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 died.
God, he wished it had.
He yanked his hand away and scowled. “Names. I want names.”
Thirteen years ago she would have told him everything in a rush. He expected the same now, because when you came down to it, people didn’t change that much over time.
Instead she narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t for public consumption. Can we go someplace more private?” When he didn’t budge, she hissed a curse. “Why did I even bother? I knew I shouldn’t have come here.” She spun and took two steps toward the door.
And collapsed.
“Isabella!” Jacob caught her on the way down. When the others surged forward to help, he swept her up into his arms and tried to brace himself against the feel of her lithe, toned body against his chest. “Stand down, I’ve got her.”
“That’s the chick we saw behind the Secretary of Defense,” Tony said. “The one who made you miss the Bull.”
“No kidding.” Jacob carried her to the stairs and started up with no real plan.
“Has something happened to Louis Cooper?” Cameron Murphy asked, his voice carrying the weight of leadership and surprising Jacob, who hadn’t even noticed the boss’s arrival.
“You’ll know as soon as I do.” But the thought of it grabbed at Jacob’s guts and wouldn’t let go. If the Secret Service had been protecting Cooper, it was because he was in danger.
And given that Cooper’s protection agent was unconscious half an hour away from the resort—
It didn’t look good.
Chapter Two
Isabella couldn’t believe she’d fainted. How embarrassing. Worse, she was pretty sure Jacob had seen her hit the floor.
But that was nothing compared to the ultimate shame. She’d failed her protectee. She made a small sound of distress and clamped her eyelids shut against the remembered images.
“I know you’re awake.” Jacob’s low, half-familiar voice seemed to come from far away, making her aware of the yielding surface beneath her and the sense of being in a quiet space amid action. “You said you wanted to talk privately. So talk.”
She wanted to tell him to go away and leave her alone. But she had come to him, not the other way around, and she still couldn’t talk herself out of the logic.
Within an hour of the attack, she’d found herself kicked out of Cooper’s chalet and cut off from all the official options. Refusing to give up on her duty, she’d decided she needed an unofficial option. And Jacob Powell, ex-Special Forces airstrike pilot and current high-stakes bounty hunter was about as unofficial as it got.
More importantly, from what she’d heard over the years—not that she’d been keeping tabs on him, of course—having him on her side was like having an entire private army at her disposal. That, more than anything, had compelled her to make the drive to the bounty hunters’ headquarters in the mountains. If she could have avoided this awkward reunion, she would have. But duty—and failure—had made it a necessity.
So she opened her eyes and shoved herself upright on the couch in one smooth move that left her head reeling and her stomach fisting on a slap of nausea.
God, she hated percussion bombs. She’d caught the edge of a relatively mild flash-bang during training and her ears had rung for a week. The one in the chalet had nearly flattened her. Then LBJ had finished the job with one blow of a gun butt.
By the time she’d come to, it had all been over. Secretary Cooper had been unconscious, tied to a dining room chair.
And Hope and the twin girls had been gone.
Kidnapped.
“Isabella.” Jacob’s voice
