Boneyard Ridge (17 page)

“Good thinking,” she conceded, following him up one more flight of stairs to the second floor. So far, her healing feet weren’t giving her too much trouble, thanks to the excellent fit of the tennis shoes Hunter had purchased at the thrift store and the last-minute bandaging job he’d done before they left Quinn’s cabin.

“How’re you holding up?” he asked as they opened the door that led into the second-floor corridor.

“I’m good. How’s your leg?”

He slanted a narrow-eyed look her way. “It’s fine.”

Okay, then. Not a profitable topic of conversation.

“It hurts,” he said a moment later as they edged out into the hallway after a quick look around. “Some days worse than others. Like I said before, lots of bolts and pins in there.”

The hallway was deserted, the lights set on emergency lighting. There had been a few times Susannah had pulled an all-nighter preparing for a big event at the hotel, so she was used to the look of the place after hours.

But apparently Hunter hadn’t worked any evening or night shifts during his short stint in the hospitality industry. “Is it always this dark at night?”

“Saves power, which saves money. Because it’s occupied, they don’t cut out the lights, even in the business section of the hotel. But after six, they go to what they call the evening protocol, cutting out all but essential exit lighting.”

“So if we turn on the light in your office, someone’s likely to spot it from outside.”

“If they’re looking.”

“I think we have to assume they will be.”

Susannah stopped with her hand on the door of the stairwell at the far end of the corridor. “You really think they’ll be watching my office?”

“I honestly don’t know. I just think we have to go on the assumption that they’re watching. Safer that way.” He closed his hand over hers, pushing the door to the stairwell open.

She slipped inside, trying to ignore the little shudder of awareness that rippled through her as his body pressed close against her back. He placed his hand over her arm, stilling her forward movement, as the door clicked shut behind them.

In the echo chamber of the stairwell, his whisper sounded impossibly loud. “Speaking of assuming the worst, what if there’s already someone in your office when we get there?”

“You mean Marcus?”

“If he’s up to his eyes in this plot, he might be here, finalizing things,” Hunter said.

“We’re armed. We take him down, tie him up and make him tell us what they have planned.” She was only half joking, she realized.

Hunter looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Bloodthirsty.”

“Just tired of sleeping in strange beds.” She shot him an apologetic glance. “Not that your bed wasn’t perfectly nice. And really quite warm.” As warm as the air in the stairwell had become since they’d been standing there, pressed intimately close. She edged away from him before she did something reckless, like stand on her tiptoes and kiss him. “There’s a window in the door of my office. It’s not very large, but it should allow us to take a look inside to see if anyone’s moving about.”

The first-floor corridor was empty when they eased through the stairwell door into the hall. Handing over the office key, Hunter scouted ahead a few yards, stopping just long enough to glance through the window in the office door. “All clear,” he said softly, moving up the hall to make sure they were still alone as she scooted toward her office.

She unlocked the door and slipped into the darkened room, her heart knocking in rapid thuds against her sternum. Crazy, she thought, that two days ago, this office was as familiar and comfortable to her as her own apartment. Now it felt like an alien place, full of shadows and threat.

The door handle rattled behind her, and she whipped around, her hand already closing on the Glock tucked behind her back.

Hunter held up his hands. “I come in peace.”

She dropped her hand to her side, squeezing her trembling fingers into a fist. “All quiet?”

He nodded, moving past her to the windows, where the wooden blinds were currently levered open. One by one, he eased the blinds closed, then turned back to look at her. She could barely see him in the faint light seeping in through the window in the door, the dimmed hall lights offering little in the way of illumination.

Pulling his penlight from his pocket, he nodded toward her desk. “The cops have probably already searched your desk—was there anything in there that would reveal your real identity?”

“No,” she said firmly.

“Does such a thing exist?” he asked curiously as he flicked on the penlight and aimed the narrow beam on Marcus’s desk. “Anywhere?”

“Not anymore.” After her grandmother’s death, with nothing else to connect her to her old life but a blood vendetta she’d spent over a decade desperate to elude, she’d destroyed the handful of keepsakes she’d held on to for memory’s sake.

Her grandmother had never been sentimental, and she’d managed to strip most sentiment from Susannah, as well. There hadn’t been a lot to hold on to, anyway. Just memories of a foolish mother, a venal father and a weak brother who could have made a better choice for his life but chose to follow in his father’s shiftless footsteps instead.

And her grandmother, who never sat for a photo in her life besides her driver’s license photo.

She crossed to where he crouched, looking under Marcus’s desk. “I used to have a piece of an old driver’s license that belonged to my grandmother. The photo part.” It had been one of the keepsakes she’d finally destroyed after her grandmother’s death, the grainy photo almost a decade old. Her grandmother had cut up the license when she’d received a new one shortly before the shooting that had sent Susannah out of town.

Hunter looked up at her. “Just the photo part?”

“She’d cut it up when she got her new license in the mail,” Susannah explained, tugging at the top right-hand door of the desk. “This is locked.”

Hunter pulled a small wallet from his jeans pocket. “I was prepared for that possibility.” He flipped open the slim leather wallet to reveal something that brought back a few old, unpleasant memories for Susannah.

“You have a lock-pick kit?”

He glanced at her again. “You know what a lock-pick kit looks like?”

“Did I mention my daddy was a thief?” She watched as he wielded the thin pieces of metal to pop open the lock on the drawer. “Explains why I was living with my grandmother, huh?”

“What happened to the picture of your grandmother?” he asked as his penlight flicked across a collection of perfectly ordinary office-desk minutiae—a small box of staples, a few loose rubber bands, several paper clips in a variety of sizes. Nothing that screamed “domestic terrorist.”

“I burned it after she died.” The memory stung. “She would have wanted me to. In fact, she’d have been furious if she’d known I’d kept the picture. She was so adamant about changing everything about my life, including my past.”

“She was probably right. If the wrong person had seen it—”

“I didn’t keep it on me. I bought this old locket at an antique store in Raleigh. A cheap piece of junk jewelry, but I kept my grandmother’s driver’s-license photo inside that locket. I never wore it or anything. Just kept it around so I could open it when I was feeling lonely.”

Hunter put his hand on her arm, his touch gentle and deliciously warm. “I’m sorry you’ve had to live that way.”

“As long as there’s a Bradbury in these hills, I’ll be living that way. I guess it’s time to stop wishing for something else.”

Hunter closed his other hand around her arm, penlight and all. “Don’t stop wishing for something else. When you stop wishing, you start dying.”

“Why does that sound like the voice of experience?” she murmured, her heart hurting a little at the sight of his bleak expression, barely visible in the gloom.

“Because it is.” He gave her arms a squeeze and let go, turning back to the desk.

With the lock picks, he unlatched the rest of the drawers. In the top left drawer, the beam of the penlight flickered across what looked like loose tea leaves scattered along the right edge of the drawer.

“Hmm,” Susannah said.

“What?”

She waved at the dried leaves. “I never figured Marcus as a tea drinker. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him drink anything but coffee before.”

“Well, I don’t think he’s going to wipe out a cop conference with a bunch of rogue tea leaves, so maybe we should look elsewhere.” Hunter closed the desk drawer and looked around the office. “Is there anything you can remember about Lemonde that might lead you to believe he’s not what he seems?”

“Honestly? We don’t really interact that much. He tends to do his job without talking much, which is fine by me.”

“Antisocial much?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Pot...kettle...”

He grinned at her retort before his expression grew serious again. “Where would his personnel records be kept?”

“Actually,” she said, moving toward the file cabinets behind her desk, “I should have a copy in here somewhere.” Flicking on her penlight, she aimed the beam toward the top drawer of the cabinet on the left and pulled it open, grimacing as some dark powder came off on her fingers. “Ugh, is that fingerprint powder?”

Pausing at the edge of her desk, Hunter pulled a couple of tissues from the box by her phone. “Here.”

“Thanks.” She wiped her fingers on the tissue, then used it to pull the drawer open wider so she could get to the file tucked in the back. She pulled it out and carried it over to her desk. “He had pretty good references from his last job.”

“Which was?”

“Public relations at a construction company. The hotel wanted someone who’d worked in the real estate and construction industry because we’re interested in bringing in more manufacturing events.” She scanned the résumé that sat on top of the other papers in his file. “Hmm.”

“What?” Hunter leaned closer, his chest brushing against her shoulder. A flood of heat swamped her, making her light-headed for a second.

She gripped the edge of the desk and pointed her penlight toward the third entry under “Employment” in his résumé. “He worked for Gibraltar Mining.”

“As a PR person?”

She shook her head, alarms clanging in her head. “As an explosives expert.”

Hunter closed his hand over her arm, his grip painfully tight. Suddenly he was moving, bundling her along in front of him, heading for the door of the small bathroom behind her desk. He pushed her inside and half closed the door behind them. Within a second, he had his Glock out of the ankle holster and in his hand.

“What—” she managed to get out before he pressed his fingers to her lips, silencing her.

Then she heard the rattle of a key in the office door.

Hunter wrapped his arms around her as she started to shiver, his head bending low until his lips just brushed her ear. “Don’t make a sound.” The words came out on a soft breath.

Outside the bathroom, a light came on, almost blinding her. Squinting she peered through the narrow gap between the door and the frame and bit back a gasp as she spotted Marcus Lemonde walking slowly across the office.

Heading straight for the bathroom door.

Chapter Thirteen

Susannah’s fingers tightened over Hunter’s hand and gave a sharp tug, pulling him backward. For a second, he resisted, but she yanked harder and he gave in, backing deeper into the shadows of the bathroom. He heard the faintest of snicks, the tiniest of rattles, and then she was pulling him with her through the narrow doorway of the bathroom closet.

She pulled the door closed behind them, not quite engaging the latch, and even the ambient light from the hallway that had managed to seep into the bathroom disappeared into inky nothingness.

Susannah’s breath was warm against the back of his neck, sending animal awareness prickling through his flesh. She kept her death grip on his hand, her fingers flexing and loosening in a frantic rhythm.

He tucked the Glock into his waistband and reached behind him to catch her other hand, bringing both of her arms around his waist until her body pressed flat against his. The heat of her, the rapid thud of her heartbeat against his spine, felt like a tonic, filling his flagging soul with purpose. With confidence and focus.

He could do this. He could handle whatever happened next, because he had to.

She needed him to.

Footsteps clicked on the tile floor of the office bathroom, and the light came on, sending a narrow sliver of illumination through the crack between the door and the frame. Behind Hunter, Susannah pressed her face against his shoulder. He ran his thumbs soothingly over hers, then released her hands and withdrew the Glock from his waistband.

He felt her moving as well, quick, economical movements that made her body brush his in the tight confines of the bathroom closet. Outside in the bathroom, the water came on, and Susannah leaned closer. “I’m armed now, too.” He felt her words more than heard them, the faintest whisper of breath in his ear.

Until today, the idea that the sleek, sophisticated businesswoman he’d been following around for the past three weeks would wield anything more lethal than a letter opener had seemed ludicrous.

But he’d seen her loading the borrowed Glock that afternoon, her movements quick and confident. She knew her way around a weapon. She’d already proved she was tough enough to brave a mountain hike on wounded feet. And she had enough courage to come here tonight, knowing that her life was in danger on multiple levels, because she had inside information that Hunter needed to complete his mission.

She was a far more amazing woman than he’d given her credit for.

Far too amazing for the likes of him.

The water turned off, followed by retreating footsteps. The light in the bathroom extinguished, plunging them once again into darkness.

A moment later, they heard a click. The door to the office closing?

“We should follow him,” he whispered. “See why he’s here so late.”

“We’d be spotted in a heartbeat,” she disagreed. “There’s nowhere to hide.” She caught his arm and gave a tug, turning him toward her. As he started to speak, she stopped him with her mouth, hot and hard against his. Her tongue swept over his, fiercely demanding, and his heart seemed to bolt like a frightened horse, galloping wildly to keep pace with the frantic rhythm of her pulse against his chest.