CHAPTER EIGHT
Hunter
They called me The Hunter.
Hunt for short.
A little bit ironic that my last name happened to be Huntsmen, even though not many people knew that.
I could tell you how I got started in this line of work, but I think that was a story best saved for another time.
I worked for just about anyone and everyone. I was my own boss and my only employee. I was not a huge fan of people and did my best to avoid them. Unless I was tracking and hunting them, that was.
And before you ask, yes, I had limits on the jobs I would take and the people I worked for. I always did my research and I knew what I was getting myself into before I took a meeting. And if it didn’t feel right, then I’d turn it down right away. There were a few people I worked for with little questions before I took the job. These people were…a little unsavory, but good people despite the choice to make their own laws.
I’d been contemplating taking a vacation—something I did every now and then but would never follow through with the idea—when my phone pinged with a message. Dialing my voicemail, I put the phone on speaker. Since I was at home and had just swept for bugs the day before, I knew it was safe to do.
The voice that had always been cool and calm now held a tinge of anxiety. I was needed. This wasn’t just a job, this was personal. The kind of personal that was out of fear and panic. A loved one. A brother. Someone had gone missing. I didn’t ever get those from these types of men, so that alone had me getting to my feet even before the message ended.
Seven and a half minutes later, I was sliding into my car. Two hours and thirty-eight minutes, I was rolling through the tall ass gate that secured the compound. And nine minutes after that, I was seated in a rickety chair in front of the President of the Steel Paragons Motorcycle Club.
Cal sat behind his old, cheap desk, while Loch, Diesel, Tank, and Axe crowded around the small room.
I listened to Cal speak, remaining silent until he was done. I just needed a starting point, if they didn’t have that for me, I could find it on my own. But I knew time was of the essence and if I even had just a whiff of a trail to follow it would cut down on time significantly. With jobs like this, that was a big deal, when all it could be was a matter of minutes between life and death.
The story started and I listened to the quick run-through. I was right, it was a brother that had gone missing. Bocca. The Flirt. Hacker. The gatekeeper to all the club members’ secrets. I made it my mission to know the people I worked with and I had a damn good memory.
So, it made sense that they’d called me in for this. Without their resident computer nerd, they were a bunch of blind men stumbling around a pitch black room. Must have sucked to have a wake-up call this way. To become so comfortable in relying on one person for certain things. If you asked me, Bocca could have been considered the backbone of this club, because clearly, without him they were fucking clueless.
Good thing they knew me.
He’d been tipped off to a human trafficking auction. Loch explained that Bocca was only supposed to go in and blend into the background and collect information. That sort of thing. My guess was, he got made. No telling what happened to him after that. I could sure as hell tell you that it wasn’t good.
At best, they took him out back and shot him in the head. Yes, it was a shitty thing to say. But I knew these guys well, having had my fair share of rescues from underground trafficking. I knew what these men were not only capable of, but enjoyed doing. The worst of the worst, some might say. And while I would agree with that wholeheartedly, I had seen worse in my days.
The story wrapped up with the only knowledge that he’d gone into the city. No names as to who the hell was running this thing. No directions as to where it was being held. Fucking jack shit for me to start from. The list of people that they knew would be attending probably wouldn’t help me out for shit. It would end up taking more time to track the place I was looking for using the names on that list. I was better off heading into the city and seeing where the wind took me. And by that, I meant walking down the shady side of town with my ears open. Because one thing I’d learned over the years, was that people couldn’t keep secrets for crap. So if someone knew, there would be word going around.
Before I could say anything, the door busted wide open with a force that had even a guy like me twitching. My head whipped around, my body rigid and ready to pounce. I only slightly relaxed when I saw a tall bombshell standing just on the other side of the threshold. Her eyes were strangely cold. No, not cold. There was something there, guarded and calculating. Her movements were slow and her stance projected the kind of relaxed toughness that told me not to let my guard down.
“Angel,” Tank said with a heavy sigh.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his arms flop to his sides as his head bowed with a sad kind of shake to it. Like he had resigned himself to the invasion. Like he didn’t expect anything differently even though it was clearly something that was simply not done.
Nadya. Contract killer—former, from the word circulating around my people. Not that I really had people, but I guess you could call them that, you know, the underground, go around the law types. I knew her well enough to be unsure of what to think about her, if that made any sense.
She waited there like she knew her intrusion was unwelcome, but she wasn’t going to let that completely stop her. After a long, tense, silent minute, she finally took a step inside. I could have only guessed that Cal had given her some sort of silent sign that she could enter. Her eyes slowly cut down to take me in for a fraction of a second as she walked to the desk. An odd flash of something that was too quick for me to analyze passed in her gaze.
She didn’t speak as she dropped, quite literally, a tablet down on the desk in front of Cal and hit play. The news clip played, filling the room with sound. The smoldering building in the background caught my attention before the sound of the woman speaking even hit my ears.
One of the best ways to cover up evidence, burn everything to the ground. Take it a step further and leave your victims naked and toothless.
The death toll was at twenty-five so far and it was clear that they weren’t nearly done going through the rubble.
They said it was an underground party filled with a bunch of runaway kids. Yeah, total bullshit to cover up what had really happened. There was someone in power behind that too, I had no fucking doubt. I bet if I dug into it further, I’d find that most those bodies belonged to children reported as missing. Kids snatched when they, and their parents, least expected it. Vanished in broad daylight when they thought they were the safest. I’d put money that most of them were girls.
I couldn’t in good conscious have said that this was good, but at least now I had a starting point.
“I called Silas,” Nadya said speaking for the first time.
There was an odd lilt to her voice, one that was almost hidden. Her words came out slow and one might have said, void of any emotion. But I knew that wasn’t it. No, this was the way she held herself together. Against the pain. Against the hard things she’d had seen and worse, done.
Silas. Nadya’s sire, in a sense. The man that found her and made her into what she was today. He, at one time, was considered the best contract killer that didn’t go by a false name or generic title. Or maybe Silas wasn’t even his real name. Who the fuck knew. But that was what he was known as in my world. Silas. The Killer. The dragon slayer that only took jobs that ended evil. He, like me, had rules. Lines he wouldn’t cross. In a way, it was noble, perhaps. But he was still a killer. A man that took lives without even blinking his eyes.
I wasn’t judging. I had my fair share of blood-soaked hands. I was painted in gray and red down to the core. So, I understood. His head wasn’t the one that laid on my pillow at night, so what did I care?
But what I did care about, was that this was going to impact me and how I worked. I worked alone. That was me. But I had a damn feeling that was about to change no matter my say in it. I chose to bite my tongue, knowing this was serious, and the help shouldn’t be unwelcome.
“How long?” I asked not tilting my head to look up at her but still able to catch her movements out of the corner of my eye.
“An hour,” she responded not looking at me either.
“Tell him to meet me there,” I said, pointing to the now darkened screen on the tablet.
Then I gave a nod to Cal and headed for the door.
I had work to do.
There was no more time to waste.