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LENGTH: Borderline Mid-Novel
SENSUALITY:Sensual

Cover art (c) Alex DeShanks 2008
ISBN 978-1-60394-205-8
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As partners, Jenna and Hunter had developed a bond, a rapport that had carried them through many cases … until the night the killer calling himself Jack had stabbed her and left as his fifth victim on the steps of the police station.

Three years later when Hunter showed up at her door to tell her Jack was back, she was forced to accept two unpalatable truths—she couldn’t hide
away from a world with Jack still in it and determined to kill again.

And the one kiss she’d shared with Hunter so long ago had changed everything about their relationship.

Rating: Sensual.

BLOOD IN THE MOONLIGHT

By

Allie Harrison

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

Hunter McCall stared at Jenna Delaney’s front door for a long moment.

Then he swallowed hard and reached up, preparing to tap his fist on the window glass. Why should this be so difficult, he asked himself? He’d done far more dangerous things in his life, in his career. His knock vibrated through his knuckles and echoed within the log house before he got the chance to talk himself out of doing this.

At first, he heard nothing. Fine, he thought. She’s not home. Perhaps it was fate’s way of telling him he should never have come in the first place.

“Why am I thinking like this?” he muttered out loud. His question was lost to the slight breeze that touched him. “Idiot,” he went on to mutter. There was, after all, so much more at stake than his own pride that he needed to force down. Then he heard a loud crash and a breaking of glass, followed by a muffed curse.

She was home.

Hunter hardly had time to get used to that idea before Jenna Delaney opened the door and Hunter caught his breath at seeing her again. Three years had changed her very little.

For another long moment, he merely stared at her. His memory had failed him when it came to remembering her beauty.

He liked the way her long, dark, wavy hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail. It gave her heart shaped face a longer appearance and made her nose look somewhat more pointed. She had always been lean, lithe, keeping her body in perfect shape as she worked within a male-dominated career. Now, he thought her to be too thin. Her gray eyes looked like dark thunderclouds. She stood nearly a head shorter than he, yet she had always had the ability to somehow look him down with those eyes.

But now she stared up at him, her mouth slightly open, her shock at seeing him evident.

Then as if someone had run an eraser across a chalkboard, her shock disappeared. “Hello, Hunter,” she said.

Her rich, husky voice hadn’t changed a bit, he thought. He often heard her voice call out to him in his nightmares. What surprised him was the lack of emotion in her greeting, as if it had been only yesterday since she had seen him instead of nearly three years ago. What surprised him even more was the flood of emotions that surged through him when he allowed himself to fall into the trap of her gaze.

He should have known those feelings existed, even though he’d chosen to hide and ignore them as well as simply pretend they didn’t exist. He’d missed her, terribly, he realized now. What was more, he loved her. The idea touched him like the sudden heat of a searing brand on his chest. They’d worked together for years, and there had always been respect between the two of them. Yet, Hunter knew now there had been more than simple respect growing inside of his soul for her. It was love—pure and simple love. And even now, he tried to push the idea aside.

“Jenna.” His voice sounded lacking—in strength, in volume.

“Come on in,” she said slowly as if she wasn’t certain she really trusted him in her home. She moved aside so he could enter.

He recognized her home. It wasn’t the home he would’ve thought she would choose for herself. It was a log house, rustic, smelling woodsy, a masculine home. It had once been her father’s and she had inherited it upon his death. Hunter recognized so much of her father still there. He saw, too, the small subtle woman touches, hints of change.

“Come into the kitchen. I have a mess to clean up.” She turned and headed into the kitchen and gave him no choice but to follow her.

He watched her back as she moved away. He stuck his balled fists into the pockets of his jeans to keep from reaching out to her.

The mess turned out to be an entire pitcher of what smelled to be lemonade on the floor. Jenna got a sack from under the sink and knelt beside the mess. Carefully, she began to put large pieces of glass into the sack. “I’d offer you some lemonade, but you’re going to have to wait.”

He knelt down beside her. “Let me help you.” His hand brushed against hers as they both reached for the same piece of glass, and he didn’t miss the way she pulled away as if his touch burned her.

“No, thanks, Hunter. I don’t need your help. Why don’t you have a seat at the table, and I’ll fix some more lemonade in a few minutes?”
His gaze met hers, and he forced himself to hold it, not to look away from the pain that was so evident in the smoke of her eyes. “I want to help you,” he insisted.

“Now you want to help me?” she asked sarcastically. “Where were you when I needed it, Hunter? Where were you when I was learning to function again with all of my insides sewn together in different places? Where were you when I was learning to breathe without having to experience pain? Where were you when I had to deal with not having my dad here? Where were you when I refused to sleep because I knew if I did, I’d dream and live it all over again?”

Her accusing questions hurt.

His lack of answers cut just as deep.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

They were just two words, hard words for him to say even though he meant them with his soul. He knew as soon as he said them they weren’t enough. And they would never be.

She looked down at the mess before her, and for the first time since he’d known her, she looked defeated. Worse, she looked as if she’d given up or given in, something he’d never known her to do before.

He didn’t like the look and, again, it took every ounce of energy he had not to grab her and shake it out of her.

Or at least reach out and cup her face in his hands and force her to look at him again.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said softly without looking up at him. “Just tell me why you’re here. Tell me what you want.”

“I need to talk to you.”

She chuckled as she finished wiping the floor. “So, it isn’t because you want to see me, or because you want to take me to lunch, or because you were just passing through and thought you’d stop by and check on me or simply because you just missed me?”

She slowly got to her feet. He followed suit as she threw the sack of glass and soggy paper towels in the trash.

His throat was tight as he replied. “Yes, it’s all those things, too, Jenna. But I do need to talk to you.”

She took a heavy breath, and he couldn’t help but notice the way she had to think about it as she did it. She pulled out another pitcher, a plastic one this time and moved about the kitchen to make more lemonade. He waited.

“I don’t do the job anymore, Hunter,” she said.

“Jenna ….”
She cut off any further words he might have said, even though he really had no idea what he’d plan to say to her. “I can ride a bike without getting winded. I can go weeks without having a nightmare. And the doctor assures me that everything is healed, and I could even have children if I wanted.”

“That’s great,” he put in. Why did the idea of her having children pierce him like an ice pick? Because he didn’t think he’d be the father?

“But I can not do the job.” She emphasized that word ‘not.’

“I didn’t come to ask you to do the job. Not like you did before,” he added. “But this is important. And you need to know about it. I also do need your thoughts, your ideas.”

She stopped in her stirring of the lemonade to stare at him as if he’d just asked her to walk through hot coals barefooted.

“You always knew how to get into their heads, how to know what step they might take next. I don’t know how you did it, but you did, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you like I should have.”

She laughed again, and again there was no meaning behind the laughter. “Well, don’t take it personally, Hunter. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s simply a man thing. My father didn’t listen to me either, and it got him killed.”

Hunter wasn’t ready to tread down that memory lane. But he knew that street was just a few blocks away, and soon he’d have no choice.

“I need your help, Jenna,” he said again, changing the subject.

She poured him a tall glass of lemonade. “Well, I don’t want to help you,” she said flatly.

She handed him the glass of lemonade, and this time he didn’t let her pull away when his fingers touched hers. She didn’t like him back in her life. He didn’t blame her, but he was here, damn it. He wasn’t running away again. He wasn’t leaving her. He’d missed her. And like it or not, she needed him. She just didn’t know it yet.

But more than that, he needed her. He just hadn’t known how much until five minutes ago when he had looked into her eyes.

“I know you don’t, and I understand why you don’t.”

She let out a loud huff and took a drink of her own lemonade before she finally moved to the back door that led to a covered deck. He followed her out. The deck was new, as was the cushioned furniture. The view was green, trees, with the lake in the distance down the slope. There was the distant sound of a speedboat motor from down on that lake.

She sat down at a table with a glass top, and he sat down opposite her. A large yellow striped Tomcat sat up on the deck rail licking his paw. Hunter was not in the least bit surprised to see him. He’d be surprised if he didn’t see one or two more before he left. Jenna had always been a cat lover.

“I don’t think you understand at all,” Jenna said.

And it took him a moment to remember where they’d been in their conversation.

“I don’t want to help you,” she went on. “I don’t plan to help you. I’m not a cop anymore, and I don’t psychoanalyze anyone anymore. I don’t want to go back to that, and I don’t plan to. I remember when I was a little girl and my father was still a beat cop. My mother once made the comment that a cop’s life costs a lot. Well, I know that very well. Because it cost me my father. It cost me a lot of friends and a big chunk out of my life. It cost me a lot of pain and almost my own life. And it cost me your respect.” She looked hard at Hunter with her last sentence. “I have nothing left to give except the home you see around me. And I’m not giving that up, Hunter. The answer is no. So why don’t you drink your lemonade and leave? Because there is nothing you can say to change my mind.”

Oh, but there was, Hunter thought.

He just wasn’t quite ready to spring it on her yet. She was still reeling with the emotions of seeing him again after so long, of having to face memories he knew she must have worked hard to tuck away in a dark part of her mind.

“You never lost my respect,” he had to put in. “Can I tell you why I left?”

He half expected her to say no, that after three years, she was no longer interested in knowing his reasons. She gave him a small smile over her glass. “Sure, tell me why you left.”

“I knew that staying would hurt you more. I felt that staying would hinder your healing.”

She set the glass down on the table that separated them and stared at him. “You thought what?” she asked slowly.

“What are you feeling right now?” he asked, not answering her question.

“What?” she asked.

“Tell me what you feel—regarding me—right now. Be honest.”

She’d never been anything less than honest with him and he expected no less now.

“I feel betrayal, anger. I feel like I’m swinging back and forth between wanting to slap you and wanting to hug you. I feel like you let me down. And I don’t know if I can get that trust back or not.”

He found himself unable to look at her when she spoke those last two sentences, for they were the truth. He knew he had let her down. Just as he knew she might never again be able to trust him. Sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, he was going to have to face that. Just as she was going to be forced to trust him again.

She went on, “I feel like I hate you and I love you and I’ve missed you. I feel pain, still so fresh after all this time, like that knife cuts through my gut over and over.”

They were both quiet for a long moment, and the only sounds were of nature—birds in the trees, insects.

“Do you think you could have healed had you had to feel all of those emotions every time you looked at me?” Hunter asked quietly. He met her gaze again. “Because there’s one you forgot to mention—blame. So much of what happened was my fault. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t look at me without blaming me. You can’t tell me that if I’d listened to you, your father might still be here and you wouldn’t have been ….”

She let out a heavy sigh and stopped his words. “Oh, Hunter, don’t open all this up again. We could play ‘if only’ until the cows come home, and it won’t change a thing.”

“I know that. I’m just trying to point out why I left. I wanted you to heal, to get better, and I knew you couldn’t do it seeing my face every day.”

“You had to work it out for yourself, too, didn’t you?” she pointed out. “You could work the job with a partner, but you never wanted to ride any of the roller coasters of your life with anyone beside you, did you?”

He shrugged, hating that this had been turned around to face him. She was right. He worked things out for himself alone. It was just the way things had always been, the way he preferred them now.

“Your dad was a good cop,” he put in, trying again to change the subject from something other than himself.

She leaned across the table toward him. “You’re a good cop, too, and I was a good cop. I’m not anymore. So the answer is still no.”

“How did you know I was working my way back to that?”

“The same way I’ve always known, so don’t ask. I couldn’t explain it before, and I can’t explain it now. I don’t even want to try.” Hunter heard the frustration in her voice. It was a simple sixth sense, a gut instinct. Many cops had it, some far better than others. Jenna had had it far better than others, far better, in fact, that anyone else Hunter had ever known. So why had he doubted her that day when she’d told him the evidence wasn’t adding up, that something was out of kilter, when she said he shouldn’t waste his time following what turned out to be a bum lead? He still couldn’t answer that question.

“This is really important,” he insisted.

“Find someone else who cares. I can’t afford to care.”

She gazed out toward the lake, the look in her eyes growing distant.

Hunter watched her, drinking her in like the lemonade in his glass.

“There’s no one else, and you have to afford it this time,” he said.

She was still for a long moment, and he knew she recognized the urgency in his voice, in his words, and took it for what it was worth. She met his gaze again.

“Why do you say that?” she asked slowly.

Hunter thought she probably already knew the answer. She just needed him to say it in order to believe it.

“Because I got another letter. Jack’s back. And because you were a target before, I can only assume you’re a target now.”

Jenna stared at him for a long moment. And Hunter said not a word as he allowed her to digest what he’d just told her.

“That’s impossible,” she let out finally, her words little more than a breathy whisper.

“I know. That’s what I thought, too. I know how you must feel ….” He could only imagine it was the same way he’d felt upon opening that letter he’d received three days before.

“You have no idea how I feel!” she let out in a rush, standing so suddenly her chair nearly toppled over behind her. “Don’t you dare tell me you know how I feel. This—this ….” She struggled for the right word.

“Butcher?” he supplied.

“Yes, this butcher killed four women, almost killed me and killed three other cops—good cops—during a car chase that never should have happened, one of them being my own father. There was nothing left of any of them when the fire department finally got all the car fires put out, not even enough to make a positive ID through dental records, and you’re telling me he’s not dead?”

If looks could kill, he’d be dead, Hunter thought, for he had never before seen such daggers in her eyes. True over the course of their time as partners, he figured he’d seen her in every emotion. He even thought he’d seen passion in her eyes when he’d given her a kiss at the stroke of midnight one New Year’s Eve and she’d had a bit too much champagne. But he had never seen the mixture of emotions he saw now.

Slowly, Hunter pulled the clear evidence bag from inside his pocket.

He slid it across the table toward her.

Involuntarily, Jenna took a step back as if she might get burned if she got too close. She stared down at it and read the words on the paper, cut from books and magazines, only one word handwritten.

Guess What? Jack is back.

After a long time to wait

Isn’t it great?

As you can guess there will be five

Who sooner or later won’t be alive.

Jack’s looking forward to the fun

Be on the lookout for number one.

It was signed with a simple crawl in pencil graphite—Jack. The letters flowed and swooped in fancy cursive, just as with the five letters of three years ago. Then below that written word were four more words cut from newspapers and magazines—The Master of Disguise.

Jenna swallowed hard and met Hunter’s gaze.

Hunter saw a new emotion in that gaze—fear. He didn’t blame her.

“This can’t be,” she said. Then she sank to her chair once again as if her knees would no longer hold her. “Tell me there hasn’t been a body found.”

Hunter wanted to reach out and take her hand or even pull her into his arms, anything to erase that look of fear in her eyes. He hated even more to have to tell her. “There has been, found yesterday, just like all the others.”
“Just like me?” she asked softly.

“You didn’t die like the others.”

“No, he just meant for me to.”

For a long moment, neither spoke. It might have been three long years since Hunter had talked and shared with her, but he still knew her. He knew how she liked to work things out in her mind, how she liked to think things through. He let her do that now.

“It’s been tested?” she asked slowly

“Yes, and nothing helpful was found, no fingerprints, no chemicals, no leads, just like all the others. It was sent through the United States Mail, mailed directly to me at the Crime Investigation Headquarters. It’s hard telling how many people handled it.”

“Do you really think this is the same killer?” Jenna asked.

“A man who thinks he’s Jack the Ripper reincarnated into a master of disguise doesn’t come along every day, thank God,” he put in.

“I know that,” she said sharply. “I asked if you thought he was really the same man. Do you think he could have slipped away somehow?”

Hunter finally gave into the urge and reached across the table. He took her hand, and she let him, holding on to his hand with strength that didn’t exactly surprise him. Her hand was warm and soft. Why had he never noticed that before?

“I don’t know,” Hunter finally replied. “I do know that even though the idea of the notes was somehow slipped to the press, the fact that every letter was written in rhyme was not. I also know that there were very few people who knew the letters were signed in actual handwriting Jack, in pencil. The press labeled this man the midnight stalker because all the victims were stabbed between ten and two in the morning. But the idea of Master of Disguise never leaked, and only a few people knew he was following in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper. Remember how Kovich would all but yell at us to make sure we didn’t give this guy the satisfaction of giving him the same status by calling him Jack the Ripper?”

Jenna gave him a small smile. It was the first that wasn’t forced, and Hunter liked the way it looked on her. True, this wasn’t by any means a light case, but he was glad he’d been able to lighten the mood, even if it was only one comment at a time.

Hunter grew serious again. “Either this is a copycat with inside scoop to everything we kept secret, or there were two killers working together all the time and now we’re dealing with the second, or the guy who died in that car chase with your father wasn’t the right guy.”

“Where was the body found?” Jenna asked.

She was absorbed in the case, just as Hunter knew she would be. She could say no all she wanted but being a cop was in her blood, and she couldn’t stop her own need to know.

“A town by the name of Chapel Hill.”

“I guess I don’t need to remind you that last time he took all his victims to Turner’s Chapel,” she put in.

“Always a town with a name similar to White Chapel, the part of London where the real Jack the Ripper had done his dirty work. What does he do, study maps?”

“Good question,” Hunter replied. “But unlike the others of before, he did kill this latest victim there before leaving her to be found there.”

“What’s your plan?” Jenna asked.

“Aside from not letting you out of my sight for one second?”

He half expected her to roll her eyes at his question and reply that she could take care of herself. She did neither.

“I want to go to this place, this Chapel Hill. I want to be waiting for him.”

“That means he’ll have to kill again before you can catch him,” Jenna pointed out to him.

He still held her hand. He found he liked holding her hand. He planned to do it more.

“Maybe not,” he replied. “Remember how we thought he cased the town of Turner’s Chapel, how we thought he must be staying there and getting to know it very well in order to strategically place his victims?”
“Yes,” she said.

“Well, I think he’ll do that again. I want to be there first.”

Jenna took a deep breath and stared at him. “And you want me to go with you.” It wasn’t a question.

Yet, Hunter answered it as if it were. “Yes, I’m taking you with me.” He meant for it to come out in a way that told her she really didn’t have much choice. He meant to keep her safe. He meant to keep history from repeating itself. She obviously understood that and wanted the same for she didn’t argue.

“Who else knows about this?” she asked quietly.

“Captain Dugby, of course and a few of the guys who worked the case before—Kovich, Dalton, Harmen.” All good men, he thought.

“Do they know about me?” she wanted to know.

“Dugby wanted you brought in. I said I’d take care of you.”

“Do they know of your plan to go to Chapel Hill?” she asked.

Hunter thought it best not to tell her that she was starting to sound more and more like the cop she used to be with each question.

“Dugby does, he’s approved it. I don’t know about the others. I’ve contacted the sheriff there. His name is Booth, John Booth. Don’t ask him what his middle name is and don’t tell any jokes. He and I went through the academy together a long time ago. He’s a good man. He said there’s a house in town where we can stay.”

“Why don’t we just stay in a motel or something?”

“I want to be accepted as part of that town, that place. If we stay in a motel, we’ll always be on the outside looking in.”

She slid her hand out from beneath his finally as if she suddenly realized it was there. Then she flicked back her hair with her fingertips as if she needed to do something with that hand he’d been holding all this time. “And you want me to help? You want me to do more than just be your house companion?”

He looked at her hard. “Anything you can do to help, I’d appreciate. Anything you can tell me that you remember from before, I’d appreciate. I am not going to force you to do any cop related work, Jenna. But at the same time you can consider yourself handcuffed to me, because I’m not leaving you alone where this guy can get to you a second time, if that is, indeed, his intentions.”

“Thanks, Hunter,” she replied softly. “Have you seen the body?”

“Not yet. I thought I’d do that on our way to Chapel Hill.”

“When do we leave?”

“As soon as you’re packed and ready to go.”

* * * *

It was a short time later that Jenna hung up the phone after offering to pay her teenage neighbor to keep her cat, Syl, in food and water. With her packed duffel bag over her shoulder, she looked out at Hunter through the kitchen window. He absently petted Syl, who eventually considered every visitor a cat person and a friend.

Hunter looked out toward the lake, totally unaware that she watched him.

What was she doing? She asked the question for what had to be the hundredth time. And still the answer was the same—something she was sure she was not going to like, something she should stick to her guns and say no to, something she was bound to regret.

She stared at Hunter. In three years, he’d grown nothing more than handsome. He had to be thirty-five, maybe thirty-six now. The years had deepened the worry lines that flagged his eyes, giving him a more rugged look. His nose was slightly crooked, just as it had been before, just as it was in Jenna’s dreams and memories. His brown hair was just long enough to begin to wave and show signs of becoming unruly, and there was what was probably a permanent cowlick from the habit she knew he possessed of running his fingers through it was he was frustrated. He filled her cushioned chair with his broad form, and Jenna smiled at the picture he made. He was a strong, muscled man with big hands.

Yet, he held her cat with the gentlest touch as if it were something precious or could easily break—just as he’d just held her hand.

She was proud of herself at not jumping into his arms at the sight of him. Those feelings and emotions she’d admitted to him were the truth. But there had been one that she had left out, and it was the strongest of all.

It was a mixture of longing, of want, of desire, perhaps even something on the border of love.

And it had been there after New Year’s Eve nearly five years ago when, at the stroke of midnight, he had kissed her and her life changed forever.

That growing mixture of want only grew after that, until Jenna couldn’t control it. She worried over him, watching his back every chance she got. Then her worry and wonder escalated to questioning what he did on his days and nights off. Did he see other women? Did he ever think about her?

“It’s like he never left,” she said softly. “Those feelings haven’t dwindled one bit. Where would we be if Jack hadn’t entered our lives?” Her whispered words were lost.

Hunter didn’t even know she watched him through the window.

Because Hunter was there, close, in case she needed him, Jenna allowed herself to let in memories of Jack.

Like a terrible storm, Jack had shattered the peace of the entire area. They—all the cops assigned to the case—were all determined to catch this man who killed quickly using only a knife and left his victims in strange places that seemed to have no reason, leaving behind no clues, no evidence, and nothing to tie the victims together.

Jenna took a deep breath and allowed in the frustration that came with Jack as she remembered the fifth note of three years ago.

This note had been so different the entire team contemplated the idea of a copycat killer. It indicated that the fifth victim was still alive and that Jack didn’t plan to kill her any time soon.

At the memory, Jenna shivered and took herself back to that day as she looked up into Hunter’s deep gaze. “This feels so wrong,” she said. It took all her energy not to let the note slip from her hands. It felt so dirty she didn’t want it to touch her.

“No, it’s not, Jenna,” Hunter replied. “Look at all the clues he’s giving us. He talks about gargoyles watching over the fifth victim. The library’s housed in an old building with gargoyles at each corner of the roof. We need to get over there right now.”

“I don’t think so,” Jenna’s warned. “Something’s wrong, I feel it.”

“What’s wrong is wasting time,” Hunter let out, his voice filled with impatience. He turned away from her.

Jenna reached out and grabbed his sleeve, feeling the heat of his arm and doing her best to ignore it. “It isn’t like this man to give us so many clues so suddenly when he hasn’t before. I’m telling you something doesn’t feel right. Don’t go rushing into the library. You don’t even know what you’re looking for.”

“Fine, stay here, then,” he snapped at her. “Don’t expect any credit when I come back dragging Jack in.”

His words, his tone, his unexpected lack of respect stung. The fact that he was tired and she was tired was no excuse.

She let him leave. She didn’t go with him. And she didn’t tell him ‘I told you so’ when he called twenty minutes later to tell her the library was dark and empty. She couldn’t remember what led her outside after that phone call. Perhaps it was a simple need for fresh air. Perhaps it was because the precinct was suddenly too confined, too stale smelling. Perhaps it was because she wanted to be on the front steps when Hunter returned. But she went outside.

The heat of the day lingered in the stone of the steps. The moon was high above, looking hazy. She leaned up against the column at the end of the stairs and waited for Hunter, thinking more about his kiss than about Jack. She was so tired of thinking about Jack.

“Got any change, lady?” a soft male voice broke her concentration.

He was a street person, wearing too many layers for the heat, wearing an old baseball cap that had probably been red at one time. He sat on the opposite side of the pedestal where she leaned. Jenna smelled him from where she’d stood, a strong mixture of body odor and stale liquor.

“Yeah, sure,” she replied absently. He wasn’t the first street person she’d seen and given a quarter to, and she doubted he’d be the last. She dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the change she’d stuck there earlier. It wasn’t more than fifty cents, and if it helped him, then she’d be glad for him. She looked up to hand it to him and noticed the pedestal for the first time.

A gargoyle sat perched on it.

And the man was no longer sitting, but standing directly in front of her.

Then something hot, painful, terrifying gripped her middle. She looked down, and the moonlight reflected off the knife in his hand, a knife that was now covered with her blood. She tried to pull her gun from its holster, but her belly felt as if it were on fire. She suddenly couldn’t breathe.

Jenna knew how he worked. He planned to take her away, take her and leave her in a small town called Turner’s Chapel. She couldn’t allow that to happen. She sucked in a breath and forced her body to move, doing her best to ignore the pain in her gut.

She pulled out her gun. The metal was cold against her palm.

She would probably have been able to shoot him had her knees not chosen that moment to give out. The bullet splintered the steps beyond him. She fired a second time despite the fact that her vision was blurry now. But he moved away as she missed again. Her third shot would have hit him in the shoulder had he not managed to escape around the corner of the building. More stone splintered from her shot.

She wanted to cry at the pain. She wanted to cry at the fact that she thought was going to die. She wanted to cry at the idea that she’d let Jack get away.

She didn’t want to die. She had things she had to tell Hunter.

Her shots alerted officers in the building. And she was aware of movement just as she was aware of her own blood spilling on the steps. Shouts sounded far away because of the rushing sound of her heart beating in her ears.

Then there was Hunter. He leaned over her. “Hold on,” he said.

Jenna tried to concentrate on his words.

His hand was so warm against hers.

In his hand, she felt the same gentleness as when he’d held it mere moments ago when he broke the news to her.

Jenna blinked back to reality and took a deep breath, realizing she hadn’t breathed for a long moment as she allowed those memories to wash over her. She shivered against the cold, clamminess that held her. Then she forced down a swallow but was unable to move past the lump that horrid memory left behind.

Jack was back, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength or the ability to face him a second time.

Even more, Hunter was back in her life.

And Jenna wasn’t sure she wanted to face the feelings she’d tried so hard to bury.