Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

All perfectly normal. Dave, deep in thought, surrounded by his notes in hard copy, ordering the pizza he thought-rightly so-that she’d like.

Then why had something inside her stumbled when he looked up at her? Why did she have that little warning trill in her head, the one that always told her when a scam was going off course? The difference being, this time she didn’t try to hide it. She didn’t try to smooth things over or retreat to reassess. She didn’t try to pretend nothing was wrong at all. She asked, “What’s up?”

He didn’t quite look at her. “Just wishing I could have caught this bastard years ago. Looking at him in the society pages, living his privileged life…” He shook his head. “There’s nothing right about any of it.”

Uh-huh. Very true. But not the reason for his change in demeanor. She told him, “Well, we’re here to change that,” and slipped into a chair to help herself to a couple of pieces of pizza. He nudged the notes her way and she glanced at them with approval. Just what she needed-a neat list of contacts with details. Dave had highlighted two couples who were currently out of town, but who usually appeared in Longsford’s personal orbit. She ran her finger over the green highlighter. “You’re such a nerd,” she said. “This is great.”

“Good,” he said, but his voice was studiously neutral.

She looked up at him, eyes narrowed. This was more than anger at Longsford. Definitely more. “If you’re thinking I can’t carry this off-”

He shook his head before she even finished. “I have no doubt you can do this,” he told her. “I’m not so sure I can do it.” He scraped his chair back and took the pizza box, stuffing the leftovers into the fridge.

He’s not just talking about the scam.

She couldn’t even remember a moment when there hadn’t been some sort of spark between them, from the first moment she’d watched him deal with Ellen’s dog. Sometimes it flared to rocket-fuel intensity, sometimes it merely glimmered. But it had always been there.

Not now.

“You’ll do fine,” she said. Lame, so lame.

“I’m headed up for bed.” He gestured toward the front of the house. “We’re all locked up and the alarm system is engaged, so don’t go for any midnight walks if you have trouble sleeping.”

“You’re-” she started, and again he didn’t let her finish.

“Early day tomorrow, you said. Let’s be ready for it.”

“Okay. Sure. That makes good sense.” Lame and lamer. She should have been demanding to know the problem, digging away at it.

But she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

S on of a bitch.

Dave looked at himself in the mirror over the small dresser in his bedroom. His hair was gold-bright even in the low-wattage light, and the shadow of his eyes looked more haunted in contrast. I’m talking about you, Hunter.

Back at that farmhouse, he’d talked himself out of believing that his response to “Ellen” held no conflict of interest. That he could make love to her right on the floor of her office. Make love, hell. More like wild sex. Great wild sex.

Turned out there was a conflict of interest after all.

He hadn’t expected these knotted results. Knots that blurred the lines between right and wrong and for the first time in his life left him unable to see where one turned into the other. Left him with a big bewildered empty spot where she’d so quickly made herself a part of him.

But then, that was what she was good at, wasn’t it?

It hadn’t taken his L.A. friend long to get him background on Karin Sommers. Her stepfather, Gregg Rumsey, had had early arrests and then seemed to have cleaned up his act. Dave knew he’d only hidden himself behind a little girl. No doubt he’d also finally gotten some good fixes in the local law agencies. Either way, he and his stepdaughter had kept a low profile until just over a year ago.

Until the elderly Vasilkovs. Irene and Earl. Shortly before their deaths, their retirement savings had dwindled significantly. Friends, interviewed after their deaths, were certain they’d been investing in some secret scheme. They’d left a joint suicide note, but nothing that convinced the M.E. to ignore the evidence of homicide. They’d closed in on Rumsey.

But Rumsey, with much beating of breast and teary regret, had provided an alibi and pointed the finger at his missing stepdaughter.

Karin Sommers.

Evidence was forthcoming. A warrant issued.

A warrant Dave would honor, as soon as he was done here.

So what did that make him?

A son of a bitch.

And what did it make her? The woman he’d come to know and admire in these past intense days, so composed that she could make up her absurd Mad Sheep disease while clinging to the side of a mountain? She’d meant to run, sure, but she’d also changed her mind when she’d realized she could help.

Or maybe she simply planned to complete the scam to finance another run for it. Because she was far deeper underground than she’d let on. Not just running from her nasty stepfather, oh no.

Running from a murder conviction.

He snorted at the man in the mirror. The Hunter family’s fair-haired boy, the youngest brother with so much potential who’d never lived up to expectations. No, he was too tied to his own goals, too attached to an honor that was more about helping the helpless and hopeless than hitting the international scene for the high-concept spy gigs. Satisfied to get his criminology degree and his investigator’s license and to poke around in the bones of tragic cases, trying-and often succeeding-to make everything turn out right for that one child, that one family.

He had no excuse for leaving Karin free to run this scam. No excuse for hiding his knowledge from her, except that he wanted to use her before he turned her in. He’d finally become willing to trade his pristine honor intact for results. I want Longsford. And to get the man, Dave was scamming a scammer.

At least he was fully aware of his own price.

And, thinking of Karin’s quietly stricken expression, her tacit acknowledgment of the change between them…of that bittersweet empty spot among the knots in his stomach…

He also knew the cost.

Karin woke to an unfamiliar ceiling, a tingling undercurrent touching her thoughts. Familiar enough, but not something she’d felt for a while. Mixed in was a sadness, and though she’d felt plenty of that since Ellen’s death, this was different. More sorrow and regret than outright grief.

She stared at the ceiling fan until the details trickled in. She was building a scam, that was what. She was in Alexandria, in Dave Hunter’s borrowed safe house, and she was building a scam. The jazz. Oh yeahhh. She’d learned to embrace it-to focus on it, so she wouldn’t focus on the other aspects of her work. Just as she’d learned to embrace the complicated scams, to bury herself in the challenge.

Rumsey was the one who worked the easy marks. The elderly, who were often gullible and just a little confused, and who could be beguiled by the thought of leaving a fortune to their children. There was no jazz in that. There hadn’t been for a long, long time.

But those who were rich and in the prime of their lives, they made their own choices. Like Longsford, their greed was their weak spot. And constructing a deeply layered scam that could hit that weak spot dead on…

That was Karin’s weak spot.

But now there was sadness weighing against the building thrill of this scam.

Dave.

He’d figured her out, it seemed. Seen too much.

So she stared at the ceiling fan, and she realized the most important thing: he hadn’t changed his mind. He might not like what he saw anymore, but he would still work with her. They’d still go after Longsford. Ellen’s revenge.