Running Hot

special, at least as far as she was concerned. She could not even begin to guess how she had just rocked his already slightly weird world. No one had ever detected his subtle aura manipulation, let alone actively resisted it.
    The hunter had passed blithely by, never even noticing that his jacked-up senses had been temporarily suppressed. Yet Grace had pushed back at the quick, light attempt to calm her panic as easily as she would have closed a door that had been blown open by a breeze. Now, why was that so damn intriguing?
    “Blame it on the magic of Hawaii,” he said. “Come on, let’s get somewhere private where I can call Fallon.”
    They left the path, heading away from the beach, and moved deep into the heavily landscaped gardens of the nearest hotel. He stopped beneath the low-hanging branches of a large tree. Grace halted nearby. He fired up his senses again, this time to make sure there were no auras in the vicinity. No human lightbulbs appeared in the shrubbery. Satisfied that they were alone, he punched Fallon’s code into the phone.
    He watched the dark silhouette that was Grace while he waited for Fallon to answer. She stood quietly beside him, arms folded beneath her breasts again. He wondered what she was thinking.
    It was probably a very good thing that she did not seem to know what he had tried to do to her back there on the path. He got the feeling that she hadn’t been consciously aware of what she had done, either. Her attention had been riveted on the hunter.
    Fallon answered on the second ring. That was unusual for him.
    “What’s up, Malone?” he growled.
    “I was starting to think you weren’t home. You usually jump on the phone halfway through the first ring.”
    “I was making another pot of coffee. Been a long night. Why are you calling?”
    Luther provided a brief run-through of the encounter and waited patiently while Fallon brooded on the new factor in the equation.
    “I agree that it’s unlikely that you and Ms. Renquist would run across a high-grade hunter within a short distance of your hotel,” Fallon said finally. “It’s a red flag but not a huge one. Sensitives go on vacation in Hawaii like anyone else. Hell, it could have been a Jones.”
    “I know there are a lot of hunters hanging around your family tree, Fallon, but what are the odds that one of them is here at the same time that Grace and I are supposed to be conducting surveillance on a high-grade killer?”
    “Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve percent. Lot of Joneses live on the West Coast and a lot of ’em like to vacation in Hawaii. Been there myself.”
    “You took a vacation?”
    “It was a long time ago. Before I got this job. You’re sure the guy was a hunter? Any chance he might have been some other kind of talent? Maybe Eubanks got in early?”
    “You said Eubanks is a level-nine strategist. This guy was definitely a hunter. Grace and I both made him.”
    “Okay, I’m a little tired at the moment,” Fallon said. “Not at my best. Let me think about this some more. Meanwhile, stick to the original plan. If Eubanks shows up on schedule tomorrow, we can probably assume that the hunter’s presence in the area is just a coincidence.”
    The weariness in Fallon’s voice was extremely unusual. In the two years Luther had been working for him, he had never heard the head of J&J sound so exhausted.
    “Thought you didn’t believe in coincidences, Fallon.”
    “No,” Fallon said. “I don’t. Keep an eye out for the hunter. If he shows up again, I want an ID on him, too.”
    “Figured you’d say that. I’ll look for him after I put Grace on a plane back to Oregon.”
    In the shadows, Grace stiffened. Her chin came up at a stubborn angle.
    “You’re going to need her to spot him again,” Fallon said.
    “No, I won’t. I just told you, I had no trouble identifying him as a hunter tonight.”
    “Only because he was jacked up. If he had been cranked back, just sitting around a pool, would you have been able to spot him?”
    They both knew the answer to that question.
    “Probably not,” he admitted. “But I don’t want Grace getting near him.”
    “She’s a J&J agent, just like you. She has the right to make her own decisions in situations like this.”
    “She’s a specialist, not a trained field agent.”
    “Damn it, Malone—”
    “I’ll get back to you.”
    The phone went dead in his ear. He closed it and clipped it to his belt.
    “Well?” Grace said.