Melissa Cutler - Hot on the Hunt

The idea made his chest tight, which pissed him off. She’d abandoned him in middle of the Caribbean Sea, of all the damn things. She hadn’t even seen fit to throw down a floatation device. So what if the authorities got her? He had no business caring what her fate was anymore. If she got caught, then his path to Rory would be clearer. Try as he might, he just couldn’t sell himself on that argument, though. Despite everything, she was the woman he’d once loved. Despite everything, there as a part of him that cared about her still.

He wove a path along the north side of the island, away from busy Christiansted Harbor. With the binoculars he kept in the boat’s console, he scanned the coast, but he couldn’t keep his thoughts from returning to Alicia.

It had always been that way between them—he cared too much and she acted as if she barely afforded him a thought. She’d made him fight for a spot in her bed. Made him demand it. At the time, in the middle of it all, he’d liked being the one calling the shots in their relationship. Fighting for what he wanted was his comfort zone. As with everything else in his life—his career, his family—with her he’d let his stubborn streak act as a battering ram, breaking through her self-protective walls. He’d not only loved Alicia, body and soul, but he’d loved the challenge of her, too.

He saw no sign of Rory’s boat at Salt River Bay, which had been his first hunch. Intimately familiar with almost all the docks, piers, bars and hotels on St. Croix because St. Croix had been the first haven he landed on after his life fell apart, he pressed north, where the shoreline evolved into looming green cliffs untouched by civilization and edged with shallow, yellow sand beaches. It was unlikely that Rory had ditched the boat and swam ashore—which would’ve been hell on his gunshot wound—so he’d either tied off at one of the few docks on this end of the island or he’d gone to the island’s south side.

Sure enough, bobbing in the water alongside kayaks and dinghies tied to the small private dock jutting from the Grand Ammaly Bay Resort, he spotted the boat Rory had stolen.

That cleared up where Rory’s touchdown point had been, but John knew better than to take the bait. Even if the boat hadn’t been left in plain sight as a decoy and was a bona fide signal of Rory’s trail, Rory wouldn’t have lingered at the Grand Ammaly for long. Most likely, he’d gone shopping for unattended purses and wallets at the resort’s restaurants and lounges, then stolen a car. John’s best bet was that Rory’s next move involved treating his gunshot wound.

He also bet that Alicia had started her hunt for Rory at the resort. She didn’t have many weaknesses as an operative, but she was a computer genius, first and foremost, and had the accompanying literal, statistical logic to go along with that gift. John had witnessed it enough back when they were teammates. It was the same mind-set that made her an expert at computer technology, but it would only hurt her in the Caribbean, where scarcely anything followed the rules of American-bred literal logic.

The question now was, after Rory ditched the speedboat and gathered funds, where would he go to tend his wound? Compounding the issue was that Rory didn’t need someone else to administer first aid. Green Berets were trained to take care of themselves and each other. It was a critical skill to have when operating behind enemy lines, as they often had on their missions. Once, in Afghanistan, John had sustained a nasty slice to his side while training Afghan soldiers in hand-to-hand combat techniques and Rory had administered ten stitches in the kitchen of an abandoned, bombed-out house.

All Rory would need was first-aid supplies and a secluded, clean place to patch himself up. On the sleepy, vacation paradise of St. Croix, there was definitely no shortage of secluded hideaways. Good thing John knew Eugene Flyer, bar owner and island informant extraordinaire.

He cranked the wheel of his boat in the opposite direction of the resort, toward Eugene’s bar, but something stopped him from taking the throttle out of neutral. Alicia.

What if she’d caught up with Rory before he’d had time to flee the resort? What if she was on the verge of killing him? John was so near, he had to check. The idea of seeing Alicia again made his heart pound. He wished he knew how to sever the grip she had on his heart, but the best he could do for now was try to ignore it.

But as he spun the wheel back toward the resort and pushed the throttle, he couldn’t stop the rush of memories of the woman he’d loved and lost. It was a bitter pill to swallow to realize that even with everything on the line and his future hanging in the balance, Alicia’s face, her voice, remained stubbornly in the forefront of his mind—forever there, yet forever out of reach.

* * *

Alicia followed McCaffrey’s hand as he snatched her gun and tucked it in his pants pocket. Arrest, huh? So he didn’t have the green light to kill her. Good to know. Part of her was spitting nails that her mission had gone so royally FUBAR, but another part of her had to give thanks for that small favor. At least she was alive. She sat still, forcing him to make the next play.

He took hold of her left arm again and repositioned his gun against her neck.

“Right hand on top of your head, right now.”

She complied, biding her time. Next, he’d probably order her out of the car. One could hope he’d do something so stupid, anyway.

“Real slowly now, you’re going to get out of the car. One wrong move and I shoot. Don’t think for a second that I don’t understand how dangerous you are.”

If he’d truly understood how dangerous she was, he would’ve cuffed her hands to the steering wheel, then climbed in the backseat and ordered her to play hostage taxi driver.

She unfolded one booted leg to the ground, then the other. Predictably, he tugged her arm to force her to stand. Harnessing the momentum in his tug, she pushed off the ground with her left leg, kicking out with her right.

Her boot slammed into his gut as she grabbed the wrist of his gun hand. She banged his wrist against the door frame as she kicked his legs out from under him. With an oof, he fell forward into her lap like she’d hoped he would, his grip on her arm loosening. She jerked her arm free of him, and before he had time to gather his wits, she kneed him in the head, then grabbed the wrist of his gun hand.

They grappled for command of the gun. She nearly lost the battle when he grabbed her hair and yanked. The pain of it made her stomach ache, and the lack of air made her light-headed, but she fought through it, banging his gun hand against the door frame over and over until it fell from his hand, either onto the ground or the car floor, she couldn’t tell. Time for part two of her plan.

Her hands shot out, groping the steering column until her fingers closed around what she’d been after. The gear shifter. She wrenched it down but didn’t have enough force behind the movement to snap it off.

She threw herself backward, arching her hips and creating a slight window to get her knees up. Her boots hit his legs, though she couldn’t guess how high up. Gasping and grunting, she kicked against him, but his hold on her was too firm. Before she could stop him, he pulled her from the car. She put all her effort into one last tug on the gear shifter as they moved. She was about to give up and come up with a new plan when it snapped off.

There was no time to waste. As soon as she was out of the car, she got her legs under her and swung the jagged-edged shiv toward his neck. She felt it snag on skin. He hissed through his teeth and grabbed for her arm. No way was she going to let that happen. Instead, she used his power against him and as his arm whooshed past her, she countered with a block, just as she’d learned as a student of Krav Maga, the discipline of Israeli martial arts her father practiced and had taught her, his only daughter, from the time she could walk.