Excerpt of Hunting Julian by Jacquelyn Frank

Chapter One

Even watching him from a good distance, Asia Callahan could
feel the off-the-charts testosterone roiling off the man. It
actually had nothing to do with the fact that he was
everything “tall, dark and handsome,” like something a lame
romance writer might stuff into some dopey story about rakes
and swooning or whatever. In truth, it had everything to do
with his inherent chemistry, which absolutely reeked of sex,
lustfulness, and all things outright carnal. It was as off
the charts as a man could get, bordering on inhuman, in
Asia’s opinion. The fact that he had good looks to go with
it was merely adding insult to injury, and purely coincidental.

Or just lethal.

Asia adjusted her focus slowly, ignoring the ache in her
neck as she watched Julian in action through her high-tech
night-vision binoculars. He walked with a sinful ease of
grace, she noted, for someone so tall and relatively heavy
with muscle. Not Mr. Universe heavy, but quite definitively
buffed out. Military built, she’d guessed. By now she’d seen
him with his shirt off enough times to be pretty familiar
with the contours of his upper body. He wasn’t slender or
lean or even merely athletic; he was built like a brute . .
. except that in absolute contradiction to his size and body
mass, he moved like a god. Smooth, easy, and effortless, and
even the slightest casual cock of one hip just oozed a
sophisticated style and refinement that a mere brute could
never pull off.

Too bad he was a cold-blooded murderer.

Or that was the going theory. One she was highly inclined to
believe after spending so much time studying his every move.
It had nothing to do with the fact that he kept vampire’s
hours, sleeping all day and trolling the night. It wasn’t
even because he used women like toilet paper, discarding
them just about as fast as he got them to drop their panties
for him. After all, Asia was a firm believer in women who
owned their sexuality. If these crazy chicks wanted a man
like Julian to stick it to them, well, that was their right.
If he were any other man, she’d say more power to them . . .
or perhaps even “get out of my way.”

The ones who came crying after a man like that later on—the
pathetic ones who thought he was capable of more than a
night or two of mind-blowing orgasms— in her opinion, they
deserved what they got. Tears and girly emotions had no
place in Julian’s scope of interest. And honestly, any time
one of them got to walk away with the breath still pushing
through their bodies, they ought to consider themselves damn
lucky.

Still, she could almost understand their mistakenness.
Julian’s smile alone was not only sexy and compelling, it
was enough to make anyone on the receiving end of it feel as
if she were the only woman in his world. Hell, she was how
many yards away? Even she felt like she was the only woman
in his world, and he didn’t even know she was there.

Not that Asia was known for being the swooning, sentimental
type. No, no, no. No one would ever accuse her of having
touchy-feely emotionalism or equally girly crap like that.
She’d seen way too much in her life, done too much and been
too many places to have even the littlest smidge of a star
in either of her eyes. So instead of getting weak in the
knees or panting and drooling when she saw Julian pull his
smooth routine on the women who seemed to flock to him like
vultures to a fresh kill, all she saw was a hell of a lot of
masculine sex appeal and a man who knew how to use it to
further his own untrustworthy agenda.

Surprise, surprise.

Unfortunately, for about a baker’s dozen of women to date,
his “agenda” had ended in highly suspicious and nefarious
disappearances. There had even been a pair of bodies along
the way, both men who had been closely associated with a
couple of the missing women. Just because there had been no
female bodies in his wake didn’t mean he wasn’t guilty as
the walking sin he was, it just meant he had a really good
hiding place for the—

Asia pushed away the finality of that train of thought. She
reverted to her analysis of her target. Julian was, among
these many other things, a nomad. He’d moved through seven
states in as many months, finding large cities and enjoying
them with a perverse and obvious relish, rather like the way
he enjoyed his women . . . with the arrogance only a genius
criminal mind could attain. He thought he was so clever. He
thought he was miles above detection.

Asia, however, had detected him.

Much to the embarrassment of a few police departments across
the United States, she alone had made the connection between
Julian and the missing women, painstakingly tracking back
over an all but trackless trail, making sure she found proof
that he was in every single city on every single date of
every single disappearance. Once she had established that,
she had taken her proof to the FBI, who hadn’t even known
the cases from city to city were linked. After all, he
didn’t fit any profile any of them had ever heard of. Rarely
did a serial killer cross state lines as he had done, and
when one did, and subsequently escalated at the rate of
Julian’s pace, he usually began to get sloppy. At that point
they would be indulging in their own twisted, worked-up
emotions, prey to stressors and triggers that would send
them spiraling out of control.

Also against the usual profile of a serial killer was
Julian’s remarkable sexuality and control. Often sexual
dysfunction was key to this sort of mentality; rape was the
only way they could find their sadistic pleasure. But Julian
lured woman after woman to his lairs again and again, made
thorough love to them, and then . . . he let them go. He
didn’t have a type he stuck to; he didn’t have a tried and
true lure. He didn’t do anything where anyone could see or
hear. He never left as much as a drop of DNA, his or theirs,
to guide his hunters back to him.

How was that even possible? How did women simply enter his
apartment, never be heard from again, without leaving a
trace that their paths had even crossed? How had Kenya
simply faded from existence, as if she didn’t have a sister
dying in increments every day because she was nowhere to be
found?

Asia’s sister had very likely been Julian’s tenth victim.

And if Asia hadn’t personally seen Kenya with the bastard
the night she’d disappeared, she would never have gotten
this close to him. Every time she looked at him, she could
see the last image she’d had of her sister as Kenya had
stood draped against that gorgeous body, winking at Asia
from around his side, so proud of her conquest as she’d
brazenly fondled his ass.

It was pure fortune she’d even been there at all. Asia
wasn’t the nightclub type. Oh, she had been in more of them
than she wanted to count; clubs, bars, and seedy piss-water
places trying to pass themselves off as one or the other.
People seemed to have a jones for sticky floors, meat-market
socialism, and tawdry lighting backed by music that whined,
droned, or throbbed. She had never enjoyed it, never wanted
to tolerate it, and never had a choice, it seemed, as she
ended up in them time after time. But the night of her
disappearance, Kenya had begged and pleaded with her to come
out and “relax” and “loosen up” and try to have a good time.
What her sister had really wanted was a toughassed bodyguard
in the form of a lethal sister to keep the losers off her
while she scoped for something rare and fine to take to bed
for the night.

She had found Julian.

A rare find indeed. In a club packed with male meat, Asia’s
beautiful, rambunctious sister had managed to pick the one
and only psychopathic killer in the lot.

But he had a pattern, just like they all had patterns. It
had taken some time, but she had figured it out. He picked a
city, spent a few weeks getting comfortable and fucking
everything in a skirt. Then he picked exactly two women in
each city to do . . . whatever it was he did with them . . .
before moving on to a new location. Asia wanted to be
clinical and methodical about what this man had likely done
to those girls, but she still cringed and shied away from
definitively saying he murdered them. Not because she didn’t
believe he was fully capable of such an act, because she
did, but because one of those women was her sister, and
while she knew in her gut he was responsible for every one
of the disappearances, she had no solid proof he had
actually killed them. For all she knew and the evidence
showed, he could be some kind of collector, keeping them
captive and alive somewhere . . . anywhere.

This was her only hope.

Asia set aside her night-vision goggles and checked her face
in her rearview mirror to make certain she hadn’t disturbed
the dramatic sweep of color and sparkles decorating her lids
and lashes. The cool blue of her eyes was dramatically
enhanced by the effect of midnight blue liner and lash
coloring, as well as the blue-violet shades of her shadow.
Her hair had been twisted back into a simple coif, but
shimmering ribbons of silver hung from it in long coils. She
got out of her car, the damp Florida air striking her legs
as her heels hit the pavement. She then turned toward Pussy
Willows, the nightclub where Julian was working as a
bouncer, per his usual MO, as well as general eye candy in
order to attract the young, beautifully single women the
club needed to lure in eager and recently paid males to
spend time and drink their money.

Asia had spent the past half hour watching these girls flirt
with danger and come on to almost-certain death, all the
while knowing that Julian had only taken one victim since
arriving in Fort Lauderdale and that, if he stuck to his
meticulous schedule, he had only four days remaining before
he moved on. He was probably growing a little itchy for his
second victim by now.

Asia was determined to be that second and very last victim.

Julian smiled at the buxom blonde with his usual
flirtatiousness, one shoulder back against the doorjamb as
his gaze drifted down the line of potentials who wanted so
badly to gain admittance to the exclusive hot spot. The
blonde was cute, but a bit too tawdry for Pussy Willows,
which was aiming for just a touch more class than her
overtly tits-and-ass approach to her wardrobe. She continued
to flirt outrageously with him in hopes he would give her
and her girlfriend the nod and let her in, but Julian could
tell her patience was wearing thin after twenty minutes of
being unsuccessful. The midnight hour was bearing down; he
could smell the coke and X lifestyle on her, pressuring her
to have fun and get wasted already. She clearly wasn’t used
to not getting a response to her “charms,” and it was
ticking her off as her ego took a beating from his
indifference.

He would have taken pity on her, but the club manager had
already been out twice that night to dress Julian down for
his choices of admittance. If Vernon arrived a third time
with his nasty, derogatory attitude in tow, Julian might end
up sacrificing his prime position at the club door in order
to belt the shallow, prejudiced bastard so hard his head
would snap clean off his neck. Since this would be in
antithesis to his goals, it was best if Julian didn’t
provoke such an encounter by letting the under-par girl
through the door.

Still smiling, he leaned forward toward the girl in
question. “Beat it, sweetie,” he drawled. “My boss is a dick
and he won’t let me pass anyone who isn’t wearing designer
and diamonds.”

Not that Julian was completely certain what that was
supposed to mean. From his perspective, clothing and jewelry
weren’t the clues that led to an outstanding woman, but it
seemed to ring true to the other bouncers and since it was
crucial that he fit in, he had to follow their lead. He
wasn’t there to make waves and stand out.

He was also aware of the fact that it was only his charm,
his looks, and his accent that made the phrase come off as
helpful instead of as the insult it really was. The blonde
nodded and sighed in resignation, muttered a curse, then
grabbed her friend by the arm and walked back down the line
away from the club. Vincent, the other bouncer, liked to
call the reaction “sour grapes.” It was just another
reference that went over his head and, like many others,
gave the impression that he was a bit simpler-minded than he
actually was. Some put it down to a language barrier due to
his heavy accent, just as many liked to think he was as
vacuous as he was beautiful, the combination more comforting
to them somehow. He let the impression stand, just like he
let all the others stand. People could think what they
would. He had nothing to prove to anyone and would just as
soon be left to himself so he could keep to his own business.

Julian heard her before anyone else would have, the
determined click of her heels against the cement walkway
drawing his attention almost immediately. There was
confidence to the stride, not the mincing steps of a woman
wearing heels too high for her to manage. These were high
heels, but she managed them very well indeed. When she came
around the hedges, he realized it was probably because she
was already used to walking on legs that were insanely long
and another few inches couldn’t possibly matter. The extent
of her legs was imminently obvious because her skirt covered
barely more than a scant portion of her upper thighs, the
silver fabric shimmering along her amazing body with every
single step. She wore no bra, the firmness of her breasts
not needing one in the least. Her nipples were slightly
erect, obvious under the fabric that ran over her skin with
the intimacy of the flow of water against it.

She forwent the line, the action of a woman who knew who and
what she was, and ignored the rude complaints and remarks
hissed at her as she bypassed those who were waiting like
the good little lemmings they were. This woman, Julian
realized, waited for no one. Her diamond tennis bracelet and
matching anklet satisfied one of Vernon’s requirements, and
he was willing to bet that scrap of silver she was
pretending to wear as a dress more than fulfilled the other.
Either way, he didn’t give a damn what Vernon thought or said.

She was perfect, and she was what he had been looking
for.