Читать книгу The Bounty Hunter's Bride - Sandra Steffen, Sandra Steffen - Страница 11

Chapter Three

That sparkle was still in Josie’s eyes three days later. And Kane was still suspicious. He’d been practicing the fine art of holding the opposite sex at bay for years. Women in general didn’t make it easy. Josie was more difficult than most.

Now that he was stronger, he’d put a stop to her offers to lend a helping hand. He bathed himself, dressed himself, even took his turn cleaning up after breakfast, lunch and supper. There had been no more dance lessons, no more anything lessons. Every once in a while he’d detected what he’d thought was a waning on her part. He was pretty sure she’d given up completely when he’d turned down her far-from-innocent ploy to play strip poker earlier that morning. Now, she seemed more intent upon asking questions than luring him into bed. It was a hard call, but when push came to shove, Kane believed it was far easier to answer her questions than deter her amorous overtures.

“I don’t get it,” she said, studying the checkerboard between them. “If you want to catch bad guys, why not become a police officer? King me.”

Kane turned her checker over dazedly. Studying his next move, he said, “In this age of attorneys and individual rights, police officers’ hands are tied. Besides, police departments don’t have the time or the resources to chase missing suspects down.”

“By resources, you mean money,” she said.

At his nod, she asked, “How much does it cost to capture one of these fugitives?”

Kane lifted his gaze from the board, only to find Josie’s eyes down-turned. “The average fee for taking a fugitive off the street is five hundred dollars. High profile cases can net anywhere from ten to eighty thousand dollars for an arrest. Those are my specialty.”

She shrugged as if thoroughly unimpressed. “Is that why you do it? For the money?”

He shook his head. “I do it because somebody has to. And because I’m good at it. I have a good head on my shoulders and I’ve learned how a wanted fugitive thinks.”

“Have you ever killed anybody?”

That was a question a lot of people asked. Sliding his black checker to the next square, he shook his head. “In the old days a bounty hunter would track and corner his prey. More often than not the confrontation ended in gunfire. It’s much safer today.”