Chapter Forty-Two – Hunter

 

Before the sun had even crept up over the horizon, I’d crept up the drainage pipe and onto the roof of the hacienda.

Security was light this early in the morning, and I was able to sneak along through the dense outer foliage surrounding the structure, my garb allowing me to perfectly blend with the early morning palette of blues and browns.

Off in the brush, buried practically up to her neck in cactus and scrub brush, Coal waited for the explosion of Simmons’s truck out front, which had perfect placement to draw as many attackers away as possible.

I just hoped that when she swooped down to douse the opposite side of the building in flames, she was careful not to touch the side I was infiltrating. And, with the argument we’d had last night, and the fight this morning, I was actually wary of her conveniently forgetting which side she was supposed to be targeting.

As I crouched now on top of the red-tiled roof and looked down on the patio that was to serve as my entrance to the second floor of the west wing, I thought about the worst part of our fight: I could still feel her on my lips. Could still feel her skin beneath my fingers. Remember the way she tasted.

Peach Cobbler.

It would never be the same.

Stealthily, I moved forward over the tile, rolling the outside of my boot with every step as I silently traversed the roof. The only way anyone inside would know I was up here was if they had a doctor’s stethoscope pressed to the ceiling.

I slowly eased myself to the edge of the roof, looking down onto the patio. One guard, just like Simmons had described. I watched as he stifled a yawn, went to light a cigarette. I could lean down over the edge and slap his hat right off his head, if I wanted to.

Instead, I did the next best thing, and braced myself with my arms. I eased myself forward and did a front flip, coming down with my legs wrapped around his neck. Normally, I didn’t kill during a heist like this. But with the White Feather, I’d made special accommodations. These weren’t the guards of the wealthy, who just had families to feed. They were people who chopped the hands off children because their boss was having a good day.

“What the—?”

Too late. I jerked my legs, snapped his neck. His whole body went limp, and I rode his corpse down to the patio’s tiled floor, transferring my momentum by throwing myself forward into a roll. Coming up into a crouch, I looked around the patio, straining my ears to hear signs of any alarm being raised.

Nothing. No one moving. No calling for help. No one racking a shell into his firearm.

Excellent.

Still low, I moved at a stalking jog over to the doors we’d planned on using. French doors, easy to break into. Whatever was hiding in here, Cid was clearly confident about his men’s ability to keep it safe.

I pulled out the radio receiver from my bag, checking the time. As the second hand made its way around the watch face, I silently mouthed the countdown. “3, 2, 1.”

I pressed the button, closing my eyes as I tensed up instinctively against the explosion that my body knew was coming.

And. Nothing. Happened.

I pressed the button on the detonator again. I shook it, hit it against the tiles. Pressed it again.

“The bloody hell?” I growled down at the useless hunk of electronics in my hand.

Ahead of me, the French doors began to unlock.

Eyes wide, I jumped to my feet, went to draw my sidearm. I got it clear of its holster just as the door opened, but I nearly dropped it when I saw what was inside.

Cid.

Standing there with Simmons, a grin growing on his broad face. Beyond him, a small Hispanic girl, no older than six or seven.

My eyes traveled down to the big automatic shotgun he had pressed against his shoulder. “Drop it,” Simmons growled as men came pouring out of the other doors leading onto the patio.

“Oh, Hunter,” Cid said as he stepped forward, bringing the small Hispanic girl with him with one guiding hand on her shoulder. “Hunter, Hunter, Hunter. How far you’ve fallen, serving the humans as they try to oppress us.”

I looked down at the girl, to the blank expression on her face. And then I looked again to Simmons, who was still grinning like an idiot. “You know, they always say if you wanna make a lie stick, you gotta have an element of truth to it. Guess you found the last piece to the puzzle finally, huh?”

It was hard to tell what was the most shocking. Simmons’s betrayal and how easily we’d fallen for it, or the fact that Cid had been hiding a little girl here. That she was clearly the key to his plan.

Whatever the cause, though, it was enough to keep me from even considering shifting forms. I was too damn dumbfounded by how it had all turned out.

“Take him,” Cid said. “Don’t kill him, but make it painful. I want him in more or less one piece as an offering to Earth’s new queen. Then go get the bitch in the scrub. Her you can kill.”

Simmons unloaded with his shotgun first, got me twice in my right shoulder. It didn’t burn quite as much as I expected, and I didn’t die immediately, so I suppose it was just plain old lead. But, I’ll be damned if it didn’t still hurt.

The rest of the men were on me, after that, beating me with their guns and clubs. I tried to fend them off, to keep my head at least covered, but it didn’t matter. There were just too many of them, and I went down in a hail of pain, darkness closing in from all sides, my last thought of Kris’s burning green eyes.