Hot on the Hunt. Melissa Cutler

      Chapter 4

      John didn’t have time to worry about Alicia, especially with his fate hanging in such limbo. He had enough to think about with hunting down Rory and dodging the military and coast guard vessels that swarmed the water surrounding St. Croix as he considered where and how to sneak ashore.

      He’d hitched a ride back to his boat from the yacht owner who’d heard his gunshot, and though his clothes were almost dry and his bag of guns and money had been right where he’d left it on the floor of the boat, it had been a pride-swallowing, tough slog of an hour.

      With military and federal forces descending on the island and the dark, threatening clouds of Hurricane Hannah forming in the distant horizon, John doubted Rory would linger there long. There were only a few ways one could get on and off St. Croix, and John had no doubt the airport and main port in Christiansted Harbor were already on lockdown.

      The next closest island was over a hundred nautical miles away. Since there was no way Rory would chance returning to St. Thomas, he would have to hire a private charter or steal a private helicopter, plane or a boat large enough to handle the choppy open waters. Even then, the coast guard and military would have satellites and radars to keep tabs on the water and airspace surrounding the island.

      As far as John was concerned, he was in the best position to find Rory, not only because of his intimate knowledge of both St. Croix and the man who was his former best friend, but because he was in the ironic position of being the forgotten one, the ghost operative. There wasn’t anyone in the world who cared enough about John’s movement to pay attention to where he was or what he was doing.

      The only person who even knew John was an interested party in what happened to Rory and Alicia was his ICE buddy Logan, and even if Logan thought he might go after Rory, he had no idea how close John had been living to the unfolding events or how quickly he was capable of responding. With any luck, he would slip onto the island undetected, nab Rory, extract a confession from him, then turn him over to ICE before Hannah’s wind speed hit fifty knots.

      John’s plan not to think about Alicia was easier said than done, though. Because the moment the luxury estates and resorts dotting the green hills of St. Croix’s coast got near enough that he could make out balconies and artfully arranged palm trees in courtyards, all he could think was that she was out there, too. The same 134 miles that trapped Rory with scores of federal agents and U.S. troops also trapped her.

      Had she already found and killed Rory? He hadn’t forgotten her hesitation back on St. Thomas to do just that, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. On their black ops team, there was no getting around necessary violence when their duty to defend their country demanded it, which occasionally meant making a kill. Alicia’s conviction to do what was right for her country and her lethal grace were two of the things he loved about her. Perhaps, now that duty to country had been stripped from her job description, her moral compass had changed. Unless...

      Unless what if she’d lost her touch? Post-traumatic stress disorder was common in victims of violence. Either that or there was some reason, deep down inside her, why she wanted Rory alive. Regardless of why Alicia had done what she did, it was time to set his musings aside and admit the very real danger that she wouldn’t have the chance to try to kill Rory again because she’d be apprehended by authorities here on St. Croix, if she hadn’t already.

      The idea made his chest tight, which pissed him off. She’d abandoned him in middle of the Caribbean Sea, of all the damn things. She hadn’t even seen fit to throw down a floatation device. So what if the authorities got her? He had no business caring what her fate was anymore. If she got caught, then his path to Rory would be clearer. Try as he might, he just couldn’t sell himself on that argument, though. Despite everything, she was the woman he’d once loved. Despite everything, there as a part of him that cared about her still.

      He wove a path along the north side of the island, away from busy Christiansted Harbor. With the binoculars he kept in the boat’s console, he scanned the coast, but he couldn’t keep his thoughts from returning to Alicia.

      It had always been that way between them—he cared too much and she acted as if she barely afforded him a thought. She’d made him fight for a spot in her bed. Made him demand it. At the time, in the middle of it all, he’d liked being the one calling the shots in their relationship. Fighting for what he wanted was his comfort zone. As with everything else in his life—his career, his family—with her he’d let his stubborn streak act as a battering ram, breaking through her self-protective walls. He’d not only loved Alicia, body and soul, but he’d loved the challenge of her, too.

      He saw no sign of Rory’s boat at Salt River Bay, which had been his first hunch. Intimately familiar with almost all the docks, piers, bars and hotels on St. Croix because St. Croix had been the first haven he landed on after his life fell apart, he pressed north, where the shoreline evolved into looming green cliffs untouched by civilization and edged with shallow, yellow sand beaches. It was unlikely that Rory had ditched the boat and swam ashore—which would’ve been hell on his gunshot wound—so he’d either tied off at one of the few docks on this end of the island or he’d gone to the island’s south side.

      Sure enough, bobbing in the water alongside kayaks and dinghies tied to the small private dock jutting from the Grand Ammaly Bay Resort, he spotted the boat Rory had stolen.

      That cleared up where Rory’s touchdown point had been, but John knew better than to take the bait. Even if the boat hadn’t been left in plain sight as a decoy and was a bona fide signal of Rory’s trail, Rory wouldn’t have lingered at the Grand Ammaly for long. Most likely, he’d gone shopping for unattended purses and wallets at the resort’s restaurants and lounges, then stolen a car. John’s best bet was that Rory’s next move involved treating his gunshot wound.

      He also bet that Alicia had started her hunt for Rory at the resort. She didn’t have many weaknesses as an operative, but she was a computer genius, first and foremost, and had the accompanying literal, statistical logic to go along with that gift. John had witnessed it enough back when they were teammates. It was the same mind-set that made her an expert at computer technology, but it would only hurt her in the Caribbean, where scarcely anything followed the rules of American-bred literal logic.

      The question now was, after Rory ditched the speedboat and gathered funds, where would he go to tend his wound? Compounding the issue was that Rory didn’t need someone else to administer first aid. Green Berets were trained to take care of themselves and each other. It was a critical skill to have when operating behind enemy lines, as they often had on their missions. Once, in Afghanistan, John had sustained a nasty slice to his side while training Afghan soldiers in hand-to-hand combat techniques and Rory had administered ten stitches in the kitchen of an abandoned, bombed-out house.

      All Rory would need was first-aid supplies and a secluded, clean place to patch himself up. On the sleepy, vacation paradise of St. Croix, there was definitely no shortage of secluded hideaways. Good thing John knew Eugene Flyer, bar owner and island informant extraordinaire.

      He cranked the wheel of his boat in the opposite direction of the resort, toward Eugene’s bar, but something stopped him from taking the throttle out of neutral. Alicia.

      What if she’d caught up with Rory before he’d had time to flee the resort? What if she was on the verge of killing him? John was so near, he had to check. The idea of seeing Alicia again made his heart pound. He wished he knew how to sever the grip she had on his heart, but the best he could do for now was try to ignore it.

      But as he spun the wheel back toward the resort and pushed the throttle, he couldn’t stop