The Renegade Hunter (24 page)

that way."

Nicholas merely stared at Jo blankly as she suddenly sat back and looked thoughtful, and then she asked, "You say Decker was shouting your name? That's what woke you up?"

"I-Yes," he said on a sigh.

"He did it then," she decided calmly, and as Nicholas began to shake his head, she said, "Yes, he did. He took control of you and took you both back to your place and killed the woman, set her in your lap, and then released his control."

Nicholas closed his eyes wearily. "Decker didn't do it, Jo. Decker wouldn't kill a mortal. He's a rogue hunter, he protects mortals and immortals alike. He wouldn't kill anyone but rogues."

"Yet you would," she asked dryly, and pointed out, "You were an enforcer too."

"Yes, but I was grieving, my head wasn't on straight. I was-"

"Controlled," Jo said firmly.

Nicholas wished he could agree with her and say that was what had happened, but shook his head. "Immortals can't be controlled."

"You said you can read each other's thoughts just like you can mortals," Jo said at once. "Perhaps an older immortal can also control a younger one. Decker probably-"

"Decker is younger than me," he interrupted. "And yes immortals can read each other, but only a very new turn can be controlled. I was centuries old."

"You're sure about that?" she asked, eyes narrowing.

Nicholas ran a hand through his hair and nodded solemnly. "Yes. It would take a three-on-one to wipe my memories and control me-three older immortals working together to do it. The minute you try to erase or bury an immortal's memories, the nanos will be trying to bring them back to the surface. They have to be buried and reburied over and over again. It takes days, and it was still the same night when Decker got there. I wasn't controlled, and I didn't have my memory erased," he assured her regretfully.

"Then you were drugged," she decided promptly.

"Jo," he said wearily.

"Stop fighting me and help here," she snapped. "You're wallowing in your supposed guilt. Stop that and use your noggin.

It just doesn't make sense, Nicholas. You apparently risked getting captured and killed earlier in the summer to help Dani and Stephanie, and then just the other night you did it again to save me. I was a complete stranger and I presume Dani

and Stephanie probably were too, but you risked losing your own life to save us. That doesn't sound like a man who would kill a woman just because she looked like your life mate." She paused to suck in a breath and then said, "Honestly, you'd be more likely to control the woman and keep her to play house with and pretend your Annie was still alive."

Nicholas frowned at her words. "But she was in my lap."

"But you don't remember how she got there," Jo said at once. "Does that seem right to you? How did you get her there?

What happened to the gift for Carol? Did she say anything to you to set you off? Did she cry and beg for her life? Did you take control of her and keep that control as you drove to your place? And why the basement?"

Nicholas peered at her blankly as her questions rained over him. When she put it that way, it didn't really seem right.

Surely she was correct and if he'd lost it, he'd have killed the woman there in the parking lot or at least remember something about getting her home, but... "Drugs don't work on us."

Jo paused and tilted her head. "No drugs? Not at all?"

"Well..." He hesitated and then admitted, "Weaker drugs will be removed by the nanos before they can do anything, and stronger ones wouldn't have as strong an effect or work for more than twenty minutes to half an hour."

"How long a drive was it from the hospital to your house?" she asked at once.

"Ten minutes," he said quietly. "I didn't want Annie to have to drive far to get to work."

Jo raised an eyebrow. "So you could have been drugged, taken home, the woman killed and set in your lap before you woke."

"Her blood was in my mouth," he reminded her.

She rolled her eyes and suddenly bounded from the bed and hurried from the room. Nicholas stared after her with surprise, and then threw the sheets and blankets aside to follow. He found her in the living room, bent over, picking up something from the table. His eyes slid over her bare derriere with interest totally inappropriate to the conversation they'd been having and he grimaced to himself, and said, "What-?"

That was as far as he got. At the sound of his voice, Jo suddenly straightened, turned, and threw a glass of wine in his face.

Nicholas gasped in shock, eyes instinctively shutting as the liquid splashed over him, hitting his face and upper chest.

"Oh look, you have wine in your mouth. Did you drink it?" she asked sarcastically.

Nicholas opened his eyes slowly to stare at her.

"Wake up, Nicholas," Jo snapped, setting down the glass. "This is your future. Stop just accepting that you killed the woman and start considering other possibilities, because the story you told me makes no sense at all, but everyone believes it and that can get you killed."

Turning abruptly, she walked into the kitchen. Nicholas simply stood there, watching her ass as she walked away. Once she disappeared, he glanced down at himself, noting that the wine was running down his body and dripping onto the carpet. He was about to go find a towel or something to clean up when Jo reappeared from the kitchen with a dish towel in one hand and a slice of cold pizza in the other. She tossed the dish towel to him and then dropped onto the couch and took a bite of pizza, glaring at him the whole while.

Nicholas grimaced and began to dry himself off under her glare, but then his lips began to twitch. The woman had thrown a glass of wine at him and was now glaring at him as if he was the one who'd done something wrong. Annie would have never done that. Annie had been like a soothing balm, a gentle angel. Jo was the opposite, a firecracker. Yet they'd both been his life mate and he could have lived happily with either, but he suspected life wouldn't be anywhere near restful with Jo. Or it wouldn't have been if he could have claimed her... and if what she was suggesting was true, he might be able to claim her someday.

"Right," he said suddenly. Finishing with the towel, Nicholas tossed it on the coffee table and dropped onto the couch beside her. "Let's do this."

Jo's glare immediately disappeared. Placing the nasty cold pizza on one of their used plates on the table, she turned to face him on the couch and said, "You saw the pregnant woman who looked like Annie in the parking lot... and then what?"

Nicholas sought his memories, but there just weren't any, which really was rather odd. Finally he said, "And then we were in my basement and she was dead."

"How did you get her there?" Jo shot the question at him like a bullet.

"I must have driven," he said uncertainly.

"In a blinding rage?" she asked dryly, and then snapped, "What happened to the gift for Carol?"

"I... don't know," Nicholas admitted with a frown.

"Okay, go back to what you do remember. You got out of the car and started across the parking lot. You saw the woman, she reminded you of Annie... Did she say or do anything ? Hello, or good evening?"

"I don't recall her saying anything," he muttered, searching his memory. "I think she smiled and..." Nicholas frowned.

"What?" Jo asked eagerly. "You're remembering something. What is it?"

"It's not much," he said wearily. "I just... She was walking toward me, she glanced up, met my gaze and smiled, and then her eyes traveled past me to something else."

"Probably to whoever it was who drugged you," Jo said with certainty and in that moment, Nicholas knew he loved her.

She was so certain of his innocence, believing in it even when he didn't.

Decker, his cousin and best friend, hadn't

doubted his guilt when he'd seen him there in the basement. All of his family had accepted his guilt without hesitation.

Even he himself hadn't doubted it these fifty years, but Jo, who had known him for only a matter of a couple of days, hadn't believed he was guilty for even a heartbeat... and he loved her for it...

for that, and her spirit of adventure,

courage, and intelligence and perky nature. He loved this woman.

"Do you remember feeling any kind of jab or anything?" Jo asked, completely oblivious of his thoughts. "Maybe a sudden sharp pain in the neck or arm that might have been a needle?

Or-Oh!" she interrupted herself suddenly, eyes widening. "It could have been a tranq gun. I bet an elephant tranquilizer would have taken you out for half an hour."

"It could have been," Nicholas agreed quietly.

Standing suddenly, Jo moved around the coffee table and began to pace the carpet, arms crossed under her breasts and pushing them up. The woman was completely and utterly nude and apparently totally unselfconscious about it as she

murmured, "How it was done doesn't really matter. I mean we can supposition on that all we want. You were probably drugged, the woman was probably controlled. You were taken home, she was killed, placed in your lap, blood splashed on you and in your mouth, and all just in time for Decker to show up and witness it. But none of that really helps. We can't prove it now. We need to figure out why it was done."

Nicholas nodded, his eyes drifting from her breasts to her behind as she turned to pace back again. Damn, she had a killer figure. He doubted the nanos would have much work to do body wise when he turned her. The thought drew him up short, and Nicholas swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. For the first time in fifty years, he had hopes for a future. But it was a false hope if they couldn't work this out.

"Did you have any enemies?" Jo asked suddenly, spinning to peer at him.

Nicholas shook his head. "No, not that I know of."

She clucked at that with disgust. "You were a rogue hunter, Nicholas. You probably had loads of rogues who weren't happy with your capturing them."

He winced, but then sighed and explained, "Most rogues don't live to be unhappy about it. Mostly they're staked and baked shortly after we bring them in."

"Staked and baked?" she asked.

"Staked out to bake in the sun all day," he explained. "After centuries of avoiding the sun we're pretty sensitive to it. It does a lot of damage. The nanos repair as much as they can but run out of blood to work with and start attacking the organs in search of more. It's pretty painful," Nicholas admitted with an almost embarrassed grimace.

"It's pretty Draconian," Jo said dryly.

"Yes," he acknowledged. "It's supposed to be a deterrent to others to convince them they don't want to go rogue and risk having that happen." Nicholas cleared his throat and added, "I think they may have stopped that practice the last couple of years, though, I'm not sure."

"Hmm," Jo murmured. "But they did that when you were still an enforcer?"

Nicholas nodded uncomfortably. "But not by me. Enforcers just bring them in. We aren't supposed to kill them. They get a trial just like a mortal would, and then the Council has them staked and baked and beheaded."

"Nice," she said on a sigh. "So no one you brought in could be behind this."

Nicholas was nodding in agreement when she added, "But family members could be, someone who had a rogue relative and blames you for bringing them in."

He shook his head again and peered down at his hands as he said, "Relatives tend to shun rogues. They're upset and embarrassed by them and often even deny their existence or relationship to them."

"Is that what happened to you?" Jo asked quietly.

Nicholas simply shrugged, but it was what had happened. From his checks on his family through mortal employees he knew that his brother and sister never spoke of him anymore and that Jeanne Louise, his little sister, who had adored him and made a pest of herself visiting all the time, often catching him and Annie in inopportune moments, even denied his existence now. As far as she was concerned, he had never been born.

"I'm sorry," Jo said quietly, and he glanced up to see she'd moved around the coffee table and now stood before him in all her nude glory. Just the sight of her perky breasts peering him in the face was enough to cheer him somewhat, but when Nicholas reached for her, she skipped out from between his legs and the coffee table to move back to the open area of carpet, out of his reach. "Right, so it probably isn't about being an enforcer. We have to think about this."

Nicholas sank back against the sofa with a sigh as she continued her pacing.

"So..." she murmured. "Annie called you and said she had something to tell you, but died before she could tell you what it was... in a car accident that decapitated her." Jo grimaced and paused in her pacing to turn and ask, "How did the accident happen? I mean decapitation in a car accident is pretty rare, I would think. Did she crash under a semi or something?"

"No," he said quietly. "She drove off the road on her way home from work.

She must have been tired or maybe she was

avoiding an animal in the lane. She went off the road, and slammed into a tree. Seat belts weren't mandatory at that time and she went through the windshield."

Jo stared at him with confusion. "How did that decapitate her?"

"The windshield did it," Nicholas said on a sigh. "The steering wheel caught her body and kept her in the car, but her

head slammed out the window. It didn't shatter like it should have. The bottom stayed intact and her head went out and down and-" He shrugged unhappily. "It was a freak accident. One in a million they said."

Jo started to pace again, murmuring, "A freak accident, one in a million."

Nicholas nodded, recalling his horror as they'd broken the news to him, and then Jo said, "That must be it."

He raised his head to peer at her. "What?"

"Don't you see?" she asked, turning to look at him, eyes sparkling. "Annie was going to tell you something when you got back, but died in a totally freak car accident that decapitated her... one of the very few ways to kill an immortal. And then you were heading to see her