He reached for her then. Damned fool. Rio stiffened, wanted to run out and intervene—but didn’t. He just stood there, watching Hank’s abrupt and harsh movement stagger short as Kimmer executed a swift stop-thrust, the heel of her hand hitting the sweet spot just at the bottom of Hank’s breastbone and then withdrawing so quickly that Hank was left to gape—and to gasp at the impact, hunting for the air she’d knocked out of him. “You don’t touch me,” she said. “You got that? You never, ever touch me.”

Hank made a garbled noise, not quite ready for speech.

“Look, Hank. The only reason you’re still here is because my reputation—and my boss’s mood—depends on getting this mess cleared up. Because it’s best if we do that as quietly as possible. One day, maybe two, and you’ll be out of here. You can go back to Munroville and you can tell everyone what a bitch I am and how ungrateful I am and how pathetic I am. You can even tell them I grew a mole, one of those great big black ones with hairs coming out of it. Whatever floats your boat. But as long as you’re here, in my house, you won’t touch me and you won’t treat me like your personal slave.”

So much for meddling. So much for be nice and say thank you. Rio hadn’t quite been able to imagine Hank’s capacity for boorishness…or Kimmer’s simmering anger. He’d never imagined Hank would try to grab her, try to intimidate her here in her own home, the very same day he’d seen her take down his two personal goonboys. And while part of him ached to charge out there and bodily lob Hank into the street, the rest of him churned at this very graphic demonstration of why he and Kimmer would never look at their lives—or their families—in quite the same way.

Chapter 3

N ot so young anymore. Wiser.

But not wise enough.

Or simply too tired to be wise, walking through the hall to her dark, tiny bedroom without hesitation, without pausing to listen. Without pausing to smell the cheap beer in the air.

They grabbed her as she took that last, no-turning-back step, blocking her so she couldn’t squirt right back out the door. Rough and hurtful hands—hands that had once only randomly yanked and pulled and jerked her around, now targeting forming breasts, pinching hard. Stabbing cruelly at every private, personal spot a growing teen would want to protect.

Not this time. Kimmer made no attempt to fight them off. She ground her jaw closed on what wanted to be whimpers of pain and renewed fear—for the boys were getting worse, and she knew where this would end up one day. Maybe today. Maybe this time they had Leo here with them again—it seemed always to be Leo’s idea—and maybe this time they’d wear her down and get her pants off.

So she didn’t fight them. She didn’t try to escape back out the door. Squirming, dropping her books and shucking the ragged sweatshirt on which they had such a secure hold, she darted forward. She landed on her twin bed and shoved off from her knees, sliding over the edge and onto the floor with the bed between her and the boys.

At first they laughed; they mocked her for thinking she could hide under the bed.

At first.

Because although she did dive under the bed, she came back out again. And she had a bat.

An old bat. A cracked bat salvaged from the school garbage bin. A bat heavily taped along the handle. But when Kimmer came out from under the bed she sprang to her feet and even in the darkness those boys could see the bat, see her ready stance, see her willingness to fight back with a vengeance.

It bought her the time to escape out the window. That, too, was ready—unlocked, already cracked up past the sticky part so she could merely fling it open. Out onto the roof, over the dormer and down to the lowest corner, racing them—for they knew her escape route. She lobbed the bat to the ground and hung down, dropping off for a hard fall, rolling…reclaiming the bat and running with every ounce of speed she had. Into the woods, over to the barn. As long as she had enough of a head start, they wouldn’t follow.

No doubt they were laughing anyway, bragging about the cruelties they’d managed while they’d had the chance—the soft feel of her breasts, the tug of her wild, unruly hair, the warmth between her legs. No doubt they’d locked her bedroom window, thinking themselves victorious in that.

But Kimmer was thirteen, and she’d learned her lessons well. She knew the rules. She had a metal shim tucked away behind the shutter, and she knew how to wield it silently and swiftly to get back inside.

Kimmer Reed knew how to take care of herself.

“Whoa!” Rio’s voice came from the bedroom darkness like a slap in the face. Kimmer jerked back from the sound and froze, battling the inner conflict of past and present, the overwhelming urge to strike out with the abrupt awareness that this was Rio.

The lights blazed on overhead, revealing Rio stretched out to reach the switch, one arm and his head through a cable sweater, concern on his face.

And Kimmer realized how very close she’d come to striking him, to hitting him hard. Her arm still hesitated halfway through the motion, the heel of her hand ready for the impact, her body already positioned to follow through with a low side kick that would have taken out his knee. Slowly, she straightened. “Oops.”

“Yeah,” Rio said. “That would have been an oops all right. At least, from my point of view. You okay?”

Kimmer cleared her throat and said, as lamely as it got, “You startled me.”

Rio worked his arm through the sweater and tugged it down into place. No great mystery what he was doing; the evening had turned chilly, and the threat of rain hung in the air. He’d not bothered to turn on the lights; he’d left that sweater on the bed this morning and probably planned to be out of the room in a matter of seconds. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Doesn’t answer my question. You okay?”

Kimmer looked away, surprised at the sting of tears. The contrast between the past and the present wasn’t something she could truly reconcile. It made the past that much worse and the present that much more unbelievable. And though she searched for the words to answer him, she couldn’t find any.

He took a step closer, and she realized he was waiting for her to nod, or to gesture, or even just to tell him it was okay. She lifted her head a little—a defiant movement attached to the acknowledgment for which he waited—and when he stepped in close it was to cup his hands around her shoulders and kiss each eyebrow. With his mouth still brushing her forehead, he murmured, “Hang in there.”

Of course, hang in there. When had there ever been any other choice?

By the time they left the small police station in Watkins Glen proper the next day, the rain was coming down in a steady drizzle and Kimmer’s stomach growled a constant reminder that they’d had an early breakfast and talked through lunch.

“So that’s that?” Hank said, hunching his shoulders against the rain. If he had a rain slicker, it was in the Suburban—which was in for repairs, acquiring just enough in the way of fixes to make it roadworthy again. It had actually held up pretty well, right up until the propane explosion had put a piece of shrapnel through the radiator. “No charges being filed?”

“Not yet, aside from the fine for discharging a weapon in a public area. It could still happen.” Kimmer pulled the bill of her cap down closer to her eyes. She’d dressed no-nonsense today—good jeans, a gauzy fitted vest over a stretchy black turtleneck, black post earrings. Rio wore a dark slate sweater, a fine silk knit that fit just right under a tailored collarless jacket that would have looked as good over dress slacks as it did his jeans, though it hadn’t been made for this weather. She admired the view a moment, unwilling to let any conversation with Hank deprive her of such indulgence. “But you know, I’d stick to the speed limit on the way out. The chief seemed to understand pretty well how the action ended up on the docks, and I don’t think his people will cut you any breaks.”

“It’s not my fault I don’t know the area,” Hank said, sullen rebellion in his voice and resentment on his face.

“I’m still not sure why you came to me for help at all.” Kimmer headed for the little group that had split off from them—Rio, Owen Hunter and the lawyer who’d flown in from Albany the night before. Owen hadn’t been taking any chances. “You sure didn’t trust me to handle the trouble you brought along.”

“I didn’t know—” Hank started, but stopped as they reached the group and the other three men looked over at him.

Kimmer couldn’t read Rio—nothing new about that—but she could instantly see that Owen and the lawyer didn’t welcome Hank’s presence. Whatever conversation they’d been having stopped, and Owen started a new one. “Kimmer, I’d like you to come into the office this afternoon. I think it’d be a good idea if we got you on an assignment as soon as possible.”

Kimmer narrowed her eyes at him, flicking a glance at the lawyer to see from his face that it had been his suggestion. “I’m on leave,” she said, though she knew he knew it. A couple of well-earned weeks, for though Rio had moved down a month and a half earlier, she’d almost immediately gone out of the country for several weeks. This was their time to settle in together, and it hadn’t been long enough.

“Things change,” Owen said, and though his rugged face held understanding, his voice was firm. Most of the Hunters were lean of body and aesthetic of feature, the same basic mold for each sibling. Owen had turned out craggy and rugged with a heavyweight boxer’s physique; he had only the Hunter nose, and even that was broader than the aquiline nose of his siblings. Kimmer sometimes wondered if he understood what it was to be the black sheep—except that Owen had otherwise followed in his family footsteps, leaving his younger brother Dave to break the mold.

“What he means,” Hank said, a smirk in place, “is that you screwed up, and now you’ve gotta get out of town so you don’t rub off on the agency.”

Kimmer sent a cool look his way. Then she told Rio, “I’m going to go grab a couple of subs. You want that horrible pastrami thing again?”

“With mustard,” Rio answered promptly. And he waited until Kimmer had moved almost out of earshot—but not quite—to say, “What Owen meant, Hank, is that you screwed up, and you rubbed off on Kimmer.”

Hank snorted. “She can take care of herself.”

And Rio didn’t bother to hide his pride. “Yeah. She can. But that won’t stop me from stepping in if I think I need to.”

Men. All posturing and saber-rattling. But Kimmer found herself smiling all the same.

When she returned with the subs, Owen and the lawyer had left, and the drizzle had stopped. Hank sat on the bumper of Rio’s midsize SUV, and Rio waved, standing by the half-open car door as he fished his cell phone from his pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and picked up the call. “Hey, Caro. What’s—”

When Carolyne Carlsen cut Rio off, Kimmer instantly wondered if she’d gotten herself into another situation. As far as Kimmer knew, Carolyne still handled security issues on some of the federal government’s most sensitive systems—the same job that had gotten her into trouble the previous fall.

But Rio glanced over, saw Kimmer’s attentiveness, and gave the slightest shake of his head. He could still read her like the proverbial book, dammit. And it still shook her sometimes; she still wasn’t used to it. No doubt he could tell just how she felt about Hank, even if Hank himself wouldn’t ever pick up the depth of her true feelings, not even if they came attached to a clue-by-four. “Caro, slow down. Is she…” he stopped, didn’t seem to be able to use the words he’d had in mind, and finally finished, “…still in the hospital?”

Kimmer knew, then. It had to be Rio’s grandmother. His beloved Sobo. Had it been anyone in his nuclear family, his cousin wouldn’t be passing the news along. Though for Rio, of course, “nuclear family” encompassed as many layers as the average extended family.

Kimmer thought of her nuclear family in terms of single digits. One. Herself.

“Who’s she staying with? Mom and Dad? Good. Mom won’t let her do anything more strenuous than flower arrangement. Do they need—”

Quiet Carolyne was overwrought indeed, to keep cutting Rio off in midsentence. “Okay. Okay. I hear you. I promise. I won’t go. Not without checking first. And I’ll give them a day or two before I call. Yes, I promise. I won’t even send an e-mail.”

That, Kimmer knew, was calculated to get at least a small laugh out of Carolyne. For as much as Carolyne was connected and interconnected to the online community—wireless satellite connections for every machine she owned and then some—Rio was disconnected. He hadn’t yet gotten his hand-me-down laptop to work with Kimmer’s slow rural dialup. Now the worry on his brow smoothed a little, and she knew the tactic had been at least partially successful. But his voice, when he spoke again, was as intense as Rio got. “Listen, Caro, you call me if anything changes. I mean it. Okay. Look, we’ll talk later. Soon. Thanks for letting me know.” And he listened another moment or two, nodding before a final goodbye.

“Did you ever notice,” Hank said into the silence that followed, into the connection Kimmer and Rio had established, a silent communication during which she let him know she’d followed and understood the development, “that people on TV sitcoms never say goodbye? They just hang up.”

“Here.” Kimmer thrust the sub sandwich bag at him, and he pushed himself off the bumper to reach for it. “I got you turkey and onions with mustard.” An old favorite. Ick. “There’s a soda in there, too. I thought you might be hungry enough to eat on the way home.” I thought I might be hungry enough to eat on the way home, but if it keeps your mouth busy, first dibs are all yours.

And then she cranked the window down to let fresh air dilute the stinging odor of onions.

Once home, Kimmer didn’t linger. Owen expected her at Hunter, and she wanted to get it over with. She also wanted to escape Hank. And mostly, she needed time to consider Rio’s situation.

The blunt truth was that she had no idea how to respond to his grandmother’s illness, a conjecture he confirmed in a few murmured words before she threw her tough black Eagle Creek bag in the Miata and headed the twenty minutes to the Full Cry vineyards and winery. Sobo had been diagnosed with mild congestive heart failure, briefly hospitalized and was now adjusting to a new regime of medicines while her family made hasty arrangements for the partial nursing care she’d need until she stabilized. And it was killing Rio to be down here, to be away from them…not even to call them. But Carolyne had said they needed the space to make the necessary arrangements, and that he should wait.

That left Rio in limbo. He couldn’t go rushing off to save the situation as he had so many times in the past, he couldn’t pull off his casual laid-back average-guy mode to continue life as normal, and he wasn’t made for sitting around doing nothing.

Kimmer didn’t know what to say to him, what to do for him. She didn’t have the faintest idea what it felt like to have family—people known from childhood, people immersed in and part of her life—in crisis.

So she didn’t linger. She stayed long enough to see Hank set up in front of the television and to see Rio changing into shorts, a cut-off sweatshirt and running shoes, and she didn’t say anything absurd like “It’ll be okay,” because who knew? She just ran a hand down his arm, waited for him to notice, and said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Full Cry Winery was nestled between two of New York state’s southern tier Finger Lakes, near the shore of Seneca Lake. Kimmer knew the winding road between her Glenora hilltop home and Full Cry well enough to make navigation second nature—and to sail past the speed limits when occasion warranted, slowing down only for the tiny town of Rock Stream.

At midafternoon, the area’s surfeit of farmers and grape growers were at work, but few of them took to the road and Kimmer had command of it to travel south in record time. She pulled past the lot of the old barn converted to a visitor’s center and around behind to the addition and modern outbuildings where working areas of the fully functioning winery were located. The double-level cellar started beneath the business offices and ran under the barn. Kimmer liked to walk it in the hottest part of summer and absorb the stringent smells of tannin and crushed grape and wine and damp concrete.

Not far from the parking lot sat the Hunter family home, a surprisingly modest structure. And snuggled away behind the winery’s business section, buffered by discreet security measures, the Hunter Agency maintained its own entrance to its offices, one that was, without fanfare, labeled Viniculture Development.

Kimmer reached it and flipped up the weather cover over the security pad next to a steel door that gleamed even in the darkness, pressing her thumb against the glass. It gave a brief blue glow and then issued an invitation with the quiet thunk of disengaging locks.

As she pushed through the door she considered this abrupt change of plans. Hunter maintained an extensive string of operatives, from part-timers to those who lived undercover, and although they all had specialties, they were also widely cross-trained. Kimmer herself fell in the middle of the spectrum—a full-time operative who went from job to job, usually undercover. “Chimera,” they called her, because she was so adept at reading people that she could live up to their expectations, going undetected. She could be all things to all people.

Hunter made good use of her knack to suss out people and situations, using her where their background intel had failed, inserting her into quickly developing situations to assess personalities and even clients. Often their game plan developed around Kimmer’s reports.

Kimmer went down the curving, carpeted concrete stairs. They spit her out at the end of a long hallway, where she had to navigate another security feature, this one a chamber of bulletproof glass that let her in but only let her out when it was satisfied about her identity. The whole handprint this time.

Gadgets. You gotta love ’em. Personally she trusted her own judgment over any gadget, and she was just waiting for the time one of their own became stuck in this flytrap.

With a pneumatic hiss, the door slid aside and released her into the Hunter Agency proper, a place of no-nonsense but quality furnishings, never metal where warm oak would do, everything oiled and polished. No doors squeaked; no dust dared settle or fingerprints linger. She went straight to Owen’s office, through the small area occupied by his secretary during “normal” working hours, and rapped lightly on his door before opening it and inviting herself in.

He looked up from his desk, expectation on his craggy features. He raised a heavy, dark brow at her. “What took you so long?”

Since she’d basically taken no time at all, Kimmer ignored him. She cared more about the fact that he was annoyed and trying to hide it. “I see you,” she told him, sitting in the chair across from his desk. They both knew she wasn’t talking about his mere physical presence. I see your hidden stress and anger.

Owen sighed, acknowledging the annoyance as he shuffled the papers he’d been studying aside. “Bad timing,” he said.

“Is there ever a good time to blow up a propane tank and a couple of bad guys with it?”

That got a wry smile out of him as he leaned back in his chair. “Point well taken. And I do realize you did what you could to contain the situation.”

“Given that I had zero notice.” Kimmer scowled at the thought of Hank’s arrival, and then again at the way he’d rabbited from the hilltop. “If he’d just stayed on the damned hill where I put him…”

Owen shrugged. “I’m not sure I blame him. I think your brother was in way over his head.”

Kimmer thought back over the events of the previous day. “He came here hoping I would kill them. He thinks I’m the kind of person who’ll just…do that. And damned if I didn’t turn them both into toast. Never even had a chance to talk to them.” She frowned at the situation a moment. “There’s no telling if they’ll ever be able to ID the guys. You can bet Hank’s not telling.”

Silence fell between them, until Owen said, “And how’s your brother strike you?”

Kimmer blinked. “What do you mean? You know I can’t read him. A fact for which I’m almost grateful, I should say.”

“I’m not sure it adds up, that’s all,” Owen said. “If Hank saw someone killed, why is it safe to go back?”

“He told me the dead guys were the only others to know about it. I gather it wasn’t a large organization. Just a few guys running a chop shop under the cover of Hank’s salvage business.”

“Hmm.” Owen gave a thoughtful rub of his chin. “Would have been nice to have talked to those two men.”

“Too bad toast doesn’t talk.” Pieces of toast, to judge by the condition of the sedan after the explosion. “Wildly scattered” was an understated way to have put it; identification would be impossible unless they’d been in the DNA database. No wonder Owen felt he needed to appease the local law agencies. “Tell me you’re not sending me away.”

“I’m not sending you away.”

“Because I really can’t—” Oh. She looked at him, realized she’d been about to say she couldn’t leave Rio right now, not again. Not with his grandmother sick. Then she realized she didn’t actually know if that was best. Maybe Rio just needed to do his thing. “Okay, then what’s up?”

“You’re going to put your unique abilities to work right here.”

She tipped her head at him, an unspoken is that so?

“The governor is making his rounds across the state this spring,” Owen said. “Election year prep. I’ve offered Hunter’s services as backup security. You won’t be the only one. I want you working undercover as he comes through Watkins Glen next week. From arrival to departure, I want you in the background. Watching.”

Because if someone aimed to cause trouble, she’d spot it before anyone else. He didn’t have to say it. Hunter had taken advantage of her knack often enough that such things had been said many times before.

“The others?” she asked.

“Three other agents. Also in the background, but in an obvious security capacity. You won’t have to interface with them. You’ll be reporting straight to the chief of police. You’ll also be blending in to their arrangements, not the other way around. The point is to provide a seamless extra layer of protection without causing them any extra work.”

Kimmer tapped her fingers on her knee. “Are we expecting trouble?”

“Not at all.” Owen smiled at her, the look he got when he was happy at how he’d worked things out. “It was an offer I made to take some of the pressure off the department. A gesture of goodwill, you might say. Or even by way of apology.”

Some gesture. Hunter Agency time didn’t come cheap. Kimmer winced.

Owen raised a hand. “Look at me,” he said. “I want you to know I’m not trying to pull one over on you here. The truth is, it’s good for us to make these gestures now and then. We want the local law to think of us as people who work with them and within their boundaries. We want them to understand that this is our home, too.”

Kimmer looked. She found him unfazed by her scrutiny…possibly even slightly amused. She made a grumbling noise and settled deeper in her chair. “So when—?”

“The end of the week. Give the chief a call first thing tomorrow.” He tossed a business card across the desk—one of his own, but he’d scrawled a phone number on the back. A real high-tech moment.

Kimmer stretched forward to scoop up the card…and then she sat there, deep in the chair, flipping the card back and forth in her fingers.

After a moment, Owen raised his eyebrows. “This isn’t about the new assignment.” When she shot him an annoyed look, he just grinned. “You know, the rest of us are able to make observations and deductions, too. I know you well enough for that. More than well enough, for all you don’t like to hear it. So spit it out—what’s bothering you?”

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