Hot on the Hunt

“Oh, hell, no,” was all she could mutter.

The mystery shooter. He was young, judging by his fit, muscled body barely concealed by a snug blue T-shirt and worn jeans. He held an HK45 pistol against the right grip of the bike and didn’t seem to be paying Alicia and her Glock any mind.

Why he was interfering with her operation remained to be seen. Was he helping Rory escape or trying to kill him? Until now, Alicia hadn’t considered the possibility that she wasn’t the only person in the world hell-bent on extracting lethal justice from Rory, but now it seemed a naive way of thinking.

Then again, it didn’t matter how many people wanted Rory Alderman dead. Alicia was going to be the one who pulled the trigger, and the only sure way to guarantee that was to neutralize the mystery operative before he mucked up her operation any more.

She vaulted over the partition and dropped onto the pathway, affording the felled bike a nominal glance. Rory was nowhere to be seen. Using the partition as cover, she steadied her Glock. The motorcycle was coming at her on her right. She took aim at the front tire, and that’s when he finally took notice of her. Swerving left, he brought his gun up and squeezed off a round in her direction. She ducked and felt the force of the bullet hitting the partition.

Ready to give it a second try, she peered over the lip of the partition at the same time she registered that the bike motor’s whine had risen an octave, the sound of it gaining speed. She watched it jump the partition and land on the walkway in front of her. Whoever he was, this man was a professional. A damn good one. Probably, the shots he was taking didn’t hit Rory or Alicia by design, for reasons she had yet to figure out. He could be any one of dozens of black market operatives she knew of, or perhaps someone new to the scene. He afforded her a passing glance over his shoulder, then took off on the pathway.

She stood, ready to shoot him in the back, but he was too skilled to give her an adequate target, moving the bike in unpredictable dips and swerves. A solid hundred meters in front of them, Rory had reappeared, slogging along in soaked clothes and barefoot toward the nearest dock—the one advertising parasailing adventures in which a tourist is harnessed to a parachute that’s then pulled along in the air behind a speedboat.

Alicia cursed and took off running, pushing herself beyond the pain of her now burning quads, knowing he was going for that speedboat. It was the only one on the dock that looked remotely functional, much less built to go fast.

A sunburned, schlubby tourist was presently being strapped into a parachute harness by a local man who was giving a safety talk judging by his gestures. When he saw Rory, he directed his gestures to him, protesting Rory’s presence, most likely. Rory shoved him in the water. The tourist screamed and frantically tried to unstrap himself as Rory leaped onto the boat his harness was tethered to.

The mystery shooter sped around the turn onto the dock, but not fast enough. With a rev of the engine, Rory took off in the boat, the parasailer floating into the sky behind him, screaming his fool head off. Not that Alicia blamed him. She would’ve been screaming for help, too.

Alicia ran for the dock. There were other boats nearby. Not as fast, but what choice did she have other than to give chase? Rory angled the boat toward the mouth of the harbor, then left the throttle up and moved to the back of the boat with what looked like a fillet knife in his hand. He worked to untie the rope and before the boat had gotten too far, the tourist went floating back, up into the sky in his parachute a solid ten meters before the chute buckled and he free-fell into the water.

Alicia turned onto the dock as the motorcyclist swung off the bike and ran to the edge of the dock. He dropped the bag that had been slung over his back and withdrew a Remington XM2010 sniper rifle. The prototype model. The same limited-edition prototype Alicia and the rest of her black ops team had been gifted with three years earlier.

Her breath caught in her throat. Of its own volition, her body went still. She should be making a break for one of the other boats in the harbor, stealing it and racing after Rory, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t think beyond the one thought repeating in her head. No. It couldn’t be him.

He lay flat on his belly against the dock, the rifle butt against his shoulder, its stabilizing legs extended to the floor. He ripped off his helmet, revealing tousled, dark blond hair. No.

Her gaze roved over his body. That strong, broad back, narrow waist, perfect backside. Just as she remembered it. His eye was glued to the scope. He pulled the trigger. The rifle quivered as the boom ripped through the harbor. Rory ducked. The speedboat faltered, its glass windshield shattering.

“Damn it,” he muttered, dropping his head.

His voice sent shivers over her skin. How could it be, after so many months, that he still had that effect on her?

He’d appeared out of nowhere and, whether he meant to or not, he’d helped Rory escape. And yet, she couldn’t get her mouth to close. She couldn’t catch her breath or convince her body to move. She couldn’t even find the will to tell him off for ruining everything. Again.

Bringing the rifle with him, he pushed into a squat then stood. The jeans hung low on his hips but snug around his quads. She’d forgotten this part—the perfection of him—and she hadn’t even gathered the courage to look at his face yet.

Rory’s boat was a blip on the horizon now, headed south in a direct path to St. Croix. She afforded the boat only a glance because she couldn’t, for the life of her, stop staring at the man before her, absorbing his nearness and heat, the raw power radiating from his every cell.

She could feel him watching her and forced her gaze to meet his smoky-blue eyes.

They were angry, colder than she’d ever seen them. He might have the body of the man she’d once called her lover, but she could see it in his face that he was a changed person. Harder, humorless. She wanted to slap him for what he’d done to her, slap him because she’d almost shot him in the back just now and she would’ve never forgiven herself for it. Most of all, though, she wanted to throw her arms around him and hang on forever. Like a fool in love.

“John,” she croaked.

“In the flesh.”

A tingle swept over her body. In the flesh was right. But it didn’t matter how powerful her unexpected shock of awareness of him was, because Alicia refused to yield her power to a man, especially one who’d betrayed her. It didn’t matter how he made her feel in the innermost, darkest places of her heart; she knew better now. His sudden appearance might’ve stripped her bare, but so what? The only defense against the pervading sense of vulnerability she always felt in his presence was to get mad.

She stomped over the dock toward him, not that he seemed to notice while he ran a check of the Remington for unspent ammo, so she got right up in his face. “You helped him escape.”

He huffed and shook his head as though she’d told a joke that was in poor taste. “Is that it, huh? You think that’s what this Remington’s for—to help him escape?” He turned away and shoved the rifle in his bag, then took his HK45 out of the back of his pants.

The ache of longing in hearing that growl of a voice that had haunted her dreams for twenty long months was so powerful that she hardly knew what to think anymore. She forced her anger back up to the surface. “Of course you helped him escape. You’re the Robin to his Batman. Always the sidekick, never the alpha. You’re not capable of being the alpha dog. Never were.”

As far as insults went, she knew that one had to hurt, especially to an elite soldier like John. It was an old nerve of his, one she’d learned when they were lovers. She felt like a sore loser exploiting the intimate details of their time together—God knew she had as many secret flaws and faults as he did—but she was desperate to regain the power she’d lost in his presence.

And maybe, if she were being honest with herself, she was a bit desperate to see if she could spark a fire in his eyes again. Anything but the ice-cold steel that they were now.

Rather than show fire, though, his eyes got colder. He ran his tongue over his lower lip, then gave her body a dispassionate once-over. Jaw tight and eyes frosty, he swaggered the few steps to her and leaned his face in. She held her breath, held perfectly still, as his lips brushed her temple, then grazed her hair. “You won’t believe what I’m capable of, Phoenix.”

She wanted to touch him so badly the need ached inside her like a hollow, brittle thing. She balled her hands into fists. Show me, she almost said. “I’m not Phoenix anymore. At least not to you.”

He backed his face up. Rubbing his jaw, he nodded. “I’m going to get to him first, you know.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“I can’t let you stop me,” he countered.

With any other person, if she wanted to stop him, she’d shoot him in the leg or wrestle him to the ground, then bind his hands and legs. With John, she could get away with neither. He had his gun in hand already and, besides, he was a faster shot than she. To top that off, he knew all her close-combat moves, which eliminated the element of surprise—her only advantage when trying to physically dominate a man nearly twice her size.

Back to basics. The police were going to descend on the harbor at any moment, the U.S. military, too, as they searched for Rory. She swiveled, gun extended, and shot out the tires of the motorcycle. At least now he couldn’t speed past her to steal the next fastest boat in the harbor.

He raised his brows, bemused but unimpressed. Then he lifted his gun and aimed past her, to the street beyond the boardwalk. With a casual squeeze of the trigger that belied the complicated nature of the shot, he took out the front windshield of her rental car at least a hundred meters away. Guess he’d seen her drive up earlier. That meant he’d seen her interaction with those kids, too. The realization brought a sudden flush of heat to her cheeks. Not cool.

He flicked a lock of her hair off her shoulder. “Are you going to shoot me next? Because I’m not really keen on reciprocating that one.”

She flipped the rest of her hair behind her and gave him her best scowl. “I’ve been shot enough to last a lifetime, thank you very much.”

The allusion to her injury at Rory’s hand hung in the air between them. John’s jaw went stiff and the ice in his eyes seemed to spread to the rest of his body. The peal of police sirens cut through the tension.

John stared out over the water. Alicia followed his gaze. Rory had shot straight out of the bay and was heading south toward St. Croix. John hitched his canvas bag higher on his shoulder and walked past her. “Those sirens are my cue to beat it. See ya around, Phoenix.”

“He’s mine to kill, John.”

He didn’t even bother turning around to answer. “Maybe so, but I have other plans for him.” He gave her a little salute before breaking into a run to the right, moving southwest along the boardwalk.

Alicia shook some clarity into herself, shoved away the overwhelming flood of emotions John had evoked and concealed her gun. Then she took off left in search of something—anything—that would get her to St. Croix faster than either of the two men who’d wrecked her life for the second time in as many years.

* * *

Well. That was something else. This day certainly wasn’t turning out like John had thought it would when he’d woken up that morning. True, he’d been looking to shake himself out of complacency, and being in Alicia’s orbit certainly rocked him off his axis.

He roared through the Caribbean on the boat he’d docked not too far away from the one Rory had stolen, the speedboat that was now visible through his binoculars, as he fought to recover from the confrontation with Alicia.

He hadn’t been prepared for the toxic cocktail of relief that she looked to be thriving, at least physically, after her injury mixed with a fresh shock of fury at how she’d dismissed him as a corrupt agent without ever hearing him out about what had happened that day. Beyond the fury from his memories, she’d known exactly how to hurt him.

Always the sidekick. How dare she slap him in the face with one of the deep, secret parts of himself he’d shared with her after they’d made love. It wasn’t even a valid argument. Green Beret snipers always worked in pairs, with each able to perform both jobs of spotter and shooter with deadly, world-class accuracy. Just because John had been the spotter more times than not didn’t mean he was any less skilled than Rory. And she couldn’t be talking about their stint on ICE’s black ops team. A team could only have one leader, and that hadn’t been Alicia, either, so he wasn’t sure how she got off separating her experience in black ops with his.

And there he went, arguing the point as if he was trying to convince himself. He smacked his forehead, royally pissed at his stupid, middle-child insecurities rearing their ugly heads. While the lingering, unjustified sensation of being less than compared to the rest of the team had taken a turn for the justified after the entire crew assumed the worst of him on the turn of a dime, exile had forced him to rely only on himself. He was stronger, faster and more lethal than he ever had been in the group or as Rory’s sniper partner.

He pushed the throttle to the max, careening into the open ocean until St. Thomas was nothing but a shadow behind him. St. Croix was forty miles south, not too much of a stretch on the Caribbean’s relatively calm waters. This was a well-traveled boat route for ferries and locals, and despite it being hurricane season with one such predicted storm a day or two away, he spotted cruise ships, luxury yachts and even the occasional water skiers and kayakers.

After thirty minutes of travel, he no longer needed binoculars to keep tabs on Rory’s location. In another twenty minutes, the nose of John’s boat raced alongside the back of his, and in no time flat, they were careening neck and neck toward the green hills rising on St. Croix in the distance.

Time to step up his efforts. Bracing for impact, he slammed the side of his boat into Rory’s. The blow knocked Rory’s boat off course, but didn’t slow him down. John had to crank the wheel to stay even with him. He couldn’t see how it was possible to damage Rory’s boat enough to stop it without doing the same to his. He needed a new strategy.

When they were neck and neck again, John climbed onto the captain’s chair. With a hand on the windshield for balance, he crouched with one foot on the chair and the other on the rail. He maneuvered the boat so close to Rory’s that the hulls knocked, then he pushed off, throwing himself over the edge.

Chapter 3

While John was airborne, Rory noticed what he was doing and jerked the wheel left. John’s hands closed over the metal bar atop the rail, but he didn’t make it on board. His body slammed against the side of the hull and the pull of the water on his legs nearly sucked him under, the boat was moving so fast.

His hands slipped on the wet metal. With the wake and the water pressure, he slid along the rail to the rear corner of the boat.

The next thing he knew, Rory was over him, stomping on his right hand with his bare foot as the boat sped on. John tried to swing his leg up to catch on the bottom rung of the ladder, but Rory’s assault was too much. John lost his grip with his right hand and swung out, perilously close to the nearest of the two motors.

With a shaky, smarting right hand, John moved his grip to a lower rung on the ladder so Rory couldn’t stomp on him anymore, then reached for his gun. The trouble was, Rory had started prying off the ladder with a metal gaffe. John barely had time to grab the frayed end of the parasailing rope dangling off the back before the ladder separated from the boat and flew backward. Blinking sea spray from his eyes, John wrapped the rope around his wrist and tried to line up a nonfatal shot of Rory with his gun while Rory grabbed the fillet knife and sawed at the rope.

A loud bleat shocked them both. Rory whipped his head around to see a large luxury liner bearing down on them, still far enough away for Rory to change course. He lunged for the wheel and John seized his chance to climb aboard. Replacing his gun in its holster, he rallied his grip and core strength to hoist himself hand over hand until, with a growl of effort, he fell to the floor of the boat. Rory cranked the wheel right, out of the yacht’s trajectory, and set the course toward St. Croix once more.

John wiped the back of his hand across his face, as if it wasn’t as soaked through as the rest of him. “Rory, you bastard. Stop the boat.”

Rory turned and faced him, but he left the boat racing over the water at an impossible speed. “Not a chance. What the hell are you doing in the islands?”

He bore an angry flesh wound on his thigh where John had grazed him with a bullet, but it had clotted and he didn’t seem any worse for wear.

John, on the other hand, felt as if he’d been locked in a washing machine during the spin cycle. He rolled his shoulders and flexed his hand. “I had it on good authority that Alicia was going to kill you.”

Rory let out a wheezy laugh. “And you thought you’d beat her to it? Nah, I bet you two are working together, am I right? You always were her lovesick whipping boy.”

Okay, wow. Rory knew about John and Alicia’s affair. That changed things. Intimate relationships between members of an ops team weren’t exactly endorsed by ICE or their team leader, and he and Alicia had worked hard to be discreet. But somehow Rory had figured it out, which meant that John needed to rethink what Rory’s motives were for shooting Alicia and broadcasting for all the world that John was his accomplice. Was it to twist the proverbial knife he’d stabbed John with? Why else would Rory shoot John’s lover? Even after all this time, it didn’t make any sense.

Looking into the face of the man John had once considered his brother, John felt his blood start to boil. Whatever Rory’s motivation, he’d tried to kill Alicia. Whatever muck he’d made of John’s life, he tried to kill the woman John loved. Another flex of his right hand told him all he needed to know—none of his bones were broken and he was in top shape to brawl.

He flew at Rory and landed a satisfying blow to his gut with a left hook chaser that knocked Rory into the steering wheel. Rory pushed off with a fist meant for John’s cheek, but the boat zigged right.

John gave Rory a shove, sending him stumbling toward the rear of the boat. “You don’t get to talk about Alicia like that. You don’t deserve—” He swallowed back his next words. Rory might know they were lovers, but no way would John give him even an inkling of how very much he’d cared about her.

Rory bounced back swinging, this time catching John with a blow to the chin. He absorbed the pain and grabbed Rory’s neck, yanking his torso down to John’s waiting knee. Damn, it felt cathartic, this fight. Letting Rory experience a fraction of the pain Alicia must have felt at Rory’s hand.

John tried to back up a step, but Rory locked his arms around his middle and pedaled forward, pushing John to the steering console. His midback hit hard against the rim of the console, knocking the wind out of him. Any moment, U.S. authorities were going to descend on them. It was inevitable. Rory was a violent offender and a traitor. They knew he’d escaped, and John, Alicia and Rory had made enough of a commotion on St. Thomas that officials were going to pick up their trail in no time flat.

He needed to get Rory subdued and take control of the boat, stat. But Rory had a whole lot of fight left in him. He let fly with a fast hook, but John blocked with his elbow and sent his fist into Rory’s wounded thigh. The blare of a warning horn sounded from off the bow and John played the sucker by looking. A massive barge snaked by their boat with only feet to spare. While John was distracted, Rory caught him with an uppercut that made contact with John’s jaw. He staggered back and wasn’t sure, for a split second, if only he was pitching sideways or if the whole boat was.

By the time he decided the boat was jumping a wake at a dangerous angle, he was toppling overboard. He flailed his arms as he careened toward the water, but didn’t come in contact with anything but air. He plunged into the water.

He came up spluttering and gasping for breath. The speedboat was moving fast toward St. Croix and overhead, a helicopter hovered. His first thought was that the navy or police had found him, but after blinking water from his eyes he took a closer look. It was a private chopper and Alicia was in the passenger seat. She leaned over the edge of the open passenger doorway, her hair waving wildly in the wind created by the rotors.

“You okay?” she called.

He had to admire her wit, hiring an aerial tour pilot for a private island hopping escort. That was a smart move.

“Yeah.” Sort of. The only damage was to his pride, and that wound stung like an SOB.

Alicia turned her body and looked back toward St. Thomas. In her hand, John glimpsed a flash of metal. Her gun. Which meant she hadn’t exactly hired the pilot to take her to St. Croix. She’d used force, digging herself even deeper into a criminal hole. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that jazz. The question was, why had she put herself in such a desperate position? It’d been a miracle that she’d survived the gunshot wound Rory had inflicted on her, so why was she squandering her second chance at life with vengeance? It didn’t add up.

“The navy’s coming,” she called.

Not unexpected, but he still needed to get away before U.S. authorities found him. They’d already accused him of being Rory’s accomplice after Rory’s initial arrest, but though one criminal’s claims alone hadn’t been enough proof of John’s guilt to charge him with a crime, finding him there and Rory gone might be the corroborating evidence the Feds had been waiting for to put John away for life.

He hated to ask for help, not from her. Anyone but Alicia. She already thought him as less of a man. The sidekick. Never the alpha. Damn it all to hell. “Throw down a rope.”

Her attention swung to Rory’s boat. Even from that distance, he could see it in her eyes, the disdain for John, her desperation to get to Rory. Unbelievable. She was going to leave him there in the middle of the ocean, tens of miles from shore or the nearest boat.

Anger at her and Rory and the entire rotten farce that had become his life made him snap. He smacked the water, shouting, “Don’t do it, Phoenix.”

Ignoring him, she nudged the pilot’s shoulder. He couldn’t hear her for the thunder of the rotors, but he watched her mouth the word go.

Just like that, she was gone.

The Caribbean Sea had never felt so vast. John tipped his chin up and looked at the clouds. His boat was miles away, the U.S. Navy was bound to catch up with him and try to pin him with orchestrating Rory’s escape, and he’d had no choice but to beg Alicia not to abandon him. Triple ouch.

Most of the time, he relished being the perpetual underdog. His whole life he’d been a scrapper, but he’d used it to his advantage. In warfare and black ops combat, it was rarely a bad thing to be underestimated by the enemy. But sometimes, clawing for a seat at the table sucked. Today, it sucked.

His only hope of getting through the next hour without becoming shark bait or getting arrested was to get the attention of one of the yachts or sea kayakers passing by. Treading water, he turned in a slow circle, assessing his options. The navy was maybe only five or ten minutes back. In the distance, a modest luxury yacht cruised his way, coming from St. Croix, blasting reggae music and with sunbathing, barely clothed women adorning its deck.

One thing John loved about his HK45 was that water didn’t jam it up. He raised the gun overhead and squeezed off a round to get their attention, hoping they’d process the sound as an emergency flare gun instead of a lethal weapon, then tucked the gun out of view and waved his arms high, saying a silent prayer that the boaters were feeling charitable.