Deadly Bounty: SCVC Taskforce Romantic Suspense Series, Book 11 Read online

  Damn woman had broken his heart. Now she was testing the depth of emotions he’d had for her all this time.

  The head of the Domestic Terrorism Taskforce sauntered toward his SUV, leaving Joe on the sidewalk. He stood there a moment longer, watching the taillights flicker as Walsh drove away. It was all men on deck now, women, too. Everyone up and down the state of California was determined to bring Sam to justice.

  Him included, now that Homeland had roped him in.

  It wasn’t as if he could refuse, which was another hellish thing about this whole pickle.

  He couldn’t believe she’d blow up anything. She was no terrorist. Not the Sam he knew.

  But did he really know her after all these months?

  Had he ever? That was the bigger question, adding to his indigestion. If not, she’d duped him, along with a whole lot of other people.

  He shook his head. Rubbed the spot on his chest where it felt like he’d been shot. He had in a sense—his heart ripped clean out. He was never getting Sam out of his system, and he cursed himself for it.

  The worst part? If she did come and want him to go on the run with her? He’d do it in a heartbeat. No questions asked.

  That’s how much of a weakness she was for him.

  He’d also have to say it. I told you so. She hadn’t heeded his warnings and now they’d come true.

  If she was actually innocent. He had no way of knowing.

  Outside the driver of that truck, no one had died that day, but there were over a dozen injuries. The fairground had been packed with people to watch the parade and enjoy the fireworks when the sun went down. He’d almost been there himself, but had wrapped up an arduous apprehension only a few hours earlier. All he’d wanted was a homecooked meal and a decent eight hours of sleep.

  Fishing his keys from his pocket, he wiped sweat from the back of his neck and ambled toward his car. The opposing sides of his brain—and his heart—warred like an angel and a devil on his shoulders. One tried to convince him she was innocent. The other, cataloging the evidence, insisted on her guilt.

  The car lights flashed as he unlocked the door and climbed in. He stuck the key in the ignition, looking up just in time to catch movement in the backseat.

  Instinct made him jump, reaching for his weapon, when a soft female voice said, “I don’t want to hurt you. I just came to talk.”

  Shock slid down his spine. He hadn’t heard that voice since New Year’s Day.

  He jerked around. “Sam?” The overhead streetlight had been broken out long ago and never replaced; the backseat a tapestry of shadows. Faint illumination from down the street threw a slash of light across her eyes and high cheekbones. She wore a ball cap and her hair looked different. “What the hell?”

  “I didn’t do it. You know I’m innocent, right?”

  He swallowed the tightness in his throat. “My god, I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “Me either.”

  He wished he could stare at her for the rest of the night, soak her in, but this was a volatile situation. The edge of a knife for him—and her. “They’ve hired me to bring you in.”

  Not exactly a vote of confidence, and he saw her lips twist in irritation. “I know. I have to say I’m a little disappointed you took the job.”

  He couldn’t see any weapon, and he held the belief she wouldn’t hurt him, but it didn’t make him feel exactly safe. She might not be the ‘big, bad terrorist’ that came to mind at that description, but she was certainly capable of inflicting great pain if she chose to.

  “Tell me your side,” he said smoothly, hoping to sound like the trusted friend he still wanted to be for her. “And for the record, they didn’t give me a choice about this. You didn’t either. Obviously, Homeland and the Feds came to me, believing I have the inside scoop.”

  “Of course. You do.” She was so still, so composed, it made him nervous. Her eyes shifted to the building and checked the street before returning to his. “I need you to look into a grad student at USC.”

  Disable her. Find a way to take her in, tonight, before anyone else gets hurt.

  Especially her. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “The whole thing was a setup.” Her eyes were sincere, earnest. “I don’t have time to explain it right now, but I need to find out if his computer program flagged me as a potential terrorist. I believe that’s why the Bureau actually thinks I did this. I’d investigate that angle myself, but as you can guess, my access to anyone and anything connected is extremely restricted at the moment.”

  There was a touch of sarcasm in her voice, but he also heard exhaustion, disbelief.

  Some people could stay on the run for years, others didn’t have it in them. He was pretty sure if she made it through another few weeks, she would for the rest of her life.

  What kind of life would that be?

  Ask me, he found himself mentally urging. Ask me to go with you.

  Her face was calm, unsettling, but nothing in it held an invitation to head to Mexico. He shifted forward, slowly, so as not to startle her, regrouping. There was a stun gun within reach if he could manage to distract her.

  “Let’s go to my place and you can tell me everything. When was the last time you had a decent meal?” He started the car, ready to surreptitiously reach under the seat.

  She sat forward and grabbed the door handle. “I’d love to take you up on that, Joe, but I can’t trust you at the moment. Oh, and by the way, it’s not under there.”

  Goddamn. Of course she’d already searched the vehicle and taken his weapon. He glanced in the rearview. “You’re not going to zap me, are you?”

  A smile crossed her lips. It was thin and brief, without humor. “There are several reasons I’d like to tase your ass, but no, I didn’t come here to exact revenge over old grievances. I know I’m asking a lot, but I don’t have anywhere else to turn. I was framed. I don’t know who was behind it, and I don’t know why. I have to start somewhere, and the minute I try to get close to Kyle Dunmire, they’ll nab me. He’s under surveillance and doesn’t even know it. Genius when it comes to computers, but not a lick of street smarts.”

  Joe considered hitting the door lock, hoping the child safety was on in the backseat. He would trap her inside, start the car, and take off. She wouldn’t tase him, fearing he’d crash.

  She was too quick, knowing him as well as he knew himself. Shoving the door open, she quickly exited, tapping the back of his head with the end of the Taser. “I’ll let you return to your bounty hunting. Just please, think about what I said. I know this means putting your job on the line to help me, but I swear, I was not behind that bombing. If you could give me more time, help me run down a couple leads, that’s all I’m asking. Just check into it, and see if you don’t think it’s extremely suspicious that the guy I was supposed to stop from doing this is dead, and they’ve pinned it all on me. You know me, Joe.”

  The last words were said very quietly as she stood outside. “I would never do something like this. Never.”

  The angel and devil on his shoulders went to war again. She’s innocent, tell her you believe her. She’s guilty, don’t let her get away.

  As he struggled about what to do, his firecracker gave him a sad smile and disappeared into the night.

  3

  Sam slunk into the shadows, quickly becoming one herself, before Joe could follow.

  As expected, he exited the BMW, yelling her name into the night, as she ran on silent feet.

  A few more yards, and she crouched at her lookout point and reached for her binoculars.

  She studied him, feasting on his hard face and muscular body. The earnestness in his features was obvious, even though the light and shadows playing across them added to his menacing air. As he turned in circles, scanning, she saw glints of light off his rich, dark hair and wished she could run her hands through it.

  His mouth formed a hard line, frustration oozing from every pore of his body. He kicked out with one foot, slam
ming the backseat door shut.

  Sam tsked under her breath. “That’s no way to treat a lady,” she murmured softly. He must be especially mad at not getting his collar if he was kicking his baby.

  A car cruised by on the street between her hiding place and Joe’s vehicle. He regained his composure, closed his door, and went to the trunk to retrieve a flashlight. Sam smiled as he took time to carefully shine it over and under the car.

  Smart. He knew the only way she could’ve trailed him here was if she’d stuck a tracking unit on the Beemer, which meant she was one step ahead of him. He’d never noticed how close she’d been, and he hated it when she got the upper hand.

  They’d always been two damn good agents at heart, always trying to get the best of each other.

  In and out of bed.

  He found the first, dropped it on the sidewalk and stomped on it. At the same time, the head of the SCVC Taskforce exited the building.

  Cooper Harris, nicknamed The Beast, fit the moniker well. He was a big guy—football player sized like Joe—and he went on alert as soon as he noticed Joe still there, squashing something under his foot.

  “Everything okay?” Harris called.

  Sam tensed, waiting for him to spill the beans. To admit that the woman they were all chasing had surprised him in his own vehicle after planting a tracking device on it.

  Worse, she’d been within inches of him, and yet, he’d been unable to make the arrest. He could be a hero right now. Instead, he was faced with admitting failure.

  “Cockroach.” Joe’s eyes scanned in her direction. She forced herself not to move or even breathe. There was no way he could see her, no way he could know she was there. She stayed immobile anyway.

  Uncannily, his gaze seemed to lock on hers for a long, tense moment. Then it moved on.

  Sam let out a slow breath.

  The two men said their goodbyes, Harris telling Joe to call if he got any leads.

  Joe nodded. “You’ll be the first to know,” he promised, before getting in his car.

  Sam silently thanked Harris for the diversion. Joe hadn’t gone back to searching for another device, and she never planted only one. She’d hidden the second inside the vehicle.

  A part of her hoped the reason he hadn’t told Harris about her was because he was still loyal to her on some level. After all they’d been through working together in their professional lives and falling in love, it wasn’t too farfetched. He’d stood by her when Alison Kendrick had stalked him and caused all kinds of problems for her. He’d been the shoulder she cried on when she failed to obtain her first promotion. He’d gone home with her when her father died and been her rock through the funeral and afterwards.

  She still had the diamond he’d proposed with, but it was back in her apartment in L.A. She’d give anything to have it on her finger right now. Wondered what might’ve happened if they’d married as intended.

  Joe drove off, and knowing him, she stayed put a while longer. He’d cruise the streets, accosting people and asking if they’d seen her. He was a bulldog when he was after something, which made him perfect for his job. Even with his size and demeanor, he had no trouble making friends with folks and motivating them to help him.

  He should have been a spy.

  She wasn’t one to sit still long, but she forced herself to for thirty minutes. She watched the app on her burner phone—a necessity once she’d lost all of her personal electronics—to track the GPS. Eventually, it showed Joe moving from the area and heading north.

  Hot and tired, she climbed into the stolen vehicle, drove to a different lot, and traded it. This was part of her process—hitting small-time used car lots, breaking into the office, lifting the key and a dealer’s plate, and replacing her wheels.

  The transfer took a few minutes longer because she had supplies to move from the old to the new, but she was on her way in less than fifteen minutes and headed for the deserted bridge by the water.

  Out of habit, she drove randomly for another half hour, making sure no one tailed her. Once she felt sure she was in the clear, she drove to the closest abandoned building and parked.

  Tourists were easy to lift items from. Many came from far distances and simply purchased what they wanted for their beach excursions once they were in town. Some left those same items behind, others weren’t careful about guarding them when they were out and about.

  Tonight, she had a fancy cooler on wheels that still had ice and chilled beverages in it. She slung a beach bag over her shoulder that contained several towels, two souvenir t-shirts, sunscreen, and a pair of sunglasses. From inside Joe’s car, she’d absconded with a couple twenties, a few ones, and change. She’d pocketed it all.

  The half-moon reclined on its back in the sky as she made her way through the scrub and sand to the waterfront. This was no nice beach; it smelled like rotting vegetation and chemicals. A compact fire burned in a metal drum, and Hetty was warming her hands over it, even though Sam was sweating with the effort of walking a few blocks.

  The petite Asian woman in her fifties was always cold. Probably because she didn’t get to eat much, and was skinny as the handle on the cooler.

  “Brought you some goodies,” Sam called, smiling at the way the woman’s eyes lit up.

  A scruffy dog jumped up from a pile of blankets several feet on the other side of the fire and rushed her, barking. The muscular terrier mix tried to appear quite fierce, but as soon as he recognized her, Jack-Jack wagged his tail so hard he nearly fell over.

  “Brought you something too, boy.” From her pocket, she withdrew a package of beef jerky—another thing she’d lifted from Joe.

  Some things never change. Energy drinks and beef jerky—the man lived on both. She never understood how he could look so buff when he existed on sugar and salted meat.

  Jack-Jack ran off with the jerky, still wagging, and plopped himself on the blankets to inhale the food. Hetty groaned as she stood from her box chair and limped to the cooler and tote. Her eyes were bright and her smile big as she clapped her hands together. “It’s like finding treasure,” she whispered into the night.

  Hetty was missing a tooth here and there, but the smile warmed Sam’s heart. She handed her the beach bag. “I want you to start using the sunscreen in here all over your face, okay? There are also shirts I think will fit you.”

  Unceremoniously, Hetty turned the bag over and dumped the contents on the sand. She looked each item over carefully, holding it toward the fire as if to scrutinize the haul in detail.

  “Where’s Dec?” Sam asked.

  Hetty never said much, and she stuck to that, motioning with a gnarled finger toward a shadow under a tree. Sam squinted to make out Dec’s pop-up tent. “Hey, Dec,” she called. “Come get something to drink.”

  Hetty, wanting to make sure she got first dibs, tossed down the shirt she’d been holding and tugged at the lid. Sam opened it and Hetty made a noise in the back of her throat that sounded like delight. Arthritic fingers grabbed a bottle of Mountain Dew. “Your sugar daddy give you this?” she asked in accented English.

  Sam chuckled. “If I had a sugar daddy, do you think I’d be running around under this bridge, hanging out with you losers?”

  Hetty liked to trade insults, and at first, it had caught Sam off guard when she’d hurled one at her. The woman’s life caused her to rely on lighthearted verbal abuse in order to get through her days. Their teasing banter, since Sam had joined her and Dec, had brought a little spark to Sam’s heart.

  “You like us better than normal assholes,” Hetty said, and Sam couldn’t argue the fact.

  Here, she wasn’t a terrorist on the run. She was just Sam, who regularly brought Hetty and Declyn a few meager things to make their existence slightly less traumatic.

  The tall, skinny young man crawled from his tent, stood and yawned. As he walked toward them, shirtless, he stretched his arms over head. One was shrunken compared to the other, an accident he’d told her. He had little use of it from the
elbow down, and no luck scrounging up a job. His personality didn’t fit with normal assholes either.

  “Santa Claus came again?” He offered a sideways grin.

  Sam made Hetty share. Dec took pieces of the melting ice and rubbed it around the back of his neck.

  They sat and talked, drank and laughed, calling each other silly names and staring at the oily, polluted water washing up on the scant piece of shore. Sam would’ve killed for a shower and a bed, but everything was standing in her way of those two simple things that made life so much nicer.

  She thought about calling Frank, her boss. If she could just leave a message, tell him to look into…what? Where was the evidence proving she was innocent? What could she say to convince him she’d been set up?

  Frank had believed in her, and she could imagine he was kicking himself for that now. There were others, too. Agents she’d gone undercover with, preached loyalty and duty to.

  As her mates tucked themselves in for the night, Sam stayed near the fire watching it burn down to embers. Jack-Jack came and sat next to her legs, the stray having attached himself to her the moment she arrived at this paltry camp and bribed these two to allow her to join them.

  From her back pocket, she withdrew a list of names, reading them for the hundredth time. They were the only people who had access, means, and a potential motive to send her undercover to recruit a terrorist, then turn the tables on her.

  She’d given Joe the first, not because the USC student was a mastermind who could’ve pulled all of this off, but he was the one in position to have had contact with the person who was.

  As the fire eventually went out, Sam’s eyelids grew heavy. Another day on the run, but she was alive, and perhaps she’d made the smallest bit of progress.

  Her head filled with images of Joe, she returned her list to the pocket, patted Jack-Jack on the head, and closed her eyes.

  4

  The cold water of the shower felt like pins and needles on his skin. Bracing a hand against the tile, Joe leaned into it. He needed to wake up his mind after only two hours of sleep and calm his lower half where his morning erection was hard enough to drill holes in the wall.