I TOOK a deep breath and glanced across the car at Julius, who was poised behind the wheel. A van rumbled by in the parking lot we’d chosen for its central location in D.C. The leather seat felt stiff under my ass.
“Your honest opinion,” I said, holding my phone in my right hand and fidgeting with the hem of my shirt with my left. “Is this going to be worth it?”
The leader of the Chaos Crew didn’t respond immediately. His hands flexed against the wheel. Then he looked back at me steadily. “That’s impossible to judge when we don’t know who this person is or what they want.”
“It could have something to do with the people who kidnapped me.” The organization with the logo like a droplet with a line slicing diagonally through it. The people who’d stolen me from my family and tried to kill the men who’d helped me more than once. “Or the people who hired the crew to kill them.”
“Even if that’s the case, what this means depends on what answers are still important to you. Now that you have your family, how much does it matter to you to understand the rest of your past?”
Maybe it would have been better if I could have simply moved on and forgotten all that. But the urge to find out who’d controlled me so thoroughly for so much of my life nagged at me no matter how many visits I had with the Maliks.
I needed to know why. I needed to understand the reason my life had been rewritten. I needed to be sure the people involved wouldn’t hurt anyone close to me ever again.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever said anything truer than the words that tumbled from my mouth next. “It’s the most important thing to me.”
Julius gave me a quiet smile. “Then it’ll be worth it no matter what happens, just to know you tried.”
Blaze’s voice resonated through the headset I was wearing, identical to Julius’s. “My equipment is ready. As soon as this person picks up, I can start to triangulate their signal. Be sure to keep whoever it is talking as long as possible. That’ll give me the best chance of narrowing down his location.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
I tapped the number we’d gotten from the strange missed connections ad into my phone and brought it to my ear, easing off that side of the headset. The phone on the other end rang in what felt like slow motion. After the fourth ring, I wondered if anyone would pick up at all. Maybe it’d had nothing to do with me. Just a huge coincidence.
Then there was a click and a momentary silence. My heart jumped. “Hello?”
“Who am I speaking to?” a man’s voice asked. It was hoarse. Confident. I got the impression of a fair bit of age in the gravity of his tone.
I almost said “Dess” but caught myself just in time. “Rachel,” I said, giving the name he’d used in his ad. “I think you were expecting to hear from me.”
There was a faint rustling on the other end as if he’d shifted his position. Blaze’s voice carried into my other ear. “He’s in the south end of the city.” Julius, who was hearing the same report, started the ignition and drove out of the parking lot.
“I’m glad you found my message,” the man on the phone said. “You’re obviously a sharp one, Rachel Malik.”
He knew exactly who I was then, but that wasn’t a surprise.
“A friend who knew some of the details of recent events in my life noticed the post and pointed it out to me,” I said. I wanted to demand to know what it was about, what he wanted, but Blaze needed this conversation to be drawn out as long as possible. So I stopped there and waited.
The man gave a brief hum. “A friend, not family?”
“I said a friend, didn’t I?”
“What people say and what they mean aren’t always the same thing, as I’m sure you’ll become aware of soon if you haven’t already.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, a prickle of apprehension running down my spine.
“I saw you on the news with Damien Malik,” the man said, ignoring my question. “Back from the dead. I knew you deserved better than to go in blind. I had to reach out to you.”
“And you chose this way?”
He barked a laugh. “We have to be subtle in my line of business.”
I frowned. “And what exactly is that? Who are you?” I clamped down on all the other questions that wanted to fly from my mouth.
“I’ve been investigating the Malik family for some time,” he said, again not offering the specific information I’d asked for. “I’ve turned up some unsettling information. You shouldn’t trust them wholeheartedly.”
“They’re my family,” I retorted automatically.
“Not all families mean well. Every villain is part of a family.”
I guessed that was true. I squirmed in my seat again, wondering how much longer it’d be before Blaze could home in on this guy even more. I wanted to talk to him face to face, to force him to give me some straight answers.
As if sensing my thoughts, Blaze’s voice came again. “I’m closing in on him. Northeast.”
Julius nodded and took a turn at the next intersection. I focused on the phone again. “Who are you to be investigating anyone anyway?”
“I’m a special government agent. All politicians have people keeping oversight on them, as I’m sure you can understand. Damien Malik is my assignment.”
“And what makes you think there’s anything to be worried about with him?”
“I haven’t been able to gather enough evidence to prove anything in court,” the man said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the details. But I know what I’ve seen. I know you should watch your step.”
“This all sounds like a bunch of vague fearmongering to me,” I shot back. “Why should I trust you? I don’t even know your name.”
“My colleagues call me the Hunter. And I can hardly jeopardize my mandate by giving away too much to someone who’s become so close to the target of my investigation. I simply wanted to deliver the clearest warning I could.”
He sounded like he was about to wind up the conversation. Blaze was muttering on his end, obviously still working at tracing the signal. My heart thumped faster. I had to keep this weirdo talking.
“If you’re really a government agent, shouldn’t you have been able to track down my phone number?” I said. “Why did you contact me in such a roundabout way?”
“I wanted to make sure you were interested in knowing the truth. And that your father wouldn’t be hovering over you when we connected.”
“Well, you managed that. He’s not here now. So why don’t you tell me more about whatever it is you think he’s done.”
Blaze spoke up again with a ripple of excitement in his voice. “I’ve narrowed it down to a ten block radius. Sending the coordinates for the area to your phone, Julius.”
The phone mounted on the dashboard pinged with the incoming transmission. The map we’d already had ready zoomed in on a particular section of the city.
The Hunter, if I really had to think of him by that name, shifted his position with another rustle. “There are a lot of things you don’t know.”
I gritted my teeth. “Then tell me. Tell me what’s so wrong with my family. What have you seen? It isn’t much of a warning if I don’t even know what to watch out for.”
“I told you, you wouldn’t believe me—not when you’re so close to the situation. You’ll have to see it for yourself.”
“Are you going to show me then?”
“I don’t believe it’s safe for me to get that involved,” the Hunter said. “But now that you know to be cautious, you’ll be going in with your eyes open. If I find more evidence—better evidence—I’ll share that with you.”
His words sounded like a promise of help, but it was only more vagueness when you really looked at it. I was becoming increasingly certain that he had no intention of telling me anything at all. Which probably meant this was all bullshit. But I couldn’t stop now.
When I got my hands on him, I’d find out the reason for the bullshit.
Julius took another turn, accelerating as he went. The car swayed lightly under me. I peered out the window at the buildings we were rushing by as he swerved around the sparse traffic.
“Five blocks,” Blaze muttered, and the map zoomed in even more. Then he let out a huff of frustration. “Something’s interfering with the signal.”
I spat out the first question that came to mind that might keep the Hunter talking. “Can’t you at least tell me if there’s anything specific I should be watching out for? The general type of thing that’s made you uneasy?”
“I think you should draw your own conclusions, Rachel,” he said. “You’re smart enough for that. You’ll recognize the rot when you come across it.”
Now he was talking in ominous poetry. I groped for something else to say to stop him from hanging up, and Blaze’s voice pealed into my other ear.
“There! It was passing through an electric field meant to scatter the transmission, but I modified the search and found it. I’ve got an exact building now. Probably the top floor.”
Julius revved the engine faster. Relief rushed through me. “Well, if you feel like enlightening me more at some point,” I said to the Hunter, “you have my number now.”
“Indeed I do,” he said.
I didn’t want to let him go just yet. He’d be more likely to stay in place if I kept him talking. There was no way he could know that we were descending on him right now.
“If I call you again, will you pick up?” I asked. “Or will you be busy with your government business?”
“I suppose that depends on when you call. I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can tell you right now.”
We’d almost reached the marker on the map. “Wait!” I said. “I need to know—is it just my father you’re worried about, or the rest of the family too?”
Julius pulled over to the curb outside what looked like a normal two-story house, a little shabby with pale yellow paint that was flaking off the bricks, but nothing horribly rundown. He jerked his head toward it.
I slipped out of the car, not even shutting the door so I wouldn’t make much noise, and darted around to the back door. There were no signs of occupation, no vehicles in the driveway, no lights gleaming through the windows under the overcast sky.
“It’s difficult to say without delving in more,” the Hunter said. “But for now I’d be wary of all of them.”
He was just a bucket of joy, this guy, wasn’t he? I whipped out my lockpicks and had the back door open in a matter of seconds. After I’d eased it open, I padded silently through the first-floor hallway, confirming there was no one in those rooms before heading up the stairs.
“Even my brother?” I prodded, letting skepticism color my voice. “The kid’s only eighteen.”
“I’ve met killers who were twelve,” the Hunter said. “Don’t put much stock in age as an indicator of innocence.”
The idea of my grumbly teenage brother being on the same level as a killer—a killer like I was—nearly made me snort. I swallowed the sound and darted along the upper hall to the room at the front of the house. The door was ajar.
I didn’t bother to say anything else into the phone. I sprang into the room—
And found nothing but a vacant chair with a folded paper sitting on it.
A low chuckle reverberated from the phone as I picked up the note. Nice try, it said in neat letters.
Amusement colored the Hunter’s voice. “It seems you’re good at this, Miss Malik, but you need to be ready in case someone turns out to be even better.”
Then the line went dead.
My fingers dug into the paper, creasing it, as I lowered the phone. “What happened?” Blaze asked through the headset, but I didn’t know what to tell him. The Hunter’s last words were still whirling through my mind.
He’d been here. Obviously he had—who else would have left this note? But somehow he’d either faked his signal or managed to get out of here just before I’d arrived without any of us noticing.
And now he knew that Damien Malik’s recently rediscovered daughter was more than just a restaurant hostess with a fraught past—that I had the skills to track a man like him down.
A chill tickled over my skin. Just how much about myself had I inadvertently revealed to this man with his tricks and his warnings? About the real me, not Rachel Malik?
