Page 71 of Hunt

To my relief, he pointed to the liquor cabinet. “Clean your mess,” he demanded.

“Oh, my gosh,” I gasped apologetically and pulled my apron up to wipe it clean as I could feel him watching me. A similar gaze to his nephew, Gunner, but worse. Much worse.

As I turned to leave, he licked his bottom lip, running those eyes over my thighs, before lowering his gaze to his laptop again.

Once out in the hallway, I caught my breath and walked to the trolley to the elevator. I pressed the button and glanced at the ceiling, wishing I were a million miles away.

Me: It’s done.

Bitchtective: Good

I finished the rest of my shift without a hitch and quickly escaped out the back exit, down the alleyway to the bus stop, avoiding Ronan, who liked to offer me a ride home. But tonight, I needed to be alone to figure out what to do next.

27

While Riley, or maybe I should use her correct name, Annika, was in class, I used my keycard to get into her room to grab the hidden camera. Unsurprisingly, it was covered over by the blind. Once she discovered it was there, she then told Ronan about it. She’d think it was me or the cops that put it there, but it lost its purpose if she covered it over. I’ll look at what’s on it anyway to see when she discovered it.

While there, I snooped through her drawers searching again for something to affirm what I already knew, that she was Annika, my foster sister. The top drawer was a fascinating surprise; she kept the heart-shaped box, although Shaun’s bloody tooth was missing. I could hardly blame her for throwing that away, since he was such a scumbag and collecting bloody body parts was unlikely her kink anyway.

The second drawer contained nothing interesting besides clothes, but the third drawer was a different story altogether. As I shuffled through her clothes, my hand struck something solid and cold, and as my fingers wrapped around it, I knew what it was.

Carefully, I pulled it out and unwrapped the fabric surrounding it. It was a Glock, not a brand new one, but one that had been fired previously. It was loaded with only three bullets, and I couldn’t see boxes of bullets anywhere in the drawer. So, I assumed she bought it already loaded and was probably unfamiliar with this type of weapon.

Who was she protecting herself from? The cops or us? As I folded it back and placed it back in her drawer, I heard the creaks of footsteps out her door, and I waited to see where they would go. When the steps seemed to dissipate, I padded to the door, gently opened a crack, and spotted a figure standing in the hall, leaning against the wall.

“Does Riley know you break into her room?” That geeky chick in glasses snarled at me accusingly. “It’s not the first time, is it? It’s not your first time snooping around her room.”

“I didn’t break in,” I asserted, swinging the door wider to show her that I didn’t care that she caught me in the act. I held the keycard between my fingers. “Didn’t need to.”

What was she going to do about it anyway? Call the cops. I’d catch her before she got there.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, looking at my hands to see if I had helped myself to something. “Why do you keep breaking into her room and following her everywhere? What do you plan to do with her?”

“Quite a few questions that I have no interest in answering. But how about you tell me why you keep turning up everywhere I go?” I hit back at her.

“You’re the expert in stalking people, so tell me why I’m here,” she answered.

She was surprisingly brave and didn’t seem overly afraid of me, which bothered me. It’s as if she had support from somewhere else to claw at my back like the lunatic that she was.

“I have no interest in stalking you. You’re not interesting enough,” I told her straight. “But was it you who supplied this gun in here?” She bit her bottom lip as her pupils dilated behind her glasses. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to say a thing. I can tell by your face that you were the one who gave the gun. So, you’re in the business of fake IDs as well as secondhand weapons? It looks good and clean as long as it wasn’t registered to someone who committed a crime, then you’ll be okay.”

“I have my contacts,” she flared her nostrils at me. “And it wasn’t registered to anyone. Why are you here? Do you plan to hurt her?”

“No,” I replied honestly. “I would never hurt her.” Although Mikky might want to inflict something horrific on her, that thought left me cold. Annika held my heart in her clutches, and I was under her spell with every flutter of her eyelashes and every dimpled smile she shared with me. “So, is that gun stolen?”

“No,” she snarled, and I was certain she was lying, but I didn’t care about the gun. I cared why she had a habit of turning up everywhere I went.

“What’s your name?” I pressed, stepping closer to her so she’d feel intimidated.

“That’s not your business,” she scowled at me.

“Why do you care? Why do you hate me being around Riley?” I tried another line of questions.

She swallowed nervously. “Why are you so interested in her? You’re from the crime family, the Kaisers.” She cringed when she said my surname, which was more entertaining than annoying. “So, why are you so interested in Riley laws? What about her makes you spend so much time stalking her behind a mask and following her everywhere? Why?”

“Because she’s not who she pretends to be,” I told her one reason, but the actual reason was because I was mad on her. Mad on Annika, like a pathetic fool. I knew all along it was her, but I needed evidence to convince Mikky and Ronan.

She rolled her eyes behind her glasses, not believing me, which was fine with me. “Who is she then?”

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