Page 15 of When He Hunts

He tapped the screen. Then glared at it. After a moment, “She’s a pain in the ass,” he announced.

Luna frowned.

“But she’s analivepain, correct?” A man’s calm and deep voice filled the air.

Speaker phone.Ronan must have hit the speaker button so she could hear his call.

“No, she’s dead,” Ronan returned. “As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Luna Black died on a New Orleans street. Maybe her body will eventually be found. Or maybe it’s already been dumped at the bottom of the muddy Mississippi. Who knows?”

Luna realized that she’d fisted her hands.

“She doesn’t trust me,” Ronan added.

“Well, sure, you probably drugged her. And kidnapped her. A lack of trust is bound to happen,” the man said.

“Tell her to stop running from me. I’m not in the mood to chase her ass all over the bayou.” Then he turned the phone around so it faced Luna, and she realized he hadn’t just turned on the speaker option. It was a video call. She was staring straight at FBI Agent Grayson Stone.

Not that they’d ever met in person. That first meetingshouldhave occurred in the very near future. But she’d seen pictures of Grayson before. Watched him do a few interviews on TV. So he was definitely recognizable on sight for her.

Grayson smiled at her. “Hello, Ms. Black.”

“Luna,” she mumbled. Grayson wasn’t wearing his typical suit, one of the dark ones that he tended to sport whenever he gave an interview to the media. Instead, he had on a white t-shirt. His thick hair was tousled, as if he’d been raking his fingers through it, and his gaze seemed worried as he assessed her.

“Looks like you won’t make our appointment,” Grayson noted.

Yep, looked that way. She pressed her palms to the tops of her jean-clad thighs.

“And I see you’ve met my…associate, Ronan.”

“He killed me.”

“No, hepretendedto kill you. A very important distinction. And a necessary one, I’m afraid. You see, I had intel that led me to believe you would never make our meeting. Time was of the extreme essence. You had to vanish. Too many threats were closing in on you.” A pause. “Ronan was already close by. He’d been, uh, well, he’d been?—”

“Hired to kill you,” Ronan told her. “I’d already taken the hit on you.”

Her gaze shot to him. Found those incredibly blue eyes on her.

“I’d been hired to kill you,” Ronan repeated, as if she’d somehow missed the words the first time. Spoiler, she had not. “Gray reached out, offered more for me to keep you alive, so here we are.”

Grayson coughed. “Yes, right. Indeed, here we are. You’re off the radar of the bad guys and that gives me time to solidify my case. I have some operatives that have to be recovered—there is much more at stake here than you realize—so as soon as we can close our trap, I will be contacting you again.”

Wait, wait,wait.“What do you mean, as soon as you can close your trap?” Her right hand shot up to grab the phone. Except when she did that, she wound up putting her fingers on top of Ronan’s and that weirdawarenesspulsed through her again.

What was up with that? Why was she attracted to the man who’d been hired to kill her?

No, not kill you. Grayson is telling you that Ronan is here to protect you.

But…Ronanhadkilled other people, hadn’t he? And if Grayson hadn’t reached out to the hitman…would Ronan have killed her? Would he have gone through with the hit?

“Why are you looking at me that way?” Ronan asked.

“Uh,hello?”From Grayson. “How about someone look atme?What is the point of a video call if no one is seeing me? And, look, it’s the middle of the night. I should be getting beauty rest. Hell, I should not even be on this call because the last thing I want is for anything to be traced to Luna. She needs to stay dark, understand me, Ronan? Darker than the grave.”

Like those words weren’t chilling. Goosebumps rose on her skin.

“I’ll contact you by secure means when it’s time to bring her into the light again,” Grayson added. “Until then, you stick to the woman like a second skin. She goes nowhere without you. She doesn’t get out of your sight. Because one slipup will mean she’s dead, for real, and the case I’m working will go down in flames. Those flames will burn way too many innocent people.”

That wasn’t such a great visual.

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