Page 76 of Passion and Payback

“Well, it’s not exactly a nice option, but nicer than the escort getting pulled into the whole mess.”

I sighed. “Tell me.”

“Well, you see...it used to be that we would take our cats to the vet when they needed their medication or exams. But it became easier with follow-up exams and checkups for her just to come here.”

“I’m failing to see where this is going.”

“And after some time, she started leaving stuff here...including ether.”

“Eth…wait, you want to knock this person out?” I asked, surprised at the boldness of the plan. “That’s...wait, isn’t that shit explosive?”

He rolled his eyes. “We keep it temperature controlled, for God’s sake, Kai.”

I vaguely remembered some of the specialized training I’d been through after it was obvious to Command that I could work with special operations groups and handle missions requiring a softer touch. One of those had been to prepare for the use of and handling different types of drugs. Ether wasn’t one of the ones I’d been trained in extensively, but it was still used on occasion by other groups, so we’d been aware of it. The chances of it going fatally wrong for the recipient were not high, but still possible. The worst this escort would face would be dry mouth and a bad headache.

Yet the bigger problem was that a lot was riding on ensuring the ether was delivered to the person. But the problem was, it had to be breathed in for it to be effective, which could take a ridiculous amount of time, depending on the person's size and how hard they struggled.

“Do we know what kind of escort, male, female?”

“He just said ‘surprise me’ in the message.”

“Great.”

I thought about it for a moment and sighed. “Alright. Here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to check the place out tomorrow without getting too close. That way, we can see if any security systems need to be dealt with and what’s going on on the property. From there, we’ll figure out how to handle it.”

“Well,” Hunter began and then shook his head. “I’ll wait to hear back from you before I go any further.”

“Shouldn’t I know now? Because if I give the green light, we won’t have much time to plan things out, only hours. If we’re going to cover any problems with the plan, then we should address them now.”

“It can wait,” he said with a small smile. “I don’t want to complicate things.”

I had the distinct feeling that not wanting to complicate things was not what was holding him back. In truth, I probably could have pressed him and gotten more answers. I could have also risked pushing him too hard and setting off his temper. He wasn’t showing any signs of it now, but I couldn’t help but feel a lot more was going on beneath the surface.

I’d seen it before, felt it before in other people. The sense that something was moving around behind the translucent window of their soul, something dark and sharp, ever hungry but being made to wait to strike. It was still the same Hunter, with his pretty eyes, his warm smile, and a laugh that still sounded like there was something to be happy about. But there was something else, and it was near the surface now that we might be on the tail of the first target.

For now, I would leave well alone and let him have whatever he kept close to his chest.

“I’ll go take a look,” I told him, letting the subject drop. “Then, once I figure out what’s what, we can move forward.”

“Sounds good,” he said with a smile that almost made me believe he wasn’t trying to keep something from me. And the more I thought about it, the more I believed he kept it quiet because he didn’t want to upset me. “Keep in touch, okay?”

“Heh, I’m not taking my phone,” I told him, turning toward the door. “Going to go get some cash, then buy a couple of disposable phones for us to use.”

“Oh...that’s smart,” he said with a few rapid blinks. “Probably a good idea if we don’t have our phones pinging on the towers near them, huh?”

“Exactly,” I said, opening the door. “I’ll bring one back and then head out.”

“Okay, be safe.”

“Always.”

HUNTER

It turned out that waiting outside someone’s house in anticipation of killing them wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world. At least it was still the warm season, so while I sat in Damon’s hedges, I wasn’t going to freeze my ass off. Kai wasn’t far away, but he was mostly there to wait until I gave him the signal to move in after I got into the house.

The plan was in motion. All I had to do was wait for the escort to show up. If it turned out to be a bigger guy, Kai would have to knock the man out. If it was a smaller man or a woman, I was confident that after my new strength and self-defense training, I could overpower them. From that point, I would get into the house and pose as the escort to ensure there were no other systems inside or anyone else in the house.

To say that Kai was deeply unhappy about the plan was putting it mildly. As soon as he’d done some reconnaissance and given the original part of my plan the green light, that was the time to tell him what the next part of the plan was. He immediately launched into picking apart every step, pointing out what could go wrong.

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