Page 48 of Hunt

Naturally, I would adhere to his demands, as it sounded like Ronan’s idea to put me forward as the mole in the overgrown field, but my objective was to put me at the top of the pyramid. I’ll wear my Riley Laws mask, but plot and scheme working for both sides so that Annika will benefit one way or another.

At the end of the day, I still needed a gun, so I hoped Cheetos would come through for me.Trust no one.Mikael Kaiser’s menacing, deep voice circulated in my head.Trust no one. Could I trust Cheetos as well?

When I walked back into the kitchen, a cloud of guilt surrounded me, as I was about to betray the very working-class people I worked with. Everything looked and felt different. Could they tell that I was a planted mole? Did I look different to them after being sent up to Mr. Kaiser’s office for a private chat?

Heads turned when I walked into the busy kitchen as grills were sizzling and one of the chefs smiled and cocked his eyebrows as two other of the kitchen staff called out a friendly hello to me.

“Sorry, I’m late,” I said as I put my head down and emptied the dishwasher and stacked plates.

Six staff members were solely working in the kitchen, and I couldn’t imagine any of them being dumb enough to mess around with their crime bosses. Surely, they must have known who the Kaisers were. Or maybe they didn’t understand because the Kaisers' original territory was in Larsson, and they dominated more and more terrain through coercion and force.

Whenever I heard staff talking, I pricked my ears, but the topic was only ever work-related. Organizing meals, asking for someone to pass the garnish, asking if an order had been covered, etc. Too busy to talk about anything that’s not work-related.

“Petra, can you take the rubbish bags out?” Chris, the sous-chef, asked me, pointing to the plastic bags by the door in the back.

“Oh, it’s Riley,” I corrected him, now that I could use my other fake name.

He frowned, paused for a few seconds, then focused back on the grill. I rushed to the bags, grabbed them, then walked down the hall to the back exit that opened into the alleyway where the dumpsters were. After throwing them into the bin, I glanced down the alleyway to the road to find that familiar black unmarked police vehicle and the door opening.

I groaned, as I wasn’t in the mood to have a conversation with her tonight or any time, for that matter, but she needed an explanation. First, checking that I was being watched by staff inside Savile, I ran to the car. Before Bitchtective could speak, I told her, “My phone broke, so if you’ve contacted me, I couldn’t reply until I buy a new one.”

She was irritated and opened the back door, leaned in, and pulled a box out. “I was aware,” she stated, handing the box to me.

“How did you know?” I asked her.

“I have my ways,” she said, slamming the back door, then opening the front door. “Have you planted the cameras yet?”

I shook my head. “It’s tough to get in there alone.”

“Find a way,” she ordered impatiently. “Maybe,” she waved her hand at me. “You could try doing something with your appearance to be more sexualized, so they’d drop their guard. There’s nothing like sex to make men lose their heads…well, at least for two minutes.”

I screwed my face up in horror. “I’m not going to do that,” I hissed, imagining myself trying to seduce Mikael Kaiser.

I’d look like a fumbling idiot. He was terrifying and imposing, and he held a sense of immense power just by sitting there and looking at me. I couldn’t spend two minutes with him without shaking and stuttering; there was no way I could distract him with my wily ways by seducing him.

“Well, you better do something or else I’ll be contacting the adopted parents of your little brother and letting them know there has been a drastic mistake and he must be given back to your mother,” she threatened, as she climbed back into the passenger seat of the car.

I leaned over to see who was in the driver’s seat, and it was that silent cop again—the man who rarely spoke but drove on command, like a string puppet.

“I gotta go,” I hurried away from the car, still wondering how she knew my phone broke.

There could only be three possibilities: team Shaun, Cheetos, or Ronan. None of them were friends, and I couldn’t imagine any of them colluding with the cops. I had no time to think deeply about it, so I ran back to the fire exit door, swung it open, ran down the hall to the locker room, and stopped dead to find Betty jotting something down on a clipboard.

“Oh, sorry,” I panted, catching my breath from running back.

She didn’t speak, yet I could feel her eyes on the apparent phone box in my hand, probably wondering where I got it from. With shaky hands, I opened my locker, threw it inside, and glanced at Betty, who was watching me. I flashed her a smile and didn’t wait for her to return a smile. Instead, I ran back to the kitchen to get back to work.

It was almost amusing that I was working for both sides, the police and the criminals, spying for them both, yet on neither side. I was alone in this battle, yet only I needed saving.

“Petra,” sous chef Chris used my wrong name again. Actually, I didn’t mind. We could use it like a pet name. “Orders to go upstairs.”

I grabbed the trolley, placed the covered plates in the warmer, and then wheeled it along the hall to the elevator. It’s always Ronan’s door I saw first, my Simmering Summer, and I knocked gently and opened the door. He pressed the phone against his ear and grinned, waving me inside. Rourke, who was Gunner, was my Crushing Winter, but what should I call the man in the room next door?

I left the meal on his desk with the cutlery. As I moved closer to Mikael Kaiser’s office, my nerves played havoc on my body, prickling my skin and trembling my hands. I hoped he wasn’t there or on the phone, too. But when I knocked on his door, my heart sank when he called for me to enter.

“Where would you like it?” I asked him as I pushed the door open.

“Here,” he frowned and pointed to the space in front of him on his desk.

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