The Huntress: full-length sexy romantic suspense by Dorothy McFalls

into the next block.
    Vega kept her head, backing smoothly away. She held the tiny silver phone just out of reach.
    “Don’t call anyone! No one can know about this, especially my wife. She can’t know about Kelly or this house.” His shoulders slumped in defeat. “Please.”
    “Don’t you think she’ll guess that you’ve been playing her for a fool after the police scrape your remains from all over another woman’s living room? Drop the trigger and maybe I’ll consider changing my mind about calling her.” Finally, she’d hit a hot button. “Drop that damn trigger now!”
    Brian’s fixated gaze had transferred from that black triggering mechanism to Vega’s phone. She held it high, taunting him.
    His arms erupted from his side, reaching for her. “Give it to me,” he spat. “Give it!” He stretched for the phone and let the trigger slip free to swing by his side.
    Better, but still far from safe. She took a couple of steps back. He followed like a dog hungry for a bone.
    “I’ll put this phone in your hands if you let me have control of the trigger, and don’t move for at least one minute.”
    He stopped dead in his tracks when Vega began dialing again. He placed the trigger into her outstretched hand.
    “Vega Brookes, here. I need a bomb squad out in the Lake St. Claire neighborhood, like five minutes ago,” she said to the watch commander who’d answered the local police precinct phone and gave him the address.
    Brian paled. His eyes widened. He must have realized that calling in the cops was just about the same as calling his wife. He lunged for the trigger.
    Shit.
    She didn’t have time to waste. One wrong move and she would be blasted to bits along with Brian. She dropped the phone and swung a quick blow, aiming for the spot where the jaw met the skull. Not too hard, she just put enough power into the move to knock Brian senseless.
    Like a switch flipping off the lights, the madness fled Brian’s gaze. His mouth dropped open at about the same time his knees buckled. Vega slipped her arm around his waist and used her weight to guide him, slumping against her chest, to the floor.
    They were both still alive. Thank God. A few moments ago, she’d been feeling sorry for him. What a stupid mistake. Sometimes she wondered if her father hadn’t been right about her being too damn soft.
    She plucked the phone from the floor. “Still there?” she asked, her gaze glued on Brian. Her fist poised to put him back out if he stirred.
    “What the hell’s going on?” the watch commander shouted over the line. “Is this a joke?”
    “No joke. Got a man strapped with some kind of explosives in someone’s living room.” She gave the address.
    “A real live wire, huh?” He said and chuckled.
    Vega didn’t appreciate his humor. “Just get someone out here. I don’t have enough experience with this stuff to be messing with it.”
    * * * *
    “That freak’s a raving lunatic,” Vega’s old friend, Officer Ford said shaking his head as he watched a team of officers lead the now deactivated Brian from the cute little bungalow. It had taken more than an hour to unhook all the explosives from his body. “A freaking lunatic.”
    Vega shrugged. Safe now, she couldn’t help but feel fresh compassion for the lunatic. “He’s just been shoved over the edge, could happen to anyone.”
    “Nope.” Ford sucked on the end of his pen, an irritating habit he’d started when he gave up smoking three years ago. “Seen bunches of men arrested for embezzling. This is the first one to pull a psycho stunt like this one.”
    Ford and Vega had suffered through police academy together and had formed a strong bond of friendship along the way. She trusted Ford probably as much as she trusted Jack. If he said this looked different, she believed him.
    “He says he’s innocent,” she said as they stepped back into the warmth of the house’s foyer.
    “They all do.”
    “Not my place to judge, but it sure looks like