Bounty Hunter Honor

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Prologue

Something was wrong. The certainty started as a prickling of unease at the back of Nadia’s neck. But it grew until it twisted in her gut. She glanced first over one shoulder, then the other. Nothing. Nobody.

Then she looked down at the stroller, where her two-year-old daughter had been sleeping soundly while Nadia shopped for baby clothes.

The stroller was empty.

At first, she tamped down her panic and tried to find some logical explanation for Lily’s absence. Had another shopper at the mall found the baby irresistible and picked her up for a quick cuddle? Had Lily, getting more clever with her hands by the day, unfastened her safety strap and crawled out of the stroller herself?

But a quick scan in all directions at the baby store produced no sign of Lily. Around Nadia, other women calmly sifted through tiny, pastel-hued dresses and booties, chatting among themselves. No one sensed the terrible rent in the fabric of Nadia’s reality. But her baby was gone, vanished like a mist.

Abandoning the stroller, Nadia ran out into the mall, looking frantically for her child. Nothing. Everything looked deceptively calm, sickeningly normal. No sinister persons were hurrying off with Lily in their arms.

The panic she’d kept at bay rose again in her chest, in her throat, a scream of horror threatening. No, she told herself sternly, she would not panic. Panic would not make Lily reappear. She would tell a store employee, who would make an announcement and contact security.

A gloved hand around her arm stopped her as she was about to carry out her plan. She turned to find a blond woman with sharp, rodentlike features gazing malevolently at her. The woman was well turned out, in slim black pants and a fitted silk blouse, her hair expertly cut and highlighted, but nothing could have made her pretty given the sneer on her face.

“Not a sound,” she said softly, her voice carrying the trace of cigarettes and a Russian accent. “If you ever want to see your daughter again, you won’t raise an alarm, you won’t call the police, you won’t tell anyone. Do you understand?”

Frozen inside, all Nadia could do was nod. “Is this Peter’s doing?” But she already knew. After her divorce, she’d spent months watching her rearview mirror, screening phone calls, checking the locks on windows and doors. All that time, there’d been no word from her ex-husband. Just within the past couple of weeks, she’d finally begun to feel safe.

She’d been a fool.

The blond woman didn’t answer her question. Instead she handed Nadia a folded piece of paper. “The nonnegotiable terms for Lily’s safe return are here. Follow them to the letter and your daughter will not be harmed.”

Nadia accepted the paper, her hands numb, her whole body turned to cold lead. This wasn’t happening. This could not be happening. She should grab this woman, scream for help. But even as the woman strode confidently away, out of the store and into the mall where she quickly blended in with the crowd, Nadia remained mute, fears for her daughter’s safety paralyzing her.

She opened the folded paper, though she was already pretty sure what the terms would be. She had access to something Peter wanted very badly, and it wasn’t his daughter.

Chapter One

A fugitive with millions of dollars and a group of loyal and capable bodyguards wasn’t the easiest criminal to catch. But the price on Jethro Banner’s head—fifty thousand dollars—was enough to make more than one bounty hunter try.

Most quickly abandoned the quest. But Rex Bettencourt was not the type to give up easily. As a sniper for the Marines’ Maritime Special Purpose Force, he’d learned all he needed to know about patience. He’d once lain on his belly covered with camouflage for two days without food or water, sweating in the intense, steamy heat, letting fist-size bugs crawl over his body without a twitch as he waited for a target to emerge from his secret bunker. Compared to that terrorist warlord, Jethro Banner was a cakewalk.

Sheer doggedness and some hefty bribes in the right circles had yielded Jethro’s location, in a heavily fortified mansion near San Antonio, Texas. A week of surveillance, waiting for an opportunity to take down Jethro when he was alone and vulnerable, was about to pay off. The freelance bomber had broken his molar on a macadamia nut—according to the pool boy on Rex’s payroll—necessitating an emergency trip to the dentist.

Jethro’s bodyguards could not possibly make the dentist’s office totally secure on short notice.

What was even better, Rex had gotten to Jethro’s dentist and persuaded him to inject his patient with a mild tranquilizer, ensuring he would be easy to apprehend.

By the time the fugitive arrived, whining like a six-year-old about the pain, Rex was already waiting in the exam room next door to Jethro’s, wearing a mask and scrubs in case anyone checked. Jethro didn’t question the hypodermic the dentist shot into his mouth—he cared only for his comfort. Within a couple of minutes he was feeling no pain and had a dopey grin on his face, every muscle in his body relaxed.

Rex slipped into the room with Jethro. “I’ll take it from here,” he whispered to the dentist, who nodded. He and his receptionist—the only employee who hadn’t already evacuated—left through the back door.

“Open your mouth, please,” Rex said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. Jethro did as asked, utterly compliant. Rex stuffed cotton into the fugitive’s mouth—enough to muffle his cries of panic when he realized what was going on. His bodyguards were only a few feet away, in the waiting room.

When Jethro resembled a hamster with its cheeks packed with seeds, Rex lifted the armrest on the dentist’s chair and in one swift move pushed the man forward and bent his right arm behind him. “Make a sound and I’ll tear out your shoulder,” Rex said calmly as he captured Jethro’s other arm and cuffed him. There was no resistance and not a peep from the formerly formidable fugitive. Man, whatever the dentist had given him, it had worked.

Rex hauled Jethro to his feet. The man stood precariously for a moment, then toppled like a child’s pile of blocks. Rex caught him before he could hit the floor. “Jethro?”

Easing him down, Rex pulled some of the cotton out of Jethro’s mouth, not wanting to suffocate an unconscious man. Jethro smiled. “Where we goin’, Mama?”

“We’re goin’ for a ride,” Rex answered in a falsetto. “Then some nice FBI agents are going to put you in prison, where you’ll get to be the girlfriend of some guy named Bubba.”

“Okay.”

Rex saw no way around it—he would have to carry the bulky Jethro Banner out of the dentist’s office. The fugitive wasn’t going anywhere under his own steam. He only hoped Lori had brought the Blazer around to the back door as he’d told her to do. His little sister was smart and tough—for a girl—but she was green as a mountain meadow when it came to bounty hunting. He’d only brought her along on this job because at least he could keep an eye on her when she was working with him.

With a sigh he heaved Jethro—who was not a small man—over his shoulder and headed for the storage room, which had a door leading directly to the parking lot.

When he opened the door to the storage room, he stopped cold. Two muscle-bound gorillas stood waiting for him; one of them held a .44 pointed at Rex’s head.

“Going somewhere?” the gorilla with the gun asked.

Hell. Jethro’s bodyguards must have gotten tipped off somehow. Rex dumped Jethro onto the carpet. He could have ducked back into the hallway and drawn his Glock from the holster at the small of his back… His gut twisted at the prospect. He was pretty sure the bodyguard wouldn’t shoot him, he reasoned. A messy murder would only draw unwanted attention to him and his boss, and his prime directive would be to protect Jethro.

“Get Mr. Banner,” the gunman instructed his friend. Gorilla No. 2 stepped over to his inert boss and tried to coax him to his feet, but it was no use. Jethro was barely conscious.

“I can’t carry him by myself,” the bodyguard whined.

“Drag him, then,” the gunman said sharply. “Unless you want to go back to prison.”

This seemed to motivate the second man. He grasped Jethro under the arms and dragged him toward the door. The gunman, his weapon still trained on Rex, opened the door. He’d only gotten it open a couple of inches when it slammed the rest of the way with the force of a cannon shot. In an instinctive move, Rex dived for the floor.

The door hit the gunman square in the face. Lori burst in, deflected his weapon, then did something so fast with her hands that they blurred. The gunman’s weapon flew through the air and landed on a pile of cardboard boxes.

Before the gunman even knew what hit him, Lori had swept one of his feet out from under him. He fell face-down on the floor.

Rex didn’t waste too much time watching his sister in action. He went for Gorilla No. 2, who was so shocked by Lori’s entrance that he didn’t even make a move for his own weapon. Rex came at him full speed, knocking him in the chin with the heel of his hand and snapping his head back. The bodyguard dropped Jethro—who didn’t seem to mind—and stumbled back against a set of shelves. A small box that apparently contained something heavy fell on the goon’s head, stunning him further. Then it was a simple matter for Rex to drag him to the ground and secure his wrists behind him. Thank God he’d thought to bring some zip ties, just in case.

He turned to help Lori but found she already had the first bodyguard neatly hog-tied.

“You were supposed to stay in the car,” Rex growled.

“You’re welcome,” she said sweetly. “Think these other two are wanted for anything? If so, this one’s mine.” She nudged her takedown with her foot.

BACK IN PAYTON, TEXAS, Rex sat behind his desk at the First Strike Agency, plowing through neglected paperwork like an Uzi through balsa wood. He hated paperwork, but it was a necessary evil. He sustained himself through the tedium by picturing himself on a beach in Tahiti, sipping a mai tai, a bikini-clad woman smoothing suntan lotion on his shoulders as he listened to the soothing sound of the surf.

He’d already made the reservations. As soon as he finished here, he was heading to the airport for a long, long overdue vacation. With the reward money from recovering Jethro Banner, he could afford to do it up first-class.

He became so engrossed in one particular mental picture that he closed his eyes to more fully enjoy it. It was only when he opened his eyes again that he realized he was no longer alone in the office. A petite brunette stood in front of his desk, an expectant look on her pixie face.

Images of the bikini woman vanished as reality intruded—although he had to say, in this case, it wasn’t a bad trade-off. The woman staring at him with beseeching dark eyes was small and slender, with a mop of dark curls cascading in defiant disarray around her head and shoulders. Her huge green eyes, topped with dramatically straight, dark brows, were her best feature, but her straight nose and full, pink lips all contributed to a face that was an odd mixture of boldness, intelligence and an undeniable frailty.