Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire Read Online Free PDF

smooth stones. The Gypsy sighed heavily. He seemed to be doing better now that the initial shock had passed, but he was still pale and wincing with pain.
    “So,” Gabriel said, to Fiona. “Where is it?”
    She pushed her tangled hair back off her forehead and winked, then began to unzip her dress.
    “For crying out loud, what are you doing…”
    She shucked off the dress. It pooled at her feet. Beneath it, between a filmy, transparent bra and tiny silk pan ties, she wore an ornate corset with gold stitching. She unfastened a compartment in the side of the thickly boned corset. To Gabriel’s astonishment, the golden kindjal slid out of the lining. She held it up in the moonlight.
    “You had it on you the whole time?” Gabriel said.
    “Unlike you, Gabriel, I don’t trust other people,” she said. “Or hiding places I can’t feel against my skin.” She handed him the dagger after a moment’s hesitation. Then she favored him with a slow, sultry smile. “No hard feelings, then?”
    Gabriel had plenty of hard feelings at that moment, looking at her standing there with the moonlight on her pale skin, shivering slightly in the cool night breeze. He was having a tough time remembering how she’d betrayed and tried to kill him. Lucky for him, Djordji picked that moment to speak up.
    “I would like hospital now, please,” he said.
    “Well,” Fiona said, picking up her dress and wriggling back into it, “that’s that, then. You should be happy, Gabriel. I know how badly you hate to lose.”
    She gestured for Gabriel to zip her up. When he had, she turned to face him, looking up into his eyes.
    “Enjoy it while it lasts,” she said. “Next time I may just end up on top.” She was close enough to kiss him, but didn’t. She just spun on her heel and strode away.
    Gabriel reached out a hand to help Djordji up. “Think you can walk?” Gabriel said.
    With a groan, Djordji heaved himself to his feet. Gabriel steadied him. “I think so.”
    Gabriel watched Fiona walk away across the moonlit steppe. He knew he ought to go after her, bring her in to the police of any of the three countries he’d chased her through—she’d broken no shortage of laws. But Djordji’s injury was more pressing, and even if it hadn’t been…somehow Gabriel just didn’t think he could have brought himself to do it. He looked down at the kindjal , which Djordji was staring at like he couldn’t quite believe it was real, then back up at Fiona’s retreating figure. Why had she done it, he wondered. Any of it—seducing him, betraying him, handing over the kindjal in the end. One thing he knew: No matter how far he traveled, or how much he learned, or how many extraordinary things he witnessed, he’d never be able to understand women.

Chapter 5
    Gabriel was tired, cranky and stiff by the time he arrived at the Sutton Place brownstone that housed the offices of the Hunt Foundation. His younger brother Michael had left him an urgent message to come over as soon as his plane touched down at JFK, so he’d sent his minimal baggage on to his rooms on the top floor of the Discoverers League building and told the driver to bring him directly here. When Stefan pulled the long black town car away, Gabriel stood for a moment on the steps before going inside. As was frequently the case after a particularly arduous mission, he felt a strange kind of melancholy settle in upon his return to the city of his birth. There was part of him that was glad to be home—but another part was already itching to head off again.
    He had no idea how quickly he would get his wish.
    Michael was, as usual, in the library, head buried in a leather-bound volume so large it threatened to topple the mahogany bookstand on which he’d precariously balanced it. His sandy hair, or what remained of it, was neatly combed, and when he looked up Gabriel saw from the dark circles under his eyes that he’d been spending too many late hours in this room and too fewasleep in the