Page 26 of When He Hunts

She rose onto her knees. “Youarea good liar.You lie perfectly.”

His lips twisted in a humorless smile.

Her stomach also twisted, but she still forced out the words she had to say. “Is that what makes you such a good undercover operative for the FBI? Your ability to lie? Because that’s what you are, isn’t it? You’re a Fed. You work with Grayson Stone. You’re a Fed, not a killer. You’re only pretending to be a hitman.”

No one threatens me.

Marcus Constantine Aeros exhaled slowly. He hadn’t made it to this position in life just so some asshole thug could threaten him.

And I’m not about to lose everything I’ve worked to achieve because of some middle school drama teacher. Hell, no.

He dialed Kurt. The phone rang once. Twice. Three times?—

“Hello?” Slurred. Sleepy.

“Wake your lazy ass up,” Marcus snapped. “You’re killing Ronan Walker today.”

“What?” More alert.

The dumbass had probably stayed out drinking past dawn on Bourbon Street. If the prick wasn’t his cousin…

But if you can’t give your dirty work to family, then who can you give it to?“I have an address for you.” Not exactly a spot-on address. More like a radius. A search field. Because while he’d been talking to Ronan, he’d been using a new bit of tech to trace the call. Super fast and—supposedly—very, very accurate, the tech had given him a small radius for Ronan’s location.

Just like the bastard said, he’s in the bayou.

A perfect place for the prick to die.

“Y-you want me to kill him…now?”

“I know where he is now.” Mostly. Hard to say for sure because it was a dot in the fucking bayou.Kurt can figure this shit out.“He won’t expect an attack now. You move quickly. You eliminate him. Then you get your ass back here.”

“He took out three of us last night. I’m gonna need to get backup. Those bozos from last night left me, so I’m gonna need to find men with backbones.”

“There is no time for a team. You move and you movenow.It’s called element of surprise for a reason.” He texted the location intel.

Silence on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, um, trying to put that in my phone and get directions,” Kurt finally mumbled. “But it’s just showing a spot in the middle of nowhere. Like, no roads. Nothing. You sure this is right?”

“I’m sure that if you don’t find Ronan Walker and kill him, thenyou’llbe the dead one. Figure. This. Shit. Out.” He hung up.

No one threatens me.Ronan Walker was dead. He would soon be joining Luna Black in the bayou as bait for the gators.

Another problem marked off his list.

Chapter Six

The waterfrom the shower pounded down just beyond the closed bathroom door. Ronan glared at the door even as Luna’s words played through his head again.

You’re only pretending to be a hitman.

No shit. If he hadn’t been pretending, she would be dead.

Except…

She thinks I’m a Fed. That I’ve been working undercover this whole time.And the reason why she thought that? Because Gray had opened his big-ass mouth and talked about how Ronan had helped him, over and over again. Hell. Ronan had known that would be problematic the instant Gray had uttered those unfortunate words. Gray had always been the chattiest bastard in their group.

Now Luna knew the biggest secret that he kept. And if she told the wrong person…