Heart Of A Hunter

“Great.” That meant the case was officially the FBI’s, but protocol allowed participation of the slain officers’ agency. He didn’t want to work with the Feebs. They couldn’t pass wind without permission and tended to mess up investigations. Not to mention their tendency to let the Service do the work, then steal their glory. This was not going to be fun. And it would mean putting Olivia on hold. Again.

No wonder she’d left him.

“One more thing, Falconer. The mutt slated for transport was Kershaw.”

Sebastian went cold. “Is he one of the missing?”

“Yeah.”

“Dead?”

“Won’t know till the toast are IDed.”

One life deserves another. Don’t turn your back on that pretty wife of yours, Falconer. I’ll take from you what you took from me. Kershaw had made that promise five years ago and the cold determination in the snake-yellow eyes had matched Sebastian’s determination to put him behind bars. That’s why he still checked on Kershaw’s welfare once a month. “When were Greco and Carmichael killed?”

“We found them a few hours ago.”

“When were they killed?”

“As best as the M.E. can make out, about four hours ago.”

Four hours. Enough to get from Connecticut to New Hampshire. With time to spare. He dropped the phone and raced up the stairs, taking them three by three. “Olivia!”

She jokingly called this place “Falconer’s Aerie.” He’d built it for her high on the mountain. To keep her safe. He’d vowed to her father on their wedding day that his work would never touch her. This house, this mountain, was a haven. For her. For him. And now she was out of his reach on the road on a dark night with a madman licking at her heels.

THE NIGHT WAS EERILY CALM, making the car’s engine sound as if it roared. Thick and white, fog rose from the road and made the mountainside seem to smoke. To her right, the dark fronds of pines and winter-bare limbs of oaks and maples poked through the mist, reminding Olivia of ancient druids in ceremony. To her left, the meager shoulder dipped into a black abyss, making the scaly snake of road appear too narrow for her car. At odd intervals, runs of wet snow slipped from the mountain’s flank to slide under her wheels, making the steering feel sluggish. Each curve on the winding road flashed jagged arms of trees, points of rocky outcroppings or dizzying flirtations with the edge of the road. Olivia had never liked carnival fun rides, and this nightmare was no exception.

Turn back, her weak side urged. No, not this time. This time she was going to be strong. “Stick to the plan.”

Trying to stay on the road, she hunched over the steering wheel and peered through the wavering curtain of fog.

The tears weren’t helping.

Why was she crying when she was the one who’d chosen to leave? And this short separation was to strengthen their future. “For once in your life grow a backbone, Olivia.”

She swiped at her eyes with the back of one gloved hand. She hadn’t known it would be this hard to walk away from him. That she would miss him so much in so little time. That the emptiness in her would feel as dirty and as desperate as the fugitives Sebastian chased.

“You’re a fool, Olivia,” she told the haggard reflection haunting her on the windshield. She had a great home. She had work she loved and didn’t have to worry about making money from it to survive. She had a man who loved her and supported her. Security. “You have everything a woman could want.”

But all of these chains of overprotection were sucking the juice from her creativity. She hadn’t painted in a month. Hadn’t felt the drive or the pleasure. Her next memory trunk still sat in her studio with only its priming coat on.

And the last thing she wanted was to resent the only man she’d ever loved because she’d lost herself inside his strength. This quarter apart would give them both the needed distance to view their relationship more clearly.

As she followed a curve, the slope of the mountain angled less sharply than before. The turn for the main road was only half a mile away. She eased her grip on the steering wheel and blew a small puff of relief.

A deer jumped onto the road. Olivia gasped, jerked the wheel to the left and stomped on the brakes to avoid the animal. Mistake. The slush on the road became as slippery as oil. Her wheels churned. The car slid sideways. She lifted her foot off the brake, spun the wheel in the opposite direction and fishtailed.

Smoke billowed up from the dashboard. The acrid smell made her choke. The black cloud blinded her. She tried to straighten, but the back end of the sedan kept going, then dipped over the edge of the road. There the car paused.

Holding her breath, Olivia leaned forward as if her weight could counterbalance the downward pull and tried not to cough on the toxic smoke. The engine whined. The headlights swirled in the mix of black haze and white fog. The undercarriage creaked beneath her as the car sought its fulcrum.

Please, don’t let me die. I promise I’ll go back. I promise I’ll try harder. I won’t complain. I promise—

Gravity sucked the car down. Olivia screamed as she scratched at the dashboard as if she could escape her fate through the windshield. The car careened down the rocky slope, gathering speed. Boulders and trees didn’t slow the metal skeleton. It simply bounced from the obstacles in pinball madness, up and over, side to side, tossing her painfully around the safety harness. Wrenching metal screeched. The air bag deployed, burning her face and suffocating her for a desperate moment. As a branch thrust through the windshield on the passenger’s side, glass cracked and the blanket of crazed glass wrapped around the sprung mushroom of air bag.

Then the right rear quarter panel smashed into a granite monolith, grinding the car to a sudden halt, canting it sideways, and sending her head crashing through the side window. She saw stars and a bright pinprick of light. A warm rush flowed over her brain, turning everything blood red, then black.

Panting, she swiped at her eyes. If she couldn’t see, how could she work? How could she paint? How would she fill the endless emptiness of Sebastian’s absences?

The car slipped again. A foot. Two. She stilled and bit back the scream clawing at her throat. Please…

The car came to rest with the small bump of a landing elevator, bobbing her head. That gentle slap of her temple against the metal frame was the final insult.

Like a light winking out, she fell backwards into the inky chasm fracturing her conscious mind. I don’t want to die! I don’t want to be alone. Panic made her fight the pull of darkness. Her arms reached forward. Her mouth opened for one last desperate cry, “Sebastian!”

Chapter Two

The red lights of the rescue squad turned the fog a bloody red. The slam of the closing ambulance doors cracked like a shotgun and thundered over the mountain. As the ambulance sped away, Olivia’s blood-streaked face colored Sebastian’s vision. Her closed eyes, her pale skin, the rip in her scalp, were a punch to the gut. The fading whine of the siren was a cry that swept him back too many years and pooled old dread into his boots like cement.

He swallowed hard and shook his head. Don’t go there. It’s not going to get you anything. You have a job to do. Do it.

Olivia was in good hands. Once at the hospital, he couldn’t see her right away anyway. Doctors would need to examine her and patch her up. What good would he do her pacing the hall? Here he could get a jump on Kershaw. He flexed his fists. She would be okay. But not Kershaw. Kershaw would pay. Sebastian cranked his gaze away from the disappearing red lights in the fog to the scars in the slush made by Olivia’s tires.

Resolutely, he pushed Olivia from his focus. She crept back in on the next breath. He crouched by the side of the road. Read the facts, damn it. Pukes always leave a trace. If you let him get away, Olivia’s the one who’ll pay.

He should be at the hospital with her. But in these weather conditions evidence would disappear fast. His gaze followed the run of the tire marks over the edge, and with each breath he got himself into Kershaw’s head. Kershaw had vowed revenge. Kershaw had escaped from a maximum-security facility. Olivia was hurt. Too much of a coincidence and he’d never liked coincidence.

Concentrate. Feel what he feels. Fear what he fears. Trust what he trusts.

Sebastian turned off the emotional switch and went into hunter mode. Catch the scum, then get back to Olivia.

That was the plan.

Always.

With effort, he rose and strode toward Victor Denley, Wintergreen’s chief of police. Both the mustache, waxed Western-villain style, and the weapon, cocked at an odd angle from the chief’s belt, seemed out of place on the six-foot, barrel-shaped man. He looked more like a caricature of a cop than a figure of authority. But the accident had taken place in his jurisdiction and this was his scene. The Service prided itself on interagency cooperation.

“How soon can you get the car out?” Sebastian asked.

Denley snorted and shook his head. “I’m not sending anyone down there till daylight.”

Sebastian bit back his temper. He needed answers now. “When you do, I want it gone over with a fine tooth comb. Anything and everything that might be out of place, I want to know.”

“I don’t have that kind of manpower or budget. You know that, Falconer.”

“Tow the car to Cyril’s and send me the bill.” Sutton was going to bust an artery over his next expense report, but screw him. He’d given his all for the Service. His job was never supposed to touch Olivia. They owed her.

He hiked down the tailgate of his SUV and took a flashlight from his gear bag. “I forwarded a bulletin to your desk. I want your men—” All four point five of them. Cripes! This was a mess. “—aware of Kershaw.”

“How serious is this guy?”

“He’s armed and dangerous.” Sebastian clicked on a utility belt. “And he wants payback.”

“Wish you hadn’t brought that kind of trouble to my neck of the woods.”

In a town where the day’s highlight was a free cup of coffee at McGee’s General Store and writing a traffic ticket to an out-of-towner who strayed a mile over the speed limit, a cop’s edge dulled in proportion to the spread of gut over belt. Kershaw was way over Denley’s experience. “Trust me. That wasn’t the plan. He’s after Olivia. I want a guard posted by her hospital room.”

“Budget—”

“Frank’ll be glad for the overtime.” Frank Brandt was young and eager, even if inexperienced. He liked to relax at the local martial arts dojo and his edge wasn’t yet donut dimmed. Denley opened his mouth, but before a word could spit out, Sebastian repeated, “Send me the bill.” Let Sutton choke. Danger wouldn’t flirt any closer to Olivia than it already had.

Sebastian strode toward the edge of the road.

“Hey,” Denley called, “where do you think you’re going?”

“Looking for evidence.”

“You’ll mess up the scene.”

Like that was going to make a difference with the way the EMTs had trampled it to rescue Olivia. “He already has a warrant out on him for the murder of two marshals. Whatever evidence I find here won’t change anything.” Cutting down the timeline was more important than preserving this scene—a scene that would melt away before morning. Sebastian headed into the fog that covered the black hole where Olivia’s car had plunged.

Denley shone his flashlight at him. “You should get to your wife.”

“If I don’t catch this puke, he’ll go after her again.”

“He might not have anything to do with this. There’s deer tracks. The road’s slippery. On a night like this, could be just an accident.”

No, Sebastian didn’t believe in coincidence. Not with someone as determined as Kershaw. “What if he did? You don’t want that on your conscience. To get what he wants, he’ll go through anything and anyone. He’s armed. He’s motivated. He has nothing to lose.”

“Getting aggressive and imaginative at this time of the night won’t help you collar your mutt.”

Aggressive and imaginative—cop-talk for breaking the law. This was for Olivia. He’d get as aggressive and as imaginative as it took to bring down Kershaw.

IGNORING THE BEEPER vibrating at his belt, Sebastian placed a call. Working alone, he’d woven a wide network of contacts. The best way to information was knowing who to tap.

“Felicia?” a sleepy voice greeted Sebastian on the other end of the line as he paced the hospital’s emergency-room waiting area.

Officially, Aurora Cates was a librarian. But her real persona was information specialist. Why she hid her true calling was a mystery—one that was none of his business. Five years ago, he’d accidentally discovered that if he needed a fact, any fact—obtained legally—Rory Cates could dig it up. Best of all, she could do it efficiently and discreetly.

“Sebastian Falconer.”

“Falconer?” He heard the rustling of bed sheets. “Do you know what time it is?”

He glanced at his watch. Where had the time gone?

“It’s one-thirty in the morning,” Rory informed him. “What could be so important at this time of the night?”

“I need information.”

“I figured that much.”

Sebastian swallowed around the knot in his throat. “Information on coma.”

“Coma?”

His strictest rule was to never mix business and pleasure. That’s why he’d never asked Rory why she was hiding in a library when her skills were better suited elsewhere. Business took place on one level; personal life on another. Few people knew where he lived, that he was married or anything about his background. Safer that way, he’d thought. Kershaw had proved him wrong. “My wife was in an accident.”

“Wife? You’re married? How long?”

“Ten years.”

“And I’m just finding out now?” Her laugh was a bird-song. “If I need a secret kept, I know where to go.”

Mixing both planes of his life was as awkward as doing surveillance in a snake pit, but Kershaw had smashed those boundaries. “Who’s Felicia?”

“My sister.” Rory sighed, and Sebastian heard the frazzled threads of a knotted relationship. “I haven’t heard from her in a while and I’m worried.”

“She’d call you this early?”

“This late. Yeah. I’d take her call anytime, though.” The click of a pen. The shredding of a sheet of paper. Change of subject. Just as well, chitchat wasn’t his forte. “What do you need?”

“Anything you can dig up on coma and brain damage. Recovery.” The word tasted dry and made him wince.

“Jeez, Falconer,” Rory said as she scribbled down what he’d told her. “I’m really sorry. I hope she’s all right. She has to be a saint to put up with someone like you.” She gave a mirthless chuckle. “I’ll see what I can find for you.”

Not a saint, but his angel. “Thanks, I’ll owe you.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

AS SEBASTIAN WAS disconnecting, the emergency-entrance doors burst open and his sister-in-law strode in like a witch riding a twig broom. Her ICBM-like gaze zeroed in on him. He didn’t stand a chance, so he braced for the blow.

“Why wasn’t I called immediately?” Her question screeched across the room, making the nurses at the desk look up. Her bottle blond hair bobbed with every laser-sure step in his direction.

“I’m just coming up for air myself.”

One of Paula’s hands beat the air like a conductor gone mad. “For hours no one answered the blasted phone. I was going out of my mind. Then I had to find out about Olivia from that man.”

That man being Mario Menard, the Aerie’s groundskeeper and handyman. That man was even now installing another layer of protection to keep Paula’s baby sister safe. Sebastian couldn’t figure out if she treated Mario like a nonentity because he was the hired help or because he was always polite to her even when she was giving him her best impression of a third-degree black belt witch. The situation only seemed to get worse after the bankruptcy and suicide of Paula’s husband and Paula had to get a job.

“You were next on my list, Paula,” he said gently. After all, Paula had raised Olivia. Paula had been more of a mother to Olivia than their own mother, who hadn’t wanted the burden of a menopause baby.

“Next? I should have been first. What happened? How is she? When can I take her home?”

“Whoa, there.” He put up both hands against her verbal assault. “She’s coming home with me where she belongs.”

Paula’s eyes narrowed to barbed slits. “She’s coming home with me. We both know she was leaving you. That’s where she was going at that ungodly hour. To my home. Away from you. I figured you were giving her a hard time and that’s why she was so late. I never thought you’d actually hurt her.”

“I would never hurt her. The hour wasn’t ungodly. She left before seven.”

Both of her hands exploded upward. “Seven? That was almost six hours ago!”

“I had other things on my mind—like Olivia and her welfare.”

Paula’s hands hitched to her bony hips. “Her welfare? When have you ever bothered with her welfare? She wasn’t happy with you. You should have seen that years ago. But no, not Mr. Important Deputy Marshal.” She pecked her fingernail into his chest. “You were too busy doing your important job to see that she was dying inside. If you’d once bothered to ask her what she wanted instead of assuming she wanted whatever you wanted, then we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.”

“Paula—”

“No, don’t Paula me. Your selfishness almost killed her.” Rusty mascaraed tears dripped from Paula’s pale blue eyes. Her voice cracked. “I want to see her.”

“She’s not allowed visitors yet.”

Hand at her throat, she gulped. “How bad is it?”

“We won’t know until she wakes up.”

“Coma?” One hand covered her trembling lips; the other wrapped around her waist. The drips of tears turned to a stream. “Oh, God, no.”

“I have another neurologist scheduled to see her first thing in the morning.”

Paula keened. “Neurologist? There’s brain damage?”

Sebastian tentatively reached for his sister-in-law and patted a shoulder. “She’s going to be okay, Paula.”

Paula’s eyes narrowed and skewered him with pure hatred. “She’d better.”

Sebastian backed away. Knowing what to push was only part of an investigation; you also had to know when to let things slide. This was a slider. He headed toward the entrance.

“Where are you going?” Paula called after him.

“Home to shower and change. I’ll be back.”

Paula’s gaze rested on his shirt and traced the pattern of Olivia’s blood staining the white cotton. “What if she wakes up while you’re gone?”

“You’ll be there to make your final bid for her to leave me. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Her shoulders bowed and she wrapped both arms around her stick figure. “I want what’s best for Olivia.”

“Then we agree on one thing.”

EVEN AT EIGHT in the morning, the lights in the hallway outside Olivia’s room seemed unnaturally bright. Such a dazzle should have cheered Sebastian, made him expect the best. But as the doctor exited the room, the brilliant islands of light only served to rush all that could go wrong at him in a giant black wave. Olivia, you can’t die. You can’t leave me this way. We never got to talk.

“How is she?” Sebastian asked, hands fisted deep in the pockets of his pants. He’d demanded the best neurologist available and been told this beat-up dog was it.

Dr. Iverson crossed both arms over his chest like a shield. Fatigue seemed to sag his aging features into bloodhound droopiness. “Prediction of improvement is difficult at this stage.”

Sebastian closed his eyes for a second. Patience, he reminded himself. “When will you know?”

“Again, making predictions at this stage is impossible.” Dr. Iverson shrugged. “There are many factors involved in your wife’s recovery. A loving, stable relationship is a great asset and will do more for your wife than anything we can offer her.”

Stable relationship. A ticking like a time bomb settled in Sebastian’s gut. Would she want to come home? Would she let him help her? He frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means time is the best healer, and she’ll need all the support you can give her. As soon as she wakes up, we’ll know the extent of the damage.”

Damage. He swallowed hard. Trying to ignore the mad ticking, he grasped on to “wakes up.” “She’ll be okay then.”

Dr. Iverson’s forehead wrinkled more deeply. “We’re optimistic, but we’re dealing with an acceleration/deceleration head injury and you should be prepared.”

The ticking flared, started to burn. That could mean anything. Let him explain. “For what?”

“In this type of injury, the head, which was moving forward, came to a sudden stop when it hit a stationary object. In your wife’s case, the driver’s side window. When this happens, we often find bruising of the frontal and/or temporal lobes. Your wife may not be the person she was before.”

“What do you mean?”

Dr. Iverson turned sideways. The good doctor would scram if he got half a chance, Sebastian thought, and blocked the doctor’s route of escape. You’re not going anywhere until I have answers.

“The injury is located on the left hemisphere,” Dr. Iverson said. “She may have changes in thinking, behavior and personality. Problems with motor skills—”

“Like painting?” God, no. Olivia came alive when she painted. She created magic with her colors and brushes. If she couldn’t paint, there would be nothing to hold her home. And he needed her. Why hadn’t he told her so before? Why had he let her go? Because he’d never been good with words—at least the out loud kind.

“Painting. Writing. Organizing,” Dr. Iverson said. “With the temporal lobe involved, she may also have problems with memory. But it’s really too early to tell.”

The ticking stopped and something seemed to implode. “Memory? As in amnesia?”

Dr. Iverson shrugged. “Amnesia. Short-term memory.”

“Temporary?” His fists curled. What if she couldn’t remember him? Their life together? She would remember. She had to.

“We’ll hope for the best.”

Hope? Doctors were supposed to do more than hope. They were supposed to have answers. There was always some other trail to sniff, some other trigger to follow, some other fact to unearth. “Can’t you run some tests? There must be something you can do.”

“We’ve done everything we can for now. When she wakes up, we’ll do a full neurological workup designed to tell us problems with reasoning, memory and other brain functions—”

“When will that be?”

“There’s no way to tell. The sooner the better.”

A squawky announcement over the P.A. system had the doctor cocking his head. Was it standard procedure? Give the doctor two minutes with the family, then page him to save him from their stupid questions? “I want to see her.”

Dr. Iverson nodded. Without a goodbye, he spun on his heels and squeaked his way down the green hall and through the beige swinging double doors.

Sebastian fought the urge to follow him, grab him by the collar and shake him until he had answers. But the doctor couldn’t give him answers he didn’t have.