Hot on the Hunt. Melissa Cutler

shock of awareness of him was, because Alicia refused to yield her power to a man, especially one who’d betrayed her. It didn’t matter how he made her feel in the innermost, darkest places of her heart; she knew better now. His sudden appearance might’ve stripped her bare, but so what? The only defense against the pervading sense of vulnerability she always felt in his presence was to get mad.

      She stomped over the dock toward him, not that he seemed to notice while he ran a check of the Remington for unspent ammo, so she got right up in his face. “You helped him escape.”

      He huffed and shook his head as though she’d told a joke that was in poor taste. “Is that it, huh? You think that’s what this Remington’s for—to help him escape?” He turned away and shoved the rifle in his bag, then took his HK45 out of the back of his pants.

      The ache of longing in hearing that growl of a voice that had haunted her dreams for twenty long months was so powerful that she hardly knew what to think anymore. She forced her anger back up to the surface. “Of course you helped him escape. You’re the Robin to his Batman. Always the sidekick, never the alpha. You’re not capable of being the alpha dog. Never were.”

      As far as insults went, she knew that one had to hurt, especially to an elite soldier like John. It was an old nerve of his, one she’d learned when they were lovers. She felt like a sore loser exploiting the intimate details of their time together—God knew she had as many secret flaws and faults as he did—but she was desperate to regain the power she’d lost in his presence.

      And maybe, if she were being honest with herself, she was a bit desperate to see if she could spark a fire in his eyes again. Anything but the ice-cold steel that they were now.

      Rather than show fire, though, his eyes got colder. He ran his tongue over his lower lip, then gave her body a dispassionate once-over. Jaw tight and eyes frosty, he swaggered the few steps to her and leaned his face in. She held her breath, held perfectly still, as his lips brushed her temple, then grazed her hair. “You won’t believe what I’m capable of, Phoenix.”

      She wanted to touch him so badly the need ached inside her like a hollow, brittle thing. She balled her hands into fists. Show me, she almost said. “I’m not Phoenix anymore. At least not to you.”

      He backed his face up. Rubbing his jaw, he nodded. “I’m going to get to him first, you know.”

      “I can’t let you do that.”

      “I can’t let you stop me,” he countered.

      With any other person, if she wanted to stop him, she’d shoot him in the leg or wrestle him to the ground, then bind his hands and legs. With John, she could get away with neither. He had his gun in hand already and, besides, he was a faster shot than she. To top that off, he knew all her close-combat moves, which eliminated the element of surprise—her only advantage when trying to physically dominate a man nearly twice her size.

      Back to basics. The police were going to descend on the harbor at any moment, the U.S. military, too, as they searched for Rory. She swiveled, gun extended, and shot out the tires of the motorcycle. At least now he couldn’t speed past her to steal the next fastest boat in the harbor.

      He raised his brows, bemused but unimpressed. Then he lifted his gun and aimed past her, to the street beyond the boardwalk. With a casual squeeze of the trigger that belied the complicated nature of the shot, he took out the front windshield of her rental car at least a hundred meters away. Guess he’d seen her drive up earlier. That meant he’d seen her interaction with those kids, too. The realization brought a sudden flush of heat to her cheeks. Not cool.

      He flicked a lock of her hair off her shoulder. “Are you going to shoot me next? Because I’m not really keen on reciprocating that one.”

      She flipped the rest of her hair behind her and gave him her best scowl. “I’ve been shot enough to last a lifetime, thank you very much.”

      The allusion to her injury at Rory’s hand hung in the air between them. John’s jaw went stiff and the ice in his eyes seemed to spread to the rest of his body. The peal of police sirens cut through the tension.

      John stared out over the water. Alicia followed his gaze. Rory had shot straight out of the bay and was heading south toward St. Croix. John hitched his canvas bag higher on his shoulder and walked past her. “Those sirens are my cue to beat it. See ya around, Phoenix.”

      “He’s mine to kill, John.”

      He didn’t even bother turning around to answer. “Maybe so, but I have other plans for him.” He gave her a little salute before breaking into a run to the right, moving southwest along the boardwalk.

      Alicia shook some clarity into herself, shoved away the overwhelming flood of emotions John had evoked and concealed her gun. Then she took off left in search of something—anything—that would get her to St. Croix faster than either of the two men who’d wrecked her life for the second time in as many years.

      * * *

      Well. That was something else. This day certainly wasn’t turning out like John had thought it would when he’d woken up that morning. True, he’d been looking to shake himself out of complacency, and being in Alicia’s orbit certainly rocked him off his axis.

      He roared through the Caribbean on the boat he’d docked not too far away from the one Rory had stolen, the speedboat that was now visible through his binoculars, as he fought to recover from the confrontation with Alicia.

      He hadn’t been prepared for the toxic cocktail of relief that she looked to be thriving, at least physically, after her injury mixed with a fresh shock of fury at how she’d dismissed him as a corrupt agent without ever hearing him out about what had happened that day. Beyond the fury from his memories, she’d known exactly how to hurt him.

      Always the sidekick. How dare she slap him in the face with one of the deep, secret parts of himself he’d shared with her after they’d made love. It wasn’t even a valid argument. Green Beret snipers always worked in pairs, with each able to perform both jobs of spotter and shooter with deadly, world-class accuracy. Just because John had been the spotter more times than not didn’t mean he was any less skilled than Rory. And she couldn’t be talking about their stint on ICE’s black ops team. A team could only have one leader, and that hadn’t been Alicia, either, so he wasn’t sure how she got off separating her experience in black ops with his.

      And there he went, arguing the point as if he was trying to convince himself. He smacked his forehead, royally pissed at his stupid, middle-child insecurities rearing their ugly heads. While the lingering, unjustified sensation of being less than compared to the rest of the team had taken a turn for the justified after the entire crew assumed the worst of him on the turn of a dime, exile had forced him to rely only on himself. He was stronger, faster and more lethal than he ever had been in the group or as Rory’s sniper partner.

      He pushed the throttle to the max, careening into the open ocean until St. Thomas was nothing but a shadow behind him. St. Croix was forty miles south, not too much of a stretch on the Caribbean’s relatively calm waters. This was a well-traveled boat route for ferries and locals, and despite it being hurricane season with one such predicted storm a day or two away, he spotted cruise ships, luxury yachts and even the occasional water skiers and kayakers.

      After thirty minutes of travel, he no longer needed binoculars to keep tabs on Rory’s location. In another twenty minutes, the nose of John’s boat raced alongside the back of his, and in no time flat, they were careening neck and neck toward the green hills rising on St. Croix in the distance.

      Time to step up his efforts. Bracing for impact, he slammed the side of his boat into Rory’s. The blow knocked Rory’s boat off course, but didn’t slow him down. John had to crank the wheel to stay even with him. He couldn’t see how it was possible to damage Rory’s boat enough to stop it without doing the same to his. He needed a new strategy.

      When they were neck and neck again, John climbed onto the captain’s chair. With a hand on the windshield for balance, he crouched with one foot on the chair and the other on the