Hunter's Need Read Online Free PDF Page A

totally failed him.
    “I’ll miss you.”
    He hugged her tight and then stepped away. Smiling sadly, he said, “But you really want to get away from here, don’t you?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, I do. And I think I need to. For both of us.”
    Away from Excelsior. Away from Virginia. Away from people who didn’t know her every shortcoming. Away from people who kept looking at her and just waiting for her to screw up again. Away from people who looked at the siblings and judged them both based on what Ana had done.
    Away from Duke . . .
    She shied away from that silent voice, but not quick enough. A memory flashed through her mind—those dark gray eyes, staring down at her as though nothing, no one else in the world existed. The warmth of his body. The strength.
    Yes. Away from Duke—away from just another reminder of how inadequate she was.

CHAPTER 2
     
     
     
     
    T HE air was cool, crisp with the scents of the coming fall. Although it was still mid-August, summer was fading, and fading fast. Already the long days had gotten drastically shorter, and it wouldn’t be too long before the summer sunshine was nothing but a vague memory.
    Ana walked along the sidewalk in downtown Anchorage, pausing in front of a bookstore to study the display in the window. A lot of “Alaskana” books—tourism was a huge business in Alaska, something she’d figured out almost immediately. When she’d moved here a year ago, it had been in the middle of one of the coolest, wettest summers recorded, and still, tourists had been everywhere.
    Just about every store, from the corner grocery to the mall on Fifth Avenue, had something for the tourists. Bookstores were no different. Most of these books, she’d seen before. The few that had caught her interest, she’d already picked up. She glanced over most of them, more interested in a decent mystery or a romantic suspense than anything else. One cover caught her eye, though, and she found herself staring at the dark rainbow of colors with something akin to fascination.
    Unsolved—Mysteries of the Far North .
    The cover was mostly abstract, dark reds and blues, but the faintest image of a woman’s face, frozen in a horrified scream, was superimposed over the blur of colors. Something about it sent a shiver down her spine. Tearing her gaze away from it, she turned to go.
    Her lunch hour was almost up, payday was still a week away—she didn’t need some nonfiction crime book to add to the teetering tower of books she’d yet to read.
    She made it all the way to the stoplight before she turned back. Like a nagging itch between her shoulder blades, something was demanding she go back and buy that book. Buy it. Read it.
    She didn’t want to buy it.
    Didn’t want to read it.
    And Ana kept telling herself that the entire time she was walking into the store, plucking a copy from the display by the window, shelling out the fifteen and change to cover it. Even as she pushed the book into her tote, she was trying to figure out why she was buying it.
    It wasn’t like she’d ever want to read about a scorned lover taking his revenge, a burglary gone wrong—
    “Spare change?”
    She almost crashed into him—a man with long, unkempt hair, grimy hands, worn and threadbare clothes. He stood in front of her, staring at her with sad, sad eyes. Despair hung in the air around him, thick and clouded.
    Her hand shook as she stuffed it into her pocket and pulled out a couple of ones.
    “Ana!”
    From across the street, she heard somebody yelling her name. Dimly, she recognized the voice, but she didn’t look away from the man before her. Couldn’t. Quietly, she said, “I don’t have much cash . . . I’m sorry.”
    He smiled at her. It was a sweet smile, almost innocent, despite the wear of years on him, despite the sadness in his eyes. “Thank you.” He folded the money carefully and tucked it away. Before he walked away, he stopped in his tracks and did the weirdest damn thing.
    He saluted her, back