Hunter: Perfect Revenge (Perfectly Book 3)
Table of Contents
HUNTER
Hunter
© Alice May Ball, TzR Publishing, 2017
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Author’s Note
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© Alice May Ball, TzR Publishing, 2017
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PIERCE excerpt
Title
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
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HUNTER
PERFECT REVENGE
A DARK CRIMINAL ROMANCE
Alice May Ball
© Alice May Ball, TzR Publishing, 2017
Cover Design by Signs of Desire for TzR Publishing
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is purely coincidental.
All the people and places are portrayed in this story are fictional. All characters are over the age of eighteen, and entirely imaginary.
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This story is the arrival my hottest hero yet and for sure it’s the hottest action.
I love the male lead character, and the heroine too.
I really hope that you enjoy this fast, smoking hot, rolling thunder tale.
ALT BEEF on rye!” Hard echoes of the rasping call bounced around the deli’s midday crush.
I should have ordered a lighter sandwich but what the hell, they were so good here. Maybe I could burn it off with the effort it would take me to get back in time. Four minutes from now I was due back at the stakeout. It was a seven minute walk away.
A huge man, tall, wide and slow moving, reached across, stretching across me with his big paw out for my sandwich. A sidearm hung under his leather jacket and an amused sparkle lit his eye. It was reflex that made me wonder if he had a valid permit for it. It wasn’t a show-off civilian gun or a gangbanger’s desperate nine.
The weight, the tailored holster and the glimpse of dull metal betrayed a discreet piece of precision artillery. From the stock I recognized a regular Special Forces weapon of choice.
I shouldered forward through the crowd to the counter. “Excuse me,” with, the most confident smile I could put in place, I needed to collect my lunch and get out of there. “I think that’s mine.”
A sardonic grin spread slowly up to his gray eyes. They glimmered under thick and absurdly long white lashes. Over the pupil of his left eye, the lashes were black. I couldn’t keep from looking at it. A cool, trembling sensation opened in the pit of my stomach and travelled down.
His voice was deep and quiet, but with a force that you would hear from a long way off if he wanted you to. It was a voice he could load and aim with ease and deadly accuracy.
His eyes danced as he looked down at me. “Did you order the world’s first, last, and only salt beef sandwich on rye?” An eyebrow twitched, like he was working at keeping his mocking to a daytime minimum.
“No,” I swallowed hard, “It seems you did that.”
In the Manhattan lunch crush he towered like a Renaissance statue, like a dancer on a subway platform in the 42nd Street rush. One who just came down from a mountain. He was like a breath of air. In the crowd, everyone else seemed small and drab and irritable. He was luminous and gorgeous. And huge.
“Mustard?” he asked me.
“English.”
“Mm.” He said, “Pickles?”
“Sweet.”
“Man,” his head turned slowly from side to side and his too-big Adam’s apple bounced like a yo-yo. “You’ve got good taste in a sandwich.” He had was a smile that made you want to climb aboard, showing strong, white teeth
“This is all very touching, but your New York minute is up,” the man behind the counter interrupted, “I don’t have total recall for who ordered what ands exactly when, so would you please come to a decision so my life can resume?”
“No,” I said, “I think he probably did order before me.” The Renaissance mountain man’s playfully wicked grin sparked up thoughts of things that were inappropriate and also unhelpful in the middle of a busy work day.
“What can I say?” The mountain man took the wrapped sandwich and held it out to me. “It’s yours. I’ll wait.” Dimples crinkled the bottoms of his cheeks and his voice was like a panther’s purr.
He was definitely nothing like my usual type. He had a nice body, though.
The man behind the counter was still holding the perfectly wrapped sandwich. From the look on his face, his mood didn’t appear to be improving. With a graceful smile, the mountain man took the sandwich and his head dipped a little lower as he handed it to me.
“Tell you what,” he said, “wait with me and the only other salt beef on rye in the world and we can take them to the park up the street.”
“Sorry, soldier, I’m lunching al desko.” I didn’t work at a desk, and he knew that was a lie.
“What I mean is, I’m taking my lunch back to work with me. It’s not actually at a desk.” His head tilted as I spoke, like he was tuning in to my voice.
“You working outdoors? Maybe I could join you.” Was he kidding? Maybe not. I held up a hand. I wanted to show some authority. His grin stretched wider and he raised an eyebrow.
“What we do,” I said, “it isn’t performance art.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a Special Agent. FBI.”
“I thought so,” he lifted his chin. “That’s funny, you being in enforcement. Me too.”
“Oh?” I looked him up and down. I took my time, though. He was easy on the eye. “What branch?”
“I freelance. Contract work mainly, but I get jobs for a group you may have heard of,” his thin smile was pant meltingly mischievous. “They’re called the Mafia.”
The look in his eye. The ‘mafia’ crack, well I could have been derelict in my duty if I didn’t follow it up. I asked him, “Why did you say, ‘I thought so’ just now? What made you think that I w
as an officer in enforcement?”
His voice was directed to me like a laser. None of the other people jostling around us in the lunch-time order contest would have heard a word that he said. His eyes sparkled, “What, are you supposed to be in deep cover?” it was just loud enough for me to hear. I pulled my lips between my teeth and narrowed my eyes. The sound of his voice was like warm honey, slipping over a thick velvet cord. It made me breathe in. My chest swelled while my stomach back flipped and swan-dived.
All innocence as his tongue slid over his lips, he said, “You mean what gave you away, other than the long-barreled piece you have under your jacket?”
The holster is pretty well designed and I had it custom fitted. When I arrived in New York to join the anti-corruption unit, the Special Agent in Charge asked if I needed to meet with the armorer. He hadn’t spotted the weapon.
This guy had. Whatever else, he was way out of the ordinary, I had to give him that, and in more ways than one. Under those craggy features, his grin may have been slathered in oil of sarcasm, but it was still pleasing to behold and it all went along with the mocking sparkle in his eye.
“Anyway,” he said, “It’s been fun being interrogated. Enjoy your sandwich. And your stake out. Or whatever Special thing you Special Agents are Specializing today.”
My pulse quickened and before I’d thought it through I said, “Perhaps you’d make yourself available for questioning over a drink later.”
He was smoking hot. There were muscles on his muscles and he had twinkles in his dimples. You could cut glass on his cheekbones and bust open a vault with his chin. The way he smirks while he looks at you, you’ve got to do something to stop your clothing catching fire. And the barely concealed weapon in the front of his pants was going to haunt me all afternoon.
It would have been wrong of me not to at least explore the possibility of developing him as a potential source, especially after what he said. Whatever it was that he said.
I made the operational choice to cultivate him as a possible asset. In a location where he would be relaxed and off his guard. Where he would find the atmosphere relaxing and comfortable, somewhere he would be at ease.A basement bar downtown, for instance. And, if other things happened along with the whole source-development thing, well, there’s no law against it. Not exactly.
His crooked smile stayed in my mind, and the slow blink of his deep, hooded eyelids. His ridiculously long, pale eyelashes with the dark patch, they stayed in my head, too. The dark patch over his left eye that batted slowly as his eyes crinkled. I wondered why it was that the baddest guys always seemed to get the memorable looks.
HAT SPARK IN her eye lit a fire in me way down low and it lasted all afternoon.
When I said, “Give me your number, if you’re a very lucky Special Agent maybe we’ll do something special,” her eye flashed in a way that, had I only known it then, changed the course of my life. At the time I jut thought, Oh, yes.
At odds with her words, her voice almost purred. “Well, that isn’t going to happen, mountain man. I said a drink. Maybe.”
That made me laugh, the way that she’d said it. “What did you call me?”
Her head cocked slightly to one side. “You look like you don’t quite belong in the city. You’re too rough for your surroundings. Lke you’re kind of too big for your clothes.”
She was being cute. I liked it, but she hadn’t given me her number yet, so I turned to go with a smile and lifted my hand in a wave.
“Okay,” she said “look,” and I thought, Yeah, baby. One more long, slow step away before I turned my head back, about the least amount that I could. And as slowly as I could. She had her phone out. “Give me your number. Maybe I’ll message you or something.”
I saw the look in her eye and I laughed. Maybe. Yeah, right. I stayed still as my brows rose.
“Alright,” her lips tightened. She got the cutest firm set in her eyes when she tried to look tough. “I will message you. You’re one of those guys who has to win all the time, aren’t you.”
“I don’t know,” I told her, “The alternative never came up.”
Her lips pursed and her eyes shone. I had the strong sense that this feisty little Fed would be an off-the-scale fuck. There was probably space in my schedule for another one of those. “So,” I pointed my chin at her, “What’s your number?”
“You give me yours.” She said.
“Sure,” I took out my phone, “But if I don’t know who’s calling, I’m never going to pick up.”
She scowled, her expression fiery and determined. I almost cracked a smile, just watching her face change.
When she told me her number, I called it straight away and cut off as soon as I heard her ringtone. It was the theme from an ancient black and white cop show, Dragnet or something like that. In its day it was probably real scary. Duuuum da dum dum! Now it was kitschy and cute. The curvy Special Agent was getting hard not to like.
The serious business of my sandwich needed attention, but as I left I was looking forward to hearing from her. I figured she’d leave it about as long and as late as she could stand. Try to make me think she wasn’t going to call. About four-thirty I guessed she would crack. Five, maybe.
She was no ordinary Special Agent. I only got a glimpse of the grip of her weapon, but it looked very non-standard, and it had a custom long barrel, too. I had been looking at her a lot, and especially around the parts of her where that gun hung. Mind you, it really wasn’t the gun I was looking at. I just saw that because I kind of happened to be there. No, what I was seeing were the deliciously tempting curves of a real woman.
They weren’t the kind of curves that I usually found in my bed, or in any of the other beds that I wound up in most nights. Something about her smart, tough exterior made all of those leggy, limber lionesses look like giggly high-school girls. I’d been in the presence of a real woman, and looking at her made me feel a way that I hadn’t felt since I was a schoolboy myself.
She wore only light make-up, nothing showy. You could tell it was just enough to please herself. Like her clothes. Practical, not advertising anything. But no kind of clothing was ever going to hide the body underneath.
Goddamn. She was going to be a hot lay. She had strength. Not just physical strength, she had an inner strength. Determination. I saw it in her eyes. And the way she moved in those combats and that leather bomber, I couldn’t help imagining how she looked naked.
She would most likely fight all the way. She would let you know that she was ready, but she’d still have a way of making a fight out of it. Oh, baby. Now my cock was hard, stretching up and pressing against my fly, desperate to get out of my damn pants, like it wanted to run off and hunt her.
And now I had to cross Broadway without tripping.
HE TEXT MESSAGE on the phone surprised me at first. I thought, Is he missing me already? Then I realized the message wasn’t from him. A ‘Fortune Cookie’ app I had downloaded one drunken night sent me random ‘fortunes’ all the time, along with little ads for dim sum and other MSG laden treats and I kept forgetting to delete it. This ‘cookie’ said, ‘What if the one you fell in love with was your total opposite?’ They weren’t even fortunes anymore.
The surveillance detail was a watch on a police safe house. We had suspicions about two officers involved. Information about police investigations that had been leaked to high-level suspects happened way too often. Evidence was leaked, compromised and tampered with. Our investigation showed pretty conclusively that these two detectives were a key link in the chain. We had enough evidence to bust them, but it wasn’t a one-off, and we were convinced that there was an organization behind them. We needed to find out who gave them marching orders, and the identity of their buyer.
These two were associates of police Commissioner Paul Butler. His name surfaced in a Saint Louis Anti Corruption investigation, and that was what got me sent to the New York bureau AC unit.
In St Louis, a congressman’s suicide note revealed th
at he had been blackmailed for political favors. But that wasn’t all.
A young Missouri society girl, and I mean very young, had washed up in the Mississippi. Gina Haddon Tate’s body had been weighed down with an anchor chain, but a current must have disturbed it and she floated to the surface. We knew about the anchor chain by the marks and the residual rust that remained on her body.