Hunter's Need (30 page)

Carter’s eyes flickered. Blood rushed to his cheeks. Still, he wasn’t one to turn tail and disappear—which kind of sucked, at least the way Duke saw it. “You so sure of that?”

“If she was into you, I wouldn’t be here,” Duke said. And that was God’s honest truth. If he had to stay this close to Ana while she was into some other guy, he’d be hovering on the knife edge of control. Not even he was that into self-torment. Even if she was into Carter, Duke would have fought for her, but not here—not so close that he could smell her desire for another man. “Not something I want to see, and it wouldn’t have Ana that comfortable, either.”

A muscle jerked in Carter’s jaw. Duke almost felt a little sorry for the guy. Almost. Hooking his thumbs in his pockets, he lifted a brow and said, “Was there anything else?”

Carter turned away and took a couple of steps down and then stopped, staring off into the east, at the same mountains that kept grabbing Duke’s attention. The other man sighed and shoved a hand through midnight black hair. At his temples, the hair was starting to silver, but just a little. Fine lines fanned out from his eyes, the kind that came from a lot of laughter, a lot of smiles. He wasn’t smiling now, though.

He shot Duke a dour look and said, “Here I was thinking she probably figured I was just too old for her, and I was hoping I could work past that. She’s been living here nearly a year—I didn’t know there was some other guy in the picture for her.”

Duke didn’t know what to say to that. Frankly, he didn’t want to say anything to it. He remained quiet and Carter blew out another harsh sigh and glanced at the money in his hand. “Be a lot easier on me if I could actually believe there was something up with this money—or with you,” he muttered. Then he tucked it in his pocket and glanced at Duke. “I won’t say anything about the money. I’ve got enough going on with my classes starting back up that I won’t be around too much—she’s always given me a check in person, so maybe if I’m not around to do that, she won’t think about it as much for a while.”

He headed back down the stairs and then stopped, looking back up at Duke. “You better take care of her.”

That was exactly what Duke planned on doing. Starting now. He didn’t bother waiting until Carter had disappeared inside his house before going back into Ana’s place. She was still sleeping. He could hear the slow, steady sounds of her breathing, but she’d been asleep long enough. She needed to wake up and eat—if she was still tired after that, fine.

No. Not fine. If she was still tired after that, he was calling Kelsey and telling the woman to get her ass up there and check Ana over.

But Ana could sleep while he made up a meal.

 

 

 

 

T
HOSE damn eyes.

Ana stared at the TV, but she wasn’t seeing the blank screen, the living room, nothing. She couldn’t quit seeing those eyes. The man who’d kidnapped and killed Leah—Leah’s determination to look upon her killer, memorize his face, those memories burned inside Ana like a fever.

Kind eyes—or rather they seemed kind, but below that mask lay madness.

“Who are you?” she muttered, absently rubbing her hands up and down the legs of her cotton capris.

Abruptly, she climbed off the couch, moving so fast she knocked the remote onto the floor, but she didn’t notice as she strode across the living room toward the kitchen table. It was covered with books, notes, maps and pictures—research into the death of women who’d died too young, too violently.

She riffled through them until she found Leah’s picture, a copy made from a newspaper article that had run in the weeks after her disappearance. Grainy and small, it showed a young woman with a wide, open smile and dark, friendly eyes. “I need more,” Ana muttered, but if somebody had asked, she couldn’t have said if she was talking to herself or somebody else.

Of course, there was nobody there to answer.

Other than Duke, she hadn’t seen a soul—or a spirit, since returning home two days earlier. He wasn’t there now, out to get some food—she thought. The guy ate like a horse.

Dropping Leah’s picture, she went through everything, searching for the pictures she found of Marie. “Where are you?” She found the picture and stared at it, all but willing the ghost to appear.

Leah hadn’t known her killer, even though she’d died with his image emblazoned on her mind.

Marie didn’t remember anything about that night.

And none of the others had ever made their presence known to Ana. She needed answers, but she really didn’t know where to look. She needed to find
him
, but she didn’t know how to go about doing that. “And sitting here talking to yourself is going to do a lot of good.” Taking a deep breath, she pulled the chair out and settled down at the table.

“Start at the beginning. Isn’t that what people always say?”

The beginning.

With Marie.

But there wasn’t anything within these books and papers that she hadn’t already read over ten times. At least.

She needed more.

There were answers, she knew it. She could all but see them in front of her, obscured by the mists of time, hiding in them. Damn it, she’d seen that man before. Frowning, she grabbed a pencil and a blank piece of paper, jotting down the features she remembered clearly. White male. Age—? She left it blank, because she couldn’t be sure. Twenties, maybe. Or a little younger. A little older. Brown eyes. Thin lips, but not too thin. Close set eyes, skinny blade of a nose. Hair? She couldn’t recall the hair color.

Chewing on the eraser, she studied the sheet of paper. “This is just going to be another waste of time,” she muttered. But instead of tossing the pencil aside, she bent forward over the page and got back to work.

 

 

D
UKE juggled the grocery bags when his cell phone started to ring. Eying the number on the display, he debated on whether or not to answer. If he thought, for five seconds, he could avoid messing with Kelsey Hughes, he would have just ignored her. But she’d keep calling. And calling. And when he didn’t answer, she’d start calling Ana.

That was one thing he definitely didn’t want just yet. That nosy woman would just start asking Ana questions, and Duke knew the witch too well to think they’d all relate to the job at hand. Chances were, once she knew Ana was okay, very
few
would relate to the job.

The phone stopped ringing while he was still trying to decide and he heaved out a sigh of relief.

It was short-lived, though. He’d only managed to stow one of the reusable grocery sacks Ana had given him before the phone started ringing again. “What?”

“Duke, we really need to work on your phone skills,” Kelsey said, her voice amused.

“If I was paid to answer to a phone, maybe. Since I’m not? Not worried. What do you want?”

“Just wanted to see how things are going.”

Duke rolled his eyes. “Since when did you start checking up on people, Kelsey?”

“I’ve always checked up on people—when I feel the need.”

Yeah, and he could just imagine why she felt the need, too. “I’m alive. Ana’s alive. We’re working on the problem. Anything else?”

“How is Ana? She handle things okay from the other day?”

“Okay? No. As well as can be expected? Yes.” Absently, he braced his elbows on top of the car and stared across the street, without really seeing anything. He opened his mouth to reply—most likely with something biting or insinuating, but the words shriveled up and died, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth as he found himself looking at a face that was very, very familiar.

Carter.

“You still there?”

Distracted, Duke said into the mouthpiece, “I got to go, Kelsey.” He disconnected in the middle of her sentence, tucking the phone back into his pocket and tossing the second tote of groceries into the car.

He almost started for the crosswalk, but at the last moment, he decided against it. He could see just as well from over here, and he was much less likely to be noticed by Carter or the woman he was with.

Woman—hardly more than a girl, Duke decided. Twenty. Maybe twenty-one. Pretty. Dark. The golden skin and near-black eyes of a native. A smile that lit up her entire face. And she looked far too much like Marie did.

 

 

S
HE was still trying to jog her memory when the door opened a little while later. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched as Duke came in, two black totes hooked over his shoulder.

He gave her a distracted smile but didn’t say anything as he started unpacking the bags. A whole hell of a lot of junk food, then some stuff for sandwiches and salads. Ana pushed back from the table and went to help put things up, neatly sidestepping in front of him when he would have just dumped stuff into the refrigerator.

He was acting weird, she decided as he went back to unpacking the rest of the stuff without saying anything, without even really looking at her.

“Are you okay?”

His only response was a noncommittal grunt. Rolling her eyes, Ana turned back to the refrigerator and put up packages of cold cuts, lettuce and tomatoes. She finished and turned around to find him staring down the book she’d bought weeks earlier.

Unsolved—Mysteries of the Far North
. He flipped it open, going directly to the short section that detailed Marie’s disappearance. “Did you think of something?” she asked, but she didn’t really have any hope in the answer.

“I don’t know,” he said, and his voice had that same distracted tone to it.

She glanced back to the table, eying the notepad with her neat little lists. She’d spent the past couple of hours trying to think of the men she knew. Most of them were either too young, or too old, and none of them really seemed to
fit
.

“You don’t by chance know any police sketch artists, do you?”

That caught his attention. Curious, he looked up at her and lifted a brow. “Sketch artists?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged. “Afraid not. At least none that I can go talk to.”

“Why not?” she asked, puzzled.

A grin curled his lips, showing a ghost of his normal humor. “Because I’d scare the shit out of them if I showed up on their doorstep. They think I’m dead, sweets. I knew them back before . . . well, before I ended up at Excelsior. It’s a different life. Everybody from before that point thinks I’m dead. They had a funeral and everything.”

“How can they have a funeral without a body?”

He flipped the book closed and shrugged. “As far as I know, there was a body. Just not mine.”

She gaped at him.

He sauntered over to her and placed his finger under her chin, nudging her mouth closed. “I fell into a group of people that know how to make messes go away when it suits them. I was gunned down in front of at least one human. They had to do something.”

“So they just found a body and said it was you? What if somebody said otherwise?”

Duke shrugged. “The only person around that could have said otherwise was in a coma until a few weeks after my so-called funeral. They weren’t going to dig up a casket just to let him take a look-see.” He draped his arms over her shoulders and dipped his head, nipping her lower lip. “So why do you want a police sketch artist?”

“Because I have somebody I want sketched and I’m no artist.”

“Who?”

Cold fear settled in the pit of her belly. She licked her lips. Man, her mouth had just gone seriously dry. “Him.”

“Him.” He studied her thoughtfully. “Ana, it’s been twenty years since Leah saw him. He isn’t going to look the same now.”

“I know that.” Ana dropped her head forward and let it rest against his chest. She slipped her arms around his waist and settled against his body. “Yeah, it’s been twenty years. Yeah, he’s going to look different—there’s something familiar about him, Duke. I don’t know what it is, but I swear, I know I’ve seen him before.”

He stiffened. Big hands came up and closed around her arms. “What?”

She swallowed and lifted her head, wincing as she caught sight of the look on his face. “I’ve seen him. Somewhere. Hell, for all I know, it’s one of the local news anchors. But I know I’ve seen him.”

He cupped her face in his hand, eyes locked on her face, staring at her as though he was trying to see through to her soul. “Where have you seen him?”

Ana rolled her eyes and said, “I just told you. I don’t
know
. Wherever it was, he doesn’t look the same as he did then. I can’t . . . I dunno, but something about him is just too familiar. His eyes . . . ” She closed hers and pulled the memory of his face to mind. The eyes.

“It’s his eyes,” she repeated softly. “I’ve seen those eyes somewhere.”

Then she sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “I just can’t remember where.”

Duke bit back a snarl. It wasn’t going to help anything if he lost his temper, but damn was his control pretty much shot. Every protective instinct he had was screaming, jerking and struggling to be free. He wanted to hunt. Wanted to lose his skin and find his other self, take to the hunt until he scented his prey.

But then again, Duke had seen the bastard several times and he hadn’t once gotten that vibe off of him. Of course, he hadn’t been able to fully rely on his instincts the entire time he’d been here. The few days they’d spent up near Palmer, his instincts had just about gone haywire on him.

Then there was the night the girl had died—he hadn’t felt a damn thing.

Abruptly, he recalled how he’d automatically assumed it had been because of Ana. He knew better now and he’d just started thinking that maybe he wasn’t meant to save that girl. It hadn’t ever happened like that before, but it made a lot more sense than anything else he could think of.