I COULDN’T SAY I’d ever felt more pathetic in my life. I could barely walk to the bathroom to take a fucking piss, my body so shaky I had to trail a hand along the wall for support. Even with a fresh dose of painkillers in my system, the wound on my side throbbed as I sat with the others eating dinner. I couldn’t even enjoy the food, focusing on forcing down the most nutrient-packed morsels I could since my stomach wasn’t up to a large meal.
I was supposed to be leading the crew. How the hell could I do that when I was a bed-bound invalid?
But as much as my current state of health niggled at my nerves, a sense of peace settled over me as I looked at my brothers-in-arms and my woman. We were still together, still alive, still ready to fight.
The Blood Hunter hadn’t conquered us yet. He wouldn’t beat us, no matter what state I was in. Being a leader was about a hell of a lot more than running around tackling people. I could holler orders just fine without moving an inch.
I just had to figure out the right orders to give. And my crew would help me find them. That was why I’d surrounded myself with these talented people.
I glanced around the rough circle we’d formed in the barn that was our current hideout. My sleeping bag was cushioned by straw now—I’d slept on worse beds. The dry scent tickled my nose.
“Our team has taken a major blow, but we’re not beaten,” I said. “But we might only get one more chance to make a solid strike, and we need to make it soon, before he regains more of his balance. We have to be smart about this.”
Blaze glanced toward his laptop. “I’ve been following every trail I can, but I don’t know what would make for a definitive move. There are a couple more clients whose homes we could raid, but that doesn’t affect the Blood Hunter directly at all. There won’t be another local shipment of girls for a few weeks, and I haven’t been able to identify any of his other auctions around the country.” He paused. “Not that you or Talon is in much condition for an extended road trip.”
I grimaced at the truth in his words.
“What about the military angle?” Dess asked, tapping her knee against Garrison’s where he sat next to her. “Has the general Garrison targeted pulled his support?”
“I think so,” Blaze said. “But I don’t know who else in the military the Blood Hunter might have influence over.”
“And that doesn’t get us right to him either.” I paused, the facets of the conversation sinking in. An unexpected revelation rose up in my mind in their wake. “We’ve been coming at this wrong.”
Talon glanced over at me from where he reclined against a bale of hay. “What do you mean?”
“Listen to us,” I said. “We’ve gotten distracted from the goal of destroying the Blood Hunter completely, focusing instead on the parts of his business that we find most personally offensive: the human trafficking and his manipulations of fellow soldiers and mercenaries. But those avenues aren’t necessarily where he’s the most vulnerable. We need to figure out what angle we can come at him from that gives us the best access to him, the best chance to end him once and for all.”
Garrison nodded slowly. “We’ve undermined him in a few areas, but a man like that must have dozens of income streams. Hurting him financially isn’t going to crush him. And the DNA gathering missions seem to be a pretty new thing, not something his dealings rely on.”
“Exactly.” I rubbed my jaw. “But we can’t eliminate him by our usual methods, going straight at him and taking him down with violent chaos. We’ve already seen that he’s too carefully protected for that.”
“He has to have some weaknesses,” Dess put in. “Everyone does.” Her gaze drifted away from us through the wooden structure, her expression going distant with thought. Then her eyes snapped back to me. “You said that we got distracted—that’s been our weakness. But distraction isn’t good for anyone. Is there a way we could distract the Blood Hunter—enough that he’d make a fatal mistake and give us the opening we need?”
Garrison snapped his fingers. “I like the way you’re thinking, sweetheart. To distract someone, you need to dangle something they care about. Anything that matters to him is a potential weakness, a way to get access. What do we know that this prick has a hard-on for?”
Blaze wrinkled his nose. “I wouldn’t put it that way, but he obviously cares a lot about his daughter. Or daughters. The one who died, and presumably the one he’s replaced her with too.”
“And Dess,” Talon said.
Dess blinked at him. “He’s trying to kill me. That seems to indicate he doesn’t care all that much.”
“No, Talon’s right,” I said. “He might not care about keeping you alive, but he cared a hell of a lot about what you represent, about the plans he had for you.”
“About his revenge against the Maliks,” Garrison filled in.
“How can we use that?” Dess knit her brow. “Everyone in my birth family is dead—except my brother, but he wasn’t even born when the Maliks killed the Blood Hunter’s daughter. I doubt he cares about Carter.”
“Just add it to the list,” Garrison said. “He also cares about his businesses, even if they’re not essential. You said he sounded pretty pissed off about how we’ve interfered that time you talked to him.”
“It matters to him to stay in control,” I said, understanding rushing through me as the words came out.
I might have more in common with the Blood Hunter than I’d ever have wanted to believe. I’d told Dess that I’d built my life around maintaining near-perfect control, and wasn’t our enemy the exact same way? Possibly even more so. He’d manipulated every detail of Dess’s life, orchestrated her clash with her family beat by beat. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was as furious that we’d managed to shake up his plans at all as he was about the specific businesses we’d messed with.
“What we’ve been doing should only be minor harassment to a man with as vast a criminal empire as he claims,” I went on. “He said so himself to Dess. But he’s incredibly angry. He’s been pulling out all the stops to squash us, expending far more resources than really makes sense relative to the minor damage we’ve done. He’s too used to everything going his way, to being able to ensure it does. Having anyone slip through his fingers—that’s definitely a distraction.”
Blaze hummed to himself. “Then in a way, we’re already partway there.”
“His need for control is a strength and a weakness, then,” Talon said. “Being pissed off at us hasn’t toppled him on its own. How are we going to use his control-freak tendencies to stop him?”
Garrison—always the schemer—stood and began marching across the room as he contemplated. “We can’t go straight at him because of his protections… so we have to lure him to us, into a scenario where he’s vulnerable. We need bait that matters so much to him that he’d keep chasing it even while we’re stripping him of his guards along the way. What would compel him like that?”
“His daughter,” Dess said quietly. “We take her. He’d do anything to get her back.”
“I’m not sure that’d be quite enough,” Garrison said, but a glint had lit in his eyes that told me his own manipulative skills were coming out in full force. When Garrison really understood a person, they’d better fucking believe they were in trouble. A smirk played across his lips. “We might need a little help, but I think I know exactly what’ll make this chase totally irresistible to him. He’ll come running, all right.”
“You figure out how to make it happen,” I said, a greater calm filling me alongside my sense of resolve. I could lead my crew from here in this barn if I needed to. I could lay out the pieces and figure out how we’d take them down without needing to be charging into the field alongside them, as much as I wished I could.
Looking at each member of my crew, I could feel the loyalty and determination that emanated from every one of them. They trusted me, and that meant more than they’d ever know. It didn’t matter how many bullets I took. I could lead them, and I could do it well.
And that was why the Blood Hunter wouldn’t stand a fucking chance against us.
“You’re still going to have to deal with his bodyguards and whoever else he brings with him,” Talon pointed out. “There’s no chance he’ll set out on a quest alone just because we ask him to.”
Garrison snorted. “We’re not even going to ask. That would be showing too much of our hand. But if we make a sort of treasure hunt out of it, have him racing from one clue to the next, we should get opportunities to pick off his protections bit by bit. Dess can handle a lot of that, and we’ll set things up so Blaze and I can manage the rest. You two can keep sitting on your asses.”
I couldn’t hold back a guffaw at that remark. “Be glad we are stuck on our asses while you’re making comments like that.”
“He’ll need to be really invested to keep going even after we start eliminating his guards,” Blaze said. “Or he’ll just wait until he can call in more.”
Garrison’s smirk stretched wider. “Oh, this’ll do that. He’ll be slavering at the bit to get to the bottom of it, distracted beyond all rational thought. It’s going to be fun.”
Dess prodded him. “Are you going to tell us what this magic ticket you’ve figured out is?”
He aimed his grin at her. “Magic is right. We’re going to bring a man back from the dead.”
