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Dom combed his fingers through Luci’s hair and she closed her eyes against the need to lean into his touch….
“I’m as good as anyone on the team ever was,” she said, and couldn’t help the note of challenge in her voice. “I can do this.” For the first time in a long while, the stir of something waking deep inside Luci fluttered alive. She’d loved the team. She’d loved saving lives. She’d loved knowing her special skill could make a difference. Or destroy her world.
Dom’s smile canted up slowly, reaching all the way up to his eyes, making them glitter with humor that caused her to feel lighter. He slouched in that sexy way of his, compelling someone unaware of his lethal skill to believe they had nothing to fear from him. He deepened his drawl, letting its smoothness reverberate like a caress. “Then it’s a date, darlin’.”
Pride of a Hunter
Sylvie Kurtz
MILLS & BOON
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To Joyce—for the support and friendship.
A special thank-you to:
Mary Kennedy—for the forensic psychology help.
Chris Maddocks—for the sniper help.
About the Author
Flying an eight-hour solo cross-country in a Piper Arrow with only the airplane’s crackling radio and a large bag of M&M’s for company, Sylvie Kurtz realized a pilot’s life wasn’t for her. The stories zooming in and out of her mind proved more entertaining than the flight itself. Not a quitter, she finished her pilot’s course and earned her commercial license and instrument rating.
Since then, she has traded in her wings for a keyboard where she lets her imagination soar to create fictional adventures that explore the power of love and the thrill of suspense. When not writing, she enjoys the outdoors with her husband and two children, quilt-making, photography and reading whatever catches her interest.
You can write to Sylvie at P.O. Box 702, Milford, NH 03055. And visit her Web site at www.sylviekurtz.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Lucinda Walden Taylor—All the sniper-turned-soccer-mom wanted was a quiet life for her and her son.
Dominic Skyralov—The Seeker knew Luci’s deepest secrets.
Cole Taylor—Luci’s husband; Dom’s best friend. He was dead, but the memory of his death festered guilt in both Luci and Dom.
Brendan Taylor—The son Cole never knew existed and Luci desperately wanted to protect from a life of violence.
Warren Swanson—His goal was to expunge the sins of the soiled.
Laynie McDaniels—She was the first to die for her sins.
Jill Walden Courville—Luci’s sister was Warren’s latest pigeon.
Jeff Courville—The geeky boy reminded Warren of himself.
Joe Bob Grigsby—The escaped felon chose to kill rather than surrender.
Amber Fitzgerald—The fitness instructor softened the prey.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Prologue
In the hours between three and five in the morning, life slowed to a crawl. Her body’s need for sleep had Lucinda Walden fighting to keep her eyes open. She pulled her eye off-scope to blink out the fatigue, then resettled her right shoulder over the rubber butt pad of her rifle. Eye on-scope again, she panned left to right, across the door and windows of the two-story shack in the middle of nowhere in North Texas, checking for activity.
Her job was simple—be ready to kill, but avoid shooting at all cost. Discipline. Control. Restraint.
Sweltering heat, even so early on this August morning, had sweat streaming down her sides, sticking every stitch of camouflage clothing to her skin. Fog, graying everything in its path and rising in tongues off the pond beside the house, gave the run-down place the look of hell.
“Sierra One to TOC,” Luci whispered into the mic resting against her jaw to the Tactical Operations Center. The hostage taker couldn’t hear her, but he was so close in her scope that it seemed as if he should. “I have subject movement. White alpha three.” Back side of the house, first floor, third window. “White male, five foot ten, one hundred and sixty pounds, dark hair and beard. Bare torso, low-slung jeans. Two pistols stuffed down his pants. One rifle cruising for a target. He has the kid on his hip.” Their subject looked like a desperado in a really bad Western.
“Copy, Sierra One.”
Luci tried shutting her mind off to the bawling four-year-old the hostage taker had strapped to his waist like a lifesaver, but couldn’t keep the shine of his tears from invading. Don’t you worry, little one. We’ll get you out safe. That’s what this team does. We save lives.
Hostage negotiations boiled down to building rapport, calming fears and making consequences acceptable. But talking sometimes wasn’t the solution. This hostage taker wasn’t in the mood for rapport. The instinct to save his own sorry hide was putting two innocents at risk. And with three consecutive life sentences to serve, he had nothing left to lose.
The Special Operations Group was twenty-six hours into a situation with the escaped felon. He’d taken his ex-girlfriend and her four-year-old boy as live body armor to buy his freedom once the deputy marshals tasked with bringing him back to prison had cornered him.
Luci was five hours into her second six-hour shift with only snakes, spiders and scorpions for company as she lay in the tall grass on the hill overlooking the house.
And Joe Bob Grigsby, the piece of garbage who’d started the whole thing by flying his coop, had thrown the phone out the window half an hour ago and traded it for a shot of something that had him wired and his hostages blubbering in utter terror.
This couldn’t go on much longer. If Dom couldn’t talk this guy down, then no one could. Which would rev up the assault team. Cole had to be chomping at the bit to knock down the door and kick some butt.
Dom and Cole. The mule and the thoroughbred. Each excellent at his job. Each as opposite as black and white. Each the best of friends. One was her confidant, the other her lover. No, make that her brand-new husband—though no one else on the team knew. The thought of her elopement brought a small smile to her lips. She and Cole and Dom had all competed and bonded in the same training class and, although like tended to mix with like, their odd circle of friendship had endured.
Together, they worked magic.
She’d punched holes through thousands of targets, but because of Dom’s smooth-talking ways and Cole’s take-no-prisoners daring, she’d never had to make that split-second decision to plug a bullet through anyone’s brain stem and end a life. Knock on wood, so far, all of their operations had ended without a shot fired.
“TOC to all units, stand by to copy.” The voice of the Special Operations Group leader boomed through Luci’s earpiece. Something was up. A shot of adrenaline spiked through her veins, brightening the crown of sun spearing through the fog.
“Sierra One, ready to copy.” The other units, assault and sniper, keyed in.
Her father had once told her that a pilot’s life was long hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer terror. A sniper’s life wasn’t much different. Hurry up and wait. The U.S. Marshals Service hadn’t promised her glamour, but they had promised her a chance to prove herself. Four years ago, that had seemed like more than she’d gotten out of life so far.
Twenty-six hours of trying to end a situation peaceably had come down to the next few seconds.
One second. One shot. No second chances. A miss meant a failure. A hit, two lives saved. Are you ready, Luci? Can you do it? Can you take a life? Can you finally prove you’re good enough?
She centered the crosshairs in the scope tube. Her index finger rested on the trigger guard. She looked into the living room, one hundred and ninety yards away, with an intimacy that was deceiving. Joe Bob hadn’t shaved since he’d run. The five o’clock shadow had grown into a short beard. His skin was oily with sweat. His brown eyes were wild and the whites spidered with red. She could almost smell the sourness of his body, the alcohol on his breath, the desperation in his rage-spiked pulse.
“Hotel One to TOC. We’re at Yellow.” The assault team had reached the forward rallying point, the last position of cover and concealment.
“Copy, Hotel One. I have you at Yellow.”
Luci aligned her body with the recoil path, pressed her hip against the ground and spread her knees for stability.
Slow and easy.
She raised the elevation to compensate for the high humidity. With air this still, she didn’t have to accommodate for windage. The crosshairs in her scope fluxed slightly as a wake of adrenaline flowed out of her muscles. She settled back on Joe Bob’s face.
The assault team waited for the order to breach.
“TOC to all units. You have compromise authority and permission to move to Green.”
The group leader counted down the launch sequence. “Three…”
The world blackened and narrowed to that third window on the first floor. To Joe Bob’s crazed face as he buzzed back and forth across the window, brandishing the petrified child like a sack of feed. Just a few more seconds, baby, and we’ll have you out and safe.
“Two…”
Concentrate. Calm yourself. Slow the heartbeat. Her heart pumped with a trained rhythm that fed her brain oxygen but didn’t interfere with her shot. She settled the crosshairs on the tip of Joe Bob’s nose.
“One…”
Then came the pause that seemed to hang in the air forever before the world exploded into action. The assault team, clad in black, blew down the door—no flash-bang devices because of the kid—and raced in. Every move was a well-practiced choreography. “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”
The woman screamed. The child howled.
Joe Bob stopped his mad pacing. He dropped the rifle and stuck a pistol under the boy’s chin.
Luci sucked in air and eased it out.
Committed, she increased pressure on the trigger.
The world shattered, spewing chaos into the air like Fourth of July fireworks.
Her ears rang.
Bodies dropped.
And the ground ran red with blood.
Chapter One
Seven years later
His mind seventeen miles away from where he sat in the basement bunker of the Aerie in Wintergreen, New Hampshire, Dominic Skyralov paid little attention to the morning briefing as he carved a bite out of the almond coffee cake on his plate and washed it down with warm green tea.
“That’s all, gentlemen.” Sebastian Falconer, head of Seekers, Inc., closed the top file in front of him. The briefing was ending, and Dom wasn’t quite sure how to bring up the subject of his quandary. “Check your PDAs for updates.”
Dom pulled what was left of the almond coffee cake on the platter toward him. “I need a word with you.”
Falconer nodded and leaned back into his chair, the picture of patience.
Sabriel Mercer, dark and brooding, peeled himself off the shadows of the wall and left without a word. Nothing new there. Dom often wondered what had scarred the man so deeply he couldn’t trust himself to speak.
Noah Kingsley halted his swift unplugging of snakes of wires attached to his various computer accessories. Looking from one man to the other, he snapped his red suspenders and said, “I’ll get his later.”
Hale Harper, usual glower in place, gathered his notes. “Hang on, Kingsley. I need some information from you.”
“Follow me to my parlor.” Kingsley waggled his eyebrows.
Liv, Falconer’s wife, poked her head through the door, blocking their escape. Her short chocolate-brown hair looked wind-tousled and her blue eyes gleamed with mischief. “All done?”
Falconer’s whole body relaxed as if he’d inhaled a powerful tranquilizer and a smile invaded his stern face. When it came to his wife, their fierce leader was a push-over. “All done. Coming in?”
“Um, no. I need to borrow Gray.”
“Me?” Grayson Reed halted midstride on the far side of the room as if he’d been frozen by a photographer’s flash.
“Uh-oh,” Kingsley teased as he slipped by Liv. “You’re in trouble now.”
“You’re getting married in a month,” Liv said, displaying a neat row of white teeth.
“I am.” A goofy grin took over Reed’s toothpaste-commercial smile and warmth flooded the silver steel of his eyes. Even the sideways mention of his fiancée, Abbie, turned Hollywood veneer into soap star mush. “Oh, God, I am.”
Harper exaggerated a shiver. “Man, I feel for you. I’d rather face a felon in a dark alley than sit through the torture of picking out china patterns.”
Dom couldn’t help the tickle of envy at Reed’s happiness. He’d imagined he’d have himself a team of rug rats by now. That’s what happened when someone stole your heart and didn’t give it back. You found yourself alone, wanting what you couldn’t have. Especially now, when he was about to reopen a wound best left alone.
“Weddings don’t plan themselves, you know.” Liv grabbed the stunned Reed’s shirtsleeve and pulled him into the hall. “We have a lot to do and not much time. Abbie’s upstairs, waiting. How do you feel about pumpkin and cranberry?”
“Um, they make good pies?”
“Color schemes, you silly man.” Liv’s laughter faded as she and Reed climbed the stone stairs up to Liv’s sunny office.
Once Liv disappeared, Falconer swiveled his black leather chair to face Dom. “What’s on your mind?”
“I found our target.” For the past six months, Dom had been tracking down a hit-and-run groom. The scam was swift and efficient, leaving heartache and ruin in its wake. The guy wooed divorcées, married them, drained them of all assets, then disappeared, taking on another identity and starting all over again somewhere else. His marks didn’t even know they’d been hit until it was too late.
After the con artist’s last foray, the bride, Laynie McDaniels, distraught by her losses, hanged herself in a motel room closet. She’d spent the past seven months on life support and had recently died. Her parents, Austin high society, feeling the authorities weren’t doing enough to capture and punish their daughter’s tormentor, had hired Seekers, Inc. a month after Laynie’s accident to locate the “dirty, rotten scoundrel” and bring him to justice. Circumstances pointed to foul play, but he needed court-solid evidence to back up the gut feeling. “He’s going by Warren Swanson this time. He’s passing himself off as a private detective in Nashua. And he’s about to strike again.”
“Let’s make sure we stop him before he does.”
“We need irrefutable evidence.”
“Uh-uh.”
Dom shoveled coffee cake into his mouth and chewed, trying to stay ahead of his bleak thoughts. Sweetheart scams rarely got prosecuted because who was to say that all hadn’t been given for love and the angry spurned lover hadn’t simply regretted her generosity? Not that many people reported the crime in the first place. Who wanted to admit they had been duped by a lover? The con artist counted on the character flaw of pride to get away and live to perpetuate the scam on some other unsuspecting love-starved pigeon.
Catching this guy would mean riding a delicate balance between putting an innocent woman in danger and making sure they got enough to put the guy behind bars for a good long time. Dom had to make this stop the impostor’s last. Evidence wasn’t a problem. Dom already had a six-inch-thick file with a number of aliases and addresses. What he lacked was proof of criminal intent. “I have a plan.”
“Shoot.”
The plan was simple enough: slip into Marston’s tightly knit community and pose as Luci Taylor’s boyfriend. Once he was close to both victim and con man, he could gather evidence. Dom reached for the mug of tea and drained it as if it were a shot of whiskey. Going in with guns blazing wasn’t going to work with this guy. He was too good at disappearing and reinventing himself. Dom couldn’t risk losing him again. This cover was the best way to snag him. “It requires going undercover to catch him hand in the cookie jar. I need to get close to him, win his trust.”
“I don’t have a problem with that.”
Nope, nothing out of the ordinary. Just a run-of-the-mill operation.
Except for one thing.
“The victim is Jillian Courville.” Dom chewed on the last piece of coffee cake and almost choked on it as it went down crooked.
“Is that a problem?”
Dom stared at the crumbs on his plate and swirled the fork through them. “Jill is Luci Taylor’s younger sister.” Jill was a spoiled divorcée who’d made out rich in her divorce settlement. And Luci? Falconer already knew about the Hostage Rescue Team and the way Cole Taylor had died. Dom looked around for more coffee cake and realized he’d eaten the whole thing without tasting it.
“Ah.” Hands tented over his lap, chin resting on his upraised fingers, Falconer rocked his chair back and forth. “I can send someone else.”
“No, I’ve got this guy’s number.” Dom had seen the havoc the con man had wreaked. Cuffing him was personal by now.
“What’s the problem then?”
“Luci.” Dom would be a reminder of everything she’d left behind, of everything she’d lost. He’d watched her for the past few days. Her routine was her comfort—the mornings spent in her fields, the afternoons in her barn, the mad rush of late afternoons taken up by her son’s needs. The master sniper had turned herself into the picture of a suburban soccer mom. She wouldn’t appreciate him showing up on her front steps.
But making peace and putting criminals behind bars where they could hurt only themselves had been his mission since his seventeen-year-old brother had been killed by a small-time con man. He couldn’t stop now just because his pride might get dinged. “She’s not going to like having anyone mess with her piece of paradise.”
“She doesn’t have to know.”
He’d thought of that, but once he put the plan through its paces, he figured trying to get one past Luci would bring more conflict than it would resolve. She might think she’d left her sniper days behind, but her warrior’s instincts were as sharp as ever. Twice, she’d nearly caught him following her as he’d tried to establish Jill’s habit pattern. “I need her help to get close to Swanson so he doesn’t feel threatened.”
“You can’t have it both ways.”
Dom pushed away the plate. “I know.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I need cover. He’s bound to check me out and it looks like he can do it, too, since he’s got Jill’s numbers all lined up. Leave the football history there for common ground. Swanson’s sporting a Super Bowl ring. Not his, mind you, just part of his cover. A salesman, maybe. That wouldn’t be a threat to him, especially if I’m not so good at it.”
Falconer’s grin slid sideways. “That’s going to be hard to do. You could sell manure to a pig farmer.”
“Aw, shucks, Falconer, I’m just a redneck from down Brazos County way. I couldn’t sell a plug nickel to a leaking dam.”
Falconer chuckled. “I’ll have Kingsley fix you up.”
“I’ll need data support.”
“You’ve got it.” Falconer gathered up his files. “Anything else?”
How about a face Luci wouldn’t hate on sight? “I’ve got everything covered.”
Everything but his dumb heart, and he couldn’t let Luci know she still had it in her back pocket. Not if he wanted her help.
“BRENDAN!” Luci Taylor bowled through the creaking back door of her Victorian fixer-upper, walked out of her garden clogs and into the kitchen without breaking stride. The room was a chaos of half-finished jobs, but she didn’t have time to worry about the cupboard doors waiting refinishing in the barn or the last wall of wallpaper waiting to be stripped. “We’re going to be late for soccer practice.”
“I can’t find my shoes.” The small voice came from somewhere in the front. She suspected the living room where her six-year-old son had surely parked his butt before the forbidden television. Her five minutes of picking basil leaves had turned into an hour of weeding, and he’d taken advantage of her distractibility.
Luci stuck her hands under running water and washed off the rich garden dirt with a homemade cake of rosemary soap. “They’ll be much easier to find once you turn off the TV.”
“Aww, Mo-om.”
“Come on. We have to pick up Jeff.” Jill’s carnival committee meeting was running late—as usual. On the positive side, if Jill hadn’t called requesting a ride for her seven-year-old son, Brendan might have missed practice altogether. Again. Luci still had summer’s unstructured time on her mind and, one week into school, she hadn’t quite gotten into the fall routine yet. She had to learn to wear a watch and not let time get away from her. Other moms managed to keep a regular schedule. She should be able to also.
“Do we hafta? He’s such a baby.”
Like a six-year-old was all grown-up. Luci transferred the cell phone from her sweatshirt pocket to her purse, then collected the storage bag of oranges she’d quartered earlier from the fridge. “He’s your cousin and you’re to be nice to him.”
“He’s a dork.”
“A dork who fixes your computer games.” That Jeff wasn’t athletic wasn’t his fault. His talents had a more intellectual bent—something she’d wished for her own son. To her utter devastation, Brendan had inherited his father’s craving for risk. She’d spent enough time at the local emergency room to be on a first-name basis with both first-shift and second-shift personnel.
Luci strode into the living room, flicked off the television and urged her son off his nest of plush pillows and toward the kitchen. Maggie, the brown-and-blond mutt seemingly put together from spare parts, jumped off the couch with a guilty look and slunk into the kitchen, wagging her tail warily. Luci didn’t have time to care about dog hair, so ignoring the transgression seemed best for her sanity at the moment. “Come on, Brendan. Your shoes are by the door where they belong.”
“Can we stop at the playground on the way home?”
“Not today.” Luci ruffled her son’s shock of dark hair.
“How come?”
“We don’t have time. I have a batch of pesto to get ready for the country club restaurant by tomorrow morning.” Not to mention the herb logs or the herb vinaigrette. And that didn’t take into consideration the gardens that needed cleaning up or the goats that needed feeding and milking on a regular basis. She loved all of it, really she did. She just needed a few more hours every day to make it all work out.
“Aww, Mo-om.”
“Aww, Bren-dan.” She grabbed her purse and the bag of orange sections. The dog danced all around her, wound up by the buzz of energy Brendan and their lateness created. Surveying her son, she noted the shin pads loosely cuffed around his lower legs and mouth guard dangling from a finger. “Do you have water?”
Brendan lifted his Nalgene bottle from the deacon’s bench by the door. “And my ball.” He scooped the black-and-white ball out from under the bench with his sock-clad foot.
“Let’s go.” She slipped on a pair of felt clogs, grabbed the cleats, opened the back door and shooed out the dog.
Just as Brendan maneuvered the ball out the back door, the strangled sound of the bell on the front door rang. Not now. She snagged her van keys from the horseshoe-shaped holder by the door. “Get in the van and wait for me. Don’t touch anything. And we’re not taking Maggie, so don’t let her in.”
As Luci pounded to the door, she juggled everything in her arms to free a hand. She opened the door, ready to put her ill-timed visitor off. Whatever word had meant to cross her lips remained locked in her voice box.
“Hi, Luce. Can I come in?”
The sight of Dominic Skyralov, big as life and broad as a bull, knocked her back two steps and seven years. His blond hair had darkened to caramel. But otherwise, nothing much had changed about the smooth-talking cowboy. His blue eyes still matched the well-washed denim of his skin-hugging jeans, still could read right through her, still made her want to confess her deepest sins. He’d been her best friend for four years. Then everything had changed. Now the sight of him called back her darkest memories and the nauseating disorientation that came with them.
“No.” She hung on to the brass doorknob as if it could save her from the flood of pain that rushed through her. “You can’t come in.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, trying desperately to break apart the image of blood, of horror, of Cole dead on the floor, of red staining the dirty boards of that bleak North Texas shack. “I’m on my way out.”
Dom nodded. A good-old-boy gesture that was as part of him as his inbred politeness. “I’ll come back, then. When would be good for you?”
Never. Her ears rang. Her vision narrowed and blackened. Oh, God, no. Him coming back would make this even worse. She’d have all the time in between to relive her worst nightmare over and over again. Cole falling, bleeding, dying. Closing her eyes, she swallowed hard. “Say whatever you have to say and leave. I’m in a hurry.”
“It’s a nice place you’ve got here.”
“No, Dom, don’t.” Her voice strained between clenched teeth. “I know how you work. Put your subject at ease, then slip in the punch. Just get to the point, okay?” She couldn’t take his smooth negotiator’s voice, that slow Texas drawl, chipping away at her calm until he found her soft spot and bored in for the kill.
“There’s a con man in town. He marries divorcées and bleeds them dry. I need you to help me gather evidence and provide me with some cover.”
Why don’t you just take a knife and twist it in my guts? “You are not bringing trouble here. Do you hear? You are not bringing trouble to this family. You are not bringing trouble to this community.”
“He’s engaged to your sister.”
The soft punch of his words knocked her breathless. “Now I know you’re lying. My sister isn’t seeing anyone.”
Then Luci remembered Jill’s bubblier-than-usual voice this morning as she’d issued a dinner invitation for Saturday and added she had a surprise. Luci had assumed Jill had scraped up another blind date to force on her. Jilly, what have you done? “I’m leaving now. And when I get back, I don’t want to see you or your truck in my driveway. Is that understood?”
Another nod. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t leaving. His big body became an iceberg she feared wouldn’t melt away until he’d done what he’d set out to accomplish. “Thing is, Luce, whether you want it or not, trouble’s here and it’s not me. The last woman this con man married died. You don’t want that for Jill. As much as you two rub each other raw, you love her.”
He shrugged as if he weren’t ripping the world she’d worked so hard to create to shreds, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. But he did. Dom had always cared too much. That’s why she couldn’t bear the sight of him. “You want to see trouble go away, Luce. You want your neat little life to go on. Then you need my help.”
Shaking her head, she snorted. That was just like him, turning this whole thing on her, making it her fault, her failure. She didn’t need this. She was already serving her time in hell. She was doing her penance. She deserved her small corner of peace and security. And even if she didn’t, Brendan did.
“I’ll take care of Jill myself. Goodbye.” Heart pounding, tears clawing up her throat, she slammed the door in Dom’s face and ran out the back door to the minivan where her son waited unaware that a monster worse than any video game’s had just invaded their bright little world.
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