She licked her lips and imprinted his taste.
“Falconer,” he barked into the phone.
She opened her eyes, blinked as if taking a last picture, then turned toward the steps. She wanted to stay. She had to go. Her heart suddenly weighed heavily with the contradiction of her needs.
“Olivia! Wait.”
But she couldn’t. She was leaving because she’d nearly lost herself in him again. When she was stronger, when she was his equal, when she could stand solidly beside him without forgetting herself…then she’d return.
“HOLD FOR MR. SUTTON,” the voice on the other end of the line ordered in a clipped voice.
Sebastian put a hand over the speaker and called, “Olivia!”
But she wasn’t waiting. She was running up those stone steps as if the devil were on her heels.
Maybe he was. In the past year, he’d felt himself grow colder, harder. Had his work seeped into his home life? Olivia was so sensitive that his dark moods were bound to frighten her. Decompressing took longer and longer. Would he one day get stuck in the mind of the scum he chased?
Tethered to the phone and his boss, Sebastian watched helplessly as the ten best years of his life walked out the door. Maybe if he’d been able to give her the child she so desperately wanted. But no, he realized, the slowly widening rift between them went deeper than that. Something had been bothering Olivia for months now, and he’d gone against his habit of facing unpleasant things head-on and chosen to believe the closeting he saw in her eyes was temporary. Winter blues. She had them every year. Should he have suggested adoption? Would that have calmed the sadness in the summer sky of her eyes? A vacation. They needed a vacation. Somewhere sunny.
He strained the length of the telephone cord. “Olivia!”
She wasn’t really leaving. She couldn’t. He needed her. Did she know he watched her sleep? That he took comfort in the slow rise of her chest, in her simply being there, alive, beside him? That she was the reason he could keep doing what he had to do and still stay sane?
Finding her was always his first objective when an assignment was over. Getting back to Olivia. The beat of that need pulsed in him from the second he ratcheted cuffs on a fugitive. And then, when the long ride home was finally over and he saw her, alive and breathing, he could let the tension slip, let his breath out, let his heart feel again. With the first hug came a silent prayer of thankfulness. She was safe. He was home. And for now the world was right.
But not tonight. Tonight the mountain smoked from the unseasonable sweat of the day. Every year in February, winter seemed to grow weary of blowing blue and mean. For a day or two, it teased New Englanders with the false hope of spring. Temperatures rose. The sun blazed. Snow melted. And that brief flirting with spring seemed to have the same effect as a full moon, making everyone a little crazy.
Cabin fever. That was it. She’d be back. He’d give her a day, then he’d show up at Paula’s and take Olivia home where she belonged. Better still, he’d take her for that long-promised vacation and they would talk—really talk.
“Falconer,” Edwin Sutton barked into the phone. Sutton was the executive in charge of a thirty-man, seven-state, ongoing Fugitive Investigative Strike Team covering the northeast. He liked for operations to run smooth, for the felon arrest numbers to run high, and he liked to play those successes to the press. With no wife, no kids, not even a dog, the Service was his life and ambitious couldn’t even begin to describe him. “Head for Connecticut. We just lost two of our men.”
A personnel loss wouldn’t look good on Sutton’s scorecard. He’d want closure and fast. “Who?”
“Sean Greco and Robert Carmichael. They were on transport. There was a fire. Two prisoners are dead. Three escaped. Somehow they cornered Greco and Carmichael outside the building, had them drive getaway, and cut the hell out of them under an overpass on I-95. This is going to get us blowback. I want it contained, and fast.”
Bad PR would tarnish Sutton’s record. With D.C. his next planned step up the ladder, he had to keep the stain from spreading. “Any leads?”
“We’re working on IDing the three pukes on the run. Two more turned to toast in the fire. We gotta sort them out. I want you on this full time till they’re back in their pen. And Falconer, the Feebs are involved. Crossed state lines and all that bull.”
“Great.” That meant the case was officially the FBI’s, but protocol allowed participation of the slain officers’ agency. He didn’t want to work with the Feebs. They couldn’t pass wind without permission and tended to mess up investigations. Not to mention their tendency to let the Service do the work, then steal their glory. This was not going to be fun. And it would mean putting Olivia on hold. Again.
No wonder she’d left him.
“One more thing, Falconer. The mutt slated for transport was Kershaw.”
Sebastian went cold. “Is he one of the missing?”
“Yeah.”
“Dead?”
“Won’t know till the toast are IDed.”
One life deserves another. Don’t turn your back on that pretty wife of yours, Falconer. I’ll take from you what you took from me. Kershaw had made that promise five years ago and the cold determination in the snake-yellow eyes had matched Sebastian’s determination to put him behind bars. That’s why he still checked on Kershaw’s welfare once a month. “When were Greco and Carmichael killed?”
“We found them a few hours ago.”
“When were they killed?”
“As best as the M.E. can make out, about four hours ago.”
Four hours. Enough to get from Connecticut to New Hampshire. With time to spare. He dropped the phone and raced up the stairs, taking them three by three. “Olivia!”
She jokingly called this place “Falconer’s Aerie.” He’d built it for her high on the mountain. To keep her safe. He’d vowed to her father on their wedding day that his work would never touch her. This house, this mountain, was a haven. For her. For him. And now she was out of his reach on the road on a dark night with a madman licking at her heels.
THE NIGHT WAS EERILY CALM, making the car’s engine sound as if it roared. Thick and white, fog rose from the road and made the mountainside seem to smoke. To her right, the dark fronds of pines and winter-bare limbs of oaks and maples poked through the mist, reminding Olivia of ancient druids in ceremony. To her left, the meager shoulder dipped into a black abyss, making the scaly snake of road appear too narrow for her car. At odd intervals, runs of wet snow slipped from the mountain’s flank to slide under her wheels, making the steering feel sluggish. Each curve on the winding road flashed jagged arms of trees, points of rocky outcroppings or dizzying flirtations with the edge of the road. Olivia had never liked carnival fun rides, and this nightmare was no exception.
Turn back, her weak side urged. No, not this time. This time she was going to be strong. “Stick to the plan.”
Trying to stay on the road, she hunched over the steering wheel and peered through the wavering curtain of fog.
The tears weren’t helping.
