They took the bait.

They turned toward him, revealing themselves to Kimmer, and as one goonboy slammed a new magazine home, the other raised his pistol at Rio.

Kimmer aimed between them and took a deep breath. No turning back now. Once she drew blood, she’d be explaining herself to the local law; she’d also drag the Hunter Agency into the mess. From this distance the pellet spread meant she’d hit them both without truly damaging them.

If only the cops were closer.

But now it was more than Hank in trouble. Rio stood within their sights….

Kimmer pulled the trigger.

Dear Reader,

What is a Bombshell? Sometimes it’s a femme fatale. Sometimes it’s unexpected news that changes everything. Sometimes it’s a book you just can’t put down! And that’s what we’re bringing to you—four fascinating stories about women you’ll cheer for!

Such as Angel Baker, star of USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Beard’s Touch of the White Tiger. This twenty-second-century gal doesn’t know who is killing her colleagues, but she’s not about to let an aggravating homicide cop stop her from finding out. Too bad tracking the killer is exactly what someone wants her to do….

Enter an exclusive world as we kick off a new continuity series featuring society’s secret weapons—a group of heiresses recruited to bring down the world’s most powerful criminals! THE IT GIRLS have it going on, and you’ll love Erica Orloff’s The Golden Girl as she tracks a corporate spy in her spiked Jimmy Choos!

Ever feel like pushing the boundaries? So does Kimmer Reed, heroine of Beyond the Rules by Doranna Durgin. When her brother sics his enemies on her, Kimmer’s ready to take them out. But the rules change when she learns her nieces are pawns in the deadly game….

And don’t miss the Special Forces women of the Medusa Project as they track down a hijacked cruise ship, in Medusa Rising by Cindy Dees! Medusa surgeon Aleesha Gautier doesn’t trust the hijacker who claims he’s on their side, but joining forces will allow her to keep her enemy closer….

Enjoy! And please send your comments to me, c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway Ste. 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Sincerely,

Natashya Wilson

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell

Beyond the Rules
Doranna Durgin

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DORANNA DURGIN

spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art, and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent many years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures—and with a new touchstone to the rugged spirit that helped settle the area and which she instills in her characters.

Doranna’s first published fantasy novel received the 1995 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award for the best first book in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres. She now has fifteen novels of eclectic genres on the shelves and more on the way; most recently she’s leaped gleefully into the world of action-romance. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds Web pages, wanders around outside with a camera and works with horses and dogs. There’s a Lipizzan in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of agility dogs romping in the house and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it. You can find a complete list of titles at www.doranna.net along with scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos, and a link to her SFF Net newsgroup.

This is for my Nana, who preferred her stories

to be sweet, but whom I’ll always think of when

I see this book. In many ways her life was no

less heroic than any Bombshell heroine….

With thanks to Judith’s late nights, Jennifer’s

smiley faces, Tom’s enthusiasm, continuing

conversations in the Things That Go Bang newsgroup

on SFF Net and to Matrice and everyone else

who wanted to see more of Kimmer.

Note: Some of the locations and details are accurate

and really exist, and some of them…don’t.

Mwah ha ha! The power of being a writer!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

H e’s still there.

Still following us, dammit.

Kimmer Reed glanced in the rearview mirror and gave an unladylike snort completely at odds with her shimmery taupe jacquard tunic, her carefully understated makeup and the lingering taste of an exquisite lunch on Captain Bill’s Seneca Lake cruise.

The big man filling the passenger seat of her sporty Mazda Miata immediately understood the significance of such a noise. Rio Carlsen turned his gaze away from the picturesque wine country scenery speeding past them—spring-green everywhere—to stretch a long arm across the back of Kimmer’s bucket seat, glancing behind them and bracing himself as she took an unsignaled left turn. “Suburban. Big. Old. Can you say ‘eat my dust’?”

Kimmer shook her head, short and firm, eyes on the road. She could outrun him…but she wouldn’t. She took another left, accelerated down a barely traveled alley on the outer edge of Watkins Glen, shot across a one-way feeder road, and downshifted to take the next left at speed. “This isn’t a Hunter Agency assignment. This is my home. There are rules.”

Rules about how to live…rules for those around her.

Rio’s hand strayed from the back of the seat to stroke the hair at Kimmer’s nape, a short dark fringe that showed well enough how her hair would explode into curls if she ever freed it from its close cut. A reassuring touch that could turn smoldering in a moment, but right now it wasn’t nearly as casual as it might seem. It connected them—and it transmitted his readiness. He said, “Let’s go explain the rules, then.”

Another glance showed her that the idiot had stayed with her, bouncing along the rough roads on spongy shocks, closing the distance between them. “He’s persistent enough. This isn’t casual.”

Rio glanced behind them. Kimmer knew that quiet tension in his body, the tall rangy strength he hid so well in his amiable nature. “The question is, is this about you or is this about me?”

“Your turf was overseas.” The Miata slewed back onto the main road, a two-lane state route between Watkins Glen and Rock Stream. “And you’re ex-CIA.”

“Hey,” he said, wounded. “I’m good ex-CIA. I might have made an enemy or two. And it doesn’t make sense for it to be you. You don’t exactly work on your home turf.”

“Not if I can help it,” she grumbled, not bothering to point out the irony that she’d met him on a job she hadn’t wanted simply because it was too close to her childhood home. Her long-buried, long-hated childhood. She blew through a stop sign—not a significant risk on this particular stretch of road—with her eye on the upcoming turn, the one that started off with a decent paved road, turned abruptly to dirt, and even more abruptly came to an end, a service road made obsolete by underground utilities. She thumbed the switch to bring up the Miata’s barely open windows. “Check the glove box, will you?”

“God, is it safe?”

Kimmer smiled. “Probably not.”

Rio flipped the latch, hands ready to catch whatever spilled out. “Switchblade,” he reported, ably maintaining his equilibrium as Kimmer hit her target turn at speed, luring her pursuer along behind…enticing him to carelessness. “Tire gauge. Knuckle-knife thing. And this.”

She glanced. “War dart.”

He grinned, for the moment truly amused. “War dart. Of course it is.”

His wasn’t the grin she associated with Ryobe Carlsen, former CIA case officer and skilled overseas operative. No, this particular grin belonged to the man who’d left the Agency after a bullet took his spleen and kidney. Eventually he and Kimmer had collided during one of Kimmer’s assignments; eventually he’d turned just this same honest get a kick out of life grin on Kimmer. In response she’d turned the fine edge of her no-nonsense temper back on him, and—

And now here he was at Seneca Lake.

Kimmer’s car hit the rough seam between asphalt and dirt. She’d gained ground with the turn; she spared an instant to warn Rio with a predatory expression that really couldn’t be called a smile.

Rio braced himself.

Kimmer hit the brake, slinging the car around in a neat one-eighty and raising enough dust to obscure the rest of the world. She didn’t hesitate but punched down the accelerator, heading back up the road just as fast as she’d come down it. They ripped out of the dust and back onto asphalt, passing the Suburban.

“I think I lost the dart.” Rio groped along the side of his bucket seat.

“Got my club,” Kimmer said. It was a miniature war club, iron set into smooth red oak wood, sleek with time and use. She handled it with great familiarity and precision.

“You brought your club?” Rio asked. “On our date?”

“As if the whole world is about you. Of course I brought it.” Kimmer didn’t warn him this time; she hit the brake, gave the wheel a calculated tug, and ended up neatly blocking the road. She reached for her seat belt before the car had even rocked to a complete stop. “You coming?”

“Oh, yeah,” he murmured, betraying some of the grimness lurking beneath his banter. But he wasn’t as fast about pulling his long legs from the car’s low frame and Kimmer strode past him as the Suburban’s driver—having executed a wide, rambling turn to emerge from the dust and discover himself trapped—came to a clumsy, shock-bobbing stop not far away. The interior of the vehicle filled with a leftover swirl of dust through its half-open windows.

The driver waved away the dust, coughing, as Kimmer stalked his vehicle, alert to any sign that he’d jam the accelerator. The massive Suburban could plow right through her Miata if he wanted it to, but he made no move. As the dust cleared, he seemed oddly mesmerized, watching her with his jaw slightly dropped.

True, she hadn’t come dressed for action. She’d come dressed for lunch—the taupe tunic gleamed in the sun, and slimline black gauchos hit just at her knee, offering a low, flat waistband over which she’d fastened a low-slung black leather belt with a big chunky buckle. But her sandals had soles made for walking—or running—and though she held the war club low enough by her thigh to obscure it, he could have no doubt that she held something quite useful indeed.

She didn’t give him time to firm up his jaw or to reach for a weapon. Nothing about him set off alarm bells; whoever he was, whatever he wanted, he was well out of his league. She went straight to the door, yanked it open and grabbed his hand from the steering wheel. He yelped in surprise as she flexed it down, levering it against his body to take advantage of the seat belt restraint. “Hello,” she said. “Who the hell are you and why are you on my tail?”

“Or my tail,” Rio said, coming up on the other side of the window. Kimmer knew that he’d be looking for any signs of a gun, that he’d keep his eye on the man’s free hand. He eyed, too, the awkward angle of the man’s left arm. “You’re not going to break him, are you?”

Kimmer shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” the man said, and his expression—full of bemusement, floundering in some way Kimmer couldn’t understand—didn’t fit the situation. Didn’t fit it at all. “Ker-rist! Back off, will you?”

Kimmer narrowed her eyes, tipped her head. Thoughtful. There was something about this man…

She knew him.

“Kimmer—” he said, then hissed in pain as her hold tightened.

She knew him.

Not so much the narrow chin and the receding hairline of dark, tight-cropped curls, or the skin, leathery and damaged by sun and cigarettes. Not so much the scowl carved into his forehead.

The eyes. Round, wide-set, thickly lashed. A deep blue, so deep as to look near black unless the light hit them just right.

Kimmer’s eyes.

She released the man’s hand, slammed the door closed hard enough to rock the vehicle, and turned on her heel, striding back to where the Miata glinted Mahogany Mica in the sun. Maybe, she thought, deliberately taking herself away from this moment, it was time to get that BMW she’d been eyeing. Time to move up.

With the BMW, she could outrun even her past.

Rio came up behind her. In the background, the Suburban’s door opened again. Kimmer walked around to the driver’s door, brushed dust from the side-view mirror, and slid back behind the wheel. On the passenger side, Rio opened the door, but he didn’t get in. He ducked low enough to peer inside. “Hey,” he said, a gentle query. “You know him?”

Kimmer didn’t look at him. She pressed her lips together, bit her top lip, and was then able to say in an astonishingly moderate tone, “My brother. One of them, anyway. Let’s go. We’re through here.”

She should have known he wouldn’t get in. Not with the way he felt about family. He’d never understand her reaction. How could he? For all she’d alluded to her past, she’d never truly explained. He knew she’d turned her life around, remolding herself into the fierce, competent Hunter operative who made her own rules. But she’d never shared the appalling truths of her past.

Because it meant reliving them.

She looked over at him, meeting the almond sweep of his eyes. His Japanese grandmother’s eyes, set in the bones of his otherwise Danish family—a face sculpted by the combination. Rio was nothing if not tied to his family, right down to his appearance. And he didn’t understand.

A flicker of desperation tightened Kimmer’s hands on the steering wheel. “Please,” she said. “This is a choice I made a long time ago.”

He tipped his head back at the hefty SUV. “It can be a different choice now.”

“No,” she said tightly. “It can’t.”

He looked at her for another long heartbeat of time, and then he gave the slightest of shrugs and lowered his tall frame into the low sports car. Kimmer breathed a sigh of relief, thanking him with a glance. They might well talk about this, but Rio had done what Rio did best. He’d let Kimmer be Kimmer, accepting her without trying to change her.

Except this time, just a moment too late. Kimmer’s brother crossed in front of the Miata, came around to the driver’s window. Kimmer still had time to turn the key, to floor the accelerator—and yet somehow she didn’t quite do it. Maybe it was Rio’s trust. Maybe she was just tired of running.

Maybe she wanted to think again about pummeling the crap out of a man who had made her childhood miserable.

He stood on the other side of the closed window—not a tall man, nor a bulky one. Like Kimmer in that way. He settled his weight on one leg and crossed his arms. “You don’t even know which one I am.”

She knew he hadn’t changed much, not if he’d tracked her down only to throw that attitude at her.

Of course, he was also right.

“Should I care?” she asked, not unrolling the window. “You all made my life hell. You were interchangeable in that way. Although if I had to guess, the way your ears stick out, I’d say you were Hank.”

More than ten years had passed since she’d bolted from Munroville in rural western Pennsylvania. She’d been fifteen and her brothers had been in various stages of older adolescence and early adulthood, still unformed men—their bodies awkward, their facial structures still half in hiding. Hers was a family of late bloomers.

Or never-bloomers.

Her brother colored slightly and lifted his chin in a way so instantly familiar that Kimmer knew she’d been right. Hank. A middle brother, particularly fond of finding ways to blame things gone wrong on Kimmer no matter how minuscule her association with them in the first place. He’d seldom been the first to hit her, but it never took him long to join in. Hank, Jeff, Karl, Tim. They all took their turns.

She started slightly as Rio’s hand landed quietly on her leg, only then realizing she’d reached for the club resting beside her at the shift. You don’t know, she wanted to say to him. You can’t possibly understand. His family had supported him, surrounded him, welcomed him back home without question when the life he’d chosen had changed so abruptly. Hers had…

A young girl hid in the attic, hands clasped tightly around her knees, face pale and dripping sweat in the furnace summer had made of the enclosed space. She didn’t know who’d misplaced the phone bill the first time, or even the second. It could have been between here and the tilted mailbox down the lane; it could have been shoved off the table to make way for one of their filthy magazines. She only knew that today she’d brought in an envelope stamped Final Bill, and that its arrival was therefore her fault. Her father and brothers had come home before she’d had the chance to slip out the back of the house to the hidey-hole she’d made beneath the barn.

They didn’t know she’d grown tall enough to pull down the ladder stairs and make her way up here. And now she couldn’t leave until they were gone. If they spotted her they’d harry her like hounds, shouting and slapping and shoving for something she hadn’t done in the first place. She shivered, even in the heat. She could feel their hands, their cruel pinches, blows hard enough to bruise, hidden in places that wouldn’t show. And she remembered her mother lying at her father’s feet and knew her own life would only get worse as she matured.

A grip tightened on her leg. In a flash, Kimmer snatched up the club, turning on—

Rio.

She withdrew with a noise between a gasp and a snarl. Never Rio.

But her brothers had never seen her as anything other than a frightened young girl at their disposal for blaming, controlling and manipulating. A young girl who had highly honed skills of evasion and an uncanny knack for reading the intent of those around her—at least, anyone who wasn’t close to her. The closeness…it blinded her instinctive inner eye, kept her guessing.

She’d never been able to read Rio, not from the moment she’d met him. It had terrified her, but she’d learned to trust him. He’d earned it. So now she looked at him with apology for what they both knew she’d almost done, but she wasn’t surprised when he made no move to withdraw his hand.

Rio didn’t scare easily.

Kimmer took a deep breath and turned back to Hank, the window remaining between them. “I’m not even going to bother to ask why you thought you could or should run me down in a high-speed car chase. Just tell me why the hell you’re here.”

“I need to talk to you,” he said, and his mouth took on that sullen expression she knew too well, a knowing that came flooding back after years of pretending it didn’t exist. “You shouldn’t have run. It would have been a lot easier for both of us if you’d just pulled over when you noticed me.”

“A lot easier for you. I like a good adrenaline hit now and then. Or did you really think I didn’t know this was a dead-end road?”

Surprise crossed his face; it hadn’t occurred to him. “Anyway,” he said, as if they hadn’t had that part of the conversation, “I had to be sure it was you. Leo told me you’d changed a lot—”

“Leo.” Kimmer rolled her eyes, exchanging a quick, knowing look with Rio. Leo Stark, hometown bully and family friend from way back when. Not her friend. Not then, and not when he’d cropped up again to interfere with her work just six months earlier. “Damn him. It wasn’t enough I gave him a chance to be a hero for Mill Springs last fall? Stop the bad guys, save the country, keep the damsel in distress alive?”

For when Rio had come home to recuperate from CIA disaster, he’d slipped seamlessly back into civilian life, applying a fine hand to custom boat repairs and paint jobs—but only until his cousin Carolyne drew him back into the world of clandestine ops.

Except Kimmer, too, had been assigned to project Carolyne. Of course they’d collided. Disagreed. Worked it out. And now he’d come to cautiously discuss part-time work with the same Hunter Agency that employed Kimmer. Cautious, because he’d been sacrificed on the job once already. But doing it, because Hunter’s intense, personal approach was so completely different from his experience with the CIA. In the CIA, one field officer’s hubris had nearly killed him, and the chief of station hadn’t prevented it. At Hunter, the loyalty between operatives and staff was a given.

Hunter’s international reputation for effectiveness was why the agency had been tapped to watch Carolyne, a computer programmer extraordinaire who’d been on everyone’s snatch list when she uncovered—and developed the fix for—a security weakness in the current crop of missile laser guidance systems. The bad guys, professionals at the beck and call of those who wanted to exploit that weakness. And Leo Stark’s role had been a desperate ploy on Kimmer’s part to keep him from focusing on her. Because it was Kimmer he’d wanted—Kimmer who’d been promised to him not so much as a wife than as a servant. Leo. Dammit.

“He was right, I guess. Must have cost a pretty penny to fix you up like this.” He lifted an appreciative eyebrow.

She snorted. “Is that your idea of a compliment? It’s supposed to make me stick around long enough to hear what you have to say?”

Hank scowled. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. I’ve come all this way to find you. That must count for something.”

Yeah. It pissed her off.

But there was Rio sitting next to her, knowing only how upset she was and not quite understanding; the puzzlement showed in the faintest of frowns, the only outward sign of his struggle to comprehend the strength of her reaction. And he’d never understand if she literally left Hank in the dust.

You want to know my family, Rio? Okay then.

She raised an eyebrow at Hank. “Coming all this way doesn’t count for a thing,” she told him. “But let’s just call it your lucky day. I’ll bet you know where I live, too.” She wouldn’t have been hard to find once Leo pointed Hank in the direction of Seneca Lake; she was in the phone book. She’d never made any effort to hide who she really was—she’d never expected them to care enough to come looking.

Whyever Hank had tracked her down, it wasn’t because he cared. He might still want to control her, he might still want to use her, but he didn’t want to renew any kind of family relationship.

Rio would learn that.

Outside the window, Hank nodded. For an instant, she thought he actually looked relieved, but a second glance showed her only the arrogant certainty that she’d see things his way. But whatever had inspired him to invade her world…

It wouldn’t be good enough.

Kimmer had little to say on the way home. Full of glower and resentment and anger, she took the curving roads at satisfying speed, reveling in the way the car clung to the road and how it leaped to the challenge when she accelerated in the last section of each swoop of asphalt. She left the Suburban far, far behind and when she pulled the Miata to an abrupt stop beside Rio’s boxy Honda Element in her sloping driveway, she exited the car with purpose.

Shedding and gathering clothes along the way, she climbed the stairs to the remodeled second floor of the old house—two small bedrooms and a bathroom turned into one giant master suite—and dumped the lunch outfit on the unmade bed. She replaced it with a clean pair of low-rise blue jeans from the shelves in her walk-in closet, and a clingy ribbed cotton sweater with laces dangling from the cross-tie sleeves. Red.

If Hank thought he was here to see his little sister, he had a thing or two coming.

She jammed the war club in her back pocket—Hank would do well to pale if he recognized it, given the events of the night she’d departed—and headed back down the stairs.

Rio puttered in the kitchen, putting away lunch leftovers and the desserts they’d brought home for later. He’d poured them each a glass of bright blue Kool-Aid, his current favorite flavor. Raspberry Reaction. A third glass stood off to the side, filled with ice, waiting to see what Hank preferred. Rio didn’t react as she stood in the kitchen entrance, slipping athletic Skechers over her bare feet, but he knew she was there; he pointed at the glass he’d filled for her.

As usual, he seemed to fill the room—he always filled the room, no matter how large it was, though calling her kitchen roomy went beyond exaggeration and straight to blatant lie. He’d gone to lunch in a tailored sport coat over jeans and a collarless short-sleeved shirt, a look he carried off with much panache. Now he’d dumped the coat and still looked…good.

Oh, yeah.

For a wistful moment, Kimmer wished they could simply lock the door and exchange frantic Kool-Aid flavored kisses. Forget Hank, forget family…just Rio and Kimmer, warming up the house on a beautiful spring day.

But Hank was on the way. They had no more than minutes. In fact, he should have been here by now. Kimmer strongly suspected he’d gotten lost. She wished she could take credit for the missing street sign between her street and the main road…it was enough that she’d neglected to mention it to Hank. She sighed heavily and reached for the cold glass.

The sigh got his attention. He turned to look at her, tossing the hand towel back into haphazard place over the stove handle, his mouth already open to say something, but abruptly hesitating on the words. He stared; she raised her eyebrows. He cleared his throat. “I like that sweater.”

Kimmer smoothed down the hem. “It’s unexpectedly easy to remove,” she informed him.

“That’s not fair.” He seemed to have forgotten he held his drink.

She shrugged at his ruefulness over Hank’s impending arrival. “You’re the one who wanted me to give Hank his say.”

That brought him back down to earth. “But—” He narrowed his eyes at her, accenting the angle of them “—you told me you couldn’t use your knack on me.”

“I can’t,” she said, sipping the drink. It wasn’t what she’d have chosen, but it was cold and felt good on her throat.

“Ah.” His expression turned more rueful yet. “That obvious, am I?”

“Oh, yeah.” She gave him a moment to digest the notion, then nodded at the front door. “Let’s wait on the porch. I don’t want to invite him in.”

He followed her outside, latching the screen door against the cat she seemed to have acquired when Rio moved in—an old white marina cat with black blotches, half an ear and half a front leg missing. Rio had seemed almost as surprised as Kimmer when it showed up along with him, muttering some lame-ass explanation about how it was too old to survive alone at the dock. OldCat, he called it.

Big softie. That was Rio, deep down. Too intensely affected by the lives of those he cared about, even the life of a used-up cat.

Though the cat did look comfortable on her front window sill.

Kimmer helped herself to a corner of the porch swing and sat cross-legged, shuffling off her Skechers. Rio took up the rest of the seat and stretched his legs out before him, taking up the duty of nudging the thing back and forth ever so slightly. Down by the barely visible stop sign, a blotchy green-on-green Suburban traveled slowly down the main road, passing by her unidentified street.

Rio settled his glass on the arm of the swing. “You may have to go get him.”

Kimmer didn’t think so.

After a moment, she said, “When I was little, my mother used to rock with me.”

“I thought—”

“Before she died,” Kimmer said dryly. “Sometimes my father would be out with my brothers—some sports event, usually. It was the only time we had together. And she spent it rocking me, trying to pretend she wasn’t crying. It was too late for her, she said, but not for me. So she spent that time whispering her rules to me. How to survive. Making damn sure I wouldn’t end up like she did.”

He frowned, hitched his leg up and shifted his back into the corner pillow. They’d been a long time sitting this day; no doubt it was starting to ache. If so, he didn’t pay it any close attention. “You’ve never really said—”

“No. I haven’t. Who’d want to?” She felt herself grow smaller, drawn in to be as inconspicuous as a child hiding desperately in an attic. Except as soon as she realized it, she shook herself out of it, deliberately relaxed her legs to more of an open lotus position. “I don’t want to go into it right now. I can’t. I’ve got Hank to deal with. But I wanted you to know at least that much, before you watch how I handle this. Every time I say or do something you wouldn’t even consider saying or doing to your family, think about the fact that my mother used her most precious private time making sure I knew no one would take care of me but me. Making sure I always knew to have a way out. That I always knew what the people around me were doing. That I always saw them first.”

“You’re talking in halves.” He prodded her with a sock-enclosed toe, gently, and then withdrew. “There’s so much you’re leaving out.”

She heard the sounds before she even reached the house. Flesh against flesh. Chairs overturning. A muffled cry.

When she was younger, she wouldn’t let herself believe it. But she was eight now, and she had her world figured out. She flung her school papers to the ground, gold stars and all. She charged up the porch stairs and through the creaky screen door and all the way to the kitchen, and she was only an instant away from launching herself onto her father’s back, right where the sweat seeped through his shirt from the effort of hitting her mama, when Mama looked up from the floor and cried out for her to stop.

Startled, her father turned around to glare at her. “You’d better think twice, little girl.”

She’d looked at her mama, pleading. Let me help. Her mama shook her head, right there where she’d fallen against the cupboard, her lip bleeding and her eye swelling, the kitchen chairs tumbled around her. She lifted her chin and she said, “Remember what I told you, Kimmer. Stay out of this.”

And her father closed the door.

“Yeah,” Kimmer told Rio. “There’s so much I’m leaving out.”

Hank’s Suburban crawled into her driveway only a few moments later, as Rio did what only Rio could do—establish a connection between himself and Kimmer solely with the honest, thoughtful intensity of his gaze. He’d done so even before he really knew her, baffling Kimmer into temporary retreat. Always it was about trying to understand what lay beneath the surface—and though he usually did a spooky job of uncovering just that, this time Kimmer could see the struggle. He couldn’t quite fathom how it had truly been, or how resolutely it had shaped her. “You don’t have to understand right this minute,” she told him, a quiet murmur as Hank slammed the reluctant door of the old Suburban and made his way up to the porch with misplaced confidence. “Just keep it in mind.”

And Rio nodded, going quiet in that way that would leave her free to deal with Hank.

Hank jammed his hands in his back pockets and settled into the arrogance of his hipshot stance. “I get the feeling you’re not going to invite me in.”

“It’s a pleasant afternoon.” Kimmer looked out over the yard, where daffodils and forsythia still bloomed. “Why waste it?”

“Kimmer. That was Mama’s nickname, once. And you’re just like her. She didn’t know how to take care of family, either. She died to get away from us…you just ran.”

She gave a little laugh. “What makes you madder? That I escaped, or that I’ve done well?”

“Is that what you call this?” He glanced at the little house behind her, the modest yard before her. The Morrows on one side, the Flints on the other.

“Ah.” She looked over the yard in bloom, that in which she found such peace. “If this is your strategy to keep me listening, it’s not working very well so far.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a meeting to attend, so if you’ve got something to say, best say it. Otherwise, go away.”

Rio knew better than to give her a puzzled glance, even though he knew she had nothing planned for the afternoon, that Hunter had her on call but not on assignment. That she was expected to visit and confer on some upcoming operations, but had no set time for doing so. No, Hunter wasn’t what she had in mind. Not with those long legs of his stretched out beside her—not to mention the smudge of Kool-Aid blue at the corner of his mouth. Quite clearly, it needed to be kissed off. Maybe Raspberry Reaction was her favorite flavor after all.

And then Hank blurted, “I need your help.”

For an instant, words eluded her. When she found them, they were blunt. “You must be kidding.”

“You think I came all the way up here to kid you?” Hank threw his arms up, a helpless gesture. “You think I want to be here talking to you and your—”

“Ryobe Carlsen,” Rio said in the most neutral of tones. “Konnichiwa. We can shake hands another time.”

Hank’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly Kimmer thought they looked nothing like hers at all. “You were there,” he said to Rio. “Leo said there was a man involved.”

“There were several, in fact. But I was one of them. I was certainly there when Leo mentioned how you planned to hand Kimmer over to him.”

Relief washed through Kimmer. Rio might not truly understand what Kimmer’s family did—or more to the point, didn’t—mean to her, but he knew Hank had a lot to prove. She should have known, should have trusted Rio.

Of course, that wasn’t something that came easily. Emotional trust was against the rules.

She took a deep breath, suddenly aware of just how much this encounter was taking from her. Tough Kimmer, keeping up her tough front when all she wanted to do was ease across the swing into Rio’s arms. Except—

It was her own job to take care of herself. Her very first lesson.

So at the end of that deep breath, she made herself sound bored. “I can’t imagine how you think I can help you at all.”

“Leo said…well, hell, you made an impression on Leo. He says you took down the Murty brothers when you were in Mill Springs. And he came back to Munroville spouting stories about terrorists. He said you’d taken them out.”

Kimmer flicked her gaze at Rio. “I wasn’t alone.”

“He said they shot you, and you didn’t even flinch.”

She touched her side, where the scar was fading. It had only been a crease at that. She shrugged. “I was mad.”

“He said,” Hank continued doggedly, “that you were connected. That your people came into Mill Springs and did such a cleanup job that the cops never had anything to follow through on. Even those two guys you sent to the hospital—Homeland Security walked away with them.”

“Leo talks a lot,” Kimmer said. But she suppressed a smile. Damned if Hank didn’t actually sound impressed. “And you still haven’t gotten to the point.”

“The point,” Hank told her, “is that that’s the kind of help I need.”

“You want me to get shot for you?” Kimmer shook her head. “Not gonna happen.”

“You gotta make this hard, don’t you?” Hank shifted his weight impatiently, coming precariously close to Kimmer’s freshly blooming irises.

Yes. But she had the restraint to remain silent, and he barged right on through. “Look, I’m in over my head. I let some people use a storage building for…something. They turned out to be a rough crew, more’n I wanted to deal with. An’ I’ve got a wife and kids—bet you didn’t even know I had kids—and I wanted out. Except I saw a murder, damned bad luck. They know I want out, and they don’t trust me to keep my mouth shut.” He looked at her with a defiant jut to his jaw, daring her to react to the story. To judge him.

Kimmer sat silently, absorbing it all. Hank on the run from goonboys. Hank scared enough to track down a sister he’d abused and openly scorned. Hank here before her, asking for help she wasn’t sure she could or would give him. Assuming I believe a word of it in the first place. Wouldn’t it be just like her brothers to send one of them to lure her back down home where they probably thought they could control her?

Out loud, she said thoughtfully, “‘Bad luck’ is when you’re on your way to church and someone runs a red light in front of you. Witnessing nastiness at the hands of the goonboys you’ve invited into your home is more under the heading of ‘what did you expect?’”

His face darkened, something between anger and humiliation. “You gotta be a bitch about it? I’m asking for help here, Kimmer.”

“I’m not sure just what you’re asking,” Kimmer told him. Except suddenly she knew, and she spat a quick, vicious curse. “You want me to kill them. You actually want me to kill them.”

Hank hesitated, startled both by her perception and her anger, and put up a hand up as though it would slow either.

Rio looked at her in astonishment—Mr. Spy Guy, somehow not yet jaded enough to believe this to be something a brother would ask a sister.

But Kimmer, so mad she could barely see straight, still caught the unfamiliar sedan traveling too fast as it passed by her street. She watched as it stopped and backed up to hover at the intersection.

“Dammit, Hank, did you tell anyone you were coming to see me?”

Startled, he at first looked as if he’d resist answering just because he didn’t like her tone. By then Kimmer was on her feet, now bare. Rio, too, had come out without shoes. Sock-foot. He never wore outdoor footgear in the house out of respect for his Japanese grandmother’s early teaching, even if he didn’t use the proper slippers while indoors.

Family. She wanted to snarl the word out loud. She didn’t take the time. Hank had followed her gaze and blurted, “Just a few people, but they didn’t know why—”

“They didn’t have to,” Kimmer said, and by then Rio was beside her—and the sedan had turned sharply onto the narrow back street of wide-set houses, the acceleration of the engine clearly audible. “Keys, Hank!”

“What—”

She turned her gaze away from the car long enough to snap a look at him. “Your damn car keys. Hand them over!” She didn’t wait for compliance, but headed for him. No time to run inside for any of her handguns, no time to hesitate over anything at all.

“They’re in the—hey!”

“They’ve already spotted it,” Rio said, close behind her.

“You don’t have to come,” she told him, no sting to her words, just simple assessment of the situation as she hauled the door open and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Coming anyway,” he said, just as matter-of-factly. And then gave Hank a little shove toward the back door on his way past. In a moment, he sat beside Kimmer. Hank sat in the back, still baffled.

“Where’s the shotgun?” Kimmer asked, cranking the engine. It hesitated; she gave it a swift kick of gas and it caught, rumbling unhappily.

“I don’t—”

“You do. Where?” She wrestled the gear shift into reverse, giving the approaching sedan a calculating glance. We’re not fast enough.

“Under the seat,” Hank admitted, and Rio ducked to grab it. “Why—”

“What did you think?” She snorted, backing them down the driveway. “Have it out right here in my neighborhood, with all these innocent people going about their lives? In my own house?”

“I didn’t think you’d run!” Hank snapped. “But then, that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”

“When the moment’s right.” Kimmer cranked the wheel to catapult them out into the street, looking back over her shoulder through the rear glass of the big utility vehicle.

Too close. They’re way too close.

She couldn’t make herself feel any particular concern about her brother’s safety, but this moment didn’t have to be about Hank. It was about the goonboys, who were now chasing not only Hank, but Kimmer and Rio. Rio, whom she wouldn’t allow to be hurt again. With the vehicle still whining in reverse, she locked her gaze on the rearview mirror. There they were. Goonboys, to be sure—guns at the ready, assumed victory molding their expressions.

She wasn’t in the habit of letting the goonboys win.

Kimmer jammed down the accelerator and watched their eyes widen.

Chapter 2

T he crash resounded along the street. Mrs. Flint popped up from her flower garden next door, horror on her face. Kimmer didn’t wait for her rattled head to settle or her vision to clear. She ground the balky gears from Reverse to Drive and jammed her foot back down on the accelerator, bare foot stretching to make the distance.

The bumper fell off behind them. “Son of a bitch!” Hank groused, scrambling to find a seat belt that had probably disappeared between the seat cushions years ago.

Kimmer glanced in the rearview only to discover it had been knocked totally askew, but Rio saw it, too. He looked back and then turned a grin on her. “Nice,” he said. “They’re stalled and steaming.” He racked the shotgun with quick efficiency, counting the cartridges. “Four. And here I was thinking you might have bored out the magazine plug.”

“That’s not legal,” Hank muttered, still in search of the seat belt as Kimmer bounced them along the uneven street, discovering waves in the pavement she hadn’t even considered before.

“Oh, please,” she said while Rio loaded—one in the chamber, three in the magazine. “You just haven’t done it yet. Got more ammo?”

“’Course. Under the seat somewheres.”

“Find it.” She hit the brake, found it soft and unresponsive, and stomped down hard to make a wallowing turn uphill. “This thing drives like a boat.”

“Needs new brakes,” Hank said. He pawed through the belongings in the backseat, tossing take-out food wrappers out of his way.

“Needs brakes,” Kimmer repeated. “You don’t say.” And to Rio, “How’s it look?”

A glance, a resigned grimace. “They’re on the move again. You have a plan?”

“One that doesn’t include outrunning them?” she said dryly, glancing at the speedometer. Just forty miles per hour—fast enough in this rural-residential area. “Yes. Get the high ground. Pick them off if we have to. Hope my neighbors called the police.”

“I love that about you,” he said. “So efficient. Bash the bad guys—”

“BGs,” she reminded him.

“—and get the cops in on things at the same time.”

“Cops?” Hank popped up from his search. “If I’d wanted to go to the cops, I woulda called ’em from my place and saved myself the trip!”

“Quit whining,” Kimmer said shortly. “And find that box. Unless you just want to get out now? I can slow down—”

“This isn’t my hunting vehicle, you know. Dunno that I’ll find—whoop!”

Kimmer had no doubt that without his seat belt on that last hump of road, he’d been riding air. White picket fence flashed by the side windows as they hit a washboard dirt road and another incline. She spared a hand to grab quickly at the rearview mirror and straighten it. The road made perfection impossible, but now she could get her own glimpses of their pursuit.

Too close. She made a wicked face at the mirror. “Dammit.”

“Still going with Plan A?”

“There isn’t a Plan B. Besides, the last little bit is completely rutted—” this as she manhandled the Suburban around a turn that took them from dirt-and-gravel to dirt-and-grass—“and I don’t think they can make it.” They’d left the last farmhouse far behind and now climbed the road over a mound with picturesque spring-green trees. At the crest of that hill the road faded away into a small clearing, one that bore evidence of being a lovers’ lane, teenage hangout and child’s playground. Condoms, beer cans and a swinging tire.

On the nights when Kimmer couldn’t sleep, she found it the perfect target for a fast, dark training run. Less than a mile or so from home, a good uphill climb and at the end a perfect view of the descending moon on those nights when there was a moon at all.

The Suburban creaked and jounced and squeaked, and then abruptly slowed as Kimmer carefully placed the wheels so they wouldn’t ground out between ruts. A glance in the rearview mirror and…ah, yes. The sedan had lost ground. Pretty soon they’d be walking, unless they didn’t realize this road dead-ended and gave up, thinking the Suburban would just keep grinding along, up and over and down again.

Though if they stuck around long enough, they’d hear the Suburban’s lingering engine noise.

Kimmer crested the hill, swinging the big vehicle in a swooping curve that didn’t quite make it between two trees; the corner of the front bumper took a hit.

“Hey!” Hank sat up in indignant protest, scowling into the rearview mirror when no one responded to his squawk. Kimmer finally put the gearshift in Park, unsnapped her seat belt with one hand and held out the other for the shotgun. “Keep looking for those shells,” she told Hank.

“And Plan A is…?” Rio asked.

“I can get a vantage point on them. See if you can find something else in this heap that we can use as a weapon. Tire iron, maybe. Any other nefarious thing Hank might have collected. I’ve got my club, too.” She twisted around to look at Hank. “I changed my mind. Get your ass up here and turn this thing around. It’s going to take time we won’t want to waste if they do come up here on foot.”

“Jeez, when did you get to be such a bitch?” Hank gave her a surly look. “I came up here for help, not to get pussy-whipped.”

“You’ve got help.” Kimmer assessed the semiautomatic, a gun made for a bigger shooter than she’d ever be. No surprise. “You just thought you were going to call the shots. Well, guess what? Wrong.” She slid out the door. Rio was already out and at the back, rummaging around. “Watch your feet,” she told him. “There’s broken glass up here.”

“Got it. And got the tire iron. I’ll keep looking.”

With little grace, Hank climbed down from the backseat and up into the driver’s side. With exaggerated care he began the long back-and-forth process of turning the SUV around.

Kimmer took a few loping steps to the nearest tree, the maple with the tire swinging from a branch made just for that purpose. A lower branch on the other side acted as a step. She pulled herself up one-handed, climbing the easiest route to the branch from which the tire hung. From there she looked down on the road they’d just traversed. It passed almost directly beneath the tire before the hairpin turn that ended at the top of the hill. From there the area spread out before her—small farms and then the smaller tracts of her neighborhood in neat, topographically parallel streets.

The pursuing sedan sat barely visible through the trees, not moving. With the grind of the Suburban swapping ends and gears in the small space behind her, Kimmer couldn’t hear anything of the men who’d been in the sedan, and she couldn’t yet see them.

She waited. Her toes flexed on smooth maple bark, her fingers warmed the wood stock on the shotgun, and she waited, plastered up against the tree to put as much of herself behind the trunk as possible. Beneath her, Rio came to stand beside it—a second set of eyes. And Hank finally finished turning around and cut the engine.

Blessed silence. And then in the roadside not far below them, a flock of kinglets exploded into noisy scolding, flittering from bush to bush like parts of a perpetual-motion machine. Kimmer rested the shotgun barrel on a tree branch and snugged it into place against her shoulder as Rio eased back behind the tree. She raised her voice to reach those slinking below. “That’s far enough.”

The birds hopscotched away through the brush. An annoyed voice asked, “Who—what—the hell are you?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but I’m still young,” Kimmer said airily. “Hank will tell you I’m a bitch, though, and I suppose that’s really all you need to know. Plus I bashed up your nice car. I also have you in my sights and this is double-ought buckshot, too. It’s gonna sting, boys. Where do you want I should aim it?”

The reply came as something inarticulate and disbelieving, a strong Pittsburgh accent in play. Kimmer glanced down at Rio, who looked up with perfect timing to raise an eyebrow at her.

“Hunter’s going to hate this,” Kimmer told him. “They really want us to play nice in their backyard.”

“Look, sputzie,” said one of the BGs. “We only want the scrawny guy we followed here. There’s no need for you to get hurt.”

“No need at all,” Kimmer agreed, hoping she heard the sound of small-town-cop sirens in the distance. Unless these suited goonboys took off across country on foot, they couldn’t leave this little section of Glenora without meeting the cops on the way out. And Kimmer would be on their tail…squeeze play. She saw a rustle of movement and carefully sighted a foot in front of it, squeezing the trigger of the twelve-gauge.

The spring brush exploded in bits of leaves and twigs. Damn, that thing has a kick. But she’d been prepared and stayed firmly in position, braced between the spreading limbs. The goonboys scrambled wildly into the bushes, cursing copiously. Kimmer saw a glint of metal. “Here it comes.”

A quick volley of shots from someone who obviously felt he had ammo to spare, and Kimmer ducked behind the tree trunk. She was sure they were out of pistol range, but even goonboys got lucky. They’d take turns laying down cover to dart up the side of the road, getting closer…maybe getting close enough.

Rio knew it, too. “I’m going to draw them off,” he said. “I doubt I can get their interest more than once…better not waste it.”

Blam! Blam!

“Won’t,” Kimmer told him. Won’t waste anything.

“What the hell?” Hank growled loudly from the SUV between gunshot volleys. “Don’t play games with these people, Kimmer! Just…do something!”

Blamblamblam!

“Nice,” Kimmer told him, her cheek still pressed against smooth bark. “You don’t even have the guts to say it. What is it you want me to do, Hank? Exactly?”

Blam! Blamblamblam!

“Whatever it takes!” Hank’s voice crept toward panic. “Just stop them!”

Uh-huh.

Blamblam—click!

“Reload,” she said, but Rio was already away, running crouched just behind the crest of the hill and heading for another tree. He made a god-awful amount of noise and then took position behind the tree, holding the tire iron up to his shoulder so the sun glinted along its length.

They took the bait. They turned toward him, revealing themselves to Kimmer, and as one BG slammed a new magazine home, the other raised his pistol at Rio.

Kimmer aimed between them and took a deep breath. No turning back now. Once she drew blood, she’d be explaining herself to the local law; she’d also drag Hunter into the mess. From this distance the pellet spread meant she’d hit them both without truly damaging them. It wouldn’t end this confrontation unless they took it as the warning it was and withdrew.

If only the cops were closer.

But now it was more than Hank in trouble. Rio stood within their sights, drawing fire for her. Drawing it from Hank, who deserved no such sacrifice.

Kimmer pulled the trigger.

They both went down, tumbling away in surprise, losing ground downhill away from the road. Good. That bought some time for the cops to close in. Not much time, but—

She and Rio startled in unison as the Suburban’s engine revved. Hank! That puny-assed—

Rio reacted immediately, running for the vehicle with long strides, dirt sticking to his socks and the tire iron in hand. The SUV swung past him, building speed, and with a grunt of effort he managed to draw even to the open tailgate and fling himself into the back. For an instant Kimmer thought he’d bounce right out again, but he must have found something to grab on to; his feet disappeared inside.

And that left Kimmer. Kimmer, sitting in a tree and staring stupidly at her stupid brother’s stupid break for it. So much for the plan to sandwich the BGs between Kimmer and the cops she’d so fervently hoped would arrive in time.

No way in hell was she leaving Rio to take this one alone. Not when she had the only gun.

Though maybe while he was bouncing around in the back, he’d find those shotgun shells they needed so sorely.

The shotgun had a sling strap. She pushed the safety on and ducked through the strap, freeing her hands so she could climb swiftly out on the branch and then down the rope to the tire. She could just barely push off the side of the hill while crouching in the tire and she did it, swinging back closer to push harder, propelling herself into the open air over the road as the BGs struggled to pull themselves together, smarting and bleeding but still well-armed.

And here came Hank, hauling the Suburban around the hairpin turn from the clearing, forced to slow down for the rutted section. Kimmer adjusted the arc of her swing, leaning to the side and pushing the tire around until she hung precariously out over nothing, high enough to see nothing but sky.

Time to let go. And if her timing was off, to go splat.

Kimmer landed with a painful klunk, denting the roof under the luggage rack. The shotgun smacked her in the back of the head, the metal smacked her bare feet and palms, and her forehead made contact with…something. She squinched her face up as if that would clear her head, clinging to the luggage rack as the vehicle bounced beneath her.

“Kimmer?”

That was Rio’s voice, filtered through metal and glass and creaking shocks, and she thumped the roof twice in affirmation. She wanted to bellow to Hank that he should slow down—hell, he should just plain stop—but he’d already scraped the Suburban by the sedan in a painful screech of metal and she knew better than to think he might give her shouting a second thought. Best to just hang on.

Yeah. So much for Plan A.

The road grew a little smoother, giving Kimmer the wherewithal to turn around and watch their back.

And here came the sedan. Backing down a road it hadn’t been built to climb in the first place, and doing it with the careless haste that said the driver had already decided it would be sacrificed to the cause.

Which was killing Hank. And now, killing Kimmer and Rio.

She flattened out over the luggage rack, wrenching the shotgun around into a useable position. Eventually the road would get smoother. Eventually she wouldn’t have to hang on with all her fingers and toes just to keep from being jounced over the side.

They hit pavement. The sedan lost ground with a hasty three-point turn but then more than made up for it with the increased speed of forward movement. Hank responded with a lead foot, and they screamed downhill toward the residential area far too quickly for the sake of playing children or loose livestock. You fool. I took us away from this area for a reason. From inside the vehicle came the sound of raised voices, Rio’s emphatic and Hank’s shrill and defiant. The Suburban wove back and forth, wildly but briefly, and then continued as it had been. Kimmer, a little vertiginous at the landscape speeding backward past her, took the activity to mean that Rio had tried but failed to wrest some sort of control from Hank. And then they hit a series of turns for which she could only clutch to the luggage rack, grateful for its presence and cursing centrifugal force.

He couldn’t have any idea where he was going.

Nor did Kimmer, until she finally got a glimpse of the Dairy Queen on the way by and knew the road they traveled, and where it went.

Where it stopped.

The docks.

Kimmer could only imagine Hank’s cursing when he realized he’d driven into the asphalt equivalent of a box canyon. Quaint, bobbing wooden docks all around them on this little jetty, populated by a plethora of gently rocking boats—sailboats, pontoon boats, a speedboat or two. No launching bay; this area was meant for cars to back up and unload. Not even enough room for the Suburban to turn around without backing up to the wider parking, bait sales and gas and propane refill area they’d just passed.

No time for that.

The Suburban rocked to an uncertain halt. Kimmer gave two sharp knocks on the roof beneath her, letting Rio know she was still aboard. She uncrimped her fingers from the luggage rack and pushed up to her elbows, bringing the shotgun to bear.

The sedan, unsteady on its wheels from the abuse it had taken, shot around the corner into the parking area. The goonboys were just mad enough to keep accelerating when they could easily have crawled to a stop and still had the same result.

The Suburban was trapped at the end of the lot with only one place to go.

Seneca Lake.

With perfect timing, an old station wagon loaded to the fenders with kids and fishing gear and flotation devices came ambling around the corner, not far behind the sedan.

And this, Hank, is why I took us up the damned hill.

Two cartridges left and no other way to warn the innocent bystanders on this family-run dock. With a wicked curse, Kimmer jumped to her feet, legs braced wide, toes finding purchase on the roof rack. Only peripherally aware of the vehicle’s sway beneath her as Rio disembarked, she pointed the shotgun at the sky and pulled the trigger.

The station wagon screeched to a halt; the figures within made emphatic gestures at her and each other. Other people on the edge of her vision reacted, withdrawing. Someone shouted at her.

And the sedan kept coming.

One cartridge left.

With deliberate movement, Kimmer resettled the gun at her shoulder, perfectly aware of the dramatic silhouette she made standing braced on top of the SUV. She considered it fair warning. She’d fired on them before; they’d know she wasn’t bluffing. She could see their silhouettes: big, dark blots, the passenger with his gun held ready. They’d be out and shooting as soon as they stopped—or out and grabbing up prisoners, which could only lead to shooting in the end. They didn’t know her. They must be counting on her nerve to fail in this peculiar game of chicken.

Wrong.

Kimmer pulled the trigger.

Someone screamed. The windshield shattered and the car veered wildly. For a moment Kimmer thought it would plow right into the Suburban. She crouched, ready to leap away from any collision, and then the car sheered away toward the side of the parking lot and the clear path to the—

“Kimmer!” Rio shouted, and Kimmer dove for him, perfectly willing to use him as a landing pad to get behind cover because anysecondnow—

The goonboys and their car ran smack into the propane storage tank, smack at the juncture of tank with intake and outflow pipes. The initial impact of metal against metal preceded the explosion by just enough time to distinguish one sound from the other.

Kimmer hit Rio and Rio hit the ground and the ground rocked beneath them. Shrapnel struck the Suburban in a series of staccato pings; jagged shards of tank metal dug into the asphalt and the wooden docks beyond. The station-wagon family and any other spectators were long gone. The dizzying blast of noise settled into the roar of flames as the sedan burned. From inside the Suburban, Hank muttered a long string of profanities, making free and repeated use of the phrase “fuckin’ crazy bitch.”

Kimmer pushed herself off Rio’s chest. She found it a good sign that he helped, disentangling their arms to support her shoulders. She found his eyes, the warm sienna irises almost hidden by pupils wide with shock and anger and concern. She grinned down at him. “Hey,” she said. “Was it good for you?”

Owen Hunter, Rio thought, had used remarkable restraint. At the time Rio had been too pumped to appreciate it, stalking around with the impulse to pick up the damned tire iron even though there was nothing left to hit and the cops would have taken him down for it anyway.

Or they would have tried.

“How’s your back?” Kimmer had kept asking and he’d repeatedly said it was fine, knowing it would be a lie once the adrenaline rush faded, but for the moment, true enough. Besides which, another six months of physical therapy had made the difference; he hadn’t expected further improvement at this point but he’d gotten some anyway.

All a good thing, for by the time the fire department, the cops and Owen Hunter had hashed out the situation to everyone’s temporary satisfaction—meaning the fire chief was unhappy, the cops were disgruntled but willing to discuss things further without making outright arrests and Owen Hunter had displayed his remarkable restraint any number of times—Rio had stiffened up considerably and was thankful for the heating pad now tucked between the side where his kidney had once been and the oversized, overstuffed recliner of Kimmer’s he found so comfortable.

More comfortably yet, Kimmer sat sideways in his lap, curled up to flip through the style magazine she’d finally fessed up was a guilty pleasure after he’d found it tucked behind the cookbook she never used. Not quite under the mattress, but she blushed enough so it might as well have been.

He liked that she’d blushed. She wouldn’t have been that vulnerable with anyone else. She’d have kicked his ass for snooping around.

Not snooping. He lived here now. For now. Him and the battered, failing OldCat he hadn’t been able to leave on his own back at the Michigan dock. For now and for…who knew? Kimmer’s wasn’t a large house, and her personality filled it. Claimed it. Made Rio aware of how hard she’d fought to get here, and that unlike himself, she’d never shared space with a loving, squabbling, all-for-one family.

Just the hard, cruel family which included the man now watching ESPN in the small TV room, a space meant for a dining room but where Kimmer had chosen to isolate the television so she could have this den for quiet moments. Perfect, quiet moment, turning the pages of her magazine while Rio rode the edge of sleep beneath her, arms loosely around her waist, hands clasped against her hip, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing, her slight movements as she scanned the pages, the occasional nearly silent snort of derision at some piece of haute couture for which she saw no use, the movement of her shoulders when she grinned, laughing under her breath at some joke within the pages. Eventually she rested the magazine on the fat arm of the chair and let her head tip against his shoulder, her short curls soft against his neck. Dark curls, so short they never grew sun-streaked. Intense, like Kimmer herself.

After some moments, she murmured, “Sleeping?”

“Yes.”

She moved slightly against him. Oh, yeah. Wuh. Like that. And then she said, “No, you’re not.”

He smiled without opening his eyes. “Honey,” he said, “I could be almost dead and that would still happen.”

Her cheek moved against his shoulder as she, too, smiled. “Okay, then,” she said. “Just checking.”

“Nice shooting, by the way.”

“Had to be. Last cartridge. I wasn’t expecting the whole propane-tank thing, though.”

“I wasn’t expecting Hank to identify the men as the ones running his chop shop.” Rio kept his voice low, although the televised sound of car engines and crowds—and his sporadic couch coaching—inspired little concern that Hank would actually hear them. “Boom, the end of all his troubles. He never lifted a tire iron, never touched the trigger. Just a victim.”

“I never expected anything else,” Kimmer said, and traced Rio’s collarbone through the fabric of his T-shirt in a way that made him want to rip it off. Okay, that, Hank might notice.

Too damn bad they’d both decided the unpredictable man was best kept close to home—a decision Owen had emphatically endorsed. For although the Hunter Agency had taken only a generation to expand from a small missing-persons agency to the current elite collection of international undercover operatives, it remained more than discreet on its wine-country home turf. It was invisible.

And Owen wanted to keep it that way.

“We’ll be okay,” she added. “The cops aren’t happy, but they know what Owen does for this town—that his operatives go out of their way to keep the area safe. We’ve pitched in on plenty of their difficult cases.”

“They owe you? That’s not exactly how the law is supposed to work. Turn the other cheek is more of a civilian option.”

“Trust me, we’ll earn it when we go in for our little discussion at the station tomorrow. They’ll pry every detail from us, write it all down and look it over as carefully as they would anyone’s. They’ll know Hank isn’t telling the whole story about why those guys were after him, but they don’t have anything on him here. And when there are legitimate choices to be made, they’ll give us the benefit of the doubt. Nothing happened out there today that wasn’t self-defense. And they know I tried to draw the action away from anyone else. Tried being the operative word. And come on, there were so many other things the goonboys could have hit besides that propane tank. That wasn’t fair.”

“Probably the very last things that went through their minds.”

“Yuck.”

Hank’s voice rose above the sound of his television program. “Hey, Kimmer, bring some coffee this way.”

Kimmer stiffened. In that moment she stopped being the woman who showed him glimpses of a gentler, playful self, and returned to being the woman he’d first met. Hard. A woman with edges. A woman who had no intention of being ruled by her past, in whatever form it came. She no longer fit perfectly into his lap; she just happened to be sitting there. And she said, “You want I should make up some sammitches, too? Call up some girlfriends to keep you company? And I got a little bell you can ring anytime you need something, how about that?”

Rio winced.

She knew it; she felt it. For all the ways her knack of reading people failed her when it came to Rio—when it came to anyone close to her, for good or bad—she’d learned to compensate. To observe and know him. She withdrew, sliding off his lap to stand before him. “It’s not the same and you know it.”

Rio’s grandmother had ruled her Danish-Japanese children, and then her grandchildren. His sobo had instilled her courteous, often ritualized ways through the entire family—and those who had married into it soon found themselves murmuring courteous phrases, taking off their shoes at the door, providing slippers to guests…and going out of their way to make guests feel at home. In Sobo’s household, failure to anticipate a guest’s needs—so much as a cup of coffee—was a profound failure indeed. Those in Rio’s generation were more relaxed about such things, but still respectful, still attentive. And though during the years away from home—the CIA years, as Rio thought of them—Rio had adjusted to myriad cultures, he’d easily returned to most of his old ways once he’d come home.

Well, his old ways if you didn’t count the constant adjustments he made for that spot where his kidney used to be, and all the not-so-well-adjusted muscle and tendon that had also been in the way of that bullet.

Rio looked up at Kimmer, found her defiant and hard—that same demeanor that had drawn him in, the one shouting I don’t need anybody when in fact she needed everything. Someone to accept and love her for who she was, just for starters. Petite but carrying hard, toned muscle, lightning-fast in reaction and as quick in improvised strategy as she was on her feet. Features saved from being cute by the hard line of her jaw and the look in her deep, clear blue eyes. And because being honest with Kimmer was the only option, Rio said, “No. Hank is not a good guest, or a welcome one. But it’s not about him, it’s about you.”

“Exactly.” She gave an assertive nod, and if Rio didn’t know her so well he might have missed that faint tremble in her chin. “It’s about me never forgetting the things my family taught me—even if they didn’t mean to.” Not entirely true; Rio knew by now that Kimmer’s battered mother had deliberately left her with a set of rules to live by. “And I guess there’s no hope if I haven’t at least managed to learn that men like Hank will own you—if you let them.”

“That’s not—” Rio started and then stopped, because he could see that the conversation was over, that Kimmer had gone to that place where her past very much ruled her, even if in a way she’d never acknowledge. She hesitated a moment, clad in lightweight drawstring pants and a French-cut T-shirt, and Rio’s experienced eye saw vulnerability beneath that hard edge. When she turned away, it was to stalk out to the front porch on bare feet that had been wrapped in sports tape at heel and ball to cover the damage the day had wrought—tree bark, asphalt, gouging bits of stick and gravel had all left their mark.

Rio had thrown his socks away, but they’d lasted long enough to leave him with little more than a few pebble bruises.

He lost himself in the appreciation of watching her walk away, and then he tipped his head back and closed his eyes, trying to call up the moments when he’d had her in his lap and they’d manage to forget—mostly—that Hank was here, and all the things he’d brought with him. Goonboys. Troubled past. A really bad attitude. And then he sighed and told himself, “Walk the talk, Ryobe Carlsen.”

That meant switching off the heating pad and getting up to walk silently into the next room, where he interposed himself between Hank and the television and said, “I’ll make some coffee. Go out and talk to your sister.”

Hank couldn’t have looked more startled. His gaze flicked past Rio to the television and then out to the front porch. Rio made his point by turning off the television. Before Hank’s open mouth could emit words, Rio jerked a thumb at the front porch. “Go. Talk. She saved your ass today.” And then, as Hank slowly, uncertainly, stood, Rio added a low-toned, “And be nice. Don’t crowd her. Don’t boss her. Just try saying thank you.”

Of course Hank had to open his mouth. “Kinda looks like she’s got you pussy-whipped.”

“You think so?” Rio cocked his head to consider it. “You know what? I don’t. Maybe you and I will have a talk about that another time. For now, you want that coffee? You go be nice.”

Hank shook his head, a gesture of disgust—at just exactly what, Rio wasn’t sure. And didn’t care. Hank headed for the front porch—and Rio found himself walking in the wrong direction to make coffee. He found himself following Kimmer’s brother, stopping to hover within earshot through the screen door.

Hank, diplomat and master of subtlety, let the screen slam behind him, shattering what peace the porch might have offered Kimmer. “There you are,” he said, and it somehow sounded accusing, as if Kimmer had deliberately inconvenienced him by choosing to sit out in the cool spring night. Rio could see her there in his mind’s eye—on the porch swing, her shoulders wrapped with the crocheted afghan she kept out there. “I guess what ol’ Leo said was right, then. You sure did handle those guys. I was kinda hoping to avoid the cops, though.”

“So was I,” Kimmer said dryly. “Gee, I wonder where we went wrong?”

“Rio’s making coffee.” Another accusation, his tone indicating she should be the one in the kitchen. Rio moved closer to the door—close enough to see out—knowing Kimmer had likely detected his presence already.

Kimmer rose from the swing, the afghan still enclosing her shoulders. “And he sent you out here to make nice, didn’t he?”

“Jeez, Kimmer, you turned into a real ball-buster. I don’t even know you anymore.”

“That’s for the best, don’t you think?”

From Hank’s expression, he hadn’t caught the exquisitely dry tone of Kimmer’s sarcasm, but nor did he quite know how to take what she’d said. He finally shook his head. “Maybe you should come back with me. Get to know the family again.”

Kimmer snorted. “I know what I need to know. I think I’ve made that clear enough.”

Hank went squinty-eyed. Together with the thin flannel shirt left open over a dingy white T-shirt, worn jeans made ragged with the rip they’d received sometime today and chin scruff too old to call stubble and not old enough to call a deliberate beard, it wasn’t a good look on him. “You’ve changed, Kimmer.”

That, too, was an accusation.

She responded with a cool, even look. “And thank goodness for that.”

He reached for her then. Damned fool. Rio stiffened, wanted to run out and intervene—but didn’t. He just stood there, watching Hank’s abrupt and harsh movement stagger short as Kimmer executed a swift stop-thrust, the heel of her hand hitting the sweet spot just at the bottom of Hank’s breastbone and then withdrawing so quickly that Hank was left to gape—and to gasp at the impact, hunting for the air she’d knocked out of him. “You don’t touch me,” she said. “You got that? You never, ever touch me.”

Hank made a garbled noise, not quite ready for speech.

“Look, Hank. The only reason you’re still here is because my reputation—and my boss’s mood—depends on getting this mess cleared up. Because it’s best if we do that as quietly as possible. One day, maybe two, and you’ll be out of here. You can go back to Munroville and you can tell everyone what a bitch I am and how ungrateful I am and how pathetic I am. You can even tell them I grew a mole, one of those great big black ones with hairs coming out of it. Whatever floats your boat. But as long as you’re here, in my house, you won’t touch me and you won’t treat me like your personal slave.”

So much for meddling. So much for be nice and say thank you. Rio hadn’t quite been able to imagine Hank’s capacity for boorishness…or Kimmer’s simmering anger. He’d never imagined Hank would try to grab her, try to intimidate her here in her own home, the very same day he’d seen her take down his two personal goonboys. And while part of him ached to charge out there and bodily lob Hank into the street, the rest of him churned at this very graphic demonstration of why he and Kimmer would never look at their lives—or their families—in quite the same way.

Chapter 3

N ot so young anymore. Wiser.

But not wise enough.

Or simply too tired to be wise, walking through the hall to her dark, tiny bedroom without hesitation, without pausing to listen. Without pausing to smell the cheap beer in the air.

They grabbed her as she took that last, no-turning-back step, blocking her so she couldn’t squirt right back out the door. Rough and hurtful hands—hands that had once only randomly yanked and pulled and jerked her around, now targeting forming breasts, pinching hard. Stabbing cruelly at every private, personal spot a growing teen would want to protect.

Not this time. Kimmer made no attempt to fight them off. She ground her jaw closed on what wanted to be whimpers of pain and renewed fear—for the boys were getting worse, and she knew where this would end up one day. Maybe today. Maybe this time they had Leo here with them again—it seemed always to be Leo’s idea—and maybe this time they’d wear her down and get her pants off.

So she didn’t fight them. She didn’t try to escape back out the door. Squirming, dropping her books and shucking the ragged sweatshirt on which they had such a secure hold, she darted forward. She landed on her twin bed and shoved off from her knees, sliding over the edge and onto the floor with the bed between her and the boys.

At first they laughed; they mocked her for thinking she could hide under the bed.

At first.

Because although she did dive under the bed, she came back out again. And she had a bat.

An old bat. A cracked bat salvaged from the school garbage bin. A bat heavily taped along the handle. But when Kimmer came out from under the bed she sprang to her feet and even in the darkness those boys could see the bat, see her ready stance, see her willingness to fight back with a vengeance.

It bought her the time to escape out the window. That, too, was ready—unlocked, already cracked up past the sticky part so she could merely fling it open. Out onto the roof, over the dormer and down to the lowest corner, racing them—for they knew her escape route. She lobbed the bat to the ground and hung down, dropping off for a hard fall, rolling…reclaiming the bat and running with every ounce of speed she had. Into the woods, over to the barn. As long as she had enough of a head start, they wouldn’t follow.

No doubt they were laughing anyway, bragging about the cruelties they’d managed while they’d had the chance—the soft feel of her breasts, the tug of her wild, unruly hair, the warmth between her legs. No doubt they’d locked her bedroom window, thinking themselves victorious in that.

But Kimmer was thirteen, and she’d learned her lessons well. She knew the rules. She had a metal shim tucked away behind the shutter, and she knew how to wield it silently and swiftly to get back inside.

Kimmer Reed knew how to take care of herself.

“Whoa!” Rio’s voice came from the bedroom darkness like a slap in the face. Kimmer jerked back from the sound and froze, battling the inner conflict of past and present, the overwhelming urge to strike out with the abrupt awareness that this was Rio.

The lights blazed on overhead, revealing Rio stretched out to reach the switch, one arm and his head through a cable sweater, concern on his face.

And Kimmer realized how very close she’d come to striking him, to hitting him hard. Her arm still hesitated halfway through the motion, the heel of her hand ready for the impact, her body already positioned to follow through with a low side kick that would have taken out his knee. Slowly, she straightened. “Oops.”

“Yeah,” Rio said. “That would have been an oops all right. At least, from my point of view. You okay?”

Kimmer cleared her throat and said, as lamely as it got, “You startled me.”

Rio worked his arm through the sweater and tugged it down into place. No great mystery what he was doing; the evening had turned chilly, and the threat of rain hung in the air. He’d not bothered to turn on the lights; he’d left that sweater on the bed this morning and probably planned to be out of the room in a matter of seconds. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Doesn’t answer my question. You okay?”

Kimmer looked away, surprised at the sting of tears. The contrast between the past and the present wasn’t something she could truly reconcile. It made the past that much worse and the present that much more unbelievable. And though she searched for the words to answer him, she couldn’t find any.

He took a step closer, and she realized he was waiting for her to nod, or to gesture, or even just to tell him it was okay. She lifted her head a little—a defiant movement attached to the acknowledgment for which he waited—and when he stepped in close it was to cup his hands around her shoulders and kiss each eyebrow. With his mouth still brushing her forehead, he murmured, “Hang in there.”

Of course, hang in there. When had there ever been any other choice?

By the time they left the small police station in Watkins Glen proper the next day, the rain was coming down in a steady drizzle and Kimmer’s stomach growled a constant reminder that they’d had an early breakfast and talked through lunch.

“So that’s that?” Hank said, hunching his shoulders against the rain. If he had a rain slicker, it was in the Suburban—which was in for repairs, acquiring just enough in the way of fixes to make it roadworthy again. It had actually held up pretty well, right up until the propane explosion had put a piece of shrapnel through the radiator. “No charges being filed?”

“Not yet, aside from the fine for discharging a weapon in a public area. It could still happen.” Kimmer pulled the bill of her cap down closer to her eyes. She’d dressed no-nonsense today—good jeans, a gauzy fitted vest over a stretchy black turtleneck, black post earrings. Rio wore a dark slate sweater, a fine silk knit that fit just right under a tailored collarless jacket that would have looked as good over dress slacks as it did his jeans, though it hadn’t been made for this weather. She admired the view a moment, unwilling to let any conversation with Hank deprive her of such indulgence. “But you know, I’d stick to the speed limit on the way out. The chief seemed to understand pretty well how the action ended up on the docks, and I don’t think his people will cut you any breaks.”

“It’s not my fault I don’t know the area,” Hank said, sullen rebellion in his voice and resentment on his face.

“I’m still not sure why you came to me for help at all.” Kimmer headed for the little group that had split off from them—Rio, Owen Hunter and the lawyer who’d flown in from Albany the night before. Owen hadn’t been taking any chances. “You sure didn’t trust me to handle the trouble you brought along.”

“I didn’t know—” Hank started, but stopped as they reached the group and the other three men looked over at him.

Kimmer couldn’t read Rio—nothing new about that—but she could instantly see that Owen and the lawyer didn’t welcome Hank’s presence. Whatever conversation they’d been having stopped, and Owen started a new one. “Kimmer, I’d like you to come into the office this afternoon. I think it’d be a good idea if we got you on an assignment as soon as possible.”

Kimmer narrowed her eyes at him, flicking a glance at the lawyer to see from his face that it had been his suggestion. “I’m on leave,” she said, though she knew he knew it. A couple of well-earned weeks, for though Rio had moved down a month and a half earlier, she’d almost immediately gone out of the country for several weeks. This was their time to settle in together, and it hadn’t been long enough.

“Things change,” Owen said, and though his rugged face held understanding, his voice was firm. Most of the Hunters were lean of body and aesthetic of feature, the same basic mold for each sibling. Owen had turned out craggy and rugged with a heavyweight boxer’s physique; he had only the Hunter nose, and even that was broader than the aquiline nose of his siblings. Kimmer sometimes wondered if he understood what it was to be the black sheep—except that Owen had otherwise followed in his family footsteps, leaving his younger brother Dave to break the mold.

“What he means,” Hank said, a smirk in place, “is that you screwed up, and now you’ve gotta get out of town so you don’t rub off on the agency.”

Kimmer sent a cool look his way. Then she told Rio, “I’m going to go grab a couple of subs. You want that horrible pastrami thing again?”

“With mustard,” Rio answered promptly. And he waited until Kimmer had moved almost out of earshot—but not quite—to say, “What Owen meant, Hank, is that you screwed up, and you rubbed off on Kimmer.”

Hank snorted. “She can take care of herself.”

And Rio didn’t bother to hide his pride. “Yeah. She can. But that won’t stop me from stepping in if I think I need to.”

Men. All posturing and saber-rattling. But Kimmer found herself smiling all the same.

When she returned with the subs, Owen and the lawyer had left, and the drizzle had stopped. Hank sat on the bumper of Rio’s midsize SUV, and Rio waved, standing by the half-open car door as he fished his cell phone from his pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and picked up the call. “Hey, Caro. What’s—”

When Carolyne Carlsen cut Rio off, Kimmer instantly wondered if she’d gotten herself into another situation. As far as Kimmer knew, Carolyne still handled security issues on some of the federal government’s most sensitive systems—the same job that had gotten her into trouble the previous fall.

But Rio glanced over, saw Kimmer’s attentiveness, and gave the slightest shake of his head. He could still read her like the proverbial book, dammit. And it still shook her sometimes; she still wasn’t used to it. No doubt he could tell just how she felt about Hank, even if Hank himself wouldn’t ever pick up the depth of her true feelings, not even if they came attached to a clue-by-four. “Caro, slow down. Is she…” he stopped, didn’t seem to be able to use the words he’d had in mind, and finally finished, “…still in the hospital?”

Kimmer knew, then. It had to be Rio’s grandmother. His beloved Sobo. Had it been anyone in his nuclear family, his cousin wouldn’t be passing the news along. Though for Rio, of course, “nuclear family” encompassed as many layers as the average extended family.

Kimmer thought of her nuclear family in terms of single digits. One. Herself.

“Who’s she staying with? Mom and Dad? Good. Mom won’t let her do anything more strenuous than flower arrangement. Do they need—”

Quiet Carolyne was overwrought indeed, to keep cutting Rio off in midsentence. “Okay. Okay. I hear you. I promise. I won’t go. Not without checking first. And I’ll give them a day or two before I call. Yes, I promise. I won’t even send an e-mail.”

That, Kimmer knew, was calculated to get at least a small laugh out of Carolyne. For as much as Carolyne was connected and interconnected to the online community—wireless satellite connections for every machine she owned and then some—Rio was disconnected. He hadn’t yet gotten his hand-me-down laptop to work with Kimmer’s slow rural dialup. Now the worry on his brow smoothed a little, and she knew the tactic had been at least partially successful. But his voice, when he spoke again, was as intense as Rio got. “Listen, Caro, you call me if anything changes. I mean it. Okay. Look, we’ll talk later. Soon. Thanks for letting me know.” And he listened another moment or two, nodding before a final goodbye.

“Did you ever notice,” Hank said into the silence that followed, into the connection Kimmer and Rio had established, a silent communication during which she let him know she’d followed and understood the development, “that people on TV sitcoms never say goodbye? They just hang up.”

“Here.” Kimmer thrust the sub sandwich bag at him, and he pushed himself off the bumper to reach for it. “I got you turkey and onions with mustard.” An old favorite. Ick. “There’s a soda in there, too. I thought you might be hungry enough to eat on the way home.” I thought I might be hungry enough to eat on the way home, but if it keeps your mouth busy, first dibs are all yours.

And then she cranked the window down to let fresh air dilute the stinging odor of onions.

Once home, Kimmer didn’t linger. Owen expected her at Hunter, and she wanted to get it over with. She also wanted to escape Hank. And mostly, she needed time to consider Rio’s situation.

The blunt truth was that she had no idea how to respond to his grandmother’s illness, a conjecture he confirmed in a few murmured words before she threw her tough black Eagle Creek bag in the Miata and headed the twenty minutes to the Full Cry vineyards and winery. Sobo had been diagnosed with mild congestive heart failure, briefly hospitalized and was now adjusting to a new regime of medicines while her family made hasty arrangements for the partial nursing care she’d need until she stabilized. And it was killing Rio to be down here, to be away from them…not even to call them. But Carolyne had said they needed the space to make the necessary arrangements, and that he should wait.

That left Rio in limbo. He couldn’t go rushing off to save the situation as he had so many times in the past, he couldn’t pull off his casual laid-back average-guy mode to continue life as normal, and he wasn’t made for sitting around doing nothing.

Kimmer didn’t know what to say to him, what to do for him. She didn’t have the faintest idea what it felt like to have family—people known from childhood, people immersed in and part of her life—in crisis.

So she didn’t linger. She stayed long enough to see Hank set up in front of the television and to see Rio changing into shorts, a cut-off sweatshirt and running shoes, and she didn’t say anything absurd like “It’ll be okay,” because who knew? She just ran a hand down his arm, waited for him to notice, and said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Full Cry Winery was nestled between two of New York state’s southern tier Finger Lakes, near the shore of Seneca Lake. Kimmer knew the winding road between her Glenora hilltop home and Full Cry well enough to make navigation second nature—and to sail past the speed limits when occasion warranted, slowing down only for the tiny town of Rock Stream.

At midafternoon, the area’s surfeit of farmers and grape growers were at work, but few of them took to the road and Kimmer had command of it to travel south in record time. She pulled past the lot of the old barn converted to a visitor’s center and around behind to the addition and modern outbuildings where working areas of the fully functioning winery were located. The double-level cellar started beneath the business offices and ran under the barn. Kimmer liked to walk it in the hottest part of summer and absorb the stringent smells of tannin and crushed grape and wine and damp concrete.

Not far from the parking lot sat the Hunter family home, a surprisingly modest structure. And snuggled away behind the winery’s business section, buffered by discreet security measures, the Hunter Agency maintained its own entrance to its offices, one that was, without fanfare, labeled Viniculture Development.

Kimmer reached it and flipped up the weather cover over the security pad next to a steel door that gleamed even in the darkness, pressing her thumb against the glass. It gave a brief blue glow and then issued an invitation with the quiet thunk of disengaging locks.

As she pushed through the door she considered this abrupt change of plans. Hunter maintained an extensive string of operatives, from part-timers to those who lived undercover, and although they all had specialties, they were also widely cross-trained. Kimmer herself fell in the middle of the spectrum—a full-time operative who went from job to job, usually undercover. “Chimera,” they called her, because she was so adept at reading people that she could live up to their expectations, going undetected. She could be all things to all people.

Hunter made good use of her knack to suss out people and situations, using her where their background intel had failed, inserting her into quickly developing situations to assess personalities and even clients. Often their game plan developed around Kimmer’s reports.

Kimmer went down the curving, carpeted concrete stairs. They spit her out at the end of a long hallway, where she had to navigate another security feature, this one a chamber of bulletproof glass that let her in but only let her out when it was satisfied about her identity. The whole handprint this time.

Gadgets. You gotta love ’em. Personally she trusted her own judgment over any gadget, and she was just waiting for the time one of their own became stuck in this flytrap.

With a pneumatic hiss, the door slid aside and released her into the Hunter Agency proper, a place of no-nonsense but quality furnishings, never metal where warm oak would do, everything oiled and polished. No doors squeaked; no dust dared settle or fingerprints linger. She went straight to Owen’s office, through the small area occupied by his secretary during “normal” working hours, and rapped lightly on his door before opening it and inviting herself in.

He looked up from his desk, expectation on his craggy features. He raised a heavy, dark brow at her. “What took you so long?”

Since she’d basically taken no time at all, Kimmer ignored him. She cared more about the fact that he was annoyed and trying to hide it. “I see you,” she told him, sitting in the chair across from his desk. They both knew she wasn’t talking about his mere physical presence. I see your hidden stress and anger.

Owen sighed, acknowledging the annoyance as he shuffled the papers he’d been studying aside. “Bad timing,” he said.

“Is there ever a good time to blow up a propane tank and a couple of bad guys with it?”

That got a wry smile out of him as he leaned back in his chair. “Point well taken. And I do realize you did what you could to contain the situation.”

“Given that I had zero notice.” Kimmer scowled at the thought of Hank’s arrival, and then again at the way he’d rabbited from the hilltop. “If he’d just stayed on the damned hill where I put him…”

Owen shrugged. “I’m not sure I blame him. I think your brother was in way over his head.”

Kimmer thought back over the events of the previous day. “He came here hoping I would kill them. He thinks I’m the kind of person who’ll just…do that. And damned if I didn’t turn them both into toast. Never even had a chance to talk to them.” She frowned at the situation a moment. “There’s no telling if they’ll ever be able to ID the guys. You can bet Hank’s not telling.”

Silence fell between them, until Owen said, “And how’s your brother strike you?”

Kimmer blinked. “What do you mean? You know I can’t read him. A fact for which I’m almost grateful, I should say.”

“I’m not sure it adds up, that’s all,” Owen said. “If Hank saw someone killed, why is it safe to go back?”

“He told me the dead guys were the only others to know about it. I gather it wasn’t a large organization. Just a few guys running a chop shop under the cover of Hank’s salvage business.”

“Hmm.” Owen gave a thoughtful rub of his chin. “Would have been nice to have talked to those two men.”

“Too bad toast doesn’t talk.” Pieces of toast, to judge by the condition of the sedan after the explosion. “Wildly scattered” was an understated way to have put it; identification would be impossible unless they’d been in the DNA database. No wonder Owen felt he needed to appease the local law agencies. “Tell me you’re not sending me away.”

“I’m not sending you away.”

“Because I really can’t—” Oh. She looked at him, realized she’d been about to say she couldn’t leave Rio right now, not again. Not with his grandmother sick. Then she realized she didn’t actually know if that was best. Maybe Rio just needed to do his thing. “Okay, then what’s up?”

“You’re going to put your unique abilities to work right here.”

She tipped her head at him, an unspoken is that so?

“The governor is making his rounds across the state this spring,” Owen said. “Election year prep. I’ve offered Hunter’s services as backup security. You won’t be the only one. I want you working undercover as he comes through Watkins Glen next week. From arrival to departure, I want you in the background. Watching.”

Because if someone aimed to cause trouble, she’d spot it before anyone else. He didn’t have to say it. Hunter had taken advantage of her knack often enough that such things had been said many times before.

“The others?” she asked.

“Three other agents. Also in the background, but in an obvious security capacity. You won’t have to interface with them. You’ll be reporting straight to the chief of police. You’ll also be blending in to their arrangements, not the other way around. The point is to provide a seamless extra layer of protection without causing them any extra work.”

Kimmer tapped her fingers on her knee. “Are we expecting trouble?”

“Not at all.” Owen smiled at her, the look he got when he was happy at how he’d worked things out. “It was an offer I made to take some of the pressure off the department. A gesture of goodwill, you might say. Or even by way of apology.”

Some gesture. Hunter Agency time didn’t come cheap. Kimmer winced.

Owen raised a hand. “Look at me,” he said. “I want you to know I’m not trying to pull one over on you here. The truth is, it’s good for us to make these gestures now and then. We want the local law to think of us as people who work with them and within their boundaries. We want them to understand that this is our home, too.”

Kimmer looked. She found him unfazed by her scrutiny…possibly even slightly amused. She made a grumbling noise and settled deeper in her chair. “So when—?”

“The end of the week. Give the chief a call first thing tomorrow.” He tossed a business card across the desk—one of his own, but he’d scrawled a phone number on the back. A real high-tech moment.

Kimmer stretched forward to scoop up the card…and then she sat there, deep in the chair, flipping the card back and forth in her fingers.

After a moment, Owen raised his eyebrows. “This isn’t about the new assignment.” When she shot him an annoyed look, he just grinned. “You know, the rest of us are able to make observations and deductions, too. I know you well enough for that. More than well enough, for all you don’t like to hear it. So spit it out—what’s bothering you?”

Kimmer hesitated as something on his flat screen computer monitor caught his attention. He turned to type in a few quick words and then turned back to her, expectant.

Damn. Maybe she should have run while she had the chance.

But she hadn’t, so she took a deep breath. “You have a family…”

“A rather large one.” Owen smiled a compressed and crooked smile.

“Then…when you get bad news about one of you…”

After she’d hesitated long enough, he prompted, “Bad news as in ‘Dave’s breaking away to do his own thing instead of following the family business,’ or bad news as in someone’s dead?”

“Jeez, Owen, you’ve got to let that thing with Dave go,” Kimmer said. “He’s still in the family business. He’s just doing it differently.”

“Excellent use of distraction,” he said. “Two points. And minus two points for evading the question.”

Kimmer gave him a sulky look, just because she knew she could get away with it. “As in bad news, someone’s sick. Someone old is sick. Someone who means a lot to the whole family.”

“Got it. What about it?”

“What’s…someone else supposed to do? Oh, screw it. Me. I. What am I supposed to do? I don’t get the whole family thing. I don’t get hanging together through thick and thin. I don’t get how you drop everything and try to make things right even if you know you can’t. I don’t get any of it! How am I supposed to do the right thing?”

Owen cleared his throat. “Rio has had some bad news, I take it.”

Kimmer nodded. “I feel like I’m supposed to do something about it. But I can’t fake it. I can’t even truly believe it—that his family could be that close.”

Owen hesitated for a long, long moment, looking at Kimmer until she felt uneasy. He thought she should have this answer. And at last, he gave it to her. “What if it were your mother?”

She almost jumped right to her feet. To prevent herself, she froze, stiffening enough that she thought she might even creak. “That’s not fair, Owen. It’s not the same, not the same at all.” She and her mother had been bonded by abuse and adversity. They’d never had a normal relationship—just an intense one. “My mother taught me how to survive. But she also married my father in the first place…and then she left me with him. I don’t have a relationship with her, I have a memory of her. And I learned the very hard lesson that even the people who might love you still end up leaving you.” A long speech for her, especially when it came to this topic.

Owen shook his head. “You can’t truly believe that. Or why invite Rio down here?”

That was easy. “Because he was willing to take the chance.” She relaxed slightly; it was either that or turn into one giant body cramp. “Don’t get me wrong. What we have is…something I’d never even considered for myself. But that doesn’t mean it’s forever. As soon as he sees an advantage in being elsewhere…” She stopped herself. She hadn’t meant to say that much. Not nearly that much. In fact, she hadn’t even realized she believed it possible of Rio until she heard her own words.

Maybe she was just afraid of it.

Owen regarded her for a good long while—one of the few people comfortable enough with himself that he could do that, knowing of her knack. Most people fidgeted, wondering what she saw. Owen held himself quietly, with the unusual dignity he carried around like an extra jacket. “As to your original question,” he said finally. “Think of your mother in those days when she was the most important to you. When she could still protect you. And then think what would have made you feel better when you were frightened for her.”

Not to wonder if my damned father would come for me next. But that was the easy answer, the smart-ass answer that while perfectly truthful, also didn’t plumb the question as deeply as could be done. So she nodded. “You think I don’t have to get the whole family thing in order to…be there…for Rio.”

“I think you don’t,” he agreed, and then, totally unexpectedly, reached into a drawer for a set of keys and tossed them her way. “These belong to Hank’s Suburban.”

“It’s fixed already?” Kimmer eyed the keys in disbelief.

“Consider it a favor,” Owen said dryly.

“I cannot imagine you wanting to do my brother a favor after all of this.”

Owen snorted, as coarse a response as he ever made. “The favor was for you,” he said. “And come to think of it, for me, too. I need your head on straight next week.”

“My make-nice week,” she murmured, and reached for the keys. “Don’t worry, Owen. From the way Hank’s acting, he’s had enough of me, too.”

Chapter 4

T he house clanged with the sound of free-weights landing on the thin, cheap basement carpet over the concrete floor. Kimmer hesitated just inside the doorway, tossing her girly red ostrich tote on the nearest chair and her matching red driving cap on top of it. Otherwise her outfit was demure enough: black stovepipe jeans with elaborate stitching on the calves, a black silk turtleneck and a gauzy vest over it all. Just the red at her wrist—her watchband—and the red detailing on her flat, open-toe sandals.

Just enough to peek out at the world in a sassy way, and to leave her brother in the position of snatching surreptitious looks when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. For his mouth to open as though he might say something as she drove him to Full Cry Winery to pick up the Suburban, and then to close again on those words unspoken.

She’d pulled into the employee parking lot near the back end of the Suburban, and she hesitated without turning off the engine—without even putting the vehicle in Park. “Look, Hank,” she said as he reached for the door handle. “Now you’ve seen me. Now you can go back and tell the others that I’m up here, but I didn’t turn out the way you wanted and I can’t be convinced to change and I don’t want anything to do with you. Any of you. Whatever power you once had over my life is long gone.”

Hank grunted in an unconvinced way. “Maybe not. But you didn’t turn me away.”

“I didn’t have the chance.” Kimmer kept her tone flat. “Don’t make the mistake of bringing trouble to my home twice.”

Hank shook his head. “You’ve got your nice car and your house and you think you’re better’n all of us now, but you still haven’t learned the first thing about what it means to be a family.”

“Wrong.” She smiled at him, showing teeth. “I know what it means to you, and I want none of it.”

With that he’d gotten out of her car, hauling his cheap nylon duffel from the backseat. He threw her a sarcastic, half-assed salute and headed for his own vehicle, and Kimmer laid down a satisfying strip of rubber on the way out.

And now Kimmer stood in the entry of her house, thinking that it seemed like forever since she and Rio had been here alone and not just a handful of days.

“Kimmer?” Rio’s voice filtered up from the floor beneath her.

“Here,” she said. “And alone.”

He muttered something she couldn’t quite catch and didn’t really need to, and there was a final clink of shifting weight before he climbed the old wooden stairs leading from the basement, creaking on those fourth and seventh steps as usual. He came out of the kitchen with a towel around his neck and one of those T-shirts with the cut-off sleeves that showed his biceps to perfection, and that pair of shorts that hugged his ass just right.

“You’re wearing those on purpose,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. Worry dogged his eyes, but the tough-guy-I’m-working-out expression let her know he wasn’t interested in talking about it—about his grandmother—just now.

He grinned, convincingly enough. He’d been drinking that Kool-Aid again, leaving a smirch of blue at the corner of his mouth. “Do you think so?” He stalked closer, hands on either end of the towel, an exaggerated prowl. Sweat blotted his shirt here and there, but not so much as to cry out for a shower.

She didn’t answer. She told him, “Hank is gone. And Hunter’s not sending me anywhere.”

That diverted his prowling a moment. “No?”

“I’ve got some local spy-girl duty,” she said. “Maybe I’ll have the chance to throw myself in front of an important political figure in the line of duty.”

“The governor’s visit,” he guessed. “That’s not bad. It’s barely more than a drive-through.”

“As penance goes, I’ll take it. But sooner or later, I’ll go out on assignment again.”

She didn’t have to say any more; he shook his head. “I still haven’t decided if I want to go back to that kind of work,” he said. “I’ve been burned badly enough. I don’t have that need anymore, the drive to go out and take care of the things no one else even knows about. Make the world safe, blah blah blah. Been there, done that…and there are others better qualified than I. You, for instance.”

“You were driven enough last fall.”

“That was different. That was family. You know that. And you know I hardly blend into the crowd. I found ways to use that to my advantage with the agency. I was good for drawing attention away from other case officers when they needed it.”

She could well imagine that. At six-three and with that bright blond hair, those striking angles in his features, the natural warmth of his rich brown eyes, he’d drawn her attention quickly enough.

“I can be hidden, but…it’s not what I’m best at. And my back means there’s no way Hunter could use me in their more…active assignments. I’m done with paramilitary. So…” He shrugged. “I can find work with boats here, too. I don’t have any problem with that.”

“It’s less of a commitment,” she guessed, surprised that it hurt to say it. It was common sense, that was all. Dabble your toes in the water before jumping in. If she hadn’t just had that conversation with Owen she wouldn’t think twice about it. That conversation in which she realized that she still fully expected Rio to walk away when it suited him.

Who could blame him? It wasn’t as if Kimmer herself had ever been anything but a loner, using her personal interactions as transactions and trade-offs.

And Rio just shrugged, a gesture that neither confirmed nor denied but simply didn’t get into it.

Kimmer took a deliberate breath. “Okay,” she said, letting go of the subject quickly enough to surprise him. “Besides, anyone would need time to recover after meeting my very suave brother. Did he leave you any of those fried pork rinds?”

“OldCat loves ’em,” Rio reported.

Kimmer shuddered with exaggeration. She tipped her head back and scrubbed her fingers through her near-black hair—not long enough for the curls to do any more than suggest soft waves along her head and a few wispy, feathery curls at her nape, but still long enough to ruffle under her fingers. She shook like a dog, shoulders all the way down to her fingers, torso down to her hips, making a rolling-R noise of a shivery nature. “There,” she said, straightening to find Rio watching her with interest. “All those Hank vibes…gone.”

“Do that again,” he said.

“Do which? The whole—?” and she shook her arms to demonstrate.

“More the part with the hips.”

She gave him a speculative look from beneath half-lidded eyes; his own widened. She had no idea how he’d ever been a spy guy.

Because what he shows you isn’t what he’d ever show anyone else.

He swallowed visibly. A flicker of tension ran up his arm, a brief clench of muscle. Kimmer murmured, “You goof,” as if it were actually an endearing phrase, and then a moment later it occurred to her that she was kissing him and had been kissing him for who knows how long. Pressed up against his slightly damp shirt, fingers pressed into the hard muscle of his arms, hips against his and angled to connect most intimately. She pulled back long enough to tell him in her most serious voice, “You must use this power only for good,” and then to laugh with pleasure at the dazed expression already glazing his eyes.

Somewhere in the back of her head Owen’s words trickled through, and she followed his advice the only way she knew how. A long, slow kiss that said I’m here for you. A lick and nibble at the corner of his jaw, I care. A delicate nip at his ear, one that made him groan, made his knees buckle down in the way they sometimes did, made him surge back up again to hold her more tightly, lifting until her toes merely brushed the floor. Slow kisses, her fingers skimming his back beneath the shirt and down, caressing cheeks that clenched under her touch. I’m here. I care. I love, as best I can.

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