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      It should have been a piece of cake. All he had to do was pick up some pretty little bail jumper who wasn’t even bothering to hide. But cynical bounty hunter Jack Dakota soon discovered there was nothing easy about spitfire M.J. O’Leary—or about this case.

      Someone had set them both up. Now they were handcuffed together and on the run from a pair of hired killers. And M.J. wasn’t talking—not even when Jack found a gigantic blue diamond hidden in her purse. Everything told Jack this alluring vixen couldn’t be trusted…everything, that is, except his captive heart.

      To independent women

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter 1

      He’d have killed for a beer. A big, frosty mug filled with some dark import that would go down smoother than a woman’s first kiss. A beer in some nice, dim, cool bar, with a ball game on the tube and a few other stool-sitters who had an interest in the game gathered around.

      While he staked out the woman’s apartment, Jack Dakota passed the time fantasizing about it.

      The foamy head, the yeasty smell, the first gulping swallow to beat the heat and slake the thirst. Then the slow savoring, sip by sip, that assured a man all would be right with the world if only politicians and lawyers would debate the inevitable conflicts over a cold one at a local pub while a batter faced a count of three and two.

      It was a bit early for drinking, at just past one in the afternoon, but the heat was so huge, so intense and the cooler full of canned sodas just didn’t have quite the same punch as a cold, foamy beer.

      His ancient Oldsmobile didn’t run to amenities like air-conditioning. In fact, its amenities were pathetically few, except for the pricey, earsplitting stereo he’d installed in the peeling faux-leather dash. The stereo was worth about double the blue book on the car, but a man had to have music. When he was on the road, he enjoyed turning it up to scream and belting them out with the Beatles or the Stones.

      The muscle-flexing V-8 engine under the dented gutter-gray hood was tuned as meticulously as a Swiss watch, and got Jack where he wanted to go, fast. Just now the engine was at rest, and as a concession to the quiet neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C., he had the CD player on murmur while he hummed along with Bonnie Raitt.

      She was one of his rare bows to music after 1975.

      Jack often thought he’d been born out of his own time. He figured he’d have made a pretty good knight. A black one. He liked the straightforward philosophy of might for right. He’d have stood with Arthur, he mused, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. But he’d have handled Camelot’s business his own way. Rules complicated things.

      He’d have enjoyed riding the West, too. Hunting down desperadoes without all the nonsense of paperwork. Just track ’em down and bring ’em in.

      Dead or alive.

      These days, the bad guys hired a lawyer, or the state gave them one, and the courts ended up apologizing to them for the inconvenience.

      We’re terribly sorry, sir. Just because you raped, robbed and murdered is no excuse for infringing on your time and civil rights.

      It was a sad state of affairs.

      And it was one of the reasons Jack Dakota hadn’t gone into police work, though he’d toyed with the idea during his early twenties. Justice meant something to him, always had. But he didn’t see much justice in rules and regulations.

      Which was why, at thirty, Jack Dakota was a bounty hunter.

      You still hunted down the bad guys, but you worked your own hours and got paid for a job and didn’t answer to a lot of bureaucratic garbage.

      There were still rules, but a smart man knew how to work around them. Jack had always been smart.

      He had the papers on his current quarry in his pocket. Ralph Finkleman had called him at eight that morning with the tag. Now, Ralph was a worrier and an optimist—a combination, Jack thought, that must be a job requirement for a bail bondsman. Personally, Jack could never understand the concept of lending money to complete strangers—strangers who, since they needed bond, had already proved themselves unreliable.

      But there was money in it, and money was enough motivation for most anything, he supposed.

      Jack had just come back from tracing a skip to North Carolina, and had made Ralph pitifully grateful when he hauled in the dumb-as-a-post country boy who’d tried to make his fortune robbing convenience stores. Ralph had put up the bond—claimed he’d figured the kid was too stupid to run.

      Jack could have told him, straight off, that the kid was too stupid not to run.

      But he wasn’t being paid to offer advice.

      Jack had planned to relax for a few days, maybe take in a few games at Camden Yards, pick one of his female acquaintances to help him enjoy spending his fee. He’d nearly turned Ralph down, but the guy had been so whiny, so full of pleas, he didn’t have the heart.

      So he’d gone into First Stop Bail Bonds and picked up the paperwork on one M. J. O’Leary, who’d apparently decided against having her day in court to explain why she shot her married boyfriend.

      Jack figured she was dumb as a post, as well. A good-looking woman—and from her photo and description, she qualified—with a few working brain cells could manipulate a judge and jury over something as minor as plugging an adulterous accountant.

      It wasn’t like she’d killed the poor bastard.

      It was a cream-puff job, which didn’t explain why Ralph had been so jumpy. He’d stuttered more than usual, and his eyes had danced all over the cramped, dusty office.

      But Jack wasn’t interested in analyzing Ralph. He wanted to wrap up the job quickly, get that beer and start enjoying his fee.

      The extra money from this quick one meant he could snatch up that first edition of Don Quixote he’d been coveting, so he’d tolerate sweating in the car for a few hours.

      He didn’t look like a man who hunted up rare books or enjoyed philosophical debates on the nature of man. He wore his sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a stubby ponytail—which was more a testament to his distrust of barbers than a fashion statement, though the sleek look enhanced his long, narrow face, with its slashing cheekbones and hollows. Over the shallow dent in his chin, his mouth was full and firm, and looked poetic when it wasn’t curled in a sneer.

      His eyes were razor-edged gray that could soften to smoke at the sight of the yellowing pages of a first-edition Dante, or darken with pleasure at a glimpse of a pretty woman in a thin summer dress. His brows were arched, with a faintly demonic touch accented by the white scar that ran diagonally through the left and was the result of a tangle with a jackknife wielded by a murder in the second who hadn’t wanted Jack to collect his fee.

      Jack had collected the fee,