Bullseye
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Jessica Andersen
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17,7K
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14
Chapter One
“Bull!” Jacob Powell grinned and reclaimed his seat near the built-in fridge.
“Big surprise,” grumbled fellow bounty hunter Anthony Lombardi. He pulled Jacob’s dart from the center of the dartboard and took his place behind the tape mark on the floor. “We don’t call you Bullseye for nothing.”
The dark-haired hunter threw and hit the inner ring one step out from the center, eliciting howls of derision from the half dozen men gathered in the rec room of the Big Sky Bounty Hunters’ headquarters in Ponderosa, Montana.
The rules for Bull were simple. You had five shots. You hit five bullseyes or you lost. And Jacob never lost.
Though he’d earned his nickname in the Special Forces, where he’d been a fighter pilot with an airstrike hit record second to none, the moniker had stuck when he and the rest of the unit had followed their leader, Cameron Murphy, into the bounty hunting business. In his five years as a bounty hunter, as in his Special Forces career, Jacob almost never missed his target.
Failure wasn’t an option for Bullseye.
But at that moment, he wasn’t thinking about the past, or even about darts. His mind was focused, as it usually was these days, on the job. Though he’d instituted the game of Bull to give his ever-active hands and body something to do, his brain crunched the data he’d assembled on their current bounty.
Too damned little information as far as he was concerned. A few weeks earlier, eight prisoners had done the unthinkable and escaped The Fortress, the nearby maximum-security prison. Big Sky hadn’t recaptured them, and worse, the escapees had wreaked havoc, executing a German diplomat and engineering a train crash that had killed the corrupt governor of Montana. The incidents had almost upset months of delicate United Nations’ negotiations regarding the despotic king of a former Soviet Bloc country called Lunkinburg.
Almost.
“Your turn, Powell.” Tony clapped him on the shoulder. “And Bull.”
Meaning that Tony had gotten his five center hits. It was up to Jacob to finish the game with five of his own.
No sweat.
Jacob stood and stepped up to the masking tape line. A television babbled in the background, perpetually tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station. The Secretary of Defense’s familiar hangdog, bespectacled face filled the screen as Jacob took aim and buried his first dart in the bullseye.
“Turn up the volume,” one of the other bounty hunters ordered. “He’s talking about Lunkinburg.” Secretary Cooper, the President’s primary adviser on foreign affairs, was strongly in favor of sending troops into the small country.
Jacob sent his second dart whistling into the bull, but focused part of his attention on the secretary’s words. The Big Sky Bounty Hunters rarely worked internationally, but the Lunkinburg issue had become their problem the moment their bounty had started targeting diplomats.
Which itself was a puzzle, as Boone Fowler and his followers were strictly domestic hell-raisers. Their agenda was to overthrow the U.S. government in the name of The Cause, which was pretty much defined by Fowler himself and included a dizzying mix of xenophobia and anarchy. This was the first time the MMFAFA had dabbled in international politics, which begged the central question.
Why now? Why had they broken out of The Fortress and immediately changed their MO?
Secretary Louis Cooper’s televised voice said, “The United States military is not the world’s police force. However, there is a time and a place for us to say enough.” Cooper rested his hands on the wheeled podium in front of him. His faded blond hair was washed out by the lighting, his blue eyes emphasized by the subtle gleam of a navy tie. As Jacob watched, the camera panned out far enough to show brilliant fall colors and a familiar logo.
A quiver of interest ran through him at the sight. The Golf Resort. The Washington, D.C.–based Secretary of Defense was at a Montana vacation spot, not twenty miles away from the log cabin that held the bounty hunters’ offices on the main floors and a host of specialized, high-security rooms belowground.
In one of the aboveground rooms, Jacob threw. Bull. Three down, two to go.
Cooper’s televised voice continued. “The President, myself and the members of the United Nations have had enough. The atrocities perpetrated by King Aleksandr have gone on too long with no hope of change in sight. We must commit to overthrowing Aleksandr’s tyrannical rule—a goal that is strengthened by the support we have found within his family.”
Jacob focused. Threw. Bull.
On screen, Secretary Cooper gestured toward a mid-thirties, dark-haired man in a custom-tailored suit. “Please welcome Lunkinburg’s premiere freedom fighter. Disowned by his father for his politics, he only wants what is best for his people.” Cooper waved the man forward. “I give you Prince Nikolai of Lunkinburg.”
Jacob imagined teenage girls swooning all across America at the sight of the crown prince, whose camera appeal was second only to his patriotic fervor.
There was scattered applause from those assembled at the Golf Resort, and the cameras panned to track the prince as he made his way to the portable podium. The image swept over several navy-suited figures in the background. Secret Service most likely, Jacob thought, and ignored the quiver in his gut and the sudden desire to stare at the screen.
He focused instead on the dartboard, where he was one bull away from his usual perfect score. He lifted the missile and felt the click as he visually connected with his target. Measured. Pulled back.
A flicker of navy suit on the screen caught his peripheral view and yanked his attention to the TV in an instant. Images jammed his brain. An hourglass shape. A chin-length swing of auburn hair too vivid to be strawberry-blond, too rich to be brassy red. Flashing green eyes and mobile lips made for kissing.
Jacob’s stomach knotted.
He threw.
He missed.
The room stilled with a collective hiss of indrawn breath as the six other bounty hunters stared at the dart quivering in the outer ring of the board. A half an inch farther out and he would have missed the board entirely. In the game of Bull, that entitled the other player to a future claim.
In five years, Jacob had never given up a future claim. Shoot, he’d only missed the bull one other time—and then he’d had a bullet wound in his arm and a temperature well over a hundred and two.
But hell and damn, he’d missed this time. Missed big.
On the television screen, Prince Nikolai spoke of patriotism and human rights, and of how his pain at working against his father was offset by the knowledge that the people of Lunkinburg needed his help. But Jacob heard the words as background noise—his whole attention was locked on the woman standing behind Secretary Cooper with a clever communications device in her ear and an I’m-all-about-the-job look on her face.
His body flashed hot then blazed to nuclear temperatures as he took a second look and realized that, yeah, it was her, all right, a heart-stopping face and mind-blowing body straight out of his past.
Isabella Gray.
HER DAY HAD STARTED well before dawn and didn’t look as though it was going to be over anytime soon.
Special Agent Isabella Gray unobtrusively shifted on her aching feet, one level of her consciousness wishing for a shower and a couple of aspirin while another, deeper level scanned the crowd and monitored the low-level chatter on the airwaves. As the single Secret Service agent overseeing the Secretary of Defense’s vacation, she’d liaised with the Montana locals for backup and security when Cooper had announced he was holding an impromptu press conference at the resort.
So far, everything seemed under control.
It had better be, she thought with a frown. She’d been up at 3:00 a.m. overseeing the last of the details. It was her event, her security, and her reputation on the line.
They didn’t call her a cojone-busting nitpicker for nothing. She didn’t tolerate screwups, either above or below her position.
And certainly not from herself.
“And so,” Prince Nikolai said into the microphone from his position between two of his personal bodyguard/advisers, “It is with both sadness and joy that I proclaim my support of the UN resolution to send troops into Lunkinburg and remove my father, King Aleksandr, from his dissolute throne.” Nikolai glanced at Secretary Cooper. “It is my fondest hope that these actions will bring to my country the great peace and prosperity enjoyed by the people of the U.S., such as Secretary Cooper and his lovely family.”
At that, the two men shared a handshake while reporters shouted easily ignored questions.
Secretary Cooper shook his head. “I’m sorry, folks. No questions today. The prince has a prior commitment and I promised to have an early dinner with Hope and the girls.”
At the mention of his family, Cooper’s normally fierce expression softened so slightly that Isabella might have missed it if she hadn’t known to look. But in the past couple of weeks, ever since Cooper had received graphic death threats from King Aleksandr’s supporters and been assigned Secret Service protection, she had gotten to know her protectee and his family. For all that he was a political barracuda, Louis Cooper was soft as mush when it came to his young wife, Hope, and his twin, eighteen-month-old daughters, Becky and Tiffany.
Isabella motioned for the locals to flank her, guarding the secretary and Prince Nikolai while they walked from the front of the Golf Resort to the rear, where Cooper’s secure chalet was set back against the edge of the dense forest. While she scanned the crowd and the manicured lawns beyond, a small, not-so-easily ignored part of her felt a wistful tug at Cooper’s devotion to Hope and the girls.
Isabella had once dreamed of having a loving, stable family of her own, but it hadn’t happened. Now, at thirty-five, she protected other people’s families and considered it a patriotic trade-off. Even the low-grade maternal urges had mostly faded over the years. She told herself she was only feeling them now because she’d been spending so much time around Becky and Tiff. She told herself it had nothing to do with being in Montana, with knowing that the Big Sky Bounty Hunters were quartered nearby.
But she was lying to herself, and knew it. Damn Jacob Powell. Thirteen years later she still couldn’t stop herself from keeping track of him. She’d even located the Big Sky headquarters on a map and checked how long it would take her to reach the cabin.
Not that she’d drop in for a visit. No way, no how. Their relationship had burned comet-bright, and when it had crashed, she’d been left cratered. Nearly destroyed.
She had grown up and grown out of the breakup damn quick, but that didn’t mean she’d feel comfortable seeing him again. Besides, what was the point? They were different people now, with different agendas.
He probably barely even remembered her.
And heck, it wasn’t as though she thought of him on a weekly basis now, or even yearly. It was being in Montana that had brought him to mind. Montana and the little girls and the foolish dreams she’d once had.
Secretary Cooper and Prince Nikolai stopped on the wide pathway outside the Coopers’ chalet, bumping Isabella out of her unproductive, unprofessional thoughts.
“I will leave you here, my friend,” Prince Nikolai announced.
The men shook hands and parted, the prince returning up the walkway and passing near Isabella. She caught a faint whiff of his cologne, felt a whisper of his sheer animal magnetism and held herself professionally distant when he stopped a breath away and looked down at her with dark, almost ebony eyes.
“Keep him safe, Agent Gray,” the prince said in his trademark low, sexy voice. “I need him. My people need him.” He glanced back. “And he is a good man.”
“He’s my protectee,” Isabella said simply, refusing to credit the fine buzz running along her skin, which served only to remind her how long she’d focused on being a Secret Service agent rather than a woman.
The prince held her eyes for a moment more before nodding. “I leave him in your care, then.”
She watched him go. Part of her appreciated the aesthetics of his rear view while another wondered why the sexy prince brought nothing more than a pleasant buzz when Jacob—there he was again, darn him—had brought roaring heat that had charred her from the inside out and left her hollow and filled at the same time.
Irritated with her lack of focus, she followed Secretary Cooper into the chalet, scoped out the three-thousand-square-foot vacation palace and checked the perimeter motion detectors to make sure nothing had changed in the hour they’d been gone. As she did her job, she shoved the distractions to the back of her mind.
Nothing seemed out of place. When she returned to the stone-accented great room, King Aleksandr scowled out of the flat screen TV that dominated the opposite wall.
Secretary Cooper cranked up the volume.
“…a traitor to my blood and to my family,” the king shouted, red-faced. “The American people should be warned!”
A frisson worked its way through Isabella’s gut at the near-threat. The ornate stonework and tapestries visible in the background indicated that Aleksandr was still holed up in his palace in Lunkinburg, but too many incidents in recent years had shown that evil men could cause trouble from afar.
Aleksandr leaned close to the microphone, bringing his flinty gray eyes and heavily lined face into sharp focus. “If Louis Cooper brings war to my country, then his family and the American public will suffer the consequences.”
The shiver worked itself into full-blown battle readiness. Isabella locked eyes with Cooper, who warned, “That bastard better not touch Hope and the girls.”
“Agreed.” She reflexively checked the semiautomatic pistol she carried in a holster at the small of her back. “I’m going to call the Great Falls field office. To hell with them being short staffed, I need backup.” She frowned. “I think we should return to Washington. The Service can protect you and your family better there.”
God knows her hands were tied out here, with most of the active protection agents either overseeing the President’s fund-raising efforts or keeping tabs on the last of the UN diplomats as they left the country.
“Of course.” Cooper nodded shortly. “I hate to interrupt our vacation, but my family’s safety comes first.” He spun on his heel and left the room.
“Yeah,” Isabella said into the empty space. “I know.”
And she shouldn’t envy that. She had chosen her path, and though it might not have been the happily-ever-after she’d envisioned in college, the lifestyle fit her like a second skin now, one that she wasn’t sure she would want to peel off if offered the chance.
Frankly, she wasn’t sure she could.
Cooper returned moments later and gave her a sharp nod. “We’ll be ready to go in an hour. Hope is making the necessary arrangements.”
“Fine,” Isabella said, already forming a mental list of the calls she needed to make. “I’ll just—”
Boom! A catastrophic explosion ripped her words away and flung her across the room. She slammed into the wall and lost her breath, her senses. After a moment her vision came back, gray and fuzzy.
Louis Cooper lay flat on the floor, unmoving. Hope reeled from the bedroom, blond hair flying wildly, red-painted mouth open in an O of horror, hands outstretched toward her husband.
Percussion bomb, narrow focus, Isabella’s brain supplied, quickly naming the device. The ringing in her ears faded within moments and her arms and legs twitched with returning consciousness. Heart pounding, she dragged herself up and fumbled for the gun at the small of her back. She shouted, “Hope, get back! Get the girls!”
At least she thought she shouted the words. She couldn’t hear a thing over the buzzing and the rush of blood through her body.
Three men charged into the room, heavily armed and running low. Their faces were cloaked in rubber Halloween masks of former Presidents Johnson, Clinton and Nixon, which gave the scene a surreal feel.
Nixon and LBJ reached for Secretary Cooper.
“Get away from him!” Isabella yanked up her weapon and fired in one smooth move, but her target jerked aside at the last possible moment. The shot ricocheted off the fieldstone fireplace in the sunken living room and spent itself in a bullhide sofa.
She squeezed off a second round and hit Nixon in the leg. He cursed and went down as she struggled to her feet.
Clinton rushed at her. “Bitch!”
She spun in a dizzy circle and fumbled to bring her weapon up even as the knowledge beat in her veins— I’ve got to protect Cooper and his family.
Her third shot went wild. LBJ closed in from the other side, reversed his weapon and swung it at her head in a deadly arc. She aimed between his eyes and—
Blackness.
IN HIS SMALL OFFICE on the second floor of the Big Sky headquarters, Jacob scrubbed his hands through his short, spiky brown hair, hoping to take away his headache with the gesture. No dice, but maybe he deserved the pain. He’d pretty much pushed himself into the ground since that afternoon, first with a long, hard run through the woods, then with an impromptu sparring session in the gym that Cameron had finally halted due to one too many bloody noses.
Maybe it wasn’t pain he was feeling in his head, Jacob thought as he rolled the chair back to the computer and pulled up his e-mail messages, hoping for a lead. Maybe it was anger.
Over the past thirteen years he’d learned to keep his emotions in check, learned to—mostly—control his temper.
But one sight of Isabella and there it was, front and center in his soul.
Anger. Guilt. Regret. Relief.
He hadn’t seen her since the day after they had both graduated from Georgetown. The day he had ended a relationship that had been too intense, too overwhelming for him to stay in and not lose himself.
He cursed and pushed away from the computer and the pitiful amount of information he’d managed to amass in an evening of data mining and phone calls.
Why was he thinking of her at all? How could a single glimpse of her put him back in that roiling, all-consuming place where he barely knew his own name? A place he intended never to go again.
She was nearby. That was why he was thinking of her. It was bad enough he’d glimpsed her on TV and felt the lightning bolt hit his gut. It was worse to learn she’d accompanied the Secretary of Defense on his annual vacation, where Louis Cooper invariably rented the same chalet at the same expensive adult playground.
The Golf Resort. Half an hour away by Jeep, less by horse if he cut up and over the mine-riddled ridge.
Not that he would do any such thing. Why would he? They were nothing to each other now. Ancient history. A bad taste at the back of his mouth.
But damn, she’d looked good on that TV screen. Good enough that several hours, one run and three mock fights later, his body still revved on overdrive from the sight of her, from the memories he’d tried to forget over the years.
Memories of sexual delirium. Sensual oblivion.
The ding of an incoming e-mail message was a relief and Jacob swung back to the keyboard just as voices rose outside the small office. It sounded as though the other bounty hunters were starting a new game of Bull, but he wasn’t in the mood anymore. He wanted to work.
He opened a message from Aimelee, a friend at the dispatcher’s office. Though he’d flirted briefly with the busty blonde when she’d moved to the area, nothing had come of it. She didn’t do the casual thing and he didn’t want anything else. So they’d become, surprisingly, friends.
No sighting of the fugitives, her e-mail reported, but a small walk-in clinic was broken into a couple of hours ago. Normally we’d think drugs, but mostly bandages and supplies were taken. Maybe that’s something?
Maybe. Jacob typed a quick thanks while his mind poked at the new information.
The fugitives were still in the area—or had been a week earlier when they’d derailed a train carrying a handful of UN diplomats. He bet they were still in the area. Where else would they go? The Montana mountains formed their home base. But where were they hiding? And why the medical supplies?
Perhaps they were nursing wounded from the train sabotage. Or perhaps—
He heard a loud shout outside the office. Running footsteps. A barked command muffled by the closed door. His heart rate picked up.
What the hell?
He was out of the computer chair and halfway across the office when Tony Lombardi yanked open the door. “Get out here. Now.”
Jacob followed his teammate out to the main room. There were only a half dozen bounty hunters in the HQ at that moment, but the knot of men near the front door seemed made up of twice that. He paused at the edge of the crowd. “What’s wrong?”
Then he caught a glimpse of auburn hair and a softly rounded cheek. A flash of green eyes. Kissable lips tipped down in a frown of pain, of worry.
The air backed up in his lungs and something hot and mean and messy fisted in his chest. The others moved aside, but he remained paralyzed. “Isabella?”
Even as his brain grappled with her presence, he noted the dusky bruise spreading along her cheek, the unfocused glaze in her eyes. Her clothes were clean, as though she’d taken time to change before finding him. But someone had roughed her up. Hard.
Primal, pure rage roared through him at the sight of an injured woman. At the sight of this injured woman. He bit off a curse. “What happened? Who did this?”
Her eyes focused. Flashed. She reached out toward him, then hesitated and glanced at the others. She let her hand drop and said, “Jacob. I need to speak with you. Privately.”
Her voice was lower than he remembered. Huskier. Her face and slight body still held hints of the same arcs and sweeps of curve and line. But the edge was new. As was the strength that kept her upright against her injuries.
Aware of his teammates looking on, Jacob reached out and touched a spreading bruise. “Tell me who did this. I’ll kill them.”
In the moment of silence that followed his declaration, he realized two things. One, he meant every word of it. He’d gladly kill whoever had laid a hand on her. And two, the whip of heat and power that flared up his arm and exploded in his chest warned him that it was still there. The thing that had brought them together over a game of darts in Smiley’s Pub in D.C. hadn’t died.
God, he wished it had.
He yanked his hand away and scowled. “Names. I want names.”
Thirteen years ago she would have told him everything in a rush. He expected the same now, because when you came down to it, people didn’t change that much over time.
Instead she narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t for public consumption. Can we go someplace more private?” When he didn’t budge, she hissed a curse. “Why did I even bother? I knew I shouldn’t have come here.” She spun and took two steps toward the door.
And collapsed.
“Isabella!” Jacob caught her on the way down. When the others surged forward to help, he swept her up into his arms and tried to brace himself against the feel of her lithe, toned body against his chest. “Stand down, I’ve got her.”
“That’s the chick we saw behind the Secretary of Defense,” Tony said. “The one who made you miss the Bull.”
“No kidding.” Jacob carried her to the stairs and started up with no real plan.
“Has something happened to Louis Cooper?” Cameron Murphy asked, his voice carrying the weight of leadership and surprising Jacob, who hadn’t even noticed the boss’s arrival.
“You’ll know as soon as I do.” But the thought of it grabbed at Jacob’s guts and wouldn’t let go. If the Secret Service had been protecting Cooper, it was because he was in danger.
And given that Cooper’s protection agent was unconscious half an hour away from the resort—
It didn’t look good.
