Hearts of the Hunted (4 page)

I stood for a second,
staring at her back, and then had to jog forward to catch her,
balancing carefully on the short heels. This time I reached for her
hand, and she let me take it. "I live a dangerous life," I said
quietly. She only nodded.

We moved away from
commerce and into entertainment, passing a variety of hotels,
clubs, and bars as well as jewelry stores with signs like 'Cash for
GOLD!' and plenty of restaurants of various quality. "The movie
theater is a block that way," she said, pointing. "I was pulled
into this alley." She gestured to a narrow gap between a dance club
and a small, cozy bar with a glass front. Her voice was steady but
tight, and she clutched my hand so hard that my fingertips started
to tingle with discomfort. I didn't try to loosen her
grip.

"Did he take you
somewhere?" I asked as gently as I could.

"I think so, but I—" She
turned to me, a look of panic on her face. "I don't remember. I
don't remember where he took me! I remember him hurting me, and I
don't think I was outside, but I can't remember where we were!" She
took a sharp breath, breathing hard, and I pulled her into my arms,
backing her away from the alley until we couldn't see down its
threatening depths anymore.

"It's okay," I whispered,
"He probably told you to forget. It's okay."

Her whole body shook, but
she held tight to me and fought against the tears. "I came back to
myself about a block from here. I was just sitting on the sidewalk
in front of a hotel," she said in a strained voice. She pulled
away, and I followed her to the hotel, my heart cracked and
bleeding for her.

"We don't have to do
this."

"We do! We have to! It was
here." She pointed to a spot on the sidewalk in front of the Sunset
Heights hotel, an unimpressive eight-story brick
building.

I nodded and gestured to a
little deli across the street. "Go sit. I'm going to go into the
alleys and look around, and I really don't want you back there,
okay?"

She looked like she wanted
to fight me, but the fear in her eyes betrayed her, and she finally
nodded and backed away, waiting for a break in traffic before she
retreated across the street.

There wasn't much to see
in the alleys, but they were connected by a narrow lane that
probably wasn't used by anyone but garbage men, bums, and the
occasional rapist or mugger. I felt hideously out of place in my
pretty, girly dress, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up
painfully as if someone were breathing down my neck.
Unobtrusiveness: yet another argument for wearing the dark,
unmemorable, utilitarian clothes I usually preferred.

And yet somehow it felt
almost as if I were a flower in a dark shadow—a ray of light that
trespassed on the wicked darkness—as if I were in the right, and
the darkness was wrong instead of the other way around, and my very
presence there was helping to push it back. I snorted.
Fairytales.

I exited through the alley
where the creep had grabbed Hannah having seen nothing but a couple
of sleeping bums and a lot of trash. Stepping into the sunlight was
like stepping into a shower after a long trek through the
woods—cleansing and desperately needed.

Hannah had taken another
corner table and put her back to the wall, and I smiled sadly to
see the new habits of mistrust and fearful caution taking root in
her. She'd ordered me a sandwich, and I sat beside her (my back to
the other wall) and thanked her.

"I figure your job doesn't
pay much," she teased.

"Not really. Mostly
Janelle gives me cash whenever I'm in town. She's sort of loaded,
and she knows I don't waste it."

"Are you lovers?" she
asked, right as I took an enormous bite of roast beef.

I swallowed the bite
whole. "No, she's straight."

"And you're not," Hannah
said, making it a statement rather than asking. I blinked at her
and thought of that searing kiss last night.

"And I'm not," I said
cautiously. I tapped my fingers on the table, eyed my sandwich, and
then her again.

Hannah sipped her soda.
"Did you find anything?"

The change of subject
threw me so hard that it took several seconds to get my brain back
on track and figure out what she'd been talking about. "Um, no, but
I didn't really expect to run into him or anything," I said. "We're
going to have to stake out the area tonight, starting around
sunset, just to be safe."

"I'll need to change into
something more practical," Hannah said, glancing down at her heels
and the pastel blouse.

I nodded emphatic
agreement. "Yeah, like running shoes."

Her grin was wicked and
cruel. "For me, yes. For you, maybe some higher heels... He's
already seen me, Camille. That means that if we want to try to bait
him, you're up."

My stomach dropped down to
my toes as I realized that she had a perfectly valid
point.

Chapter 4

She let me change into my own clothes when we got back to her
house, at least to rest in. "We should both get some sleep while we
can," she said. "It's going to be a late night." I started to
settle in on the couch, but she paused in the doorway to her
bedroom, chewing on her lip. "Would you like to—will you come sleep
with me? I dream..."

"Yeah," I said, going to
her. She looked vulnerable and scared—embarrassed, maybe. I climbed
into bed ahead of her, trying to make it easier, and held my arms
open. She fell into them with almost no hesitation, snuggling her
head up against my small breasts. She was asleep in no time, but I
lay awake for a while longer, acutely aware of the feel of her in
my arms and the smell of her in my head.

I awoke to her thrashing
before she actually started to scream, and for a moment I tensed,
gripping her tight before I realized how afraid that would make
her. I loosened my hold immediately, calling her name and murmuring
soothing things into the dim afternoon. Her thrashing and crying
stopped abruptly and her eyes flew open, locking onto mine with a
clear intensity. Shit.

"It's just me, Hannah.
It's just Camille. Relax, honey, just relax." She probably wouldn't
try to make me do anything harmful—would probably just ask me
nicely to let her go and leave the room—but suddenly it felt vital
to me to stay, so I did whatever I could think of to protect her. I
reached up and stroked her face, my fingers brushing over her
cheek. "It's me, honey, it's me. You're safe..."

She blinked and the color
slowly faded back into her eyes. Then, she reached up for me, her
hand tracing the same path on my cheek that my own fingers followed
on hers. I shuddered as she touched me, and closed my eyes to lean
into her hand. It slid back into my hair, her grip tightening just
a little as she pulled me down... and then her lush, full lips met
mine in a kiss that was at once softer and more intense than the
one we had shared before. This was a kiss full of awareness and
intention—one of affection and a need for comfort, not a weapon or
a jab.

I whimpered softly into
her mouth, not sure how long it had been since I had allowed myself
a real, tender kiss, and then I dove into the pleasure. My tongue
swept out to taste her lips, tease them apart, and stroke her
tongue with mine. She pressed her advantage then, taking control of
the kiss and making it harder, giving it a sexual edge that made
the hairs on the back of my neck jump to attention.

Then she relaxed, passive
again in my arms, and I nibbled at her lips, showing her a wilder,
more teasing part of myself.

We passed the kiss back
and forth, our lips refusing to part as we engaged in a dance of
power and submission, passivity and activity. It was a dance that I
knew instinctively could never be learned by a man, who would
always crave control, but one to which we both knew the steps, deep
in our souls.

It could have been hours
or only minutes, but the kiss was unhurried, not a prelude but an
act in itself, and it was shocking and abrupt when the alarm on her
watch chimed and drove us apart. Hannah panted, more startled than
I had been, and I grinned at her, pleased at my prowess and the
distraction I'd provided. I was less pleased when she told me it
was time to cram myself into a mini skirt and heels that I most
certainly could
not
run in.

In the end, we compromised
on the skirt length (I got something that skimmed the top of my
knees), but I had to promise not to complain while she did my hair
and makeup, which was torture this time since she was trying to
'sex me up'.

By the time she was
finished, I looked startlingly presentable, and the sky outside was
just beginning to darken into dusk. "Let's grab a quick bite," I
said. "It'll be at least after full dark before he starts hunting,
I think."

Hannah agreed, and within
ten minutes had whipped up some sort of pasta dish. Since I was
used to eating out of tin cans while on the run—half the time
without even bothering to heat them over a camp stove first—I was
suitably impressed.

When I said so, Hannah
looked at me like I'd grown an extra arm. "It's like you were
raised by wolves or something," she muttered.

I stuffed a forkful of
pasta in my mouth, but chewed with my mouth closed and swallowed
before I responded. "Well I
have
spent a lot of time running through the
woods."

She sighed. "I keep
forgetting. Especially since you clean up so well."

"You think I look good?"
The words came out before I could stop them, and I wanted to kick
myself. Stuff me into a dress for one fucking day and I turn into a
needy little princess?

"Your job tonight is to
look good, remember?" she said, her voice light and teasing. "And
it was my job to make you look good. And I am apparently
amazing
at my
job."

I gave her a sour look,
but it was good to see a sparkle in her eye and hear laughter in
her voice. It wasn't until then that I noticed the strained,
controlled tone that had threaded through everything she'd said
from yesterday when I'd met her, making itself obvious by its
sudden absence. She had been scared and in pain, and I had given
her a mission and maybe even provided a bit of a distraction. That
thought brought my mood back around, and I grinned, but I played
dumb when she raised her eyebrows at me.

"So how does this work?" I
asked, knowing the plan and wanting to go over it again, anyway. It
was something Riley had taught me through example: don't tell
people to hash out the plan again; ask them to remind you
like
you're
the
idiot.

"You'll walk downtown,
window shop, look pretty and inviting and helpless, and pass
through as many shadows and as close to as many alleys as
possible," Hannah said. Her eyebrows told me that she knew what I
was doing and was merely playing along. I didn't care as long as
she continued to play.

"And you walk with me?" I
asked, putting a little extra 'village idiot' into my voice. I
cleared the table as a peace offering for my attitude, and Hannah
smiled at me and shook her head.

"And I follow you at a
distance, looking slouchy and ugly and tough."

"You're going to have a
hard time looking anything but beautiful with that hair," I said,
shocking myself with my wistful tone. I moved behind her and ran my
fingers through the red-gold silkiness, watching it spill over my
fingers.

"Watch this," she said.
She grabbed a hair tie, twisted her hair, and suddenly the whole,
long mass of it was contained in a smallish ball at the back of her
head. Then she pulled a plain beanie down over it, and her shining
hair vanished. The whole room seemed darker, as if a lamp had been
doused.

"That's like a magic
trick," I said, twirling one remaining wisp around my finger and
tucking it in for her. I'd always been a bit of a tomboy, so my
default hairstyle when it had been longer was 'ponytail', and I'd
cut it short when I'd had to run, keeping it that way ever since.
"Can you do it again?"

Hannah turned and rolled
her eyes at me. "I can do it as often as I want, but it's getting
dark out, and we wouldn't want to waste all of that hard work I put
into making you pretty."

I made a face, but when I
stepped past her to the door, I couldn't help flashing a secret
smile at the thought that she'd called me pretty. This was getting
pathetic.

She hung back, good as her
word, and watched me cross the street and head into downtown. From
there, I couldn't acknowledge her unless I wanted to blow
everything. I wanted to look back—to check on her—but I kept my
eyes forward and my expression as blank and vapid as I
could.

I smiled into lit
storefronts, wandered through dark shadows and past open alleys,
and even paused in front of the alley where Hannah had been
attacked, pretending to fix my shoe strap. I glanced back, and even
from across the street I could see her shudder when I hesitated
there, but nothing untoward happened, and I carried on.

Two hours later, I was so
exhausted that I wanted to curl up on the sidewalk and take a nap.
Jogging through the woods for hours could never have prepared me
for the terrible ordeal of walking up and down downtown in three
inch heels. My feet, legs, and back felt as if I had dipped them in
acid. It took all of my willpower to maintain an upright carriage
and continue walking. I was actually starting to hope that the guy
attacked me soon, just so I could take the fucking shoes
off.