A Game Of Chance

right.'

'But you don't know how to get in touch with her?'

'No. I can't tell them what I don't know. I move around a lot, so a cell phone was the best way for us. I keep an apartment in Chicago, the tiniest, cheapest place I could find, but I don't live there. It's more of a decoy than anything else. I suppose if I live anywhere it's in Atlanta, but I take all the assignments I can get. I seldom spend more than one night at a time in one place.'

'How would he find you now, since your name has been changed? Unless he knows who adopted you, but how could he find that out?' Chance himself had found her only because of the incident in Chicago, when her courier package was stolen and he checked her out. As soon as he said it, though, he knew that the mole in the FBI—and he would damn sure find out who that was—had probably done the same checking. Had he gone as deep in the layers of bureaucracy as Chance had, to the point of hacking into those sealed adoption records? Sunny's cover might have been blown. He wondered if she realized it yet.

'I don't know. I just know I can't afford to assume I'm safe until I hear he's dead.'

'What about your mom? And Margreta?'

'Mom's dead.' Sunny paused, and he felt her inhale as if bracing herself. 'They caught her. She committed suicide rather than give up any information on us. She had told us she would—and she did.'

She stopped, and Chance gave her time to deal with the bleakness he heard in her voice. Finally she said, 'Margreta is using another name, I just don't know what it is. She has a heart condition, so it's better if she stays in one location.'

Margreta was living a fairly normal life, he thought, while Sunny was on the move, always looking over her shoulder. That was what she had known since birth, the way she had been taught to handle the situation. But what about the years they had spent with the Millers? Had her life been normal then?

She answered those questions herself. 'I miss having a home,' she said wistfully. 'But if you stay in one place you get to know people, form relationships. I couldn't risk someone else's life that way. God forbid I should get married, have children. If Hauer ever found me—' She broke off, shuddering at the thought of what Hauer was capable of doing to someone she loved in order to get the answers he wanted.

One thing didn't make sense, Chance thought. Hauer was vicious and crazy and cunning, and would go to any lengths to recover his daughter. But why Margreta, and not Sunny, too? 'Why is he so fixated on your sister?'

'Can't you guess?' she asked rawly, and began shuddering again. 'That's why Mom took Margreta and ran. She found him with her, doing… things. Margreta was only four. He had evidently been abusing her for quite a while, maybe even most of her life. By then Mom had already found out some of what he was, but she hadn't worked up the nerve to leave. After she found him with Margreta, she didn't have a choice.' Her voice dropped to an agonized whisper. 'Margreta remembers.'

Chance felt sick to his stomach. So in addition to being a vicious, murdering bastard, Hauer was also a pervert, a child molester. Killing was too good for him; he deserved to be dismembered—slowly.

Worn out by both physical labor and her emotional storm, Sunny drifted to sleep. Chance held her, content to let her rest. The fire needed more fuel, but so what? Holding her was more important. Thinking his way through this was more important.

First and foremost, he believed every word she'd said. Her emotions had been too raw and honest for any of it to have been faked. For the first time, all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, and his relief was staggering. Sunny was innocent. She had nothing to do with her father, had never seen him, had spent her entire life running from him. That was why she lugged around a tent, with basic survival provisions; she was ready to disappear at any given moment, to literally go to ground and live out in the forest somewhere until she thought it was safe to surface and rebuild her life yet again.

She had no way of contacting Hauer. The only way to get to him, then, was to use her as bait. And considering how she felt about her father, she would never, under any circumstances, agree to any plan that brought her to his attention.

He would have to do it without her agreement, Chance thought grimly. He didn't like using her, but the stakes were too high to abandon. Hauer couldn't be left free to continue wreaking his destruction on the world. How many innocent people would die this year alone if he wasn't caught?

There was no point in staying here any longer; he'd found out what he needed to know. Zane wouldn't check in again, though, until tomorrow morning, so they were stuck until then. He adjusted Sunny in his arms and rested his face against the top of her head. He would use the time to formulate his game plan—and to use as many of those condoms as possible.

'Get away from me,' Sunny grumbled the next morning, turning her head away from his kiss. She pried his hand off her breast. 'Don't touch me, you—you

mink.'

Chance snorted with laughter.

She pulled his chest hair. 'Ouch!' He drew back as far as he could in the small confines of the tent. 'That hurt.'

'Good! I don't think I can walk.' Quick as a snake, her hand darted out and pulled his chest hair again. 'This way, you can have as much fun as I'm having.'

'Sunny,' he said in a cajoling tone.

'Don't 'Sunny' me,' she warned, fighting her way into her clothes. Since they barely had room to move, he began dodging elbows and knees, and his hands slipped over some very interesting places. 'Stop it! I mean it, Chance! I'm too sore for any more monkey business.'

More to tease her than anything else, he zeroed in on an interesting place that had her squealing. She shot out of the tent, and he collapsed on his back, laughing—until she raised the tent flap and dashed some cold water on him.

'There,' she said, hugely satisfied by his yelp. 'One cold shower, just what you needed.' Then she ran.

If she thought the fact that he was naked would hamper his pursuit, she found out differently. He snatched up a bottle of water as he passed by their cache of supplies and caught her before she had gone fifty yards. She was laughing like a maniac, otherwise she might have gotten away. He held her with one arm and poured the water over her head. It was ice-cold from having been left out all night, and she shrieked and sputtered and giggled, clinging to him when her legs went weak from so much laughter.

'Too sore to walk, huh?' he demanded.

'I w-wasn't walking,' she said, giggling as she pushed her wet hair out of her face. Cold droplets splattered on him, and he shivered.

'Damn, it's cold,' he said. The sun was barely up, so the temperature was probably in the forties.

She slapped his butt. 'Then get some clothes on. What do you think this is, a nudist colony?'

He draped his arm around her shoulders, and they walked back to the camp. Her playfulness delighted him; hell, everything about her delighted him, from her wit to her willingness to laugh. And the sex—God, the sex was unbelievable. He didn't doubt she was sore, because he was. Last night had been a night to remember.

When she awakened yesterday afternoon she had been naturally melancholy, the normal aftermath of intense emotions. He hadn't talked much, letting her relax. She went with him to check the traps, which were still empty, and they had bathed together. After a quiet supper of rabbit and cactus they went to bed, and he had devoted the rest of the night to raising her spirits. His efforts had worked.

'How are your hands?' he asked. If she could pull his chest hairs and slap his butt, the antibiotic cream must