Hunted

Copyright © 2013 Shunta Montgomery

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Publisher’s Note:

Hunted is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, event or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover by: Sweet Temptation Designs

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Special Thanks

Thank you, Barb, for catching the mistakes I missed. Your assist with editing has been wonderful.

Thanks to all of my readers for showing your support for my work by buying and reading my books.

Books by Capri Montgomery

Write Me A Murder: Sing Me to My Grave

Shadow Hills Returns: Revenge Justified

Shadow Ridge

Shadow Hills Returns: Breaking Point

Shadow Hills Returns: Obsession’s Curse

Forged in Fire

The Funeral Planner

Hiking for Danger

Shadow Hills Returns: Family Ties

Providence

Shadow Hills Returns: The Cost of Love

The Sixth Sentinel

On the Line

Inferno

When the Heart Breaks

In Love Before Christmas

Killing Hannah

On Thin Ice

Warriors of Persia

Sworn to Secrecy

Explosive: Deadly Connections

Betrayal of the Dove

Vendetta

Shadow Hills: M is for Murder

Seducing the Bodyguard

Shadow Hills: No Valentine

Shadow Hills: Fallen Hero

Fahrenheit

Secrets and Lies

Returning Sheba

Saints and Sinners

The McGregor Affair

Dream Walker

The Geneva Project

The Admiral’s Daughter

Dangerous Obsessions

Watch Over Me

And Many Others…

~ Coming Soon ~

Mine’s to Kill ~
Special Ops series

Chapter One

Keadon Myers didn’t need to look at the menu. He knew what he was getting before he walked into the Doppelganger—coffee, black, no sugars, no creamers, just good coffee. Before Heather started working here the coffee always had a hint of over grinded brassiness to its taste and he avoided it whenever he and his brother, Riggs, strolled in. Riggs had told him it was an acquired taste, yet in nearly a year of being in Loral Hills, Idaho he hadn’t acquired a taste for it yet. Helping his little brother get back to the world of present living conditions had taken longer than Keadon thought it would. He still wasn’t sure Riggs was ready. He wouldn’t leave this mountain throw back to prehistoric times town until he knew his brother would survive without him.

He laughed to himself. Who was he kidding? He probably wouldn’t ever leave. As stale as the town was on technology and modernization, he found a certain level of peace here. The calmness of the lake, the soft rustling of the trees, the lack of deadly serious crime and the fact that at night he could hear nature breathe instead of gunfire or military vehicles driving by was a breath of fresh air. There wasn’t anything much not to like in this place. Now that the coffee was good he couldn’t complain about the only breakfast serving restaurant in town either. They had the Juke Box, but that place only catered to the dinner crowd. It catered to the ones who liked to come in, toss their hat on the wooden round tables, pull out the cards and gamble their money, and their friendships away with people who would undoubtedly, after a few days of brooding, become friend and neighbor once again.

The town held a certain charisma that he just couldn’t get in the city. Maybe he missed a certain level of peace. He didn’t know why since he never had it in the first place. His family was average middle class Americans while he was growing up. He went to a regular school with nothing special on the side. He wasn’t living in a war torn part of the city, but he wasn’t in a quiet small town either. Things were hectic. Both of his parents worked. His father was a cop while his mother was the Assistant District Attorney. He and Riggs were latch key kids; that was the life he knew and one he loved. He couldn’t complain.

But then he joined up. Military recruiters had come to the high school campus and promised something that interested him. They dangled the carrot and like a workhorse he took it. He joined the Navy and made it his home, his career, his life. He was gone more often than not, and once he got transferred to the special unit he became a man on the move—constantly rotating out to special operations, never having a place to truly call home, watching comrades fall beside him, and to him, in some far corner of his mind, the normalcy of that routine bothered him. He didn’t realize how much until he had been in Loral Hills for about six months and he started realizing the quietness of peace—relative peace—was something he needed just as much as his little brother had.

Heather had moved into town roughly six months ago. She hadn’t started making coffee here until three months ago when the responsibility was thrown on her. She had told him she made it once because the pot was empty and they were all so busy that she just wanted to help and that one time meant she had to make it forever. People loved what they tasted, which proved to Keadon that the Doppelganger’s coffee was not an acquired taste; it was just a necessary evil for the men and women hanging out for lack of anything else to do during the day. Those who had jobs worked, but when lunch break, or the breakfast rush as Heather had called it, came everybody seemed to flock to the place.

“She makes good coffee,” Riggs interrupted his solitude by reminding him they were indeed having a conversation before he zoned out.

“Yeah, she does. But they’re working her too hard. It’s like she has to do everything now while some of them stand around and flirt with the wealthier men in town.” He looked over to Massey Bright who seemed to be enjoying giggling and batting her lashes at Charleston Gray. Charleston had money; his entire family did and in Loral Hills that was rare. Only a few families had the kind of wealth they had. The rest of them were the average, pay the bills and have a little left over, but nothing ever extravagant type of people. Fortunately, Loral Hills didn’t require much living money.

Keadon had money of his own, but they didn’t need to know that. He opened his auto shop because there wasn’t one in town, and because after fixing a couple broken down cars on the side of the road people seemed to show up at the home he shared with his brother to drop off their cars. What they did before he pulled into town he wasn’t sure, but he knew once word got out he seemed to be fixing cars all week. From oil changes to “little swooshing noises,” as Massey had called her car problem; Keadon was busier than he expected he would be in a town of this size.

He had bought a place of his own six months ago which was another reason he knew he probably wouldn’t be going anywhere. Who would want to buy a place up in the mountains when there was nothing worth seeing or doing in town? He could keep the place, he gathered, but he would lose his money—hard earned money that he had put into fixing the place up. Riggs had teased him, assuring him that he was stuck there now—stuck and never getting out is what he had said. “Welcome to the Twilight Zone, big brother,” he had laughed.

Keadon was in the Twilight Zone. The problem was that he was getting used to being there and what bothered him on first sight didn’t seem to bother him so much at all now.

Keadon sat back in his chair realizing that explained a lot. Heather had been acting strange the past few days, in fact it was since his date with the cafe owner Lisa Johnston. Since then Heather had been avoiding his table like the plague. He was sitting in her section, yet for some reason she seemed to prefer to find reasons not to have to service him.

“Told you so,” Riggs gave a gloating smile. His brother’s cobalt eyes sparkled with victory. They had argued about this when Riggs suggested Heather had feelings for him. He had assured Riggs the girl wasn’t interested in an old man such as himself. He was forty-two, soon to be forty-three and she was just a twenty-five year old kid. There were other men, ones closer to her age, living in Loral Hills if she were looking for a man.

He would admit the kid had a certain look to her, not quite gorgeous, but beautiful. She was not quite standout in a crowd, but she was not a fade into the backdrop type of young lady either. If she were older, maybe, he thought. Maybe he would have indulged in a little play time with her, but she wasn’t older and she wasn’t a girl who deserved playtime status. She needed a man who would respect her and treat her like a woman. She needed a man who would let her in his life for the long haul, not just for the night. He couldn’t give her that.

Besides, she wasn’t interested in him. She was interested in his work. She came to the shop that he had opened down in midtown because she was interested in fixing cars. Her car, the little rundown barely usable Volkswagen, had been one of the cars he stopped to look at on the side of the road. She was just pulling into town that day. Her car was broken down. She had the hood up, smoke was coming from beneath the hood, and she had the most innocently distressed look on her face. He couldn’t resist helping her even if he did have someplace else he had to be.

“No,” he shook his head. “She’s just used to me; that’s all.”

“Oh please,” Cathy nearly snarled. “Men can be such blind idiots sometimes. That woman is in love with you. I feel sorry for her. You broke her heart when you took Lisa out. Everybody knows that woman will spread her legs for anything with two legs and a penis.” She shook her head and sighed. “Poor Heather cried so hard in the kitchen the day you asked Lisa out—you did it right in front of her too. You know she’s not mad at you because she loves you. She’s brokenhearted right now, so I’ll be mad at you for her you wretched beast.” While Cathy’s look on her face didn’t imply she meant severe truth to the words, her tone did. Well hell, now he was in trouble. If they were right then he had to figure out a way to fix this. Wait, why did he care? He could date whomever he wanted at any time. He didn’t need anybody’s permission to do that. He sat at the table thinking about things until Cathy cleared her throat.

“I don’t have all day for your order, Keadon Myers.”

“Sorry,” he shrugged. “Heather always knows what I want.”

“Well I’m not Heather,” she glared at him.

“Just coffee, Cat—black.”

She gave him an eerie smile. “Lisa just put on a pot,” she laughed. “I’ll be sure you get some.”

“Oh hell,” he mumbled as she walked away from their table. Riggs sat across from him laughing as if this was the funniest thing in the world to him. He shook his head. Maybe he should cancel his order like everybody else seemed to be doing right now.

“Debbie Porter,” Jake Capshaw approached her suddenly. His stature was still big, monstrous, and foreboding.

“I’m sorry; you must have me confused with somebody else.” She knew he didn’t. She knew who he was and right now she was sure he wasn’t going to buy what she was selling. Beyond that, since she had used her middle name in this relocation she couldn’t even tell him her name was Heather because he would for sure know he had the right person. She had just run out of names to use that she could remember. She had started not answering people when they called to her, which didn’t do much good for friendly relationships when people thought she was purposely ignoring them.

She had been running for five years. Running hard, fast, frequently, and the list of names never stuck with her. She thought this time she might be safe here. Loral Hills was so far off the beaten path that she figured nobody would know. She got paid in cash because Lisa was perfectly fine working her like a slave, paying her crap pay, and not having to report the fact that she wasn’t providing medical insurance for her. Under the table was perfectly fine with Lisa just so long as nobody knew she was paying her under the table, and that arrangement worked out fine for Debbie too. She didn’t want to be found which meant she couldn’t leave any paper trail of her existence behind. She bought fake names, fake identification so she could drive, but she didn’t get fake social security numbers to go with those names.

“No, I don’t think so,” he grinned. “I would recognize that beautiful mousy brown hair and brownish green eyes anywhere. You have very distinctive features, Debbie—not quite beautiful, but something about them surely did attract Jason to ya. He’s been looking for you.” He smiled, gloating in his accomplishment of finding her. “That creamy skin of yours must offer something sweet for a man like that to keep searching for you. You must have something really special in there,” he looked down to her crotch.

“Like I said,” she tried to remain stable. “You have me confused with somebody else.” She tried to step around him and he blocked her, grabbing her by the upper arm and nearly yanking her off the ground. She stood on her tip toes trying to relieve the discomfort.

“Nah, you’re Debbie. You’re going back where you belong. Big man is going to pay me a handsome bounty for you. Nobody leaves Jason Porter, Debbie—not and live to see another day.” He squeezed her arm just a little tighter.

“Let me go,” she struggled in his grip.

“No way in hell am I losing my reward, honey. All the men hunting for you across this great nation and I’m the one who finally finds you. Well by God I am one lucky bastard.”

He had the bastard part right that was for sure. “Let me go. You have the wrong woman.”

He increased the pressure so much that she though he was going to cut off all circulation in her arm.

“The lady says to let her go.”

She heard the feeble old voice. She knew who it was without craning her neck to look behind her. She saw Jake look just briefly and then that devilish smile crossed his face before he spoke. “Go away before you get hurt, Old Timer.”