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Head swirling on a raft of nausea, he found himself on his hands and knees a moment later, feeling for the pistol, which had gone flying from his hands. A second click preceded the flashlight’s beam, and the whole bunker was once more flooded with bright light.
Before his eyes could adjust, the intruder sent his gun spinning out of reach with a kick. A no-nonsense yet decidedly feminine voice ordered, “On your feet, right now. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
The speaker was not his little sister but a small and slender woman, maybe early thirties, whom he had never seen in his life. With her wavy, red-blond hair pushed back behind squared shoulders, she was aiming an intense green-eyed gaze, along with the business end of her 9mm automatic, directly at him.
“I said, on your feet—now,” she repeated, her face as softly feminine as her voice was firm. “That is, if you aren’t still seeing stars from that left cross.”
“That was you that hit me?” He staggered a little as dizziness washed over him when he rose. “With your actual fist?”
Sure, he’d dropped his guard when he’d mistakenly imagined he had body-slammed his little sister, but this woman, who couldn’t be more than five-four and maybe one-fifteen soaking wet, had damned near knocked him out with a single blow. “Tell me you clocked me with that gun or something. Leave a man a little pride, at least.”
“Come to think of it—” eyeing him critically, she waved the weapon to direct him farther inside the tube-shaped bunker “—maybe you ought to sit down. That punch to the head has you talking nonsense.”
As he moved in the direction she indicated, she bent to sweep up his pistol with her free hand before dropping it into a side pocket of her dark gray tactical pants, her movement so deft and assured that he knew immediately he was dealing with a well-trained professional.
There goes my last chance at freedom, he realized, his heart sinking. Unless he started talking fast.
“Who the hell are you,” he demanded, “and what do you want with me?”
“Relax and take a load off,” she suggested, gesturing toward a built-in leather sofa across the narrow corridor.
With little choice, he complied, while his captor stood across from him, her back pressed against the command center’s chair behind her.
“Nice little hideaway you’ve got down here,” she said, waving to indicate the pristine white walls and birch shelving, lined with boxed supplies that could easily stretch to last him for another six months. “Lucky thing for me your former real estate agent is the talkative sort. Very eager to chat about how understanding you were over the irregularities with the paperwork—including this little unpermitted building project that you could’ve thrown a fit over since it had never been inspected.”
“I couldn’t see much point of causing those two young women any grief over some old mothballed bunker I never had any intention of using,” Ace said, shaking his head. “And you actually looked up my real estate agent?”
She smiled. “In my experience, it’s a rare runner who strays too far from his home turf. Especially one with the kind of family ties that you have...and properties to spare.”
“In your experience as what?” he asked, more certain than ever than the armed intruder who’d packed such a wallop wasn’t law enforcement, since she hadn’t identified herself as such. “The woman who’s come here to kill me?”
She shook her head and made a scoffing sound. “I’m not here to kill you, Colton. I’ve come to escort you to the Mustang Valley PD so I can collect the bounty I’ve been promised.”
* * *
Sierra Madden tensed as Ace Colton leane
d toward her, a lump rising where she’d slugged him and his dark brown eyes boring uncomfortably into hers.
“Start explaining, right now,” he ordered, looking better than he had any right to, considering his month-long confinement.
The neatly groomed light brown hair in his corporate headshots had given way to a somewhat longer, more unruly look. In place of the expensive suit and silk tie, he now wore a tight black T-shirt with worn jeans molded to a trim, athletic body. Though the bulge of his biceps made her suspect he’d been working off some of his frustrations with free weights, he was a good deal leaner than he’d been in photos from his CEO days. A spiky layer of stubble, frosted with a hint of silver at his jawline, gave him an edgy look of the sort that she’d always been drawn to...sometimes to her detriment.
Some men dressed up nicely, she knew, but leave it to her to come up with one whose appearance had been improved by life on the lam. Not that it matters. Ace Colton’s nothing to me but the fat paycheck I need to buy my way out of big trouble.
“First off, I need to know exactly who you are,” he added, “and who it was that put you on my trail.”
She chuffed a laugh. “You know, you’re awfully demanding for a guy with a goose egg on his head and a gun pointed at him. Or is arrogance just an occupational hazard for you CEO types?”
“Ex-CEO,” he said, sounding irritated, “as if you haven’t made it crystal clear already you’ve done your homework on my background. Which gives you a distinct advantage over me.”
“I happen to like advantages. But then again, who doesn’t?”
“Come on. A name, at least? What’s that going to cost you?”
She shrugged. “Fine, then. I’m Sierra Madden.”
“And you must be a bounty hunter, right? But how can that be? I haven’t been arrested, so there’s no bail bond for me to have skipped out on. What authority do you even have to—”
