Page 102 of Hot Intent

“So what are you going to do,” she asked. “Walk right up to her front door, knock, and say, “Hi, Mom. It’s me. I’m home”?

“I’m treating her as a hostile until indicated otherwise. We’ll set up a surveillance and information collection detail and see what we learn. Then we’ll formulate a plan from there.”

“Won’t she be pretty good at spotting surveillance?” Katie asked dubiously.

“Undoubtedly. We’ll just have to be better.”

Katie gulped. Suddenly she felt a great deal like a minnow swimming with a pack of sharks. Sharks who wouldn’t hesitate to turn on each other and attack in cold blood. She didn’tbelong in the company of these experienced operatives jockeying against one another.

“What do you suppose she looks like?” Katie asked.

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

He guided the car to an address on a country road. A modest, two-story farmhouse stood well back from the road. It was white clapboard and traditional, with a broad covered front porch and a red barn behind it. A pair of horses and a dozen beef cattle grazed in a pasture around the place. Several mature shade trees cozied up to the house. It was all very placid and normal looking.

Alex drove on past without slowing down and continued several more miles along the road before turning, going a mile or so to the west, and then turning back to the north on a parallel farm road to place them behind his mother’s house.

Seeing what he was doing, Katie grumbled, “We’re going to have to hike again, aren’t we?”

He smiled over at her a little.

“You’re a sadist, Alex Peters.”

“You have no idea.”

“Someday, you’re going to quit talking the talk and walk the walk,” she retorted.

He glanced over at her in surprise. “Haven’t you figured it out, yet? It’s really about keeping a woman off balance. I don’t have to cause women any pain, or do anything at all for that matter, as long as they don’t know what’s coming next. The fear and anticipation does all the work for me.”

Her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “Are you actually giving away your trade secrets to me? Since when?”

He pulled the car off the road and parked it behind an abandoned barn that looked like the next strong wind would blow it over. He half-turned in the seat to face her.

He said grimly, “Since you killed a man. There’s blood on your hands, now. And it won’t ever wash off. Whether youplanned it or not, you’ve crossed a line in to my world. You can’t go back, now. I figured I might as well throw you a few survival tips.”

And with that, he opened the door and got out of the car.

Gee. That was…humanitarian…of him. Jerk.

Except in the next breath, she had to admit she could use all the survival tips she could get. She was a literal babe-in-the-woods out here, running around playing spy.

She stared at his back as he dug around in the trunk of the rental car. She heard plastic bags rattle--the supplies he’d picked up at a superstore somewhere in rural Maryland, earlier. Was he right? Was she irrevocably consigned to his world?

Dismay and terror tore through her. No! She didn’t want this! She wanted to settle down with him in some small, quiet town. To raise their adopted daughter together and have a few kids of their own. She wanted rocking chairs on a porch and big family get-togethers on holidays.

A sob rattled silently through her chest as it dawned on her that the men she and Alex had killed would never get that with their families. She wasn’t a murderer.

She wasn’t! She was a good person. Kind. Considerate of others. Moral, for God’s sake.

And yet, the facts shouted otherwise. She was no better than Alex.

The thought froze her in her tracks. Had she really thought herself better than him all this time? Had she subconsciously been judging him? And knowing him and his brilliant perception, he must have sensed it, or even recognized it outright.

God, no wonder he wouldn’t commit to a relationship with her. She was no better than any of the other women in his life. They’d all judged him and condemned him. Just like she had.

Well, at least that problem was solved. She’d gotten down in the emotional muck of his shadow world and wallowed around it shamelessly. She was every bit as dirty as him, now.

What had she done to her life? To all of their lives?

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