Heart Of A Hunter

First he had to get Olivia home, then he’d worry about Paula.

Needing to do something other than dwell on Olivia or Paula or the way his life was crumbling like slag on the side of a mountain, he snagged the phone out of his pocket and checked messages. Three from Sutton—the reason why he’d turned off the ringer. And one from Cyril Granger. He checked his watch and bit back a grumble, then punched in the garage’s number anyway. At the sound of Cyril’s cigar-gruff voice, Sebastian gave silent thanks for early risers. “Sebastian Falconer.”

“Falconer! I got the results you wanted.”

Hand in pocket, Sebastian braced. “Shoot.”

“Lucky your wife had all that metal around her or she’d a been dead.”

He’d made sure she had the safest car on the market—that was no accident. “What happened?”

“As far as I can tell, she probably hit the brakes for some reason. Maybe deer. Maybe snow. Maybe something else. Skidded and went over the embankment.”

Sebastian couldn’t wrap his mind around the information. He’d been sure Kershaw had tampered with the car. “An accident?”

“Looks that way.”

“No tampering?”

“Here’s the interesting part. I couldn’t get the taste of smoke out of my mouth.”

Sebastian frowned. “Smoke? From the crash?”

“No, that’s just it. It didn’t taste like engine smoke. It was more electrical. So I followed my nose and, sure enough, I found something.”

“What?” Sebastian prodded as he ground tight steps the length of Olivia’s room.

“Someone swapped the brake switch fuse from a 5 amp to a 40 amp.”

Sebastian stilled. “What does that mean?”

“Means that if she woulda gone five more minutes down the road, smoke woulda billowed up and blinded her. She woulda choked on it. Her eyes woulda watered. Then you coulda blamed the accident on tampering.”

Five more minutes would have put her on Mountain Road—close enough to run into a sheer wall of granite or into Trotter’s Pond if she lost sight of the road.

Kershaw.

“Can you tell when the swap was made?” Sebastian asked.

“No way to tell for sure. Anytime between the last time she used the car and got into it again. It’d take about ten minutes for the wiring harness to catch fire.”

And there was no way to ask Olivia when she’d used the car last. No way to ask her if she’d had any visitors. No way to put Kershaw at the scene, with the melting snow making any trace of him vanish. Because of the time limit on the wiring fire, the tampering had to have happened at the Aerie. And that was impossible. Not with all the security he had in place. “Thanks, Cyril. I’ll need a written report.”

Cyril humphed. “Well, I got a busy day ahead’a me. It’s gonna be a coupla days.”

“I’ll need pictures of the brake switch fuse and the burnt harness.”

“Anson’s got himself a new digital camera. I’ll get him to take the pics.”

Anson was Cyril’s college-aged son. “Great. Have him e-mail me the file.” He gave Cyril his e-mail address and punched out.

The connection had barely closed before he entered another number.

“Menard,” a sleepy voice said.

“Falconer,” Sebastian said as he started pacing again. “When was the last time Olivia used her car?”

“Three days ago when she got groceries.”

“Anybody come by for a visit?”

“Only Paula and her daughter.”

Sebastian’s steps got shorter, faster. “Meter reader? UPS delivery? Anything else?”

“Special delivery from the post office two days ago. Propane yesterday.”

That gave him some place to start. “Did you make sure the security system was on at all times?”

“That’s what you pay me for,” Mario said, voice sore as if Sebastian had poked a bruise. Mario’s hawks squawked in the background.

Things weren’t stacking up right. Sebastian rubbed a hand over his chin. Could someone who’d just escaped a prison riot, killed two marshals and traveled four hours from a murder scene have been careful enough to leave no trace?

Kershaw wasn’t into finesse. He was into results. Leaving evidence would mean nothing to someone bent on revenge. He’d have wanted Sebastian to know he was the cause of his grief.

Sebastian spun on his heels and faced the closed door of Olivia’s room. If not Kershaw, then who? Who would want Olivia dead?

Chapter Four

As the nurse left with the wheelchair, Sebastian guided Olivia out the glass front doors of the hospital toward the parking lot.

“I will wait,” she said, tugging her arm free from his grasp.

Standing still she made too big of a target, but he couldn’t explain that to her without frightening her. “I can’t leave you here by yourself.”

Her hands knotted in front of her, and she shrank back toward the hospital entrance. “I will be fine.”

She was afraid, and he didn’t know how to make her feel safe. “I won’t.”

Her blue eyes searched his and made him feel like a heel for manipulating her cooperation. I’m not your captor, he wanted to say. But that wasn’t really the truth. The Aerie would become a prison of sorts until Kershaw was caught. For her own good. With a sad nod, her gaze slid away and she stepped beside him.

Sebastian had almost made it to the SUV when the shriek of brakes had him instinctively putting Olivia behind the shield of his body and drawing his weapon.

The driver wasn’t Kershaw or some other unknown piece of scum bent on mowing them down; it was Paula shooting visual daggers at him through the windshield of her ancient Volvo. While he holstered his weapon, he thought he’d rather deal with Kershaw.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Paula stormed from her car and blocked the path to his vehicle. “She’s coming home with me.”

“You can’t protect her.”

“From what?”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Paula more than anyone would relish his failure and throw it back in his face.

A small wounded sound came from Paula. She half sank to the asphalt, then sprang up. “I knew it. This is all your fault.”

“It’s no more my fault than Roger’s leaving you penniless.” Below the belt, but she was pecking at him as if she was a vulture, and he couldn’t just lie there like carrion. He needed to get Olivia out of this open space and into the safety of their home.

The second Paula’s face hardened, he regretted the flash of temper. Roger was dead; Olivia was still alive. Paula wasn’t a fugitive. Fighting her dirty wasn’t fair.

With a skinny hand, Paula slapped his cheek with all her might. The sound echoed across the parking lot like a shot. The mark burned and throbbed. “You bastard.”

Contrite, he reached for her arm. “Paula—”

She twisted from his grasp. “No, you stay away from me. And from Olivia. I’m taking her home.”

He grabbed her as she tried to go around him. Turning them both away from Olivia, he whispered, “You can’t.”

Her pale blue eyes searched his face and disgust narrowed them. “What have you done?”

He swallowed hard around the lump of his failure. “Someone I put in prison escaped. He wants to kill Olivia to hurt me.”

Paula mewled.

“The Aerie is protected,” Sebastian insisted, scouring the parking lot for hidden dangers.

“A lot of good that did her.” She waved toward the hospital building with her free hand. “Look where she ended up.”

“This isn’t the time or place to discuss this.”

“You’re right. I’m taking her home where I can look after her. You—” She jabbed him in the chest. “—should do what you do best. Leave her alone while you hunt your fugitives. I can’t believe you’ve done this!”

He maneuvered to keep Olivia safe between the shield of parked cars and his body. “If I thought leaving with you was the best thing for Olivia, I’d do it in a heartbeat. This guy has nothing to lose, Paula. He’ll go through you, through Cari, to get to her. Do you really want to put your daughter in danger just to win this point?”

Paula shook her head. “No, you’re lying. You want to keep Olivia to yourself. She was leaving you, and you’re too selfish to admit she wanted out of your life.”

Olivia’s leaving had nothing to do with this hardheadedness. He had to keep her safe. It was his duty and his obligation. He reached behind him and found the softness of Olivia’s coat. “Do you want to look at his rap sheet? Kidnapping, rape, felony assaults. He murdered two marshals to get here. Tortured them. Cut them up like bait. He doesn’t want to go back to jail. He’d rather die. He has nothing to lose, Paula. And he wants to hurt me by killing your sister. Look what he’s already managed.”

He scanned the lot, took in the duo of nurses chattering to his left, the orderly with hunched shoulders hurrying to his right and the traffic getting heavier on the road. He needed to get Olivia out of there now.

Paula sniffed, shaking her head. “I can’t let her go with you. I have to protect her from you. She was leaving you, Sebastian. She was leaving you. You don’t deserve another chance to change her mind.”

Because Paula was half right, Sebastian offered her the white flag of a promise. “When Kershaw’s back where he belongs, then Olivia can make her own choice. Until then I will protect her with everything I have.”

He didn’t deserve this second chance, but he would take it. He’d never told Olivia how much her serene presence meant to him when he returned from the chaos of the “real” world. He’d never told her just how deeply he loved her. He owed a debt to Olivia for all the times he’d kept her waiting and worrying for him, for all the times he’d assumed she would always be there when his job was done. And the thought that he would fail Olivia scared him more than any special operation he’d ever worked. He felt her shift behind him and blocked her in.

“I’ll fight you in court if I have to,” Paula said.

Because he needed her as an ally and not an enemy, he tendered an olive branch. “Olivia’s confused now. She’ll need a woman to talk to. Stay with us. She needs you.”

The shimmer of tears in Paula’s pale blue eyes, the trembling of her lower lip and the press of her fist against her heart told him he’d finally said the words she’d wanted to hear all along.

SHE WATCHED THEM, the hard man and the stick woman, a breath away from her. They stood like gunslingers, exchanging barbs as hot as flying bullets. Anger rose from them in writhing snakes, and all she wanted to do was leave. But where would she go?

Standing here between the solid body of the man and the cold steel of a truck’s tailgate, for a moment, she was disoriented. The sky was so wide and so blue, it spun around her and she was the eye of a hurricane. The pale yellow sun was so bright, its light washed everything in glittery white and, for a heartbeat, she was blind.

The odors were different, too. The crisp air smelled like ironed sheets and the coldness of it shrank her lungs so that she had to open her mouth to breathe. She wrapped both arms around her middle, wishing for the comfort of the four walls of the room she had just left.

She’d followed him because she’d had to. He’s your husband, they’d said. He’ll keep you safe. This hot anger didn’t feel safe.

They were talking about her as if she weren’t there, and she didn’t like it. Though her insides felt as empty as eternity, she was still here and solid. Hey, you idiots, can’t you see I’m here, that I can hear every word, that I’m not deaf? But the words were playing hide-and-seek in her mind again. Fisting her hands at her side, she forced them out of her throat. But the best she could do was to cannonball, “Stop!”

Both swiveled their heads in her direction. “Olivia,” they said at once. But she wasn’t done and while the words were sliding down her throat like snowmelt, she poured them out. “I do not want…to go anywhere…with either of you.”

Heels digging into the hard asphalt, she spun around. Both hands went out to steady the world for a step. Then she focused on the glass doors of the building and headed toward them.

“Olivia!” Panic filled the word, made it roar, and the next moment, she was falling, and something big and black blurred a wall of hot exhaust and revving motor beside her.

Instead of bouncing on the hard asphalt, her head nested in the warm shoulder of the man. His body cushioned hers. The drum of his heart was loud and hummingbird fast against her ear. And when she looked into his dark eyes, something sweet melted inside her, then shook like the tail of a rattlesnake. This man she didn’t know, this man whose name she couldn’t bring herself to say, this man who was taking her to a home she couldn’t remember, he would willingly die for her.

No, she wanted to say, you can’t do that. She didn’t know why the thought of his death frightened her so much. Because she would be the cause? Because she didn’t want to sever the narrow tie that somehow held a place for her in this strange world? Because some part of her still remembered him?

Staring into his mesmerizing eyes, she knew, and the knowing was icy hot. He was the key to the hole in her mind.

Beside them the woman jumped around and sounded as if she were a cat who’d had its tail stepped on. “Are you all right? Oh, my God! Are you all right?” she kept asking.

“You almost got hit by a car,” the man said, smiling as he helped her up. The smile was a mask that was dry and cracking at the edges. “You have to watch where you’re going.” He tried to make the words light, but they weighed like stones. His gaze never wavered from hers as he dusted melted snow and grains of sand from the sleeve of her coat. “Are you hurt?”

Only in places that don’t show. As much as she wanted to hide in the familiarity of the hospital room, to find herself, she would have to step into that wide unknown. She would have to trust him. “I will go with you.”

He nodded and squeezed her hand. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Because he expected it, she nodded. But the truth came rushing at her as fast as the truck that had nearly hit her. If she went with him, if she let him fill the dark inside her with the missing memories, it was up to her to make sure he didn’t die for her.

HE WAITED FOR THEIR arrival from a safe distance. Camouflaged as he was, even Falconer with his eagle eyes couldn’t see him. Lifting the high-powered binoculars he’d taken from an Army Navy store, he followed the progress of the two cars up the long drive. A man and a woman got out of the SUV, another woman out of the Volvo. Two women? He zoomed in to focus on the thin one.

Ah, yes. He smiled. That makes it even sweeter. Pain before and after and all around—just as he’d had to bear for all these years. As he watched, the warmth stolen from him five years ago started to come back. He followed their track to the lovely nest perched on the side of the mountain. Their dance of return was an odd ballet of anger and fear, and he wore their discomfort like a quilt. “How does it feel, Falconer, to have your own home turned into a prison?”

TIME WAS SPLITTING HIM in half. Sebastian needed to trace the plate of the truck that had almost run over Olivia. He needed to go through the evidence and order his thoughts on Kershaw. Something about the timing niggled at him. But if not Kershaw, then who?

What he needed to calm the sea of unrest in him was facts. But he also needed to stay with Olivia to try to make her comfortable in her own home. She looked so lost, it tore at him. He would do anything to have been the one hurt in her place.

They were inside her studio now, and Olivia was looking at her own work as if it belonged to someone else. They’d toured the house she’d helped design. He’d pointed out all the touches she’d added to make it a home—the welcoming light in the foyer, the plants in the living room, the afghan in the den. He’d seen her frown as she touched—willing remembrance? Nothing seemed to leave a mark of recognition. When she spoke, her voice held a curious flatness. When she moved, her actions told of a blackness inside that Sebastian could do nothing to color.

He almost wished Paula were here. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of showing Olivia to herself on his own. But Paula had gone back to Nashua to collect her daughter and a suitcase of clothes. “If the Aerie’s safe for Olivia, then it’s safe for us, too,” she’d said. His sister-in-law and his niece’s presence in the space he’d never liked to share with anyone but Olivia was going to feel like an invasion. But he could not handle this Olivia alone.

Greenhouse windows overlooked westerly views of Mount Monadnock. Light flooded the tile floor and danced at Olivia’s feet. It kissed her skin with soft gold and teased her hair with gilt. In that moment, from that angle, she looked like his Olivia.

But she wasn’t.

Remembering that simple fact was so hard.

“You painted that trunk,” he said when she ran a finger along the edge of a pine chest on a wrought-iron stand. He remembered the day it had come to life. “You sat with the client. She’d brought pictures, and you talked to her for hours. By the time she left, you’d made a dozen sketches.” And I’d been jealous as hell of the time this woman had stolen from me. He jerked his chin toward the chest. “That’s the one she picked.”

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