Page 18 of Hunt

“They got money,” Gunner stated as he checked the window. “They’re back.”

I chuckled because I knew they would. Predictable. They didn’t care if we saw them, so they probably warned us of what would come. I wiped my hands on the paper napkin and sipped my black coffee as the fatigue behind my eyes started to ease.

“Looks like we're in for a ride, Gunner,” I confessed, looking out the window.

“You reckon?” he questioned, not bothered by their presence.

I nodded, “Yep, ‘cos it looks like the Russians have returned and ah…I’m guessing they want their territory back.”

Gunner grunted, shrugging his shoulders casually. “Let them try.”

8

Gunner’s Mustang was parked down the road as Bitchtective and her silent lackey pulled up, and I climbed into the back seat. As they drove away, I glanced to see if Gunner would follow. My heart hammered in my chest, seeing his face when he took off his mask. I held back my facial expressions while chaos was bestowed internally.

It was conflicted, though, because Rourke was a man I had been romantically and sexually involved with, and I should’ve reacted when he showed me his gorgeous face, but all I saw was my foster brother, the boy I loved who’d grown into a beautiful, rugged man. So, not reacting was bad, but also reacting was bad, and this was why I needed to escape this shithole.

“I need a gun” were the first words that escaped my mouth.

Bitchtective laughed and assumed I was joking, then checked my serious expression in the rear-view mirror. “You can’t be serious.”

“I haven’t been more serious in my life,” I told her straight. “I need protection. I’m dealing with the most dangerous men in the city, and you want me to open myself up to get killed. I know you disagree, but I’m worth more than being bait laid in a trap so a dirty cop can siphon information on crims.”

“Are you calling me dirty?” she scoffed.

I needed protection from her, the Royal Bitch as well as the Kaisers, but I won’t tell the Royal Bitch that. As soon as she flipped the tables and betrayed my trust, she became my enemy. She believed that she had a hold over me, but she didn’t know what I was capable of. Never underestimate a girl born in the dregs and raised in the bloody grips of the criminal underbelly.

“You’re hardly toeing the line, though, are you?” I pressed her to see how she’d react. “I mean…is setting me up and forcibly throwing me to the lions legal?”

“We have to do what we have to do,” she stated arrogantly, which pissed me off.

She believed that she was untouchable, and that only made me want to hurt her even more. If I had a gun, I’d shoot her and the silent lackey at the wheel, then I’d run. I am my mother’s daughter, and fuck knows who my father was, but my mother stated that he was someone to fear. But Mom often changed her story, especially when she was on the game, with needle tracks on her arms, dried lips, sunken eyes, greasy hair, and slurred the weirdest of shit.

“I thought I was supposed to be protected. Wasn’t that the deal? I make up some shit about my foster father, and you protected me and my mom from the Kaisers. Wasn’t that the deal?” I hit, holding back my anger.

Bitchtective assumed I was a pushover and started to learn that it was all an act from the beginning. I was only sixteen, yet I was older than my years, and they put me in a difficult situation. The photograph of my little brother, who was adopted out to a loving family, was what she used to blackmail me into doing what she wanted. It was a threat to destroy his world. Liam was an innocent stuck in the middle and used as bait. Born to a drug addict only eight years ago, the Kaisers organized his adoption to a loving family because that’s what decent people do.

I had never met him in person, and I only found out when my mother told me about him after she gave birth, and that’s when Sylia Kaiser intervened. Apparently, the baby was starving and lying on the floor in dirty diapers while Mom was passed out on the floor. I didn’t even know Mom was pregnant, and once again, the father was non-existent, a miraculous insemination.

“We dictate the deals, Riley,” Bitchtective reminded me as I swallowed the urge to find Gunner again out the back window.

The rumble of his Mustang engine was in the far distance, and if he got too close, The Royal Bitch would notice, so I hoped he stayed away, or maybe I wanted her to see. That boy didn’t seem to understand the word ‘inconspicuous,’ walking around campus in a freakishly scary mask and driving around in a classic vehicle, roaring engine shuddering the buildings, music blaring. Hardly invisible.

“We’ll see,” I murmured as the vehicle cruised down streets lined with dorms searching for a place to park, so give me the third degree. “How is Sergeant Tindale?”

They remained quiet as Bitchtective kept her eyes glued on the wing mirror as if something caught her eye, but the intensity grew at the mention of the name as if I was threatening to call him. It had crossed my mind. My fingers inched toward his number in my contacts, and the only thing that stopped me was the warning I received from Bitchtective. If I did something stupid, she could destroy everything good and virtuous, the little brother I’ve never met.

“I have no idea,” I replied honestly. I checked the door handle and found it was internally locked.

“Correct answer,” she asserted as if she were Queen of the World. Or maybe Bitch of the World was a more accurate interpretation. “He retired.”

“Pardon? We only spoke days ago. How did he retire so soon?” Then it hit me that Bitchtective had organized his exit from the police force. If she could end a man’s career, what else had she done?

“We’ve got company,” the silent lackey urged, and Bitchtective swung around to gaze out the back window.

She grunted and shot me a fierce glare before turning back. “Did you do that?” she hissed at me.

I looked back to see the Mustang following two cars behind us, still on our tail, persistent and obsessive—that’s our Gunner Kaiser. Bitchtective caught my smug smile in the rear-view mirror as I locked my stare with hers, letting her know that something had changed in me. Riley Laws was slowly peeling away, and Annika was starting to emerge bit by bit.

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