John Taggart Steele stood motionless in the shifting
shadows that edged the towering stand of evergreens.
Snowflakes swirled in the icy air around him, swept from
the treetops high overhead by a capricious wind. Narrowing
his eyes against the October sun, he raised his binoculars
to zero in on the tidyA-frame cabin in the clearing five
hundred yards away, only to jerk the glasses away as his
cell phone vibrated. Ripping it from the clip on his belt,
he glanced at the screen and saw the call was from Steele
Security's Denver office. He hit the receive button and
slapped the instrument to his ear. "What?"
"Looks like it's her, all right." As calm as a summer day,
his brother Gabe's voice held neither reproach at the
brusque greeting nor satisfaction as he delivered the long-
awaited confirmation.
Taggart said nothing, merely waited. "The truck was
recently registered to a woman calling herself Susan
Moore. The previous owner is a Laramie grad student who
says he sold the vehicle three weeks ago to a cocktail
waitress at the bar he frequents. He described Bowen to a
T, said she was 'a real sweet little thing." She paid cash
for the vehicle and confided she was headed south to see
her ailing grandpa."
"Laramie, huh?"
Gabe seemed to know exactly what Taggart was
thinking. "Yeah. When she left Flagstaff, she bolted
toward Denver, not away. Totally unexpected, completely
illogical." There was a pause, then he added
thoughtfully, "It was a damn good strategy."
Good strategy wasn't quite how Taggart would describe it —
not when he'd been chasing the elusive Ms. Genevieve Bowen
for close to three months. Still, he shoved away the rude
comment that sprang to mind, along with his
uncharacteristic impatience. Emotion didn't have a place
in the job he did as a partner in Steele Security, the
business he and his brothers ran out of their home base in
Denver, Colorado. The kind of work they did — hostage and
fugitive recovery, personal protection, threat management,
industrial security — required clear but creative
thinking, situational analysis, high-stakes decision
making.
Taggart regarded being cool and impartial an absolute
necessity. It ought to be chiseled in stone, if you asked
him — his brother Dominic's recent marriage to a wealthy
debutante he'd rescued from the clutches of a ruthless
Caribbean dictator notwithstanding.
He shifted his gaze from the cabin to the ancient Ford
pickup parked at the far end of it. Just because the
vehicle's recent history fit with his quarry's MO — blend
in, deal in cash, vanish after dropping false hints about
your destination — that didn't automatically mean it was
Bowen. There was still a chance she'd again eluded him —
and gained the gratitude and ensuing silence of yet
another needy young woman matching her general
description — by giving away the truck the way she had
three previous vehicles.
Only Taggart didn't think so. And not merely because his
instincts were clamoring that his luck had finally turned.
Because this time, damned if he hadn't seen her himself,
bold as brass, driving out of the Morton's Grocery parking
lot on the outskirts of Kalispell.
The cabin door swung open. "I've got movement," he told
Gabe. "I'll catch you later." Not waiting for a reply, he
disconnected and shifted the binoculars into place as a
woman stepped out onto the porch that skirted the cabin.
With icy calm, he let his gaze climb her length, starting
at her fleece-topped boots and moving up her slim, blue-
jeaned legs, past a serviceable green parka until he
arrived, at long last, at her face.
He let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. It was
her, all right.After the dozen weeks he'd spent on her
trail, interviewing her friends and showing her picture
around, her features were as familiar to him as his own.
There was the full mouth, the straight little nose, the
big dark eyes and the slightly squared chin. Her glossy
brown hair, which she'd once worn in a thick braid that
reached to her waist, was now cropped short and, after a
number of cut-and-color transformations, back to its
original color.
He frowned as something nagged at him, and then his face
smoothed out as he realized he was simply surprised by how
small she was. Even though his information on her included
the fact that she was only five foot three, for some
reason he'd expected her to appear taller.
Nevertheless, it was her — Ms. Genevieve Bowen, Silver,
Colorado, bookstore owner and literacy booster, teen
mentor, animal lover, occasional emergency foster mother.
A woman so well-known for her random acts of kindness that
her friends fondly referred to her as their own little
Pollyanna.
Polly-pain-in-the-butt was more like it, Taggart thought,
recalling the absolute futility of the past three months.
Given Ms. Bowen's glorified Girl Scout reputation, and the
fact that your average model citizen didn't know jack
about being on the lam, he'd assumed he'd be able to track
her down without breaking a sweat.
Wrong. First to his surprise and then to his exasperation —
and his brothers' not-so-subtle amusement — little
Genevieve had made none of the usual beginner's mistakes.
Hell, she hadn't made any mistakes. Instead, she'd simply
vanished, turning a job that should have been a week-long
romp into a test of Taggart's cunning and perseverance.
It was just too damn bad for her that he was very, very
good at his job.
That, being a methodical son of a bitch, he'd decided
after losing her trail yet again to revisit all the places
he'd initially pegged as being potential bolt holes for
her, including her late great-uncle's northern Montana
cabin where she and her brother — who was currently being
held without bail on charges of capital murder — had spent
several long-ago summers.
And that, in an unpredictable turn of luck, he'd just
happened to pull into that grocery store lot at the same
time she'd been pulling out. Otherwise, he not only would
have missed her, he'd have once again struck the cabin off
his list for now and most likely spent another few weeks
fruitlessly trying to locate her.
Instead, he'd called in the pickup's plates to Gabe and
followed her back here, managing to remain undetected only
because he'd been pretty damn sure where they were going.
Once again, what had been good for him had been bad for
her.
But then, Genevieve hadn't exactly had a banner year, what
with her brother's arrest for killing James Dunn, his
client's only son; her own unwanted role as the
prosecution's key witness and her dumb-ass decision to
flee rather than testify.
Because now she was his. With a distinct surge of
possessiveness, he watched as she reached the truck,
keeping the binoculars trained on her vivid face as she
retrieved a bag of groceries and trekked back the way
she'd come.
Suddenly, just as she reached the stairs that led up to
the cabin's railed porch, she stopped. Swiveling her head,
she looked straight at him.
Taggart knew damn well she couldn't see him. Still, he
felt her gaze like a lover's touch. Rooted in place, he
forgot to breathe, stunned as his skin prickled and he
felt the oddest tug of recognition....
It seemed like an eternity before she looked away, gave
the rest of the clearing a careful once-over, then squared
her shoulders and went quickly up the trio of steps.
Pausing under the wide overhang that sheltered the door,
she abruptly glanced one last time directly at the spot
where he stood before she disappeared inside.
Annoyed, he blew out his pent-up breath, asking himself
what the hell had just happened. Just who did she think
she was? Some sort of psychic? His long-lost soul mate?
Yeah, right. It'd be a cold day in hell when he started
believing in that kind of delusional mumbo jumbo.
Jaw clenched, he stowed the binoculars and surged into
motion. Carefully hugging the shadow of the trees, he
began to work his way toward the back of the cabin, his
powerful body making short shrift of the thigh-high
snowdrifts.
Enough cat and mouse. It was time to take her down.
Genevieve set the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter.
Chilled despite the warmth of her parka, she rubbed her
arms and did her best to dispel her lingering sense of
unease.
Try as she might to downplay it, she'd had the most
uncomfortable sensation of being watched while she was
outside. It had been sharp, overwhelming, eerie — as
palpable as an actual touch. Alarm had flickered along her
spine; gooseflesh had erupted on her arms and prickled the
nape of her neck.
She'd felt a powerful urge to run.
That's what you get for staying up late last night reading
Stephen King. Keep it up, and the next thing you know,
you'll start to think the trees are alive. Or that a
mutant squirrel is coming to get you....
A wry little smile tugged briefly at the corners of her
mouth. Okay. So maybe she was a wee bit jumpy. It wasn't
really surprising, not when her stop in town to get
supplies had filled her with such conflicting feelings.
Typical of her current existence, she'd been scared to
death that someone might recognize her while also wishing
fervently that she might see a familiar face. Which was
not only illogical and contradictory, but also highly
improbable since the last time she'd been in the area for
more than a night she'd been barely fifteen, nearly half
the age she was now.
Still, she knew she was taking a chance by coming here.
How to Vanish without a Trace, the book that had been her
bible these past months, warned against seeking out known
and familiar places.
And yet... Not only was she running dangerously low on
money, but she'd changed her identity so many times they
were starting to run together. She needed a break — just a
week or maybe two — to rest and regroup. And surely, after
all this time, anyone still looking for her would have
written this place off.
Lord, she hoped so, she thought, turning to glance fondly
at the cabin's simple interior. The structure was a
standard, open-concept A-frame. Toward the back, an L-
shaped kitchen occupied one side, while the bathroom and a
sleeping area with a massive built-in bed occupied the
other, the two areas separated by a narrow stairway that
led up to a small loft.
A bank of windows stretched across the cabin's front,
divided by a floor-to-ceiling native-stone fireplace
equipped with a glass-fronted heat insert. Although the
oversized navy couch, the trio of maple occasional tables
and the pair of padded rocking chairs were new, chosen by
the property management company she'd hired when the place
had passed to her and her brother, they had clean,
uncluttered lines, like the old furniture she remembered,
and were placed to make the most of the sweeping view of
the surrounding peaks.
If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe it was
fourteen years ago and that any second her great-uncle Ben
would come clattering through the door, an adoring twelve-
year-old Seth dogging his heels. The two would snatch away
whatever book she happened to be reading — her little
brother complained that Genevieve was always reading — and
tug her out on the deck to see the sunset or watch an
eagle soaring overhead.