The Huntress: full-length sexy romantic suspense
Read The Huntress: full-length sexy romantic suspense Online
Authors: Dorothy McFalls
Tags: #romantic suspense
* * * * *
THE HUNTRESS
By
Dorothy McFalls
* * * * *
Kindle Edition
Dedication
For the strong women I've been lucky enough to know and, sadly, the world has since lost. I have been forever changed.
Without them, I would have never had the courage to write. God bless you.
Chapter One
Vega Brookes sighed and let her head sink deep into Butch Polsen’s pillow. She couldn’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon.
Butch was a hulk of a man with edges rougher than shattered glass, but damn, he knew how to touch a woman’s body. Stripped nude, he balanced on top of her with his battered, leather cowboy hat sitting at a crooked angle on top of his blond head. His blue eyes sparkled. He liked to be on top. It was a power thing for him.
Today, she wanted him on top, too. She’d spent most of the previous night chasing a drug pusher with an arsenal of guns who got his jollies putting nasty holes in people and didn’t think bothering to show up for his own jury trial important. The slushy Detroit alleyways she’d chased him through had nearly ruined her favorite lace-up boots. And they weren’t cheap.
So when Butch pushed her onto his bed and climbed on top, she didn’t complain. Let him do all the work, she was tired.
At the moment, he was tracing a line with that hot tongue of his around her breasts until her nipples turned hard before working his way up her neck.
“Butch,” she whispered on a weighty breath, “do that thing with your fingers. That thing that makes me crazy.”
He raised his head and smiled. He had that look in his eyes, that sharp, assessing stare. Vega knew what it meant.
“Let me tie you up.” His hot breath caressed her neck.
“Butch—” The shrill chirp of her digital phone cut everything short, including her need to lose herself with him no matter how rough he liked to make things. With a push, she rolled him off her and slipped from the bed.
“Ignore it,” he growled.
“Can’t. Told Jack I’d be available.” She pulled her leather jacket from the chair, and her phone from its inside pocket.
“Jack!” Butch punched the bed.
“Yep?” she said into the phone. Standing in the middle of Butch’s one-room apartment not worrying about the uncovered windows or her lack of clothes, she scribbled a barely legible name and court date into her small notebook. “He’ll be easy to get. This is what, the third time I’ve had to bring him to court? I feel like a freaking nanny or something.”
But as long as the money was good, she’d happily bring in Lionel every day.
Lionel Wahl, aka “The Great Wall” because of his massive size, followed a rigid routine, including his attempts to give the law the slip. If she worked quickly, his pickup would bring her an easy paycheck. She uttered a quick goodbye to Jack—the owner of the bail enforcement agency that signed her paycheck—before snapping the tiny silver phone shut and jamming it back into her jacket pocket.
“You’re going to leave? Just like that? In the middle of…of…? Hell, Vega.” Butch punched the bed again just as Vega leaned under the kitchen table to grab her panties.
“Jack expects all his hunters to do local jobs when we’re in town. It’s good PR.” She stood and slipped her black t-shirt over her head. The word “Goddess” blazed in gold letters, letters that strained across her chest thanks to a malfunctioning coin-operated washer in New Mexico that shrank an entire load of shirts by practically boiling them. The small shirts had worked to her benefit, though, by giving her fugitives a distracting view while she cuffed them.
She gave her lace panties a little shake before stepping into them, and then wondered where her skirt had landed.
“Jack takes advantage of you. He sends you on all the high-profile hard-to-find cases. That’s good enough PR.” He pulled himself from the bed. He was a good seven inches taller and at least one hundred pounds heavier. He liked to use his size to his advantage. “You don’t need to do this local shit for him, too.”
She laughed and gave his washboard stomach a light slap. “Don’t be a jealous ass. Jack’s my uncle.”
She found her skirt on the sofa under Butch’s jeans. “The longer I wait.” She inched the supple leather over her hips. “The harder it’ll be to find my quarry.”
Butch growled but tugged his pants on. He hastily buttoned them, and then straightened his cowboy hat. Sometimes the guy could put on quite a show.
“Look.” She gave him a hard kiss square on the lips. “This shouldn’t take all day. I can get back by six or so.”
“Maybe I won’t be here.” His rough expression hardened into a stare frightening enough to melt any woman into a quivering mass of nerves. But Vega wasn’t just any woman. She thrived on tangling with dangerous men.
It was her job.
She was a bounty hunter.
“Guess I’ll have my fun without you tonight, then.” She checked the clip on her Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol and snapped it back into place.
Sure, he could do things to her body that made her wonder if she might explode. That talent didn’t make him indispensable.
Butch was her lover. A convenience. Jack was family. In her life, family came first. She shrugged on her leather jacket, quickly braided her hair into a cord that hung down her back, and made a straight path to the apartment door.
“I hate your hair like that,” he muttered. He leaned his head against the doorjamb and frowned. He looked almost endearing.
For a moment, she felt guilty about leaving him and his bed. “Look,” she said, “I promised Jack I’d help him out.”
“I know. I know. You always keep your promises.” He sounded pitiful. “Call me?”
Outside, snow fell in those large globs that stuck together, promising that the streets would soon get muddier and icier. She let the damp bite revive her. She’d always loved how the winter and the cold could clear her head and make her feel acutely alive. It invigorated her and made the chase all the more exciting. Her jeep, an ancient four-wheel-drive she’d revived from a pile of rust, took her down a bumpy street deep into one of Detroit’s forgotten neighborhoods.
The depressed area, with its sprinkling of abandoned and burnt-out shells of houses on every street, would never make its way into a glossy tour book. The row houses dated back to the nineteen forties and probably hadn’t seen a repairman for decades. Several shabby characters sat on a front stoop. A few others stood on the sidewalk. For the most part, everyone ignored her.
A twitchy little man with a permanently broken nose and missing most of his teeth gave Vega a wide gaping smile, though. He waved her over to the curb.
Monroe.
Just the man Vega was hoping to find.
Monroe was a homeless drug addict. But he saw just about everything that happened in Detroit’s underbelly and would share his knowledge…for a price. He limped over to Vega’s Jeep and leaned heavily on the door.
“Hey baby, what’cha got for me today?” Monroe rubbed his red, swollen hands on his threadbare coat, probably to warm them.
Vega leaned forward in her seat. “Where’s the coat and gloves I bought you?”
“Got expenses, baby, lots of expenses.” He’d traded the coat for drugs if his glassy eyes were any indication. The sharp stink of urine drifted through the window. That was a new low for him. “New guy invading the streets, you know. He’s a real expensive shit. Gotta do what’cha gotta do, you know?”
She pressed a twenty into his freezing hands. “Buy something warm with this.” She peeled a second twenty from her money clip but held onto it. “Tell me, Monroe. Who’s The Great Wall seeing lately?”
He eyed that second twenty like a kid would a forbidden sweet. “She’s not some ho. Not this time. He’s getting it for free this time, the lucky bastard.”
Vega drew the twenty back when Monroe reached out to grab it. “Where can I find her?”
“Some apartment in the West Vernor area. Don’t know the street, exactly.” His hand was snaking out for the twenty again. “It’s in one of them brick buildings. Can’t go anywhere near there anymore. Rich bastards invaded the area. The cops hassle the hell out of me whenever I step foot on one of those streets.”
She held tight to the money. “Her name?”
Monroe had to think for a moment. He kept his swimmy gaze trained on the twenty. “Lila…Lila Crafter, I think.” He snatched the money and hobbled away.
Still parked on the side of the road, she made two quick phone calls while keeping an eye on a group of young kids wearing gang colors who had suddenly taken an interest in her.
The first call was to Officer Ford, a local cop she trusted. With a little prodding, he agreed to pick up Monroe before that forty dollars of hers could be used to purchase heroin. Ford was pretty sure there was a charge pending against Monroe somewhere, which was good. Monroe would get a warm bed and a solid meal tonight.
With that handled, she punched in the phone number for Fiona, her younger sister. Much to hers and her mother’s alarm, Jack had recently hired Fiona to work for Skip Tracers.
Of course Fiona had thrown the fact that Jack had offered Vega a bounty hunter position at Skip Tracers four years earlier in their faces as a defense. But that was different. Vega had been a cop at the time with the Detroit PD. And unhappy as hell.
Fiona was the family’s golden child. An innocent. Fresh out of college. She didn’t know the world of violence and crime like Vega did. And Jack had no right to put her in their world.
Vega was only still speaking to him because he hadn’t let Fiona do anything more than serve as research assistant to the team of active bounty hunters, much to Fiona’s chagrin. As long as he kept her tucked safely behind a desk, Vega was forced to admit having her sister around was proving useful.
In less than a minute, Fiona had matched an address to a Lila Crafter living in the West Vernor area.
Number forty-five B on Green Street, Fiona had said. It took five minutes to navigate through the snowy streets and find a parking space across from the three-story brick apartment building.
Vega watched from her jeep while a bleached blonde, wearing a frilly flower print skirt and a pink coat with a white fur trim, climbed out of a shiny new Mercedes SUV and hobbled across the icy sidewalk in three-inch heels. Each step turned into a painful lesson in patience for Vega as the woman took her time, testing the concrete for slick spots.
Get on with it
, Vega could barely keep herself from screaming. This woman, clad in her fashionable Prada
helpless-wear
—spiky shoes and matching leather handbag, couldn’t really be Lila Crafter? Surely, a fashion-conscious woman like that wouldn’t slum around with some gruff, occasionally dangerous criminal like Lionel Wahl.
Vega exhaled a long breath. The woman fiddled with her keys a moment before unlocking the door marked forty-five B.
That pink powder puff
was
Wahl’s new girl. Go figure.
Vega stepped out of the jeep and crossed the street. A passing patrol car slowed. West Vernor was becoming trendy. Just down the block, a popular Mexican restaurant’s parking lot looked like a luxury car sales center. The cops wouldn’t appreciate a commotion with a takedown, not in this neighborhood. Great.
After circling the building and checking all the exits, Vega knocked on the front door. The powder puff answered.
Vega took it nice and easy, giving Lila a gentle smile. A girlfriend harboring her fugitive was always considered dangerous, and she had no interest in getting sucker punched by this one, powder puff or not.
“Miss Crafter?” Vega said, making no attempt to step into the apartment. “I’m looking for Lionel Wahl. I’ve got a package for him. Is he around?”
Lila’s eyes sparkled with confusion. She started to push the door closed. “I don’t know who you mean.”
“The Great Wall?” Vega stuck her boot in the door. “Your man, Lila?”
“Wally?” Lila flicked a nervous glance over her shoulder. Vega would lay good odds that Lionel was hiding inside.
One of the perks of being a bounty hunter rather than a cop was that she could go anywhere she believed her fugitive to be hiding. No warrant needed. No worry about civil rights. Lionel gave those up when he signed his bail bond. By not showing up for court, he was officially an escaped prisoner. And fair game for any means necessary to bring him back.
