“YOU SAID you could stop by for a visit on the weekend?” my mother asked outside the restaurant where we’d just had dinner with most of the extended family.
I dragged in a breath as my Uber pulled up next to the curb. I was getting used to the smaller family get-togethers, but having the attention of ten or more people on me for hours at a time still exhausted me. I guessed that wasn’t surprising when for most of my life, I hadn’t interacted with anyone other than my trainers. I was used to long stretches with only myself for company, not extended conversations full of small talk and family gossip.
But I did want to be a part of this family. It’d get easier over time, right?
“Bright and early,” I replied with a smile I had to force a bit. “See you then.”
I ducked into the back of the Uber, and the immediate silence greeted me like a warm blanket. The driver pulled onto the road with a rumble of the engine. As I sank back in my seat, tipping my head against the warm fabric, I caught a motion of the driver’s hand. He was setting a phone on the passenger seat next to him and hitting the speaker button.
I sat up straighter, frowning, just as a low voice carried from the phone’s speaker. “Hello again, Rachel.”
My stance stiffened. I’d recognize that slightly hoarse tone anywhere even after only one previous conversation with the guy. My gaze flicked to the driver, but he stayed focused on the road now. What the hell was going on?
“I know you’re there,” the Hunter said on the other end of the phone line.
“How did you know I’d be here?” I snapped. “Why are you bothering me again?” I glanced at the doors, wondering if I should make a run for it. I didn’t like the idea that I was in a vehicle probably controlled by this strange man with his unknown agenda.
But so far the driver appeared to be taking the correct route back to the house in the hill. And I did want to see if the Hunter would reveal more than he had before. The need for answers warred with my sense of caution.
“That doesn’t matter,” the Hunter replied. “You’re still playing happy family with the bunch of them. I thought you’d have smartened up by now.”
I glowered at the phone, not that he could see my reaction. “I’ve done some investigating of my own, and I haven’t seen any reason to think they’re doing anything wrong. And since you won’t give me any specifics, even tell me who you really are, I’m going by my own judgment. If you don’t like that, maybe you could give me more to go on.”
The Hunter let out a faint scoffing sound. “You have the inside access. You obviously haven’t dug very far. Maybe you don’t actually want to know the truth. You’d rather live in a happy delusion.”
His accusation raised my hackles. “The only one avoiding anything is you. If it’s so important to you that I know the ‘truth,’ you could tell me what you know. The fact that you won’t seems like pretty solid proof that you’re just trying to stir up problems for the hell of it.”
“Oh, the problems in this situation aren’t of my making.”
“There you go again,” I said. “All vague, ominous statements. I don’t know you, and I have no reason to trust you. So I’m done with this conversation if that’s all you’ve got to say for yourself. I’m smart enough to realize when someone’s just jerking my chain.”
I didn’t actually move toward the phone. As frustrated as I was, there was a chance that he’d reveal something—at least about his motivations—now that I was turning the conversation around on him.
He chuckled darkly. “Chains. That’s a good one. Fine. Listen carefully. There’s more digging you should do. There are answers in the soil if you know how to read them. And that family does love its garden.”
“What?” I demanded. The remarks sounded like more creepy vagueness. When the Hunter didn’t answer, I unclasped my seatbelt and lunged forward in my seat.
“Stop the car!” I shouted at the driver, gripping his shoulder hard enough to hurt. I snatched at the phone with my other hand.
As the driver jerked over to the side of the road, I picked up the phone, scanning the screen for any details about the caller. But it’d gone blank. The Hunter had hung up on me.
I swiveled toward the driver, still clutching his shoulder hard. His face had gone white. “Who was that?” I said. “Why did you set me up like this? Do you work for him?”
“I—I don’t know anything about it,” the man stammered, looking so terrified I believed him. “I’m sorry. This woman paid me to take the phone and pick you up—she said it was a surprise and that I should stay quiet. I didn’t realize—I don’t even know who you are! I’ve got nothing against you.”
I eased back my hand, worrying at my lower lip. That did sound like how someone like the Hunter would operate. Missed Connection columns and now this. He liked to put as many layers as possible between me and him. That only made his intentions more suspect.
Or maybe it proved he really did feel he had to be careful because of the danger surrounding the situation.
“The woman,” I said. “What did she look like?”
The man rubbed his hand over his face as if trying to produce the memory with the gesture. “Blond hair. A lot of makeup. Honestly, I was more focused on the cash she was offering me.”
Blond hair and a lot of makeup. That wouldn’t get us very far. The makeup might disguise her true appearance and mess with any chance of Blaze using his facial recognition app against her. But we could still try, if the interaction had been caught on a street cam. Which I had to admit, I didn’t think was very likely given the Hunter’s usual meticulousness.
“Where did she approach you?” I asked anyway.
“Just around the corner from the place where I picked you up,” the guy said. “Outside the shoe store.”
“Okay.” I shoved the phone into my pocket just in case the tech genius could determine something from it. Sitting back in my seat, I debated my next steps for a moment, but the guy already had the address I’d been going to, which meant the Hunter would have it too. There was no point in trying to hide my current location now. “Take me home. As fast as you can.”
The drive passed in what felt like seconds as I stewed in my thoughts. The moment the driver pulled up outside, I leapt out and burst into the house.
All four of my men were in the living room, Blaze alternating between watching his computer’s screen and tossing darts at a makeshift board he’d put together. Julius and Garrison were handling the dishes from their own dinner in the open-concept kitchen. Talon looked like he’d just come out of a shower.
They all went still and silent when I barged in. I held up the Hunter’s phone and tossed it to Blaze, who caught it easily.
“I had an interesting conversation on my way here,” I said. “The Hunter wanted to check in on me.”
Julius stepped toward me, his expression darkening. “Are you okay? He obviously upset you.”
“Oh, I’m pissed off all right. Mostly he just wanted to needle me about not listening to his vague bullshit as much as he liked.” I marched into the kitchen and grabbed the milk and chocolate syrup. I needed a hit of cocoa to finish processing everything that’d just happened. “He’s still insisting that there’s some dirt on the Maliks that I haven’t found. Actually, he mentioned the literal dirt. The soil in their garden. Like I’d find something there if I ‘read’ it.”
Garrison knit his brow. “Like a soil analysis?”
“I guess. Hard to know with him.” I paused, stirring the syrup into a glass of milk. The thought of poking around in my birth family’s affairs, trying to find some reason to distrust them, brought an ache into my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.
But what if the Hunter really did know something? He watched them closely enough to know how they felt about their garden. Wouldn’t it be better to check and know for sure than have his insinuations hanging over me?
If I could prove to myself that he didn’t have a case at all, maybe I could let go of that niggling worry completely.
“None of you have found out anything concerning so far, right?” I said.
The men all shook their heads. “Damien Malik runs a tight ship—and a clean one,” Julius said. “But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have secrets.”
Garrison grimaced. “On the other hand, this Hunter prick is shady as fuck.”
Talon gazed at me steadily. “What do you want to do, Dess?”
I groaned and flopped onto the sofa, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead. “I mean, it wouldn’t be hard to take a little soil from the garden. And it wouldn’t hurt anything to check it even if it turns out he’s just jerking me around. But if the dirt turns up nothing, then I’m done talking to that weirdo.” I opened my eyes to glance at Blaze. “Could you do this soil analysis thing?”
He made an apologetic gesture. “That’s outside my domain—all of our domains.”
I thought of the way we’d obtained this house, how we’d gotten my DNA sequenced back home to connect me to Malik in the first place. “Then we need to find someone else who can. Someone who won’t ask questions about it… I don’t have much in the way of money, but maybe I could set up an exchange of favors like you have before?”
Garrison nodded slowly. “I’ve heard of a woman out in New York who handles a lot of things along that line—chemicals and environmental hazards. I’ve never dealt with her directly before, but from what the people who’ve mentioned her have said, she seems to understand discretion and to stick to her word.”
I nodded. “Great, reach out to her as soon as you can. And find out what she’d want from me in return.”
“From us,” Julius put in. “Whatever she wants, between the five of us, I’m sure we can manage it.”
A rush of affection filled my chest at his automatic offer of support, not that it should have surprised me after everything else he’d done and said before. But I found myself shaking my head, resolve wrapping around my heart.
“No.” I caught Garrison’s gaze. “Make sure it’s something I can handle on my own. The Maliks are my family, and the Hunter came to me. I should be the one ‘paying’ to fix that problem.”
“We really don’t mind,” Blaze started.
I cut him off with another jerk of my head. The Hunter’s words from our first conversation came back to me, echoing up from my memory. You still need to be ready in case someone else turns out to be better.
“I might have been respected as the Ghost, but no one except the four of you knows that the Ghost is me—no one has any reason to respect me as Decima. I need to be able to stand on my own two feet in this world, and that means I have to prove myself on my own. If I want respect, I have to earn it.”
Garrison gave me a small smile that I thought was approving. It sent a tingle of heat between my legs more intense than anything his usual smirks could have provoked.
“You’ve got it, sweetheart,” he said. “One return favor, catered just to you. It’s not like you can’t blow them away without any help from us.”
