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