Heart of the Hunter Read online

  Two days more had passed. The packing and shipping and additional inventory would be long done, for Nicole worked hard, sparing herself little. Ever. The only indulgence she allowed were solitary morning walks; the only respite, lazy Sundays on the island.

  “Sunday.” Jeb rapped the window with an impatient fist. “Where is she?”

  His growled question was rhetorical. He knew where she was. Hank Bishop, Simon’s man in Charleston, had reported where she’d been, what she’d done and with whom, in precise detail. His last report had been that Nicole Callison was tucked safely, and alone, behind her garden wall. That was two days ago. Since then, Bishop had been as silent as the grave.

  A second fist rattled the pane as lightning split the distant sky and thunder rumbled. As morning blossomed in new radiance, the darkness churning over the sea had issued its first challenge. But Jeb had stopped thinking of light and darkness and colors.

  “Two days.” Hands still fisted, he fought a rising impatience. “Two damnable days and nothing!”

  Maybe it was the silence that made him too edgy to sleep. Maybe it was that he wasn’t accustomed to having a part of his investigations under the jurisdiction of another.

  “Maybe it’s a lot of things.” Bracing against the broad expanse of glass, head bowed, tired eyes closed, his bare chest heaved in a deep shuddering breath. He needed to see her. If she was avoiding him, he needed to know why.

  He needed to know now!

  Wheeling about without a backward glance at the deserted shore, he went to the telephone. An instrument he trusted little, used only carefully and sporadically, but recently his chief connection to the world outside the walls of his temporary lodging. The number he dialed rang once and, after an eternity, a second time. As Mitch Ryan answered, Jeb went straight to the point. “I’m heading for Charleston.”

  Mitch Ryan had been his friend for too long, and worked with him too many times to ask why or when or to try to dissuade him. If Jeb Tanner felt the need to go to Charleston, it would be with good reason. If there were circumstances that needed discussion, it wouldn’t be over an open telephone line. “All right,” the younger man said. “But, in case you haven’t looked out your window this morning, don’t let this sunshine fool you. There’s a mother of a storm brewing out there.”

  Jeb glanced out the window, really seeing what he’d stared at for hours, and for a moment his world was a polarized void of light and dark. He’d spent the better part of his life on or near the sea, and it never ceased to feel strange to stand in full sun on a beautiful day and watch a squall approach.

  From the looks of it, a hell of a squall, gathering strength and staying power. Mitch Ryan and Matthew Sky, two of the best of The Black Watch, had served as his crew more than once before. Water wasn’t the natural habitat for a Louisiana street kid and a French Chiricahua Apache, but they’d taken to it like salty dogs.

  They were good, better than good, but he was the captain, a sailor born and bred. The sloop and its part in this was his responsibility. “Do you anticipate any problems?”

  “Nothing the medicine man and I can’t handle.” Static crackled over the line and Mitch’s voice waffled in and out as lightning flashed again.

  “The Gambler‘s secure?” The sloop, once the Moon Dancer, had been heavily damaged in another life. Reworked, repainted and refurbished, then given a new set of papers that wiped out its past, it was reborn as the Gambler.

  In this mission, Mitch Ryan and Matthew Sky pulled triple duty as Jeb’s friends, crew and counterparts. A heavy load, but there was no one whose skill and judgment he trusted more. He could leave everything in their hands. But he had to be sure, and not just about the sloop.

  Mitch was a step ahead of him, reading his thoughts, his silence. “The three of us will be safer than you will, Cap. Especially me—I have the medicine man, remember. Monsieur Matthew Winter Sky, the original man who sees things before they’re there, and that no one else will ever see. You just worry about yourself, not us. Take it easy on those narrow roads. If you happen to see a pretty girl along the way, kiss her for me.”

  Jeb laughed then. “You don’t need any help in that department, I’ll let you do your own kissing.”

  “Given my limited choices, I think I’ll pass. Matthew would knock my head off and the boat has splinters.”

  A gust of wind swirled about the house and moaned about its eaves. A strafing gull flapped furiously, and sailed backward. Jeb had to go. If he hurried he could beat the worst of what was coming to the mainland. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “You do that. And Cap...”

  Jeb waited.

  Mitch cleared his throat. Over the scratching telephone line it sounded like a chair scraping over a hollow floor.

  Time was precious, but Jeb waited. This wouldn’t take long.

  Mitch sighed. A vocal shrug of the shoulders to diffuse the depth of what he was feeling, what he wanted to say. Then, “Just watch your back.”

  “Yeah,” Jeb agreed. “Always.” With a jab of his thumb the connection was broken and the receiver put down thoughtfully. The conversation was typical Mitch Ryan. No breach of security. No unnecessary questions asked. No unwanted advice given. Tough talk. Teasing names. Levity that fooled no one, then an oblique comment that gave him away if it had.

  Mitch was worried, and not about the storm. Tony Callison had gone to ground months ago. He could be surfacing now, in Charleston. The weather would offer perfect cover. And by now he would be desperate, as only a hunted man completely alone could be.

  Contradiction sliced though Jeb’s thoughts. Not completely alone. He had Nicole. A gut feeling said Simon had been right on target all along. The errant brother would come to his sister. Perhaps, contrary to Bishop’s absence of reports, he already had.

  Tony Callison might be desperate, and he was dangerous, but he was cunning in the bargain. The man could move in and out of a scene as quietly as a ghost. He’d proven it time and again. Better men than Hank Bishop had been lulled into a false security, thinking the target of his surveillance was too quiet and peaceful to be at risk and in no danger.

  When too quiet really meant danger was already present.

  “Danger.” The word, a constant in Jeb’s life, the measure of it, was harsh on his tongue. If the telephone had been in his hand, he would have crushed it. Was Nicole in danger?

  In all the hours he’d spent arguing with Simon—resisting this assignment until the absolute end; throughout the exhaustive brainstorming and planning with Mitch and Matthew; in the final stages of pouring over Nicole’s dossier—he hadn’t wanted to consider that she might become a threat to her brother and, thus, to herself.

  Jeb Tanner admitted he’d tried her in his mind long ago and convicted her of one of two crimes. Complicity, or innocent naiveté. He’d nearly convinced himself there were no other choices, and if it came down to it, the lesser crime would protect her. But then he hadn’t seen her again. Hadn’t discovered the woman the child had become.

  Nicole Callison might be guilty as sin, but that sin wouldn’t be naiveté.

  If Tony came to her with the taint of death clinging to him; if he asked for help, an avenue of escape, a smuggler’s ticket out of the country; if she refused him, would he harm her?

  Once Tony had loved her too much to let anyone or anything touch her. But that was before.

  Before his sociopathic mind lost its last touch with humanity. Before the collegiate bad boy evolved into a conscienceless killer of men and women and, finally, children. Before the killing became a sadistic ritual, the bounty less important than the pleasure.

  Before he became a stalking mad dog, who walked as a man.

  If she got in his way, it wouldn’t matter who she was, or what she’d been to him. “He would kill her,” Jeb muttered, the horror of it, the waste, turning him sick.

  Tony would kill her like all the rest.

  The image that scorched Jeb’s mind sent a shudder down his back. He’d s
tudied the forensic reports and seen the snapshots of what Tony did to his growing list of victims. Each a signature killing, and each worse than the last, until a gruesome pattern of a serial killer began emerging.

  “But no more.” Jeb’s voice was the guttural voice of a stranger, as cold as his eyes. It was the threat of a serial killer with the honed skills of murder for hire that had brought Simon McKinzie and The Black Watch into the pursuit. The same threat had tipped the scales, destroying Jeb’s resistance to Simon’s plan to trade on his past—renewing one acquaintance to catch another.

  With the gruesome facts laid before him, Jeb saw, not the man who had been his rival and his best friend in college, but a monster, potentially more destructive than any the world had ever known. If he were not stopped.

  But he would be. And Jeb Tanner would do it.

  “Before Nicole’s name is on any damn bloody list.” If he wasn’t already too late.

  Dread like cold lead in his belly, Jeb took the stairs in a deliberate pace that ate up the distance more surely than frantic rushing. In the bedroom that occupied the top floor, he slid into jeans, a light shirt and moccasins. A holster was strapped to his ankle and a compact, but powerful, pistol was snapped in it before he gathered up the keys to the roadster. Then he was running down the stairs again, taking them two at a time.

  The door slammed behind him on the echo of a single word.

  “Please.”

  * * *

  The air was humid and fragrant. Shrubs crowded the walled garden walk and the courtyard, their heavy blooms and waxen leaves shimmering like old velvet. In the murky half-light the narrow corridor that bordered Nicole Callison’s Charleston home was a magical place of drifting mists and deepening shade, of muted bird song and quiet footsteps.

  As she walked through the mist, Nicole reveled in these last minutes before a summer squall. When the wind lay still, city streets outside her gate were wrapped in a waiting hush, and this little part of her world was softer, sweeter. When there truly was peace before the storm.

  Soon the wind would rise again, bringing with it the rain, the thunder and the lightning. But when it was done, the city would go on as before, and her garden would be rife with the promise of new life.

  Nicole believed with all her being that in Charleston and Kiawah, she’d found the best of both worlds. One offered serenity embodied in a rain-swept garden. The other, the wild exhilaration and the furor of the sea. She loved them both.

  She was content with her life. As she wandered this tiny space that was hers alone, she knew she was more content than she had ever hoped. But the way had been long and hard, leading, at last, to a place far away from who she was and where she’d begun. Only then had she put the past behind her.

  Three days ago a part of that past had stepped back into her life, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to feel anything.

  Catching a drooping blossom in her palm, she watched as moisture gathering on a creamy petal trembled like tears. The tears she’d shed over Jeb.

  Jeb. She’d loved him. With every beat of her fifteen-year-old heart she’d loved him. As she’d trailed behind her brother and his best friend, she’d known his smiles were only kindness, and his kindnesses only pity. But the knowledge didn’t keep her from worshiping him.

  In the days, weeks and months when classes were a grim, cliquish ordeal, when well-meaning professors singled her out and older students who perceived her as a freak shut her out, there was always Tony. But most of all there was Jeb.

  When she was near him, she was even clumsier than usual. All bony knees and jutting elbows. Hair a shaggy disaster. Teeth a mass of silver wires and bands, and her tongue eternally tied to the roof of her mouth. But he never seemed to notice.

  “He was just...Jeb,” Nicole murmured. He’d been kind and gentle when little else of her life was kind and gentle. Then she loved him even more. For one school year, though he never knew, he was the center of her universe. Then the end of the term came. He and Tony graduated, she became a sophomore. One more rung on the ladder of escape. She’d thought her heart would break without him, and maybe it did, but she’d survived and even flourished in a new life. And she never saw him again.

  Until now.

  Suddenly she was restless, petals drifted from her hand like falling snow. He had promised he would call after the sale. She wondered if it wouldn’t be better if he didn’t. She couldn’t say why, except that she was afraid. But afraid of what?

  The wind stirred, nudged her gently at first, then whipped the full skirt of her dress about her knees, and tangled in her hair. She was glad of the diversion as she hurried to the piazza. She was almost at the first step when a melodic gong summoned her to the garden gate.

  “Now who?” she questioned as she retraced her steps over the patterned brick walk. Not a delivery, certainly. Bouquets and gifts wishing her well with the sale would’ve arrived days ago and at the gallery, not here. Friends and customers had already called in droves, afterward, celebrating her success, until even the most obtuse realized she needed rest and time to herself. Graciously they’d given her exactly that. Time and rest.

  So one had decided it was time her self-imposed exile be ended.

  Annabelle, of course. Only she would risk a drenching on such a Quixotic mission. Nicole smiled as she imagined the shapely little woman struggling with her voluminous skirt in the wind and weather. But not too hard. Annabelle believed with all her heart that a glimpse of a well-turned ankle, or thigh and maybe a bit of sexy lace was good for the soul. Hers, and what ever kindred souls were nearby. Masculine souls, naturally.

  Nicole’s amusement lingered as she hurried down the walk that narrowed to a single lane as it neared the street. She hadn’t realized before, but, given the turn of her thoughts, Annabelle was exactly what she needed. It was impossible to be moody, or sad or even afraid when she was near.

  Lightning flickered overhead. One small flash across a darkened sky, and then another. But long enough to burn the image of her caller into her mind and send it reeling again into the past.

  Stopping abruptly a pace away from the gate, Nicole grasped an iron spire as she stared through it to the sidewalk. With graceful spirals and swirls imbued with the strength created by a master ironworker a century before, the gate offered physical protection, but no visual restraint. The man who waited beyond it was clearly visible and unmistakably as handsome as she remembered.

  When he smiled at her she was fifteen all over again. With a pounding heart and a tongue that struggled for words.

  “Jeb,” she managed to say at last. “I didn’t expect you.” Then, foolishly, “You didn’t call.”

  “No.” He shook his head. There were creases across his forehead, from the sun. They weren’t there before.

  “What are you doing here?” She hated sounding for all the world as if she were still a gawky kid.

  “A spur-of-the-moment impulse.” Jeb’s gaze swept over her windblown hair, the uncertain smile, the simple dress that left her shoulders bare and hid the cleft of her breasts with lace. His gaze moved on, past her to the garden and the shadowed piazza. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Interrupting?” Nicole frowned and brushed a tangle of bangs from her eyes. “No. Of course not. I’m alone. I, uh...would you like to come in?” She was babbling.

  Grimly stepping to the gate, with a twist of the wrist she disarmed the lock and drew it back. “Please.” She gestured as a sharp gust sent a crape myrtle swaying and scattered scarlet petals over the grass. “Come in before you’re soaked.”

  Jeb hadn’t missed the frown, nor the hesitance in her voice. “A little rain won’t hurt me, so maybe another time would be better.”

  If she agreed, taking the excuse he offered, he would have to find another way in. A secret way.

  But she didn’t take the excuse. Instead, she caught up his hand, tugged him inside. “Don’t be silly. I was distracted, that’s all. I’m
glad you’ve come. I think it’s good that you have.”

  Jeb’s eyes narrowed, suspicion skittered like a serrated knife over raw nerves. But when he spoke his tone was a teasing drawl at odds with the truth. “Do you now?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  A thumb and forefinger at her chin lifted her face to his. He’d looked into this face countless times in the past weeks. He’d seen her smile and laugh. He’d seen her frown. Once, when she’d found a kitten washed on shore from God knew where, he could’ve sworn he saw her cry. He thought he knew every mood, but he’d never seen her as she was now. Solemn, restive, her eyes fathomless.

  Was it fear he saw? Excitement? Danger?

  Did Tony Callison wait beyond the gate for him? For both of them?

  “Why, Nicky?” he asked, using the name only he had used in the days when they were friends. When he hadn’t watched her for any nuance of guilt or warning. When, as now, he’d seen only innocence.

  Absently he stroked her chin, a knuckle gliding over skin like pearls. “Tell me,” he insisted in a voice as low as a whisper. “Tell me why you’re glad I’ve come.”

  “Because...” Nicole clenched her teeth, holding back words he mustn’t hear. She needed to think, needed to be rational. But she couldn’t. Not when he looked at her with such burning intensity that she felt he was trying to see into her soul. Not when he touched her, and his touch was madness.

  With a shiver she barely hid, she moved away, and a semblance of reason returned. She couldn’t tell him that after spending a weekend hiding from herself and from him, she’d discovered with one glance that hiding was futile. She couldn’t tell him that he’d been the love of her young life, and when he left, he’d taken her heart with him. She couldn’t in a lifetime tell him how much she’d hurt, and how long.

  She couldn’t tell him. She’d thought for years that it was all behind her, but now, she wasn’t sure. She knew now what she’d been afraid of. What frightened her still—that she would love him again, or that she’d never stopped, and might not survive losing him again.