Heart of the Hunter (18 page)

What?

She knew only that her heart was racing, her skin prickled with the feel of eyes watching from the dark.

A whisper of sound barely beyond her bed set a shock wave spiraling through her. Her heart lurched, a painful pressure stabbed her chest. Her mouth was dry, her throat too taut to scream. Sitting upright in a jerky motion, not out of boldness, but because she couldn't face the unknown lying down, she called a name in a labored voice, and prayed. “Jeb?”

A mirthless chuckle flowed out of a shadow darker than the rest, a hollow sound, plucking at her nerves like a guitar string tuned too tightly. “Not this time, Nicole. But I've brought someone else to see you.”

It took a minute for recognition to penetrate the befuddling haze of fear. Gathering the covers to her breasts, she sat up, willing herself to see through murky shade. This was crazy! It couldn't be. “Tony?”

“Right, the second try.” He moved soundlessly, his body seeming to materialize in a pool of light falling from the window. Nicole choked back a cry as she found herself looking at an older, masculine version of herself. As she stared, he laughed again. “What? Nothing to say to your long lost brother?”

She couldn't think, couldn't feel. There was only confusion. Striving to make sense of this, of his sudden appearance, and his obvious need for secrecy, she forced herself to be calm. Only her fingers twitched nervously against the covers. “What should I say?”

“You're a cool one now, aren't you? No bloodcurdling shrieks of fright, no happy tears. So, how about ‘long time, no see'?” He lounged against the chair at the foot of her bed. “There was a time you would've run to me, wrapping yourself around my neck like a limpet.”

“Limpet.” The word battered at her, repelled her. “Is that what I was to you? All I was?”

“Eventually. Why else do you think I walked away from you, with your diploma clutched so proudly in your hand, all those years ago?”

Nicole felt sick, and she felt foolish carrying on a conversation from her bed. Throwing back the sheet, not caring that her shirt stopped short of her knees, she slipped into her robe. “Let's continue this conversation, if that's what it is, in the other room, shall we?”

This was her brother. She'd spent the greater part of her life worshiping him. Now she was speaking to him as if he were a stranger and denying the excoriating pain his words inflicted after a lifetime removed from him.

She was shaking and dazed as she walked past him and into the next room. She was afraid that if he touched her she would scream. Her brother! Dear God, she was afraid of her brother!

“Don't!” His command lashed out of the darkness as she fumbled for the light switch. “No lights, please. The moonlight's so much cozier for an old-fashioned family reunion, don't you think?”

Nicole sank to the sofa, her strength sapped by the harsh command, the scornful mockery. “What do you want, Tony?” She was shivering and horrified that all she felt for him was mistrust and dread. Wrapping her arms tightly about herself she forced an even tone into her voice. “Why are you here, like this? Why now?”

“You don't know?” He leaned against the doorjamb, watching her. “He hasn't told you?”

“He?” She felt dense, disconnected, as if she'd come into the middle of a very bad movie.

“Your new boyfriend, who else?”

“Jeb?”

“Ahh, a little honesty, at last.”

“What would Jeb tell me about you, Tony? He's never mentioned you more than once or twice. What would he know about you? You haven't seen each other in fifteen years, what could he say?”

“Now isn't that strange? Considering what close buddies we were and he never mentioned me, never asked about me. But you didn't notice, did you? Too starry-eyed? Why would he mention me?” The soft unctuous voice dropped to a low snarl. “Because he's a cop, sugar. Do you hear me, a cop!”

“That's insane.” Her nails were sharp and piercing against the tender flesh of her arms. She moved her head violently side to side. To clear it, to deny, she didn't know. “Jeb's retired. He made his fortune in stocks and bonds.”

“Sure, and he just happened to retire a continent away from his home, on the island my sister just happens to live on, as well.” A grimace drew down his mouth. A bizarre, wooden expression, as if any feeling was a travesty. “Makes a nice fairy tale, wouldn't you say?”

“You're guessing. You don't know for sure.”

“I don't have to know for sure. And I don't have to know who he's working for, what private or public sector, or even if he's legit at all. I know the breed when I see it.” He caught her quick look of dismay. “Hit a nerve, did I? You've wondered a little about him yourself. Like what's a man like him doing here, with a crew like his?”

Another conversation came back to haunt her. She could close her eyes and hear Annabelle expounding about Jeb Tanner, the man of mystery. Asking who really knew him. Nicole bit her lip. She hadn't known him. Not even a little.

“You've been used, sugar. Whoever he works for was smart enough to figure you were my last option. All old Jeb had to do was weasel into your good graces, and from the looks of things, your pants, then sit back and wait for me.”

Nicole hugged herself tighter, and felt sicker. She wouldn't think of Jeb, what he had done or why. “What have
you
done, Tony? Why would the authorities, or whoever, want you?”

“A long story. If I'd needed you to know, I wouldn't have walked away from you in the first place.”

“That long?” She raised startled eyes to his and found them lackluster in the half-light. “What you've done was that long ago?”

“For that long,” he corrected, letting her understand it wasn't a one time thing. No childish prank, nor one single thoughtless act.

“If you knew he was here waiting for you, why did you come?”

“You haven't been listening, little sister. You're my last option. The last person I could turn to.”

“That can't be true.”

“But it is.” He stepped from the door, moving closer.

“There's nothing I can do.”

“You're wrong.” Moonlight spilling through tall windows was like a pale, wintry sun. In its light she saw that he was older than his years, and seedy. Desperation radiated from him like a rank odor. And something more, something off kilter.

“You've just decided you need some time off.” He spun a tale for her. “You're going to charter a boat with a crew to sail the Caribbean Islands. Makes sense, you like islands.”

“Where would you be in the meantime? While plans are made?”

“Right here, where else?”

“What would I tell Jeb?”

“From what I've seen, you and your new lover quarreled.”

“You've been watching me!” The thought of those odd eyes peering at her from hidden places made her cringe.

Beyond a feral grin, Tony ignored her outburst. “You tell him you don't want to see him anymore, that you're going away to heal your broken heart.”

“If he won't accept that?”

A gun appeared in Tony's hand. A monstrous weapon. A magnum, chrome and black and lethal as a cannon. “Then we'll settle it with this.”

Panic started deep in her chest and exploded. “You can't!”

“Wanna bet?” He looked at her with an unchanging gaze, pointed a finger at her head and pulled an imaginary trigger. At her smothered gasp, his mouth moved in a caricature of a laugh, the sound sending snakes slithering down her spine. “I won't hurt you, Nicole, but you will help me. Shall I show you why?”

Only a simpleton wouldn't have known then what her brother's crimes were, and why it was so crucial he escape. Horror sizzled through panic. Terror for Jeb turned it deadly calm. In the throes of cartwheeling sensation she managed to say almost conversationally, “I won't help you, Tony. I want you to leave, disappear from my life as completely as you did before. Forget you ever had a sister. And I'll try my damnedest to forget you.”

Tony clucked his tongue, and chucked her under the chin. He grinned when she didn't recoil. “You found some guts over the years, have you? Or is all this bravado for your lover's sake?”

She met his scorn levelly. “It isn't bravado for anyone.”

“You think he loves you? Wise up. He came here to betray you, and whatever he's done, however sweet he's been—” sarcasm curled his mouth into a nasty leer “—it was only to get to me. Then he'll walk, as far and fast as he can. As he must have countless times before, from countless women as gullible.”

Nicole didn't respond. Jeb had already walked. To the
Gambler
and out to sea with his crew, she prayed.

“Gonna be stubborn?” Tony laughed again. He laughed too much, an off note that wasn't quite right. And when she let her gaze settle on him, his head jerked and he was first to look away. “I think it's time to play my ace in the hole. See how stubborn you are then.”

He stepped to the deck and disappeared into the darkest corner. A thud, the crack of an open-handed slap was followed by a low, mournful wail that brought new fear leaping into Nicole's heart. She was on her feet, afraid to look, but afraid to look away when Tony shoved a cowering, sobbing giant into the room.

“Ashley!” His name was all she had time to say as he sprawled at her feet. A murderous look thrown over her shoulder cut short an unnatural bark of laughter as she knelt by the rigid man.

A handkerchief threaded through his lips, dragging his chin back at an awkward angle. His hands were bound, the flesh turning a ghastly color from too little circulation for too long. She touched his cheeks, wiping tears from them. She spoke softly, comfortingly, but Ashley didn't see her or hear her. He didn't feel the soiled gag loosen and slide away. Response was beyond him for he'd slipped into the self-induced trance that was his only protection from horrors he didn't understand.

Nicole stood; without a glance at Tony, with her back straight and her chin at a fighting angle she stalked to the kitchen.

“Where do you think you're going?”

She turned, her eyes were as gray and cold as Jeb's had been. “I don't think, I know where I'm going. First I'm going to turn on a lamp, then I'm going to the kitchen for a knife to cut Ashley free.”

Tony lifted the gun, the muzzle centered on her.

“You want to shoot me? Then do it. But who will you turn to if you do? Jeb's out there somewhere. So is Mitch Ryan, a Cajun who can laugh in one breath and cut your heart out the next. And with them is a master tracker, an Apache called Matthew Winter Sky. Once he has your scent, he'll find you no matter where you go, or how far. When he does, if you've hurt Ashley, you'll regret it more than you've regretted anything in your life.

“Without me you don't stand a chance, Tony. So make up your mind. Shoot or turn the gun away.” She knew she should be frightened out of her skull, but she was too furious to care. “While you're making up your mind, I'm going to cut Ashley free before he loses his hands.”

She saw a finger squeeze against the trigger.

“There's only me, Tony,” she said softly. “Or you wouldn't be here. Only me, or you wouldn't risk facing Jeb.” Her voice sank to a singsong rhythm, “Only me, only me.” She could feel the bullet in her chest, feel his need to put it there.

This was her brother!

She caught back a moan of despair and tried to rekindle a lost kinship. “There's me, Tony. Only your sister.”

“Shut up!” The gun wavered and steadied. No life shone from blank eyes, but there was sweat on his forehead. His shrug was stiff, unnatural. “Turn on the lamp, get the knife. Cut your pet fool free. But know this, and believe me, if he makes one suspicious move, he's fish bait.”

Nicole met him stare for stare, then, turning on her heel, she walked when she wanted to run. She'd gained an edge, a small one she must keep at all costs. One overt sign of the terror that lay twisted in her ready to spin out of control and she would lose everything. Ashley's life, her own. Jeb's.

The knife was slippery in her hand as she knelt again by Ashley. He hadn't moved, he didn't blink in the bright light of the lamp. For once Nicole was grateful for the self-induced trance she'd once thought maddening. Sawing at the rope, trying not to cut skin that had already torn in his struggle against captivity, a part of her knew the horror Ashley felt. He hated to be caged or closed in. Being tied and gagged would be as bad.

Ashley would have begged and cried, and struggled however long it took. The varying age of the bruises on his face and hands spoke of days. She wondered if the monster who held a gun at her back had laughed his monster's laugh.

More hate and revulsion than she knew she could feel burned through her. A conflagration that purged her fear, leaving only cold eyed, bitter rage.

She dropped the knife, the bonds were cut. Ashley lay as he was. Only tears spilling on his cheeks told her that the excruciating pain of blood rushing through starved vessels penetrated his fog.

“Lie still, Ashley,” she whispered. “Dear heaven, please lie still.”

“Shut up.”

“You said you didn't want him to move. That's what I'm telling him.” She brushed the shaggy, dirty hair from Ashley's face. “It doesn't matter how big his body is, or how old he is, he's a child.”

“Cuts no ice with me. Big, small, old, young, I've killed children before.”

Nicole jerked around, staring up at him. Hate and rage rose a notch.

He saw it. Laughed. And when she shivered at the sound, he laughed again. “It occurs to me it would simplify matters if we had another reunion. You know, old surfing buddies, Sons of Apollo.”

“No!” She would have risen, flown at his face, his eyes, with her nails if Ashley hadn't chosen that moment to move, to try to rise. With a strength born of desperation she forced the huge man back, soothing him with a touch and a soft word as he subsided.