Page 1 of Threat of Danger
Prologue
“HURRY UP!” DEREKdrew Jess forward on the narrow path in the woods.
Jess didn’t need urging. She couldn’t wait to be alone with him at the cabin. Her heart drummed:faster,faster,faster.
The two eighteen-year-olds dashed through the undergrowth, breathless with laughter. Winter sunshine gilded webs of branches, the sky the most innocent shade of blue, each gap between the tree trunks a stained glass window. The trees—mostly maple—reached up and up, as tall as church spires. Within the magnificent cathedral of the Vermont forest, the joy of young love sang.
The patches of shadows seemed far away. Jess barely even noticed the dark spots. Each step they took was into light, each breath of crisp air a thrill.
They jumped a log together, strong and nimble. Jess thought of nothing but the old family cabin, the two of them alone, Derek’s firm and eager body all around hers. Desire tingled through her, her fingers tightening on his as he pulled her forward.
“We’re almost there.”
Derek Daley—crush of her life, boy next door, every girl’s dream—wantedher.Finally!
Jess had pined after him all through high school and would have handed him her heart on a platter, if he’d only noticed her. He hadn’t then, but he did now, home from college on break. Nothing else mattered. He’d noticed her and he’d kissed her, and then he’d asked if she would go out to the old cabin with him.
Jess knew what boys did with girls at the derelict cabin off the abandoned logging road. That knowledge burst through her in a shower of sparkling light.
“What’s with the crows?” Derek jerked his head toward the treetops, but he didn’t slow for a second, as desperate for the cabin as Jess.
His eagerness tasted sweeter on her tongue than maple candy.
She glanced up, dazed.What?What did anything else matter beyond how fast they could be in each other’s arms? They had the rest of the day, hours and hours, just the two of them, together, but she didn’t want to waste a single moment.
She wanted his lips back on hers. She was dying for another kiss.
Derek must have felt the same, because he halted and dragged her into his arms in a wild move that almost toppled them. He kissed the breath out of her before spinning away to run again. Thank God he was holding her hand, or she would have stumbled. When it came to Derek’s kisses, Jess’s schoolgirl fantasies paled compared to reality.
The black dotting of crows watched them from the trees. They didn’t see the humans as two lovers flying to their nest, but merely prey as yet unaware of the hunter. The same small, sharp eyes that trailed Derek and Jess from above also trailed the hunter who closed in, moving faster than his prey, eager on the scent.
The birds knew the hunter. He always fed them well.
Down below, everything was movement.
Up in the trees, the crows perched still and waited for the bloody bits.
TEN YEARS LATER
Chapter One
Thursday
THE TWO LONEfigures on top of a New York City high-rise clashed, a man and a woman, locked together in mortal combat.
Jessica Taylor fought the killer with everything she had. She had to get this right.No mistakes.Left hook, right hook, uppercut, and then a swift kick to the middle of a hard chest. Pain shot up her leg, but the man silhouetted against the night sky finally staggered back.
His long knife flashed in the moonlight. The combatants were evenly matched in fighting skills, but that knife tipped the odds. Jess had been caught empty-handed.
The man surged forward again. Jess danced back, out of reach, but he rushed her with a snarl, a deadly glint in his eyes. She feinted left, then kicked at his right wrist. The knife broke free and flew through the air in a wide arc over the edge of the roof.
They were both breathing hard. Both bleeding. Both determined to win. But winning meant different things to them.
For the man, winning meant killing Jess and walking away to continue his evil agenda unimpeded.
For Jess, winning meant killing the man so no more innocents would be hurt. What happened to her, what price she had to pay to win, didn’t matter.
She moved in a careful circle.
