Heart of the Hunter Read Online Free Page B

softly.
    As he returned to the street he knew that, no matter what lies he might tell, that much was true.

Two
    J eb stood at the window. Where he’d stood for hours. The shirt he’d pulled over running shorts as he crawled out of bed had been tossed aside. The field glasses, normally a virtual part of his hand, lay on a table halfway across the room. Beside them sat a carafe of coffee, untouched and forgotten.
    Beyond the window, his shadowy canvas to the world, the turbulent sea was a caldron of colors, shifting and changing as the rising sun raced to challenge the brewing storm. When he first took up his cold-eyed vigil in the moonless predawn hours, black waves tipped with silver washed over an even blacker shore. Now shades of gold rose out of magenta.
    He’d watched each change. From total darkness, to this moment when night met day, he’d noted every nuance with a troubled restlessness.
    For the second night he’d tossed and tumbled until, finally counting his quest for sleep lost, he’d abandoned his bed. For the third morning the sands of the shore would be undisturbed by human footsteps.
    Nicole’s absence, immediately following the sale, came as no surprise. He expected it. From her dossier he knew she kept living quarters in Charleston. A small pied-à-terre, for convenience after tiring late-night sessions in the gallery. For safety, when the drive to Kiawah would be long and desolate. The postsale uproar with its countless details to be addressed would have been such a time.
    Two days more had passed. The packing and shipping and additional inventory would be long done, for Nicole worked hard, sparing herself little. Ever. The only indulgence she allowed were solitary morning walks; the only respite, lazy Sundays on the island.
    â€œSunday.” Jeb rapped the window with an impatient fist. “Where is she?”
    His growled question was rhetorical. He knew where she was. Hank Bishop, Simon’s man in Charleston, had reported where she’d been, what she’d done and with whom, in precise detail. His last report had been that Nicole Callison was tucked safely, and alone, behind her garden wall. That was two days ago. Since then, Bishop had been as silent as the grave.
    A second fist rattled the pane as lightning split the distant sky and thunder rumbled. As morning blossomed in new radiance, the darkness churning over the sea had issued its first challenge. But Jeb had stopped thinking of light and darkness and colors.
    â€œTwo days.” Hands still fisted, he fought a rising impatience. “Two damnable days and nothing!”
    Maybe it was the silence that made him too edgy to sleep. Maybe it was that he wasn’t accustomed to having a part of his investigations under the jurisdiction of another.
    â€œMaybe it’s a lot of things.” Bracing against the broad expanse of glass, head bowed, tired eyes closed, his bare chest heaved in a deep shuddering breath. He needed to see her. If she was avoiding him, he needed to know why.
    He needed to know now!
    Wheeling about without a backward glance at the deserted shore, he went to the telephone. An instrument he trusted little, used only carefully and sporadically, but recently his chief connection to the world outside the walls of his temporary lodging. The number he dialed rang once and, after an eternity, a second time. As Mitch Ryan answered, Jeb went straight to the point. “I’m heading for Charleston.”
    Mitch Ryan had been his friend for too long, and worked with him too many times to ask why or when or to try to dissuade him. If Jeb Tanner felt the need to go to Charleston, it would be with good reason. If there were circumstances that needed discussion, it wouldn’t be over an open telephone line. “All right,” the younger man said. “But, in case you haven’t looked out your window this morning, don’t let this sunshine fool you. There’s a mother of a