“RIGHT,” Julius said into his phone as Talon drove us back into the city. “Take care of all the bodies and wipe down the house and barn. Leave everything else as is.”
I sank into the back seat between Blaze and Garrison, grappling with mixed feelings about our leader’s instructions to the local clean-up crew he’d gotten in touch with. On one hand, we didn’t want to risk leaving any evidence at all of our involvement once the murders of my family were discovered. But on the other, there was probably evidence of all the murders they’d committed on the country property, and the cleaners might erase that too.
Well, they were dead. I wasn’t sure their crimes needed to come to light now that their legacy could end here. Surely the few remaining Maliks couldn’t keep up such a horrific conspiracy on their own?
We’d just passed the city limits when Blaze’s phone pinged. He fished it out and glanced at the screen.
“Huh,” he said, and glanced over at us like he had something he wanted to say but wasn’t sure the news would be welcome.
I elbowed him. “What is it?”
“Well, not to send us off on another chase after all of today’s excitement, but… I did get a partial license plate for the Hunter’s bike when he met you this morning. I had it running through the system, and I’ve just gotten a match from some street-cam footage in downtown DC.”
I jerked over to peer at his phone. “Really?” I might have been exhausted from everything we’d been through, but the news set my nerves on high alert all over again.
Blaze motioned to the screen, which showed a man getting off a motorcycle outside what looked like a nightclub from the exterior décor.
I frowned at the image. “That’s not the guy I talked to.” He was too thin, and when he pulled off his helmet, he was clearly too young as well, not much older than I was.
Talon had tuned into our conversation. “It’s not uncommon for an organization to have a pool of vehicles if they don’t want any individual member to be easily tracked.”
“Or he could have stolen it and returned it,” Garrison suggested.
“He’s supposed to be law enforcement,” I reminded him, but my need to say “supposed” reminded me of how little we still knew about the man who’d reached out to me with his ominous warnings.
“It doesn’t make much sense to me,” Julius said, his forehead furrowing as he turned in his seat to join the conversation. “How a man with the kind of resources he obviously had and a clear enough idea of what the Maliks were doing couldn’t manage to prove it.”
Blaze nodded slowly. “You’re right. Not to downplay how brilliant we all are, but we put the pieces together in just a few weeks, partly because of the tips he gave us. Sure, Dess had more access to their house, but anyone could have broken in. I haven’t matched an entry to the girl he said was his daughter yet, but I’ve IDed the kids from the last five years, so it’s farther back than that. He must have been investigating this for a while.”
I rubbed my arms, abruptly chilled. “It’s a loose end. I don’t like not knowing how he really fits into the whole situation. Why don’t we go over to the club and just see what we see? Even if he’s not there, maybe we’ll find something out about the people he works with if that guy with the bike is a colleague of his. And if not, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a drink and unwind, right?”
“Here, here,” Garrison said in a mildly sardonic voice, and knocked his knuckles against my hand as if offering a toast. I grinned at him, the gleam of his eyes sparking renewed heat in me after the interlude we’d just shared and the emotional declarations made on both sides.
Whatever we found, whatever we faced, the five of us had each other’s backs. That was a hell of a lot more than I could say for the “real” family that’d kidnapped Garrison and tried to murder the rest of us today.
By the time we reached the club, the sky had darkened with the setting of the sun. We parked a block away and walked over, scanning the street as we went.
Garrison stopped us a few storefronts shy of the club itself. A few patrons were standing outside, being waved in one by one.
“It doesn’t look like a public event,” he said. “The bouncers are checking something—looks like some kind of invitation.”
Julius took in the club-goers and then us. “I think we can blend in if we find an alternate entrance. They’re dressed a little fancier than we are, but nothing that should make us stand out too much.”
I nodded. I’d ended up decked out in linen pants and a silky blouse since there hadn’t been anything less fancy on offer in the Maliks’ country home. “We’ll just take a quick look around then?” I suggested. “In and out?”
“In and out,” he agreed.
Being five mercenaries with plenty of experience penetrating buildings without being noticed, we found a moment to slip through a back door with barely any trouble at all. Inside, we slunk through a hall and out into the main room of the club.
It was a pretty upscale place with a sleek steel bar counter, mahogany tables in the booths, and marble tiles covering the floor. Amber lights fixed along the middle of the ceiling gave the room an atmospheric glow. Servers circulated the room with flutes of champagne, weaving between the crowd of party-goers who were laughing and chattering with each other energetically. The whole event had a celebratory vibe.
It was mostly men, I realized as I studied the crowd. There were women here and there, hanging off the guys’ arms in skimpy dresses, but they appeared to be there for the men’s entertainment rather than their own. The back of my neck prickled.
“I wonder what they’re celebrating,” I said.
Garrison tipped his head toward the crowd and snatched a champagne flute off a passing tray. “Let’s see if we can find out. Nudge us if you see the Hunter.”
I wasn’t sure I’d recognize him at a glance. Maybe if I heard him talking. I’d only seen him with his motorcycle helmet on.
I took a glass of my own and held it in front of me as I made my way into the festivities. I tapped the arm of one younger guy I passed and gave him my best innocent smile.
“Hey,” I said, pitching my voice over the bass of the music. “What’s the big celebration? My date didn’t tell me what’s up, and now he’s gone off somewhere.”
The guy chuckled. “Beats me! I’m just here for the babes and the booze.”
I forced a laugh and moved on. Maybe one of my fellow women would be more helpful.
I fixed my attention on a redhead who moved from one man to another as confidently as if she owned the place and eased over beside her. When she glanced over at me, I motioned to the room around us. “Crazy party, isn’t it? What are we celebrating anyway?”
She shrugged but grinned. “All I know is the boss is very happy about something. That’s good for all of us.” She flicked her hand toward the bar.
There were several men gathered there, but as soon as my gaze settled on them, I could tell which one had to be in charge. There was a guy with his back to me who stood a few inches taller than the others, the artificial light gleaming off his silver-and-blond hair. All the men around him were facing him, jostling like puppies eager to catch their master’s attention.
He pushed himself a little away from the bar, grasping the beer bottle the bartender had passed to him, and my heart skipped a beat.
Those broad shoulders, that posture, and that height—the way he moved… And the blond parts of his hair were the same color as the little girl in the photo, weren’t they?
I was abruptly sure that I was looking at the Hunter, fully revealed. He was “boss” over all these people, not just an investigator in a larger organization?
And he was hosting this celebration now, right after the family he’d been working against for years had fallen… Could he already know what we’d done? How? Or was it just a coincidence and there was some other special occasion?
I glanced over my shoulder toward the guys, who’d followed me from a discrete distance. At my look, they drew in closer around me.
“The older blond guy by the bar,” I said, tilting my head in his direction without looking right at him. “I swear that’s the Hunter. And someone just referred to him as the ‘boss’—that he set up this party.”
Garrison knit his brow, taking in the room again. “If he’s got all these people working under him, it makes even less sense that he couldn’t tackle the Maliks without getting you involved.”
“There’s only one person who can explain that,” I said. “Let’s see if he’ll talk to me properly for once. Or maybe we’ll overhear something useful.”
We moved through the crowd toward the Hunter, who’d turned so that I could make out his profile. He had a craggy face like it was sculpted out of rough granite, with a high forehead and a strong jaw. I etched it into my memory as I pushed my way closer.
Our intentions must have been obvious, because we were only five feet away when another man broke from the Hunter’s side and intercepted us. He held up his narrow hand, his close-set eyes flashing. “Now isn’t the time to petition the boss with your problems. You can wait until tomorrow, whatever it is.”
He spoke with an air of authority—he must have been a close associate of the Hunter’s. But he didn’t seem inclined to answer any questions himself.
I raised my chin, putting on my best appearance of assurance myself. “We’re not petitioning him. He specially invited us, and it’d be rude if we didn’t at least say hello.”
The man snorted. “I know everyone he’d have ‘specially’ invited, and I have no idea who you are. Now scurry along and stop with the bullshit. This isn’t a game of Candyland.”
Behind me, Garrison sucked in a sharp breath. I might not have backed down if his obvious reaction hadn’t worried me. I stepped back from the man who’d interrupted us and turned to face the crew.
Garrison grabbed my wrist before I could say anything and dragged me several steps farther away. The other men followed, looking confused. “What’s going on?” Julius asked in a low voice.
“That Candyland line,” Garrison muttered, his expression tense. “You remember our contact for the household job? He went by the code name Viper? I talked to him a few times after because of their supposedly missing “property,” and I’d swear he used almost the exact same phrase a couple of times. It’s not the kind of thing you hear all the time, either.”
A chill condensed in my gut as a vague memory rose up of the voicemail message he’d played for us one time. I’d been too upset to commit the exact words to memory, but the “Candyland” part did send a tremor of recognition through me.
“The household job,” I repeated. “You think that guy is the same one who hired you to slaughter everyone in the household?”
Garrison inclined his head, his mouth flattening. I glanced back toward the man in question, who was now standing right by the Hunter’s side, his eyes narrowed as he fended off another possible petitioner.
What were the chances of that? The man who’d approached me about investigating my family was also the boss of the man who’d destroyed my captors’ home? And not just that. Like Garrison had said, ‘Viper’ and his people had wanted to get their hands on me too. We’d had every reason to believe they were behind the attacks on us back in the crew’s hometown.
Nausea coiled through my abdomen. This all felt way too wrong.
And then, as my gaze darted through the room, my eyes caught on one of the skimpily dressed women, a young brunette who was perched on an older man’s lap. He caught up her hair in his hand and tugged her head toward him, and a dark blotch showed just above her hairline at the back of her neck.
My pulse hiccupped. Unable to think, barely able to breathe, I stalked through the room straight to her and lifted her hair higher.
The woman squawked and jerked away from me, and the man started to sputter, but I’d seen enough in that brief glimpse. She had a tattoo imprinted at the back of her skull—a tattoo of a droplet with a line slicing through it diagonally, just like the one on my own neck.
The mark of the organization behind the household. What the hell was going on?
The thumping of my heartbeat had drowned out most of the noise around me, but the commotion I’d caused had drawn other patrons’ attention—including the boss’s. I glanced up, locked in my daze of shock, to find the Hunter striding toward me.
The crew pulled close around me in a protective formation. The Hunter didn’t look remotely fazed. He walked in a straight line, trusting that those around him would dart out of his path if they were in his way—and they did. It was only a matter of seconds before he came to a stop just a couple of feet from where I stood, his expression impenetrable.
Had he stolen that woman from another location like the household, the same way he’d tried to steal me? Or was something even bigger going on here? I was too off-balance to sort through everything I’d just discovered.
The accusation tumbled out of me. “You had them killed. The people who kidnapped me. You were behind the massacre at the household.”
He cocked his head slightly to the side as if trying to feign confusion, but his voice came out too steady for me to believe he didn’t understand. “I believe you’ll find that Damien Malik was responsible for that incident.”
What? I might have been bewildered, but I knew that one statement was impossible. My birth father had clearly had no idea whatsoever that I was alive when I’d first approached him. He’d still believed that I’d died in a car crash as a toddler.
As the Hunter stared me down, the understanding sank in that I might be in the middle of a game much vaster than I’d ever suspected. I had no idea where I stood or what the rules were.
And the man in front of me, standing tall amid his crowd of underlings without any sign of concern that I’d found him, could be an even bigger monster than the one I’d just killed.
