Hunted, A Romantic Suspence Novel (15 page)

To his left a man dressed in khaki camouflage pants and a black tee-shirt leaned over the pool table, making his shot. Three other men, similarly dressed and sporting various stages of facial hair hovered nearby.

At the bar sat two bleached blondes, wearing low-cut tops and high-cut skirts. Each
lady
leaned over to whisper in the ear of, or touch the arm of the older man sitting beside her. Probably giving the gentlemen sneak peeks of what they were buying.

As his gaze adjusted to the dim, hazy light, Robert searched the room for the man who’d summoned him here. Then he saw him. Sitting in the last booth, facing the room, he’d placed himself close to the rear exit, should the need for a getaway arise. The man never forgot his training.

A shudder ran through Robert.

The man known as the Prophet’s Angel of Retribution hadn’t aged much in the past ten years. As a boy, Robert had feared him on sight, making himself as invisible as possible whenever the Angel passed by. Now as a grown man, every time the Angel contacted him, the reaction to run and hide still gnawed at him.

Only this time the Angel hadn’t phoned, he’d summoned him to a face-to-face meeting. This time, there was nowhere for him to hide. As he’d always feared, his past had caught up with him.

He made his way to the bar’s rear then settled himself on the worn leather seat opposite the quiet man. Neither said a word as the bartender came and took their orders for beer. Once they each had a frosty bottle in front of them, the other man raised cold gray eyes to Robert.

“The Prophet needs your help, boy.”

Robert took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d known this day would come.

The morning after the bombing, Strict’s stepdaughter Sarah disappeared, along with files of pictures and documents linking the Family to the explosion. Within days, State and Federal agents surrounded their bunker. The adults that hadn’t fled went to jail, Strict among them. The kids and teenagers were sent to live with relatives or put into foster homes.

Robert, then fourteen, went to live with his maternal grandmother. He’d excelled through high school, amazing a legion of psychiatrists and social workers the government had insisted he see until he turned twenty-one.

None of them understood he’d been trained well by the Family at Strict’s Bunker. It was his duty to succeed and find a place where he might be helpful to the cause.

“What does he want me to do?”

Robert dreaded the answer. He’d come to Columbus at the Angel’s instructions a year ago and joined the local government in the Department of Motor Vehicles. Strict supplemented his income through the Angel in exchange for keeping track of the Family’s current and former members. Now he had to pay. He just hoped he didn’t have to kill someone.

“The traitor has surfaced.”

He hadn’t expected that. The news felt like a knife in his stomach. “Sarah?”

The other man nodded. “At the moment she’s escaped me, so now it’s time for you to help make her pay for killing your brother.”

The knife twisted deep in his gut. Sarah. The one person in the Family who’d been kind to him and his twin brother. He needed to fulfill his obligation to the Family, but he didn’t want to hurt Sarah.

“Where is she?”

“Somewhere in Columbus. But she’s gone to ground for the moment. That’s where you come in.”

Robert nodded. “What do you need?”

The Angel slid a piece of paper across the table. “This man is hiding her. I need the make and model of his vehicle and license plate number.”

Robert read the paper. A name and phone number were all that was on it.

“When you get the information, call me at that number.”

“That’s all?”

“Give me what I need to find her and your obligation to the Family will end.”

The Angel stood then disappeared out the rear entrance without another word.

Robert heaved a sigh. He was almost free from the nightmare of his youth. One simple task. That was all that he needed to do. So why did he feel as if he were signing Sarah’s death warrant?

* * * * *

When Katie entered the kitchen, Matt stood at the indoor grill, cooking three hamburgers.

“Hungry?”

She felt him watching her. The jerk.

If her stomach hadn’t growled, she would’ve ignored him completely. However she knew in order to fight Strict, she needed to maintain her strength…and damn those burgers smelled good.

She slapped the file of pictures she carried down on the table. The resounding smack ricocheted off the walls.

“What I am is ready to find out who’s trying to kill me.” Her voice sounded strained even to her own ears. What did he expect? For her to act as if everything was normal? Well, too bad. It wasn’t.

“Katie, we need to talk about what happened downstairs earlier.”

Taking a deep breath, she tried to still the anger inside her. Never give anyone power over you. Stay calm and in control at all times. “You don’t have to worry about me throwing myself at you again.”

“You didn’t throw yourself at me. I wanted to kiss you.”

His deep voice sent goose bumps shivering along her body. “That’s over now. It meant nothing, just two people letting off some frustration. What we need to focus on are these pictures. Maybe one of them will trigger an idea of who Strict sent after me.”

For a moment, she thought he was going to argue with her. He opened his mouth, then shut it, gave her a nod, and resumed fixing the burgers.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she reached for the first picture.
Dammit.
She clenched her fingers into a fist then relaxed them.

No matter how much she pretended otherwise, the kiss and his rejection affected her greatly. She couldn’t afford to become an emotional blob now. Her life, and his, depended on her ability to think one step ahead of Strict.

Matt flipped the meat onto the bun, and fought the urge to slam the grill pan into the wall. The woman was driving him insane.

There she sat, as cool as a cucumber, acting like nothing had happened to her, when less than an hour before his whole world had tilted on its side with one sizzling hot kiss. How did she shut her emotions down like that? And how could she say this electric tension between them meant nothing?

With a shake of his head he inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to fight his own frustration. Maybe she was right. Maybe what they needed was to focus completely on which Family member might be the hit man.

He set one sandwich in front of her then settled across the table with his plate.

The trouble was he’d much rather look at her lips than those damn pictures.

“Tell me about each person.” If she could play it cool, so could he.

She glanced through the pictures, pulling out one of a middle-aged woman with dark curly hair and kind eyes. “This is Maura.”

“The secretary/mid-wife?” He studied the picture a moment, committing the woman’s face to memory.

“Yes, she’s the nearest thing to a human in the Family.” Katie took a bite of her burger. A bit of bread dangled from the corner of her lips. Her tongue darted out to catch it.

Matt fought a groan. “Who else do you see?”

She handed him the picture of a bald man with a scar across his cheek. “That’s Stryker. The name fits. He liked to hurt things, especially those smaller than him.” She tossed out a picture of a young teenager. “That’s his wife. She was his anger’s usual target.”

From the looks of him, the man had probably served time in prison, which put him first on Matt’s list for the hit man. The girl looked like she’d been used hard and put away wet. Her life hadn’t been an easy one.

Had Stryker touched Katie?

Once again white-hot anger shot through Matt. He set the picture aside, the man’s face permanently fixed in his mental file.

He took a few bites of his burger to prevent him from crumbling the pictures in wads. Katie continued to search through them. Every so often a flash of sadness or a wince of pain crossed her beautiful face.

“This is Cody. He supplied guns for Strict.” She set a picture of a man with a long beard, dark glasses and stringy black hair onto the table. A second picture of a thirty-ish woman with matching stringy dark hair landed beside it. “That’s Kat, his woman. She liked to pretend she was an equal to the men. But we all knew Cody beat her when she crossed the line.”

Matt added the wife beater to his mental list of possibilities.

Two pictures landed on the table simultaneously. In both, the men wore military-style short haircuts and olive-khaki tee-shirts.

“Who are they?”

“Michael and Gabriel Whitaker. You can eliminate them from the list of suspects.”

“Why?”

“They were two of the three Family members who died at the Federal Building explosion.”

“Who was the other one?”

A sad, faraway look crossed her face for a moment, but then it quickly fled. “Gideon.”

“Where’s his picture?”

“He never had one, and no one ever took one of him.”

“Who was he?”

“Strict’s right-hand man. He treated me kindly once in a while, especially after the times Strict had meted out my punishment.”

Matt fought the jealousy that roared through him. She’d cared about this Gideon. “Was he a young man?”

“If he’d lived I guess he’d be over fifty. I think my stepfather and he were in the Army together.” She picked up another picture. “He’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter.”

As she went through the file’s remaining pictures the litany of abusive people continued and so did Matt’s list of possible suspects. Each man resembled the others, cruel and dangerous. The women, their faces full of pain, were held in submission by the men’s violent natures. The pictures littering the table resembled a collage of despair and hopelessness. Not even the children’s photos changed the bleak collection.

Cold chills slithered down his spine. “How did you survive this?”

She slipped the last piece of her burger past her lips, chewed, then swallowed. “I survived because the alternative was to give up and then my stepfather would’ve been right.”

“How?” Her apathetic summation irritated him. Why wasn’t she angry at the life she’d been forced to live?

“He told me repeatedly I was nothing more than a useless woman. That I’d die long before he did. Proving him wrong was what kept me going.”

“Because you helped get him convicted for the bombing?”

“Yes. I put an end to his plans.” She lifted a picture and stared at it a long time. “But not soon enough.”

The way she studied the picture piqued his curiosity. The boy in the image meant something to her, more than the others she’d discarded on the table.

“Who’s that?” He nodded at the picture.

“Billy Hagen. He was in the sixth grade when his parents joined the family. This picture is from the last time he attended public school.”

Matt glanced at the children’s pictures scattered on the table. Many were simple wallet-sized school snapshots. His mother had pages in her scrapbook plastered with the same size pictures of him and his siblings, one grade after another.

“What happened to him?”

She shook her head and laid the picture gently on top. “He died before they blasted the Federal Building.”

“How?”

The corners of her mouth turned down as she stared out the window into the dark night. “I killed him.”

His cell phone rang before he could ask her another question. He mumbled a curse, then flipped open the phone.

“Where the hell have you been all day, Edgars?”

Hell.
Just what he needed, his boss looking for him. “I’m still on holiday leave, Captain.”

Katie gathered their plates and carried them to the sink. The curve of her bottom and the gentle sway of her hips distracted Matt from the phone conversation. As she moved about the kitchen, the new soft limp in her gait tore at his gut.

She’d gotten that limp trying to protect him. Men were supposed to protect women from injury, not the other way around.

“You want to explain to me why your front door was rigged to blow you away?” His boss ground the question out into his ear.

Matt’s attention snapped away from Katie’s body. “How did you know about that, sir?”

“The city’s Chief of Police was only too happy to forward the report to me in person. While we’re on the subject, who wants you dead enough to set up an ambush? Is this related to a case you’re working on?”

Damn, Captain Brown was in the mood for blood—his. What he had to say next wasn’t going to make him any happier. “It’s not something I’m at liberty to discuss over the phone, Captain.”

Katie stopped rinsing the dishes and turned to watch him. Her whole being stilled, as if every cell of her body was poised for flight.

Matt winked to reassure her that the phone call wasn’t anything important. To her well-being, at least. His career, on the other hand, was another matter.

“I don’t give a shit what you think you can explain or not, Edgars. I’ve spent the entire day bending over for the Chief of Police to kick me in the ass. Who, by the way, also wants to know where you are.”

“The local police, sir? Not the feds?”

“Don’t tell me the feds are looking for you, too.”

Matt held his tongue. As likely as not, the Marshals would visit the captain next.

A derisive snort sounded on the line’s other end, followed by a string of expletives insulting Matt’s ancestors. “I want you in my office first thing tomorrow morning, before the feds come knocking on it, Edgars. Bring some answers with you. Understand me?”

Matt’s balls felt the vice-grip squeeze his boss had on them. “Yes, sir. I understand.”

The conversation ended abruptly.

Matt closed the cell phone.

Katie watched him run one hand through his dark hair. His lips pressed into a firm line. The phone call upset him.

She focused her attention on cleaning the grill pan. The last thing she wanted to hear was how much trouble she’d gotten him into. This wasn’t about him. She couldn’t afford to worry about anyone other than herself, no matter how much her heart and body wanted otherwise.