The Huntress: full-length sexy romantic suspense by Dorothy McFalls Read Free Book Online Page A

have children. That would make your mom happy, you know. Besides, you’re no longer assigned to Walker,” Jack said much too quickly for Vega’s nerves.
    “Who is, then?”
    Jack hesitated.
    Her heart shuddered. “Who?”
    “No one…yet.”
    “Then why that look, Jack? What’s up?”
    “Fiona.”
    “Fiona?”
    The length of silence that followed could have been measured with a calendar.
    She laid in the bed huffing as her anger built.
    “Fiona?” she repeated, nearly leaping off the bed. “My sister?”
    Dr. Kilpatrick rushed back to the bedside. “You really must try and lay still, Miss Brookes. Your stitches are liable to rip out.”
    Vega laid back into the soft pillow, letting the excruciating pains in her head and arm feed her anger. “She doesn’t have the experience I have, and” she swallowed hard, “and look what happened to me.”
    “What could I do?” Jack asked, spreading his arms wide. “She was close to spitting nails after she heard what had happened to you. There was no stopping her from taking the next plane down here. I couldn’t very well tie her up, could I?”
    “Mom’s probably ready to kill you, isn’t she?” she said, conceding that once Fiona set her mind to a task, there was really no turning her attention. “Christmas day, and both of her daughters are in the field because of you.”
    “Yep,” Jack said. He sank into a chair and pulled a hand through his silvery hair. “I don’t know if Gillie will ever invite me over to your house for dinner again. And I so love her fancy shrimp cocktails.”
    * * * *
    For half a day, Vega stayed in the sterile hospital bed, worrying about Fiona playing bounty hunter and wondering just how Grayson had managed to get the better of her. And, she wondered, what had he done with her gun? Her dad had given her that Glock 9, had pressed it into her hands on his deathbed. “You’re strong for a girl,” he’d said to her, the last words he’d uttered in this world.
    What care would Grayson take of that gun?
    She stared at the bright ceiling and worried until she teetered on the verge of madness.
    A call from Snitch pushed her over the edge. “Just dug up a nasty bit of information on that fugitive of yours. He killed a woman,” Snitch’s metallic voice crackled a bit. “He wasn’t Special Forces, but a professional killer for the Army’s Intelligence Support Activity, the ISA. Had been working deep in the bowels of the illegal drug trade in Colombia, his team was given orders to assassinate a drug czar—all off the record kind of stuff, of course.”
    “Of course,” Vega said, her mind reeling. Fiona was out there with a professional assassin ?
    “Your boy pulled the trigger and shot an innocent woman through the chest in order to kill his target—a Carlos Briceno.”
    “Shit. He’s determined. What did the army do? Kick him out?” she asked.
    “Nope, gave him a commendation. Of course, that was the official report, though this Briceno guy was a pretty huge thorn in our government’s side. He controlled a solid pipeline of drugs into the US. But your fugitive did walk away from the ISA after that assignment. The three other men in his team left the army with him. Can’t find out why he quit. Perhaps he was drummed out. Or guilt? I came across a communiqué a week before Carlos Briceno’s assassination. Your Grayson Walker was requesting a visa for Mirna Catanzaro, the very woman he ended up shooting. Said he planned to marry her. Can you believe it? He’d planned to marry this Mirna, and then when she got in the way—bam—he killed her. What a jerk.”
    This guy needed to be stopped before anyone else got killed. After lunch, Vega sent Jack out to find her a decent meal. It was a ruse, though. A nasty trick she knew she’d pay dearly for later. She tugged herself from the bed. In the closet, she found the suitcase Jack must have gotten from her motel room. She pulled on her warmest clothes, and stuffed her remaining