Page 26 of Hunter

Suspecting they were in for a thunderstorm, she quickly carried the groceries into the kitchen. It was strange to be setting up housekeeping with a man she didn’t know. Strange that the doctor had suggested this arrangement. Strange that Emerson had agreed. But she wasn’t going to complain.

She had just stuck a package of steak into the fridge when she thought she detected a noise from the back of the house. Shutting off the water, she strained her ears, trying to determine if she’d really heard anything or if her overactive imagination was playing tricks

At first there was nothing more. Then a new sound drifted toward her, a scuffling noise followed by a loud thump like a body hitting the floor.

Was someone in the house? Who?

Had a security detail brought Hunter over and neglected to tell her? Was he feeling some ill effects from the medical exam this afternoon? Did he need help?

Turning, she hurried through the dining room and toward the back of the house. It took only seconds to gain the unlit hall, where she was forced to come to a halt as she confronted the three closed doors. She’d left her own door open, she thought. Now it was shut.

But they wouldn’t have put him in there—unless they were playing a nasty joke, she decided, as she reached for the doorknob on the right.

Her hand froze as she heard a guttural exclamation from behind the door. Pulling it open, she saw the figure of a man standing in the middle of the darkened room, swaying on his feet as he faced the open sliding glass door.

“Hunter?”

He whirled, and she registered that it was him—dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing earlier—even as he closed the distance between them in a few menacing strides.

She knew, then, that she’d been a fool not to fear him. He had put Beckton in the hospital. Now there was only coldness in his eyes as he looked ather.

He reached her before she could run and threw his weight roughly against her shoulder.

“Don’t—” she managed as he backed her against the wall. She struck it with a thud that made the breath whoosh out of her lungs.

Chapter Five

In the moments before his hands closed around her flesh, he realized who she was. Stopping the forward motion of his body, he was able to keep from slamming her into the wall with the force he’d intended. Still, he heard the breath hiss painfully out of her lungs.

It was Kathryn Kelley. The woman with the soft voice and the kind eyes that promised too much. The woman who had come into the locker room and made him vulnerable so the security force could grab him.

In the medical center she’d said she was sorry. They had talked. And she’d made him believe her—again. Now here she was for the second time in the same day. And he’d come very close to killing her as she stepped into the room.

Perhaps his encounters with her were part of some new test, he reasoned. More dangerous than all the others Swinton and Beckton’s staffs had devised. There had been many physical tests. Appraisals of his fighting skills. And scenarios he might encounter when they sent him to the country called Gravan.

Only seconds had passed as his hand shifted over Kathryn Kelley’s mouth while he held her in place with the weight of his body against hers. But he had to decide quickly, he realized, as his eyes flicked to the sliding glass door.

Two minutes ago, an intruder had come through that door. A man wearing a black hood over his face, thick clothing, and carrying a gun that was now somewhere on the floor.

How did Kathryn Kelley fit into this scenario? Who had sent her? She had said she wanted to help him. But it was dangerous to trust the words—or the look in her eyes. Or the vague memories from before Stratford Creek.

He could kill her easily, he knew, as he contemplated the slender column of her neck. Beckton and his team had taught him the skills he would need to kill with speed and efficiency—although they hadn’t yet put him to the test. Perhaps they wanted to find out if he would do it now. Or perhaps it was part of a different plan. An unofficial plan. Like the time the trail markers had been switched in the woods, and he’d almost tumbled off a cliff.

He didn’t know who had devised this scenario. He only knew the thought of killing Kathryn Kelley brought a wave of almost physical sickness. He wouldn’t terminate her unless it was the only option. Systematically he began to search along her body, feeling for the telltale bulge of a gun or the outline of a knife.

He heard her make a strangled sound as his hand paused to explore the rounded swell of a soft breast and the edge of her undergarment where she might have tucked a small weapon.

A routine search. But nothing with her had been routine. Not the things they’d talked about—or the strange surge of unexpected heat that coursed through him as his hands learned her shape. He had thought about her body. He had wanted to touch her. Imagined it in vivid detail. Closing his eyes, he inhaled her scent, let the warmth of her flow through him.

He blinked. What was wrong with him? Every time he encountered this woman, she reached him in strange, unexpected ways. And the images of her in his head—images from before Stratford Creek—grew more tantalizing. More real. He grimaced, torn between hopes and fears he had never known before.

With a jerky motion, he pulled his hips away from hers as his hand moved on, along her ribs, to her waist where he found a rectangle of plastic nestled against soft flesh. An alarm. With a growl, he yanked it free.

“No.” She spoke the syllable against the fingers that pressed over her mouth, sending a vivid communication along his nerve endings.

Ignoring her protest and his physical reaction, he tossed the device onto the bed, where she couldn’t reach it. Had Emerson issued it? Or was she working for someone else?

He made an angry sound. He had told her someone wanted to stop Project Sandstorm. That had been a mistake. Would it also be a mistake to take his hand away from her mouth? Would she scream at the top of her lungs?

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