Heart Of The Hunter

Mitch glanced at Jeb’s clenched hands. “To lose a friend.”

“I lost him a long time ago.”

“I know.” Mitch ignored the bitterness. “But for a while, he was more than just a friend. He was a good friend.”

Jeb hesitated, then agreed. “The best.” The admission rose out of regret.

“What was he like?”

The sloop rocked with the lazy undulations of the water, a rope scrubbed against a cleat, and Jeb pondered. How did he explain Tony? Could he?

He began with the truth, as he knew it. “Tony could have been any of us, yet, at the same time he was different, one of a kind. He was wild, funny, nearly as intelligent as his sister, and a charming rogue in the bargain. Whatever he did was always on a grander scale. He was the ‘baddest’ boy, flirting with danger. Skirting the edge, closer than any of the rest of us dared, yet he was never beyond redemption. At least not until the last.

“He had the charisma bad boys do. Women and men were drawn to him. Young, old and in between, they loved him.” Jeb flexed his fingers, then closed them again into a fist. “I loved him. We were rivals and friends, and brothers. The sons of Apollo.”

A wry smile jerked his lips in a grim twist. “Sounds ludicrous now, but then, when we lived to surf and play, the one thing that was as important was our brotherhood.”

Mitch rumbled a wordless communion of empathy. The bond and trust of friendships were rare as he’d fought and clawed to survive the streets of the underbelly of New Orleans. But now he understood. The Watch had taught him. “You never saw anything?”

“To indicate what he really was?” Jeb looked down at the teakwood deck where shadows danced. “No.” With an abrupt shrug that conveyed an absolute contempt he amended, “Nothing that concerned me as much as it should have. I was too busy raising hell to be clever.”

“But there was something,” Mitch persisted. There had to be. Something to explain this self-directed guilt.

“Maybe. If you call a look or the lack of reaction something. Nicole nearly drowned trying to do something he goaded her into, and it didn’t upset him. I don’t think he cared at all. After that, when he didn’t know anyone was looking, his eyes would go flat, totally empty. Then he would laugh.”

“As if he were putting you on. Fooling the world.”

“He was. But we all thought we were. There were six of us, surfers first, thrill-seekers second. Anything else dead last. What we did was stupid, and, for the most part, innocuous. But I suppose it was inevitable there would be trouble.”

“Drugs.”

“By the grace of God, not my great common sense, I was involved only by association.”

“The rest was by the grace of Simon,” Mitch interjected.

The grace of Simon. Jeb hadn’t heard it put quite like that before. But as rough and gruff and unrelenting as Simon could be, the analogy described, perfectly, an element common to most of the stories of the men of The Black Watch.

“Tony and I were already drifting apart,” Jeb continued, and realized it was as much catharsis for himself as response to Mitch. “I can’t give a specific reason. Yet, for the first time, I wasn’t really sure of him. He was exonerated on the drug charge, but I wondered.”

A shrug pulled his denim shirt close over the muscles of his shoulders and chest. A gold bracelet flashed on his wrist as he tugged a button free. “Maybe it was just happening. The natural progression of finally growing up. Who can say? Whatever the reason, graduation and Simon delivered the coup de grace.”

Mitch chuckled, a sound at odds with the tone of their conversation. “I know the drill. He dragged you out of trouble by the scruff of your neck, damned you for a fool, slapped your wrist, then, before you knew it you were signed, sealed, recruited and committed.”

“Something like that.”

“Then The Watch became your life. No friends beyond its ranks. No lovers as important.” Mitch waved an arm toward shore. “Just this.”

He left Jeb to consider for himself the hours of work, the study, the subterfuge. A killer who had been a friend. An intriguing woman who might, or might not, be as innocent as she seemed.

Discovering there was no more to say, they sat in silence, each bound in his own thoughts of children and killers of children. Jeb knew rage seethed beneath Mitch’s laconic comment. Someone had hurt a child—no, not someone, Tony had hurt a child. Another child.

Mitch would remember, and Tony wouldn’t forget.

A trill of laughter rose from some faraway deck. The lantern gutted and died. Mitch stretched, yawned and rubbed his hand over his jaw. A gesture infinitely weary. Lurching to his feet, he yawned again. “I think I better get some shut-eye before I relieve the medicine man of his duty at the lady’s house.”

The medicine man, Matthew Sky. With his phenomenal night vision, it was without fail a foregone assumption he would take the night watch. Matthew never complained and, like Mitch, slept little.

“You gonna hang around?”

Not for the first time since he’d arrived bearing the news of Julie Brown, and battling his own sleeplessness, Jeb saw the toll the long hours had taken on his friend and colleague. Sliding back his chair, he stood, as well. “I’m heading back to the house.”

“To get some sleep?”

“Maybe.”

Mitch was too tired to argue. Three men, four if Bishop were included, made for a wretchedly small unit, spreading the duties heavily among them. It was Simon’s call. Callison was smart, as intuitive as a cat. One man too many would flag his suspicions, and they could lose him completely.

They weren’t the first of The Black Watch to work, virtually, around-the-clock. They wouldn’t be the last.

At the steps leading below deck and to his bunk, Mitch paused. “Cap?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever regretted it? What Simon did to your life, I mean.”

Jeb stroked his jaw, much as Mitch had. Two dedicated men, on the brink of exhaustion, facing truths. Perhaps for the first time. “Not often, and then not for long.”

Mitch’s head jerked in assent, a crooked smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Neither have I, but don’t tell the old fox. Wouldn’t want him to be too cocky about it, would we?”

Jeb chuckled and waited. There was more.

“It wasn’t insomnia that brought you to the Gambler.”

No admission met the statement. No denial.

“There were things you needed to resolve about the little girl and Nicole.”

Jeb’s amusement vanished. “Some.”

“Water’s like fire, it soothes the brain and clears the mind.”

“It does that.”

“You know he killed her. Julie Brown, I mean.”

“I know.”

“Damn his black heart! A child!” Mitch’s voice was strangled. “He just picked her at random, in the most unlikely place.”

“A red herring.” The words were mild, the look on Jeb’s face was not. “He’s laying a false trail, to confuse and confound whoever might be looking for him.”

“Then you believe he’s coming?”

“Now more than ever. The last contract, Jimmy Merino’s son, shut the door to his usual contacts. Now both sides of the law want him. He has nowhere to turn but Nicole.”

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