Bullseye

At least she thought she shouted the words. She couldn’t hear a thing over the buzzing and the rush of blood through her body.

Three men charged into the room, heavily armed and running low. Their faces were cloaked in rubber Halloween masks of former Presidents Johnson, Clinton and Nixon, which gave the scene a surreal feel.

Nixon and LBJ reached for Secretary Cooper.

“Get away from him!” Isabella yanked up her weapon and fired in one smooth move, but her target jerked aside at the last possible moment. The shot ricocheted off the fieldstone fireplace in the sunken living room and spent itself in a bullhide sofa.

She squeezed off a second round and hit Nixon in the leg. He cursed and went down as she struggled to her feet.

Clinton rushed at her. “Bitch!”

She spun in a dizzy circle and fumbled to bring her weapon up even as the knowledge beat in her veins— I’ve got to protect Cooper and his family.

Her third shot went wild. LBJ closed in from the other side, reversed his weapon and swung it at her head in a deadly arc. She aimed between his eyes and—

Blackness.

IN HIS SMALL OFFICE on the second floor of the Big Sky headquarters, Jacob scrubbed his hands through his short, spiky brown hair, hoping to take away his headache with the gesture. No dice, but maybe he deserved the pain. He’d pretty much pushed himself into the ground since that afternoon, first with a long, hard run through the woods, then with an impromptu sparring session in the gym that Cameron had finally halted due to one too many bloody noses.

Maybe it wasn’t pain he was feeling in his head, Jacob thought as he rolled the chair back to the computer and pulled up his e-mail messages, hoping for a lead. Maybe it was anger.

Over the past thirteen years he’d learned to keep his emotions in check, learned to—mostly—control his temper.

But one sight of Isabella and there it was, front and center in his soul.

Anger. Guilt. Regret. Relief.

He hadn’t seen her since the day after they had both graduated from Georgetown. The day he had ended a relationship that had been too intense, too overwhelming for him to stay in and not lose himself.

He cursed and pushed away from the computer and the pitiful amount of information he’d managed to amass in an evening of data mining and phone calls.

Why was he thinking of her at all? How could a single glimpse of her put him back in that roiling, all-consuming place where he barely knew his own name? A place he intended never to go again.

She was nearby. That was why he was thinking of her. It was bad enough he’d glimpsed her on TV and felt the lightning bolt hit his gut. It was worse to learn she’d accompanied the Secretary of Defense on his annual vacation, where Louis Cooper invariably rented the same chalet at the same expensive adult playground.

The Golf Resort. Half an hour away by Jeep, less by horse if he cut up and over the mine-riddled ridge.

Not that he would do any such thing. Why would he? They were nothing to each other now. Ancient history. A bad taste at the back of his mouth.

But damn, she’d looked good on that TV screen. Good enough that several hours, one run and three mock fights later, his body still revved on overdrive from the sight of her, from the memories he’d tried to forget over the years.

Memories of sexual delirium. Sensual oblivion.

The ding of an incoming e-mail message was a relief and Jacob swung back to the keyboard just as voices rose outside the small office. It sounded as though the other bounty hunters were starting a new game of Bull, but he wasn’t in the mood anymore. He wanted to work.

He opened a message from Aimelee, a friend at the dispatcher’s office. Though he’d flirted briefly with the busty blonde when she’d moved to the area, nothing had come of it. She didn’t do the casual thing and he didn’t want anything else. So they’d become, surprisingly, friends.

No sighting of the fugitives, her e-mail reported, but a small walk-in clinic was broken into a couple of hours ago. Normally we’d think drugs, but mostly bandages and supplies were taken. Maybe that’s something?

Maybe. Jacob typed a quick thanks while his mind poked at the new information.

The fugitives were still in the area—or had been a week earlier when they’d derailed a train carrying a handful of UN diplomats. He bet they were still in the area. Where else would they go? The Montana mountains formed their home base. But where were they hiding? And why the medical supplies?

Perhaps they were nursing wounded from the train sabotage. Or perhaps—

He heard a loud shout outside the office. Running footsteps. A barked command muffled by the closed door. His heart rate picked up.

What the hell?

He was out of the computer chair and halfway across the office when Tony Lombardi yanked open the door. “Get out here. Now.”

Jacob followed his teammate out to the main room. There were only a half dozen bounty hunters in the HQ at that moment, but the knot of men near the front door seemed made up of twice that. He paused at the edge of the crowd. “What’s wrong?”

Then he caught a glimpse of auburn hair and a softly rounded cheek. A flash of green eyes. Kissable lips tipped down in a frown of pain, of worry.

The air backed up in his lungs and something hot and mean and messy fisted in his chest. The others moved aside, but he remained paralyzed. “Isabella?”

Even as his brain grappled with her presence, he noted the dusky bruise spreading along her cheek, the unfocused glaze in her eyes. Her clothes were clean, as though she’d taken time to change before finding him. But someone had roughed her up. Hard.

Primal, pure rage roared through him at the sight of an injured woman. At the sight of this injured woman. He bit off a curse. “What happened? Who did this?”

Her eyes focused. Flashed. She reached out toward him, then hesitated and glanced at the others. She let her hand drop and said, “Jacob. I need to speak with you. Privately.”

Her voice was lower than he remembered. Huskier. Her face and slight body still held hints of the same arcs and sweeps of curve and line. But the edge was new. As was the strength that kept her upright against her injuries.

Aware of his teammates looking on, Jacob reached out and touched a spreading bruise. “Tell me who did this. I’ll kill them.”

In the moment of silence that followed his declaration, he realized two things. One, he meant every word of it. He’d gladly kill whoever had laid a hand on her. And two, the whip of heat and power that flared up his arm and exploded in his chest warned him that it was still there. The thing that had brought them together over a game of darts in Smiley’s Pub in D.C. hadn’t died.

God, he wished it had.

He yanked his hand away and scowled. “Names. I want names.”

Thirteen years ago she would have told him everything in a rush. He expected the same now, because when you came down to it, people didn’t change that much over time.

Instead she narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t for public consumption. Can we go someplace more private?” When he didn’t budge, she hissed a curse. “Why did I even bother? I knew I shouldn’t have come here.” She spun and took two steps toward the door.

And collapsed.

“Isabella!” Jacob caught her on the way down. When the others surged forward to help, he swept her up into his arms and tried to brace himself against the feel of her lithe, toned body against his chest. “Stand down, I’ve got her.”

“That’s the chick we saw behind the Secretary of Defense,” Tony said. “The one who made you miss the Bull.”

“No kidding.” Jacob carried her to the stairs and started up with no real plan.

“Has something happened to Louis Cooper?” Cameron Murphy asked, his voice carrying the weight of leadership and surprising Jacob, who hadn’t even noticed the boss’s arrival.

“You’ll know as soon as I do.” But the thought of it grabbed at Jacob’s guts and wouldn’t let go. If the Secret Service had been protecting Cooper, it was because he was in danger.

And given that Cooper’s protection agent was unconscious half an hour away from the resort—

It didn’t look good.

Chapter Two

Isabella couldn’t believe she’d fainted. How embarrassing. Worse, she was pretty sure Jacob had seen her hit the floor.

But that was nothing compared to the ultimate shame. She’d failed her protectee. She made a small sound of distress and clamped her eyelids shut against the remembered images.

“I know you’re awake.” Jacob’s low, half-familiar voice seemed to come from far away, making her aware of the yielding surface beneath her and the sense of being in a quiet space amid action. “You said you wanted to talk privately. So talk.”

She wanted to tell him to go away and leave her alone. But she had come to him, not the other way around, and she still couldn’t talk herself out of the logic.

Within an hour of the attack, she’d found herself kicked out of Cooper’s chalet and cut off from all the official options. Refusing to give up on her duty, she’d decided she needed an unofficial option. And Jacob Powell, ex-Special Forces airstrike pilot and current high-stakes bounty hunter was about as unofficial as it got.

More importantly, from what she’d heard over the years—not that she’d been keeping tabs on him, of course—having him on her side was like having an entire private army at her disposal. That, more than anything, had compelled her to make the drive to the bounty hunters’ headquarters in the mountains. If she could have avoided this awkward reunion, she would have. But duty—and failure—had made it a necessity.

So she opened her eyes and shoved herself upright on the couch in one smooth move that left her head reeling and her stomach fisting on a slap of nausea.

God, she hated percussion bombs. She’d caught the edge of a relatively mild flash-bang during training and her ears had rung for a week. The one in the chalet had nearly flattened her. Then LBJ had finished the job with one blow of a gun butt.

By the time she’d come to, it had all been over. Secretary Cooper had been unconscious, tied to a dining room chair.

And Hope and the twin girls had been gone.

Kidnapped.

“Isabella.” Jacob’s voice softened on the word, sending a spear of pain straight through her chest. “Talk to me.”

Because he was why she’d turned away from the airport and headed into the hills, she opened her eyes. And nearly closed them again.

He stood across the small office, shifting from foot to foot. When she’d thought of him over the years—and she’d thought of him as little as possible—her memories had been of constant motion and unflinching intensity. That hadn’t changed.

But other parts of him had. He was bigger than she remembered. Not taller, though at five-eleven, he’d always topped her by a good four inches, but broader. More solid. More muscular—and the Jacob she remembered had been plenty muscular to begin with.

Remembering those muscles, and the masculine skin that covered them, she twisted to put her feet on the floor, clutching the edge of the leather-covered sofa cushion for balance.

Jacob frowned. “You should stay down. You’re pretty banged up.”

“I’m fine.” In reality, she had a hell of a headache, but Cooper had begged her not to alert the resort’s medical staff. She glanced at Jacob. “I need your help.”

He stilled. “What happened?”

She fought the urge to close her eyes again, to block out the things she’d seen once she’d regained consciousness. The quiet chalet. Louis Cooper tied to a dining room chair with a message written across his naked chest in his own blood.

Images of failure. Of danger. Of a possible national crisis in the making that she was forbidden to speak of.

But damn it, she wasn’t going to let something like this happen. Not on her watch.

So she kept her eyes level on his and saw his body vibrate with the need to pace, to do something. Or maybe that was her body? How could she be this near him after all these years and not feel the pull?

She couldn’t. That was the simple answer. Just looking at him warmed her stomach and tightened her throat, and not only from the memories, but from his sheer presence. He seemed to fill the office, dominate it, possess it. If she could have turned and run, she would have. But Hope and the girls needed her help and Jacob was her only hope, damn it.

She took a breath, swallowed and said, “Louis Cooper’s family was abducted from the Golf Resort five hours ago.”

The sentence crushed her, as though saying it out loud made it more real. She half expected Jacob to shout at her, to panic, to tell her she was no damn good—because that was what she’d told herself, and that was the hair-trigger temper she remembered.

But he merely nodded and watched her from across the room. “Tell me everything.”

Something broke inside her, loosening the band around her heart. She almost told him how gut-wrenchingly, mind numbingly scared she’d been when she’d seen Louis Cooper’s body tied to a chair, limp and covered with blood.

She, who was never, ever, scared.

But telling him that would be leaning. Leeching. All those needy, greedy things he’d accused her of when they’d broken up and she’d realized that the things she’d seen as togetherness, as love, he’d seen as her being controlling. Clinging. Unstable.

Like her mother.

And, blast it, where had that come from? That whole mess was ancient history.

Isabella jammed her eyelids down, scrubbed vicious circles along her temples and shoved the memories clear out of her mind. She was a different person now. He was a different person. They couldn’t come at this from where they’d been back then. They needed to start fresh. Special Agent to local law, though he wasn’t technically the law.

Hopefully, he was still interested in justice.

“I was assigned to protect Secretary Cooper. He and his family have been threatened because of the Lunkinburg situation.” She glanced over and saw by Jacob’s faint nod that he followed the politics. He was standing across the room, back to the door as though he wanted to be anywhere else. The index finger of his left hand—he was ambidextrous in all ways that counted, she remembered with a faint wash of heat—twitched against his thigh. The rest of him was still, though leashed energy vibrated in the room.

His constant need for motion used to exhaust her, annoy her. Now she found it a comfort. If she could harness all that energy—

“If you were attacked five hours ago and Cooper’s family taken, the sooner you tell me—or the authorities—what happened, the better. The chances of finding abductees decrease exponentially with time.” His expression didn’t waver. It was locked between coolness and dismissal, both of which seemed at odds with what she remembered from that first moment their eyes had met downstairs. She’d felt the click of recognition, the hard wash of heat, and she’d seen the same flare in his expression, the same moment of hope, then memory.

What did it mean?

Nothing. It meant nothing. She wasn’t here to rekindle a former romance that had ended bloodily. She was here because she had no other option. Because Hope and the girls needed her.

“You’re right.” She took a deep breath, organized her uncharacteristically scattered thoughts and made her report, pretending she was speaking to one of her bosses rather than to her ex-lover. “Not long after the press conference, maybe five-thirty this afternoon, Secretary Cooper’s chalet at the Golf Resort was attacked. A percussion bomb stunned the occupants of the chalet.” Including me, she wanted to say, but didn’t because it was easier to report things this way.

She strove for the professional detachment she prided herself on, the lack of emotion so different from who she’d been, where she’d come from. “Three men entered the chalet wearing rubber masks resembling Presidents Nixon, Johnson and Clinton.” She pulled out the mental snapshot she’d taken of the attackers and compared them to each other, to the furniture and walls. Remembered them coming toward her. “Nixon was about five-ten and skinny as a rail. Mid-brown hair on his arms and hands. Johnson and Clinton were taller and more muscular, though still lean.”

She paused, remembering the blow, the unconsciousness and the screaming fear of coming around and not knowing what she would find.

Of finding three of her four protectees gone.

When Jacob remained quiet, motionless except for his left index finger, which continued to tap a complicated beat against his leg, she continued. “They…” She swallowed, realizing she couldn’t give the report from a distance now. “I missed with my first shot, hit Nixon in the leg and got off two more rounds before they rendered me unconscious.” There, that sounded more detached than clubbed me with a gun butt, more professional than knocked me out.

Being professional and unemotional was the key here.

She thought Jacob muttered something, but when she looked at him, the cool expression was firmly in place. “Go on,” he said. “Time’s wasting.”

No kidding. She could feel the minutes and hours slipping by as though they hid beneath her skin. So she plowed through the rest of the story and tried to put her mind on hold. “When I came to, the three men were gone. Secretary Cooper was tied to a chair, unconscious. They probably used chloroform, by the smell of it.” She sucked in a breath and said the rest in a rush. “His wife, Hope, and twin toddlers, Becky and Tiffany, were gone. I revived and untied him, but before I could search the premises, the Secretary directed me to play the answering machine back. There was a message.”

She paused and wrestled with the memory. No matter how far she detached herself, the low, gritty voice and the feeling of absolute failure cut through her defenses.

Jacob’s finger stilled. “Keep going.”

“The voice—male, no discernable accent—stated that Secretary Cooper’s family was safe for now, but would be killed if the kidnappers’ instructions were not followed to the letter.” She searched back, trying to remember the exact phrasing and intonation. “If Secretary Cooper alerted the authorities, his wife and daughters would die. Additional instructions would follow.” She remembered the beat of silence that had followed the kidnappers’ message, the absolute horror in Louis Cooper’s eyes, the cold spear of guilt in her heart. She swallowed. “That was all.”

“Did you follow the instructions?” Jacob asked, his whole body tense with its stillness.

“I wouldn’t have,” she admitted. “I wanted to call my superiors and the FBI immediately, but Secretary Cooper forbade it.” His eyes had been wild, his grip on her wrist too strong to deny. Nearly maniacal in his support of the U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists, Louis Cooper had crumbled at the threat to his young family. Not that she could blame him. The very thought of sweet Hope and the two eighteen-month old girls in captivity was enough to make her want to weep. Or scream.

“And you listened to him?” The faint bite underlying Jacob’s words scratched along Isabella’s nerve endings like an accusation.

“I had no choice,” she snapped. “He called my superiors and had me removed from duty. I’m off the active list until my next assignment starts in a month.”

And that was the cruelest cut of all. Though she was one of the most effective agents in the D.C. field office, she knew she wasn’t particularly popular. She just didn’t get how some of her co-workers turned their personalities on and off, how they went from goofy pranksters or sensitive touchy-feely types to hard-nosed agents in an instant. She couldn’t do that—it came too close to what she’d grown up with, a mother who was on top of the world one day, in the dregs of despair the next. Because of it, she’d gotten the reputation of being effective but not particularly friendly. All about the job. And if the labels had stung, she’d shoved the feelings aside because they were, after all, only feelings.

She knew that if it had been one of the other agents being shoved off the secretary’s protection detail, the bosses would have asked questions. But because it was her, the field office had shrugged and made the change.

Tears prickled out of nowhere and she catapulted from the couch to pace, not realizing until it was too late that her path between a set of wooden shelves and a paper-covered desk would bring her dangerously close to Jacob.

He grabbed her arms. The feel of his strong fingers raced through her like lightning and she reeled back, tried to break free from the heat and temptation.

“Isabella!” He shook her gently. “Iz, I know you’re hurt. I know you’re tired and shocky, but you’ve got to do better than this. Why didn’t you go to your superiors yourself? Why did you come here?”

How did you know where I was? The question hung unasked between them, but there was no way she was answering. He didn’t need to know that she checked up on him now and then, didn’t need to know that she’d tried to duck the Montana assignment, not wanting to be in the same state as the Big Sky Bounty Hunters’ headquarters.

Most of all, he didn’t need to know she had measured every man in her life since college against him and found them lacking in everything except kindness.

Because whatever Jacob Powell was, he wasn’t kind.

But she wasn’t looking for kindness now. She needed a warrior, and he fit the bill.

She pulled away from him and crossed her arms to form a pitiful shield between them. “Louis Cooper’s report to my superiors took care of that. He’s smart, he knew exactly how to make it sound like I’d gone mentally shaky and he was trying to cover for me. Thus, the month off.”

And that had galled her down to the bone. But her mother’s problems were in her record, and the condition was genetic. Add that to her reputation as slightly antisocial, and wham.

Instant paid suspension pending a psych eval. Even the thought fisted her stomach with memory and dread. But she didn’t have time for that garbage. Cooper’s family was out there somewhere and she was damn well going to find them.

“So why are you here?” Jacob asked again, his closed expression brooking no evasions.

“I need help.” It stung to admit it, but there was more. “And I think you’ll be interested in hearing who took Hope and the girls.”

“They left a name?”

“No.” She shook her head. “A calling card of sorts. Until I saw it, I thought the attack was linked to the Lunkinburg issue and the stand-up Cooper did with Prince Nikolai.”

“Logical enough,” Jacob agreed. “King Aleksandr’s statement after that press conference certainly wasn’t friendly.” His tone sharpened. “But you don’t think so now?”

She wasn’t quite sure what to think. It didn’t add up. “I said they left a calling card. A signature, in fact, drawn in Cooper’s own blood across his chest.” She glanced over at Jacob, found his eyes intent on her. “MMFAFA.”

Jacob’s disbelief vibrated between them for a split second, then he was in motion. He yanked the door open and bellowed, “Everyone to the situation room, now!” Then he slammed the door and spun toward her, eyes alight with excitement and a hint of accusation. “That’s our bounty. The Montana Militia for a Free America. Eight members of the group escaped from The Fortress last month and we’ve been on their trail ever since. If this is their work…” He trailed off, spun and yanked the door open. “Stay here.”

She grabbed his arm and felt him stiffen even as the sizzle of heat raced through her body at the contact. “I want in on this. I know your group was involved with the MMFAFA incident with the train derailment, and I know your bounty is still at large. We can help each other. Why else do you think I came here?”

He shrugged her off. “Because you didn’t have anyplace else to go.” She stepped back, stung, and he cursed at himself. “Sorry, that was nasty. And I’m grateful you brought me this information. But you have no idea who you’re dealing with here—it’d be best if you stay here while we take care of it. These men are dangerous. Violent.”