Pride Of A Hunter

“That just makes it easier for him.”

Luci nodded, a resignation. “Walk me through what he’s done.”

Dom didn’t like to see defeat weigh her down like this. She’d already suffered so much. He wanted to make this as easy for her as possible, but wasn’t sure how when she’d made it so clear there was no room for him in her life and never would be. He pushed the door on the passenger’s side open. This time, she let him. “Sit a spell, Luce.”

She hesitated, then climbed into the cab, folding her long legs as far away from him as she could. Her knees pressed close together. Her hands cupped the worn-down white ovals on the knees of her jeans. Her gaze centered on her lap, as if even looking at him was unbearable. How often had he dreamed of those legs, of that hair, of her? She smelled of peppermint and something else, rosemary, maybe. He forced himself to lean away into the window rather than forward to sniff at the intriguing scent and the complex knot of emotion she tied in him.

“I need to get back to my son soon. Just give me the Cliff’s Notes on this guy.” She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “You have half an hour.”

Chapter Three

Dom reached back and pulled an envelope from behind his seat. He shuffled photographs, then handed her the top picture. The air in the cab had grown unbearably warm. Luci dragged her sweaty palms over the thighs of her jeans before she accepted the first bit of concrete proof that Jill was in danger.

“The first victim was Katheryn Chamber, twenty-six, from Seattle, Washington,” Dom said, the rhythm of his voice soothing in spite of the harsh nature of his subject. “She was a dot-com millionaire, divorced with a seven-year-old son. Her blond husband went by the name of Wade Bilski and passed himself off as a U.S. Marshal. She met him on a day cruise to Canada and married him within a month. A month later, he left her with nothing, except her house and the stock that was in her son’s name.”

Dom plucked a second photograph from the pile and slid it across the seat. “The second victim was Sharlene Vardeman, twenty-nine, from San Diego, California. The bulk of her wealth came from the division of assets after her divorce from a Napa Valley winery heir. She also had a seven-year-old son. She met Wesley Ripp at a naval hospital charity function and married him within a few weeks. Her bald Navy SEAL left her before the end of the honeymoon. All she had left was her house, her son and whatever investments she’d had in her son’s name.”

A third photo arrived in her hands. She fumbled the pass with fingers that suddenly seemed too thick to move.

Dom cleared his throat. “Victim number three was Carissa Esslinger, twenty-seven, from Portland, Oregon. She inherited her wealth and managed to keep most of it after her divorce. She also had full custody of her seven-year-old son. Wayne Edgeman, her redheaded SWAT officer, pulled her out of her crushed car after a traffic accident while he was off-duty. Three weeks later, they were married. Five days later, he was gone and so were her savings and investments, except for those in her son’s name.”

Dom passed over a fourth picture. It weighed down her palm as if it were made of lead.

“Laynie McDaniels, twenty-nine, victim number four, had the misfortune to bump into Willis Morehouse at one of her parents’ parties,” Dom continued. “He was a visiting guest brought along by an invited guest. The border agent with his black hair and dark eyes swept her off her feet while they danced. The oil heiress gave him everything he wanted, except what was in her seven-year-old son’s name. When he left her, hours after their return from their honeymoon, she chased him down and ended up dead.”

Victim number five was Jill. And Luci already had a feeling where that story was heading. “Laynie McDaniels was the first woman to die after being scammed.”

“We’re floating around two theories about her death,” Dom said, all business, as if they were back in a briefing room. That’s what she’d wanted wasn’t it? To keep this whole situation on a professional level?

“One,” he continued, “is that she feared her parents’ reaction to the squandering of her wealth and she ended her life rather than deal with the shame. Because the medical examiner’s findings were inconclusive, the cops investigating the case felt the evidence pointed in that direction. The second theory is that she found her husband in the motel room where a maid discovered her hanging body and that he killed her.”

“You told me she was killed, so you’re siding with theory number two. Any evidence?”

Dom shook his head, his jaw tightening with frustration. “None that would impress a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. If Swanson was there that night, he did a good job cleaning up after himself.”

“What about forensics at the scene?”

“An empty bottle of water in the wastebasket with Laynie’s prints on it. At least a dozen unknown fingerprints. A common, everyday shirt button that could have belonged to any of the room’s previous occupants.”

“Who booked the room?” Luci asked, her mind trying to go back to a time when this kind of questioning was second nature.

“The registration was in another woman’s name. Paid in cash.”

“Could be anybody, then.” Luci scanned Laynie’s photograph. Laynie’s dark brown eyes sparkled with joy and kindness—like Jill’s. Luci bit the inside of her cheek pensively. She couldn’t say why, but she was sure Laynie wouldn’t have abandoned her son that way. Too cruel for such a soft woman. “Which brings me back to why did he kill her?”

“If we knew that, we’d be ahead of the game. Maybe she just couldn’t let go and he felt he had to take that drastic measure to cut her off and move on.”

Something didn’t sound right. Luci flicked her braid over her shoulder. “What if she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see? He took a different name with each woman. What if she’d discovered something about his next identity? What if that’s the reason she ended up dead? If she could tell police who he was going to be next, then he couldn’t afford to let her blab. What showed up between the time her husband disappeared and the time she was found?”

“She never woke up from her coma. We never got to talk to her personally. Everything in her file, we got secondhand from her mother and her friends. I’ll let you read the interviews.”

Aware of the heat discharging from Dom’s body, she studied Laynie once again, wishing the dead woman could speak. “Did anyone look into her phone records?”

“Of course, we traced them back. Cell and landline. All her calls were to her mother. None after her teary call, saying that Willis had disappeared. We looked at her credit card purchases and came up with a gas receipt. Nothing else.” Dom handed her four other photographs—men this time.

Luci lined up each “husband’s” photo in a row. Warren had managed to keep the photographer far enough away that details were hard to extrapolate. “There’s just enough difference to make you wonder if it’s the same person or someone he happens to resemble.”

Dom’s hand brushed hers as he pointed out the differences. The heat of his skin jolted through her.

“The hairstyles and color change,” Dom said. “So does the weight. These are things he can easily manipulate.”

“But some things stay the same.” Luci frowned and focused on the photos. She didn’t have time to let herself get distracted by Dom and the shipwreck of emotions he seemed to raise from her. Jill’s future depended on her figuring out the key that unlocked Warren’s secrets.

“His eye color,” Dom said. “He could use colored contacts, but for some reason, he doesn’t. And each woman also described an Alpha Omega tattoo on his left pec.”

“Hard to hide a tattoo from someone you’re intimate with.” Luci shuddered. Intimacy. Warren had gotten Jill into bed quickly and easily. “Is that part of his pattern? Using sex to dull any alarm bells that might try to ring?”

“It’s worked five times so far.”

Luci spread each photo of the various incarnations of Warren on the dashboard. Below, she placed a picture of his victims. “None of the women look similar. They range from tall to short, from plump to skinny, from blond to brunette.”

“He’s more interested in their investments than their looks.”

“But still, there has to be some reason he picked them.”

“Opportunity’s a big part of it.”

Luci twirled the end of her braid between her fingers. “But he seems to make his own opportunities—the cruise, the party. He bumped into Jill at the country club. He has to stalk them ahead of time to know where they’re going to be, how to run into them in a way that doesn’t spook them.”

Dom raked both hands through his hair. “He likes water, so he heads for cities near the water. Bigger cities give him the cover to pop up in those places and make it look like fate.”

“That doesn’t fit Austin. Yes, it’s a city, but it’s not near water.”

“Laynie’s parents have a home on Galveston and a big yacht to cruise the gulf. That’s where he met her.”

The calm measure of his voice softened the jagged edges cutting hers, made her want to lean on him. She tried to ignore the buzz that heated her blood whenever his arm or his hand brushed close to her.

“Okay,” Luci said, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, forcing herself to focus on Warren. “So he likes water. Why? What does it mean? That he was brought up near water? Jill said he was from Florida. Is that his home base?”

“Or his base of operations.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The Social Security numbers.” Dom listed them. “They all have the same first three numbers. What state do you think that prefix belongs to?”

“Florida?” she guessed.

He nodded once. “They’re all real. They all belong to the name listed.”

“I see dead people?”

Dom’s rough bark of laughter rolled inside her like summer thunder. “No, they don’t belong to dead people—just made-up ones.”

“Okay, so he bought the Social Security numbers along with the rest of his ID in Florida or from someone with Florida connections. Florida’s a big state with a lot of shoreline. How are we going to find his point of operation?”

Dom huffed out a breath that hinted at his frustration. “We’ll keep combing the haystack until the sun hits the needle.”

That would take time Jill didn’t have. Somewhere in this information was a clue she was overlooking. Luci was sure of it. “Other than their large bank accounts, all the women had one other thing in common. A seven-year-old son.”

Dom’s mouth tightened. “The young child is part of his pattern. We’re thinking that he sees the woman having a child as making her more vulnerable, an easier mark.”

“Maybe, but I think there’s more to it. Look at the pattern. Not just any young child. Always seven-year-old boys. Never a girl. Not six or eight or twelve. Always seven. There has to be a reason.” Luci swallowed hard. The importance of that fact scraped her throat raw as it went down. “Jill has a seven-year-old boy.”

Keeping his voice calm and cool, Dom told her how he’d followed the con man’s footsteps from Texas, the place of his last con, along the coast to Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, waiting for a chance to catch him in the act. “He’s armed, Luci. He hasn’t used a weapon yet, but I’ve seen him carry.”

She blew out a breath, just as if she were getting ready to squeeze a trigger. She’d tried to outrun herself, but beneath the harried suburbanite there still hid an expert marksman. He just had to remind her she’d once loved the hunt for justice.

“Do you know who he really is?” she asked, staring out the window as if she were scouting for the enemy.

“No. I’m still trying to work back to that.”

She shifted her attention to his face. Her braid slinked forward over her shoulder like pale gold silk. The heat of her gaze burned all the way to his gut. He forced his shoulders to relax, his face to remain neutral, his pulse to slow.

An orange-streaked sky blazed behind her. The breeze ruffled the rough shear of the bangs that framed her eyes. His fingers itched to brush the strands back, to tangle with the wispy softness of her hair. He slipped his fingers beneath his thighs and waited.

“So what next?” she asked, gaze flicking back out the windshield of the truck.

The rules of negotiation were simple enough: know your opponent, understand the challenge, introduce new alternatives, set the rules and go for the agreement. He knew Luci, all right, knew what made her tick, what made her laugh, what made her cry. He understood that after Cole’s death she’d tried to reinvent herself, that nothing could be the same. So he had to concentrate on her love for her family, on her worry for Jill, on her need to preserve her personal circle of safety. He had to make sure he gave her the opportunity to suggest alternatives. Working indirectly would work better with someone strong like Luci. And he somehow had to get her to agree to let him step back into her life, even though every minute in his presence would remind her of Cole and the way he’d died.

“Well, here’s the stickler,” Dom said, keeping his voice flat. “Even with a file full of this guy’s predation, there isn’t a D.A. in the country who’ll want to take on the case unless I can prove he had criminal intent going in. Now you and I know that all he sees in Jill is dollar signs, but the D.A. feels the court will see only a fighting couple disagreeing on distribution of wealth. Not much sympathy for either party there from a jury. No D.A. will take on a case he doesn’t feel he can win.”

“If they can’t get him on the scam, why don’t they get him on identity fraud?”

Dom shrugged. “He doesn’t steal his IDs. He builds them. Here, too, I need proof of criminal intent to defraud.”

She flipped her braid back with a quick jerk of her hand. “So you’re saying there’s nothing we can do.”

“There’s plenty we can do, but we’ll have to be imaginative about it. Now if I come in and confront this guy with accusations, no matter how many pieces of paper I can pull out of my file to prove my point, what do you think’s going to happen?”

Luci waved about an invisible magic wand. “Presto, change-o, gone.”

“Right. And I’d have to start all over again. So here’s my quandary. How do I get close to a man who doesn’t want to get close to anyone but his pigeon?”

Gaze narrowed, she still scoured the soccer fields and the edge of oaks and pines beyond as if she expected some sort of monster to pop up. “You play his game. You get someone else, who isn’t seen as a threat, to introduce you.”

“Now you’ve got it.”

A muscle rippled on Luci’s tension-tight cheek. “And that’s me.”

“I need to get close to him, Luce. If I show up as your friend, he won’t suspect I’m on his tail. He’ll buy my presence and my attempt at friendliness. And if I stop him now, he won’t hurt anyone else.”

“How’s that going to work? If he’s as good as you say he is, won’t he just look you up and know you’re lying? After all, Jill says he’s a private detective.”

“Not the way I’ve got things set up.”

“Are you using a pseudonym?” The skin on her knuckles was getting redder, the tips of her fingers whiter.

She may want to pretend she didn’t care, but she did. And not just for Jill; for Swanson’s possible next victim, too. “Easier to use my own name in this case because we have football in common. Gives us a starting position for conversation. Nothing shows I don’t want to. What he’ll find is that I’m an insurance salesman from Houston. He’ll see I was just transferred to Holliday & Houghlin in Nashua.”

“Won’t he find a real estate deed for your current residence?”

“Nope, it’s under a corporation name. On paper, Dominic Skyralov doesn’t own a thing. Even this truck is a brand-new rental.”

“So where am I supposed to say you’re staying?” Her voice was pricklier than a bed of cacti.

“Well, darlin’, that’s where imagination comes in.”

Eyes wide with panic, she jerked her head in his direction. Old hostilities bubbled up and spilled over. “No, absolutely not. I’m not inviting you to stay at my home. I have a young son to think about. That won’t work.”

Dom slung an arm carelessly over the back of the seat, trying to keep his body relaxed and nonthreatening. “Swanson’s last mark is dead.”

“Then stay with Jill. She’s the one in danger. Not me.”

“I don’t think Swanson’d be too happy about that. He seems like the jealous type, especially now that he’s so close to his prize.”

“So how do I explain your presence in my home?”

Dom shrugged. “We’re old friends, and you’re letting me use your couch until I find a place to settle down. She’s at the falling in love stage—everything is rosy and perfect. He’s a good talker. Look at what he’s already talked her into doing and he bumped into her only two weeks ago.”

Watching Luci struggle with the conflict of hatred and love, of duty and fear, pulling her in two directions, cut hard. The last thing he’d wanted was to hurt her.

“Okay,” she said, “come with me to dinner on Saturday.”

Relief sagged the tense muscles of his stomach. “That’s all I want, Luce. A chance to stop him before anyone else gets hurt.”

She reached for the door and pushed it open. “Tell me what information you need. I’ll get it for you while you talk to him.”

“I’ll need Jill’s identifiers and the number of any account he could deplete. I’ll have our computer expert put a flag on them. We’ll be able to tell when he starts pilfering and catch him red-handed.”

“Okay.”

She started to scoot out and he held her back, the warm feel of her sweatshirt a treat for his fingers.

“Saturday dinner,” she said, a cloud of pain dulling the green of her eyes. “That’s all I can commit to right now.”

“Well, darlin’, at this point, I’ll take anything I can get.” Even if it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy him.

Her clogs crushed the gravel as she exited the truck. She looked him up and down. “Do you own anything other than jeans? My parents’ll be there, too, and they don’t approve of denim.”

He let a grin bloom on one side of his face. “Tell you what, I’ll even shower and shave. It’ll be nice to see your folks again.” The only time he’d met them was at Cole’s funeral—not the best of circumstances. They’d probably forgotten the handshake and condolences. Cole had had so many friends, in and out of the Marshalls Service.

She shut the door, and letting her walk away, even after such a short time, hurt all over again.

After a few steps, she turned back, the ghosts of the past flitting in her eyes. “I was just getting over August, Dom. Why’d you have to come back?”

Dom stared at her eyes, reflecting his own demons back at him, then glanced away like a guilty man. Because August still weighed on his conscience, too. Cole’s death was his fault and he couldn’t bear the thought of her in pain again over someone she loved—or that he couldn’t be the man to comfort her. “To keep you safe and happy, Luce. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

DARK SURROUNDED HER, sucked at her, dragged her under. Her breath rasped in her ears. Sweat stuck T-shirt to skin, holding her prisoner in that airless black beneath the sheets. The more she fought, the tighter the bonds got, the thinner the air got. The smell of cordite and blood stung her nostrils, pinched her lungs. The ring of discharge scrambled her brain.

But even as she fought the dark, she pleaded for its protective cover. It never listened. The darkness always cleared, bringing soul-ripping pain that doubled her over with nausea.

Man down! Man down!

Cole. Right there in her scope. So close. So far away. His brown hair sticky with red. His brown eyes wide with surprise, lifeless. His blood a halo around his head. Dead.

Keeping him safe had been her job and she’d failed. When it had really mattered, all the training, all the practice, all the preparation had fallen short.

A fraction of a second. A millimeter of space.

And the man she’d loved was gone.

Her mistake. No matter how she looked at it. Her fault.

She’d proved in the most graphic of ways she wasn’t good enough.

She’d thought of giving up, of letting the darkness take her along with Cole, but Cole, with his life-lived-to-the-utmost wish, would have disapproved. Then there was Brendan, the tiny seed there in her belly.

Cole hadn’t known. She barely had.

For a while, she’d only gone through the motions, been nothing but a living dead. Dom’s voice, always Dom’s voice, calm and cool, trying to talk her back into the horrid world she’d created.

Her husband was dead. His child grew in her womb. So she did the only thing she could; she ran.

She ran from city to city, looking for something, anything that would connect her to a sense of support. But every time she’d thought she’d found salvation, it crumbled beneath her feet, leaving her weaker than before. She couldn’t outrun the ghosts. They chased her everywhere—her mother’s reproach, her husband’s bloody body, her friend’s hypnotic voice.

Then Brendan was born and she’d had to find a higher level of functioning for his sake. Moving from place to place had made no sense. So she’d come home. The farm and its constant need for toil had saved her.

Living still hurt. But she was holding her little world together and Brendan was growing up into a happy boy with a zest for life as big as his father’s. She would do everything in her power to keep him safe.

A glance at the clock’s red numbers showed her she’d gotten a few hours’ worth of sleep. She tossed off the sweat-dampened sheet and blanket. Four in the morning wasn’t that early. From experience she knew sleep was done for the night. Lying in bed would mean sleeping with ghosts.

Bleary-eyed, she made her way to the bathroom with its sea-colored tiles and crawled under the showerhead, letting warm water wash away the sticky filaments of her nightmare.

She had enough goat’s milk left over to cook up a batch of soap. Might as well get started. She had the pesto, herb logs and vinaigrette she’d made last night to deliver later this morning. Maybe she’d make an outing out of it and take Brendan out for pancakes at The Sugar Barn. Then she had the breeding for Fanny, Faye and Fiona, her dairy goats, to arrange, the green manure to sow in her gardens and the greenhouses to finish setting up. Not to mention the torte she’d promised to bake for Jill’s shindig this afternoon. If she were lucky, she’d be tired enough to sleep again tonight.

Luci buffed her body dry with a towel, left the bathroom and slipped on a sweatshirt and work jeans. Her head pounded in a drum that beat in time to the queasy roll in her stomach. Work would take care of that; it always did.

Before going downstairs, she peeked in on Brendan. Maggie, sleeping at the foot of the bed, lifted her head and banged her tail against the footboard in a way that said, “Guilty as charged. Can I stay?”

Brendan was lying sheets akimbo as if he’d fought off an army of dream monsters. Cole had been like that, too, active even in sleep. With his eyes closed, her son looked like his father—spikes of dark hair, a ready-to-smile mouth, a stubborn square chin that told the world he knew what he wanted and no one was going to get in his way. The only thing Brendan had inherited from her was his green eyes. His looks made forgetting Cole impossible. But none of her guilt would taint her son if she could help it.

Without turning on a light, she made her way down the stairs to the kitchen, where she slipped on her barn clogs and grabbed a flashlight from the windowsill. Outside, September chill wriggled its fingers into the weave of her sweatshirt, raising goose bumps. Soon, the first killing frost would come. She had a lot of work to do before then.

As she stepped into the yard, more than the coolness of the night shivered down her spine. Something or someone had disturbed the equilibrium of her farm’s peaceful atmosphere. She flashed her light around the yard, but could see nothing out of place.