m-tired groan. “This is a bust. Let’s get your woman and get out of here.”

“She’s not my woman,” Jacob snapped with a quick, vicious bite of temper toward a man he considered a friend—if a slightly creepy one.

“If you say so.” Mike shrugged, but his eyes were sharp on Jacob’s face. On his stance.

“And don’t try to read me, either,” Jacob growled. “I’m not a suspect.”

“I don’t try to read anyone, I read them. And do you want to know what I see right now? I see—”

“No!” Jacob leaned down and got in the other man’s face. “I absolutely don’t want to know. I don’t believe in that hocus-pocus cr—”

“Jacob?” Isabella said from behind him. “Am I interrupting?”

He spun toward the arched doorway and the anger morphed again, this time into something hot and greedy. Something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time and didn’t welcome. “Yes, damn it, you’re—” Interrupting, he started to say but made himself bite the words off.

It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t deal with seeing her again. But just as seeing her on the television screen had immediately jarred him out of whack, having her an arm’s length away was…too tempting.

He was trying to handle it. Damn it, he was handling it. But he wasn’t handling the quick return of his oldest enemy—anger. He hated that she’d brought back that same sense of being trapped, of being out of control.

God, he hated this. And it wasn’t even her fault. Hell, from the looks of her, cool as a Montana stream, she wasn’t feeling a tenth of what he was. Which made it his problem, not hers.

So he took a breath and leveled his tone. “No, you’re not interrupting. We’re finished in here. We’ve got nothing. You?”

She shook her head and her auburn hair followed the motion in a slide of color and softness. “I didn’t find anything, but Tony wants you two at the back door.”

“Let’s go.” Glad to have something to do, Jacob gestured for her to go first, a bit of manners ingrained by his mother—or rather by the fleet of nannies, dance instructors and protocol experts she’d hired to shape her son into a civilized man like his father.

It had all been another level of control, one he’d gloried at escaping in college and broken free of just after, though he’d left a part of himself behind.

And wasn’t sure how to get it back. Wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Yet at the same time, the mossy-eyed woman with the rich auburn hair pulled at him, made him want to be a different man than the one he’d made himself. Because he didn’t know how to deal with that, or with her, he ignored Isabella to crouch beside Tony in the foyer just inside the back door. “What have you got?”

The lean, black-haired bounty hunter used the blunt end of a scoopula—a tool that had a sharp blade on one end, a small rounded scoop on the other—to scrape a clump of dirt off the rattan mat. “Maybe nothing. But maybe something. I’m betting the latter.”

“Tell me.” Jacob gestured for Mike to join him and stiffened when Isabella elbowed her way into the huddle.

“Look at it very closely.” Tony held the small metal scoop up to the artificial light coming from an elegant chandelier above them. “What do you see?”

Jacob squinted. “Dirt?”

“Not just dirt.” Isabella pressed closer to the sample, nearly leaning across Jacob’s lap. “There’s something else in there. Something green?”

Jacob gritted his teeth and tried like hell not to breathe, but her scent enveloped him, swamped him, surprised him. It was nothing like the flowers-and-sun-shine perfume he remembered from before. This was a woman’s scent, sharp and spicy and take-no-prisoners.

Like Isabella herself.

“Exactly,” Tony said. “That’s oxidized copper ore you’re seeing, which means…”

Isabella leaned even closer, so her upper arm and the side of one breast pressed against Jacob’s shoulder. He ground his teeth and shifted away as she said, “Which means it could have come from one of the mining areas.” She sat back, frowning, and Jacob took a breath that was tainted with her essence, even though she wasn’t crowding his space anymore. “But how does that help us? There are hundreds of mines in this state.”

“True.” Tony smiled, his too handsome face folding into creases and dimples that never failed to attract the ladies.

Knowing it, and knowing Tony’s love-’em-and-leave-’em philosophy, Jacob angled his body between Isabella and the other bounty hunter and snarled, “So why are you grinning like this dirt is a clue?”

“Because,” Tony answered easily, “I’ve got degrees in geology and topology. I know my dirt. Copper was only mined in one area of the state, about two hours north of here. There are maybe a half dozen shafts, all within short drives of each other.”

“You think it’s worth chasing dirt?” Mike asked dubiously. “What if Cooper brought it in on his shoes? Or maybe one of the security folks? No offense, Agent Gray.” He nodded at Isabella.

She shrugged. “It’s Isabella, and no offense taken. But I can guarantee it wasn’t from the secretary or his family—they haven’t gone sight-seeing since we arrived. Hope…” Jacob saw her swallow after the name, but when she spoke again, her voice was firm. Unemotional. “Hope preferred to shop. And it wasn’t the local cops. They weren’t allowed in the chalet. I was the only one on internal security.”

Tony cut his gaze back to Mike. “So our best guess is that the dirt came along with the kidnappers. And if the kidnappers really do represent the MMFAFA…”

“Then our bounty could be hiding in or near one of these copper mines.” Jacob felt the beginning of a connection form in his brain. The beginnings of excitement. Hell, they might be onto something here.

“Bingo.” Tony dumped the sample into a small screw-top jar. “So the way I see it, we need to do two things. One, we head over to the mine area—it’ll be dawn by the time we get there—and search as many as we can. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If not, we can take samples from each site and I’ll run some basic comparisons. Once we’ve identified where the fugitives have been, we can plant some surveillance equipment.”

“Good idea.” Mike straightened to his feet. “Vermin usually return to their burrows.”

Jacob stood, as well, and offered Isabella a hand with his family’s good manners. She ignored him and rose unassisted. He scowled and told himself to focus on the job. Which reminded him of something. “And don’t forget about the break-in at the clinic.”

When the other bounty hunters turned to stare, he cursed. How could he have forgotten about that?

Isabella had arrived, that was how. Since the first moment he’d seen her that evening he’d been running on half a brain, with the other half stuck in remember when mode. Or, more honestly, remember when combined with a healthy dose of lust that had very little to do with past history and everything to do with the fact that Isabella had grown from a hot college babe to a striking woman who still had the power to unglue his brain.

And if he’d resented the power she had over him thirteen years earlier, he mistrusted it even more now. He was a grown man. She didn’t have the right to make him feel this way.

Yet in fairness, she had done nothing untoward. It was all him. His weakness. His anger. His lack of control.

“Jacob? You said something about a clinic?” Her husky voice cut through the confusion.

“Sorry.” He took a breath and forced himself to focus on the job. On his bounty. That was what he was now, a bounty hunter. He was proud of the work, and as an added bonus, his parents remained genteelly horrified by his career choice. “I e-mailed a friend over at the dispatcher’s office earlier tonight, to see if she had news on the fugitives. She said one of the local walk-in clinics was tossed earlier this evening. You add that to Isabella’s report that she shot one of the kidnappers in the leg, and we might have something.”

“You’re darned right we might.” Tony clapped Jacob on the shoulder nearly hard enough to send him flying. “Let’s head for the mines. I don’t think there’s anything else to see here.”

When the other men gathered their kits and headed for the front door, Jacob hung back. “You guys go ahead and update the others. I’m going to take Isabella to headquarters for some rest. I’ll meet you out at the mines.”

“The hell you will!” She rounded on him. “You’ve already been outvoted once on this issue. Do we really need to discuss it again? Like it or not, I’m working with you on this case. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t even have these leads if I hadn’t brought them to you.”

“That’s right.” Jacob scowled and stepped in until he could feel her body heat. “But let’s also not forget that you came to me. You’re cut off, discredited and counting on us for help. So you could try being a bit more cooperative.” She paled at his words and Jacob cursed inwardly. What was it about her that made him so mean?

Fighting the urge to grab on and shake some sense into her, he softened his voice, though he was acutely aware of the others listening with avid interest. “Be reasonable, Iz. You’ve had a hell of a day. You’re bruised, battered and probably concussed. And how much sleep have you gotten in the last couple of days? It can’t have been easy arranging the protection solo.” He continued before she could snap back at him. “You need rest and aspirin. You need to shut it off for a few hours, or you’ll be no good to us or to your protectees.”

He saw the war in her eyes, the need to dig her heels in fighting with the logic.

Logic finally won. Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right, but I don’t like it.”

“Nobody said you had to.” Jacob jerked his head at Mike and Tony, sending them on their way, and resisted the urge to reach out to Isabella when she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

“Every time I slow down, every time I blink, I see Hope and the girls. I see the look in Louis Cooper’s eyes when he woke up and realized they were gone. The expression on his face when he heard that message.” She pushed away from the wall. “But you’re right. I need to grab a few hours.” Her lips curved. “You won’t even need to lock me in while you and the others search the mines. I’ll sleep a bit on your couch, then call in a few favors I’m owed by people who might not have heard about my suspension yet.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He gestured her toward the front door and turned off the remainder of the interior lights. “And, Isabella?”

“Yes?” She paused just inside the front door and turned back to him. The outdoor light cast her in shadow, emphasizing the bruise on her cheek and the dark circles beneath her eyes that made her look young. Vulnerable. Sad.

He shrugged and felt his clothes bind as though they didn’t fit quite right. I’m glad you came to me, he wanted to say, because it scared him to think of her out there alone, searching for Boone Fowler and his men, who would skin her as soon as look at her.

Because of that fear, and because he was suddenly swamped with the irrational desire to pull her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, he scowled and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Never mind. Let’s get out of here. We can send someone back tomorrow to question the staff. There had to be an insider with access to the keys and the security system.”

She nodded and slipped through the front door as though grateful to be away from the emptiness of the chalet. He couldn’t blame her. It was damned eerie how all that violence had been wiped away with a hasty cleaning.

Feeling a small shiver prickle the nape of his neck, Jacob snapped off the last light to plunge them into deep darkness. He closed the front door, which locked behind them, and shivered for real as the September cold sliced through his leather jacket.

It might still be pleasant during the day, but the nights were getting harsher. Snow was on the way. Winter.

“Brr.” Isabella rubbed warmth into her arms. At least he thought she did. In the deep night before dawn, he barely saw the motion, though the cold and the dark seemed to amplify the sound of rustling cloth and the whisper of skin over skin.

“Here.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders, which were just barely visible as a lighter shape against the dark. He probably should have left the front light on, but they’d wanted to leave the chalet as they had found it—abandoned. “Don’t argue,” he said sharply when she protested. “Just take it, okay? It’s freezing.”