She wasn’t quite sure what to think. It didn’t add up. “I said they left a calling card. A signature, in fact, drawn in Cooper’s own blood across his chest.” She glanced over at Jacob, found his eyes intent on her. “MMFAFA.”
Jacob’s disbelief vibrated between them for a split second, then he was in motion. He yanked the door open and bellowed, “Everyone to the situation room, now!” Then he slammed the door and spun toward her, eyes alight with excitement and a hint of accusation. “That’s our bounty. The Montana Militia for a Free America. Eight members of the group escaped from The Fortress last month and we’ve been on their trail ever since. If this is their work…” He trailed off, spun and yanked the door open. “Stay here.”
She grabbed his arm and felt him stiffen even as the sizzle of heat raced through her body at the contact. “I want in on this. I know your group was involved with the MMFAFA incident with the train derailment, and I know your bounty is still at large. We can help each other. Why else do you think I came here?”
He shrugged her off. “Because you didn’t have anyplace else to go.” She stepped back, stung, and he cursed at himself. “Sorry, that was nasty. And I’m grateful you brought me this information. But you have no idea who you’re dealing with here—it’d be best if you stay here while we take care of it. These men are dangerous. Violent.”
She grabbed his arm again when he tried to leave the room, and this time hung on when he brushed her off. She kept her voice low and urgent. “I’m a Secret Service agent, and a damned good one. You think I haven’t gone up against militias before? That I can’t handle myself in dangerous situations? Well, to hell with you. I’m in this thing all the way.” When he glanced down at her fingers on his arm and raised one eyebrow, rage flared and she snapped. “Don’t you dare accuse me of clinging or being irrational. It was my job to protect Louis Cooper. My duty. There’s no way I’m letting you take over. Not while there’s breath in my body.”
Jacob froze, even the background sparks of motion stilling as his eyes went dark. Isabella expected an explosion.
Instead his voice softened. “I wasn’t going to accuse you of being irrational.” He took a breath, then said, “I’m sorry about how I handled things back at Georgetown. You weren’t clingy or irrational, or any of the things I accused you of. You wanted a ring and I wanted an out, so I hit you where I knew it would hurt most.” Even as his words slashed through the years around her heart, his voice hardened again. “But that’s ancient history and this is today. I don’t want you anywhere near Boone and his maniac followers. Stay here and let us do our jobs.”
He squeezed her hand, removed it from his arm and slipped through the door.
Isabella saw it shut, heard a dead bolt slide and realized there was a lock on either side. Some office.
But even as her mind noted these details, her consciousness grappled with Jacob’s words. Perhaps it was way too little and thirteen years too late, but his apology left her shaken. It brought back a lurking tendril of graduation day when she’d accused him of being unfaithful and he’d thrown it right back at her, saying she had pushed him away with the very closeness she had so depended on, so wanted.
I’m sorry. His words echoed in her heart. I hit you where I knew it would hurt most. For a girl whose goal was to break free from her upbringing to hear that she’d gone right back there—
Yeah, it had hurt.
“But that’s neither here nor there,” she said out loud, wincing when her voice scraped on the words. “What’s important now is rescuing Cooper’s family.”
And there was no way she was leaving that solely to Jacob and his teammates, she thought, determination hardening in her soul. No way in hell.
She tried the door to confirm it was locked, then scanned the room. The desk held a nifty computer locked in wait mode—though she was pretty sure she could crack it if she took the time—and news printouts with cryptic notes in the margins. There were no photographs or personal items, but the air smelled of Jacob.
So why did he have locks on both sides of his door?
Masculine voices rose from downstairs, likely shock and excitement as Jacob revealed that the bounty hunters’ quarry had been involved in abducting the Secretary of Defense’s family.
Gritting her teeth with the need to be out there making her report, Isabella turned to the single small window. It wasn’t locked, but a bar prevented it from opening more than halfway. The gap was too small for a man to pass through.
But she was no man.
JACOB SCANNED the faces of the half dozen bounty hunters assembled in the situation room on the lower level of the headquarters. Away from the public eye, the “basement” contained a warren of interconnected rooms boasting weapons, interrogation rooms and more surveillance equipment than most Secret Service field offices.
Although Cameron Murphy was their leader, the former Special Forces colonel gestured for Jacob to proceed with the meeting. “Why don’t you fill us in on our mystery lady upstairs?”
“Agent Isabella Gray.” Preternaturally aware of the zing in his blood from where she’d touched him, Jacob cleared his throat, shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from twitching, and paced. “She was in charge of protecting the Secretary of Defense, Louis Cooper. Near dinnertime, three masked men disabled Agent Gray and Secretary Cooper with a flash-bang and kidnapped his wife and twin girls. A message on the answering machine warned of a ransom demand to follow.”
He grimaced. Saying the words out loud punched him below the heart. He might have learned long ago that just as he wasn’t going to be the son his parents wanted, he also wasn’t marriage-and-babies material. But the thought of a man’s family being taken brought a fierce spurt of anger. Quickly he sketched in the rest of the attack and the circumstances of Isabella’s suspension, ending with, “She says Cooper had letters written across his chest. MMFAFA.”
There was a collective hiss of indrawn breath. A quiet oath, though Jacob wasn’t sure who had cursed. He nodded. “Yeah. Boone Fowler and his boys are at it again. This might be just the break we need to catch these bastards.”
“Is Agent Gray going to be involved?” The question came from Mike Clark. Tall and lanky, brown-haired and brown-eyed, Mike read body language like it was vernacular English, which Jacob found vaguely creepy.
He shifted, wondering what Mike saw in him, what his body said about his relationship with Isabella. “She’s given me all the information she has. She’ll be safe here while we track the bounty.”
Cameron frowned. “She has training and experience, and if Cooper and his family were under her protection, she has major motivation to go after the kidnappers. You don’t think we should use her?”
“No, sir, I don’t,” Jacob said flatly. “She stays in my office. Period.”
At that moment he didn’t care what Mike was reading off his body language. He only cared that Isabella be kept as far away from Boone Fowler as possible.
Fowler and his men had killed hundreds of innocents over the years. They had killed Cameron’s sister five years earlier and shot Cameron in the shoulder. The leader of Big Sky Bounty Hunters still carried a scar and a grudge. Since their escape from The Fortress, the militiamen had murdered at least two others—a German diplomat and the governor of Montana.
Jacob would be damned if they got to Isabella.
A brisk knock at the door of the situation room interrupted his train of thought and had Cameron reaching for the lockdown button beneath the conference table.
Suspicion prickled at Jacob and he held up a hand. “Wait.” He reached over and flicked on the surveillance cams monitoring the hall. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Isabella stood outside the door, hands on her hips and a determined