I stepped over the legs sprawled at an odd angle and knelt so we were eye level. “I might have lied just a little. Your death isn’t going to be quick. And it most likely will be painful.”
…
Jerking up in bed, my heart thumped heavily as the gunshot echoed in my head. At first I thought I was having a nightmare, but Hunter wasn’t in bed beside me. I swung my legs off the bed and yanked on my jeans. Hurrying to the door, I stopped to listen.
There was nothing—and then a fleshy crunchy noise that caused my stomach to roil, followed by a low gurgle, and then the sound of a body thudding to the floor.
Common sense dictated that I stay upstairs, but fear— fear for Hunter—seized my chest. Had more Luxen come for me? Icy terror clawed at my insides as I slipped out into the hallway.
Heart pounding, I crept down the two flights of stairs, wanting to call out for him, but I knew on an inherent level that something bad, something terrible had happened in the middle of the night. It was the same feeling I’d had when I spotted the man in the hallway outside my apartment.
My mouth opened, my tongue forming Hunter’s name, but no sound escaped my suddenly dry lips. I moved forward on numb legs.
As my bare feet hit the cool wood floors, I smelled the acrid afterburn of a fired gun. The air was thick with it down here. Grabbing the vase I had held the night Hunter had been gone, I clenched it tightly as I approached the kitchen.
I saw a leg first.
A black trouser-clad leg cut across the entrance to the doorway. The shoes were black and recently polished. Shiny. In a numb daze, I crept closer, my gaze following the length of the leg to the odd angle of the waist. The man’s jacket was laid open, revealing a tan gun holster. The gun was on the floor near the open hand.
I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t stop.
It was Officer Richards on the kitchen floor, and his neck was twisted to the side, nearly turned halfway around. He was dead, very dead.
Oh God…
Beside him, propped against the island, was Zombro. Something…something had happened to his throat. It was pushed in, the fragile bones collapsed. Both of them were dead and Hunter…there was no sign of Hunter.
The vase slipped from my fingers, shattering upon the floor into large ceramic chunks. My throat worked on a scream, but there was no sound. I stumbled back, pressing my hand to my open mouth. This couldn’t be happening. My brain absolutely refused to process all the death. Maybe I was dreaming? No. Everything was too real—the sights, the stench of smoke and death, my pounding heart.
A hand clamped down on my shoulder, and the scream that had been building in my throat ripped through the silence. Twisting away, I tried to evade the grasp, but an arm snaked around my waist, pulling me back against a hard, bare chest.
“Serena, it’s me. It’s okay.”
Relief shot through me in dizzying speeds. I spun around, pressing my face against his chest. “Oh my God, Hunter, what happened to them?”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then Hunter’s arms swept around me. The embrace was awkward and stiff, but right now, I didn’t care. I held on to him like he was an anchor built only for me.
I inhaled his scent, hoping that it would wash away everything else. “They found us, didn’t they?”
“No.”
The word took a few moments to settle and make sense. When it did, I pulled back a little, lifting my head. I searched Hunter’s striking features. They were frighteningly empty. Nothing about them reminded me of the man a few short hours ago who had smiled and asked me to stay with him.
A niggle of unease stirred. “What do you mean?”
“This wasn’t the Luxen,” he said, his pale eyes meeting mine.
I took a breath, but it got stuck in my throat. That’s when I noticed the duffel bag on the coffee table and that unease grew like a weed, choking me. “Then who…who did that to them?”
“I did.”
My breath caught again. The room tilted a little, the floor suddenly uneven under my feet.
“You need to go upstairs and pack whatever you can. Now,” Hunter continued, his hands sliding off my back. “We need to leave.”
Taking a step back, I felt my heart drop. Based on what he’d told me about himself, I would’ve run a million miles away from the Hunter of four years ago, but not this Hunter. This one could be prickly and downright menacing sometimes, but there was good underneath.
So why were there dead bodies on the kitchen floor?
I took a deep breath. “You killed them?”
Impatience flickered across his icy expression. “I think that’s already been established.”
Knots formed in my belly. For one horrifying instance, the bodies of Richards and Zombro flashed before me. “Why?”
The look on his face said he really didn’t think he had the time to explain the why behind murdering two members of law enforcement.
Anger swirled with fear, a heady and dangerous combination. “I obviously didn’t get the memo, Hunter! The last time I checked,” I gestured behind me with one shaking hand, “they were on our side.”
“They were never on my side,” he said, thrusting a hand through his hair—a hand that had ended two lives tonight.
God, I was going to vomit.
I started to turn. I needed to get away from him—I needed fresh air. Pressure was back, building on my chest like a gorilla was sitting on it. A buzzing filled my ears.
Hunter caught me, wrapping one hand around my arm and another clamped down on the back of my neck. My pulse pounded at the firm hold. “You’re not getting it, Serena.” His intense eyes searched my face. “They came here to kill you, to make sure you never told anyone about what happened—about the Luxen.”
Confused and scared half witless, I pressed a hand to the center of my chest. My heart thudded erratically.
“They decided they’d rather keep the senator and the Luxen happy, and to do so, they were going to kill you. They aren’t on your side. And we need to get the hell out of here.” When I didn’t move, he lowered his head toward mine. “I know it’s a lot to take in, Serena. You’ve been through some crazy shit and it’s about to get crazier.”
“Crazier?”
He slid his hands to my cheeks and the coolness of his skin jolted me. “I need you to stay with me, okay? I’m going to get you out of this, but I need you to keep it together.”
“Stay with you?”
He nodded.
Then it hit me. More startling than aliens running amuck, dead officers in the kitchen, or the government wanting to give me a cement swim was that Hunter was helping me.
Hunter frowned. “You can breathe, right? You look like you’re breathing, right—”
“Why?” I grasped his wrists. “Why would you do this? You went against the DOD —the government—to help me? Why would you put yourself out there like that? Now you’re in as much shit as I am.”
Hunter blinked slowly and then pulled his hands away. He took a step back. “We need to leave, Serena. We don’t—”
“No!” My hands balled into fists as my skin tingled. The thing was, what if I had this whole situation wrong? “I need to know why you’d do this. Because what do I really know? Let me know it’s okay to trust you.”
He put his hands on his hips and drew in a deep breath. I prepared myself—for what, I wasn’t sure. “I don’t know,” he said.
My mouth worked, but there were no words.
“I don’t know,” he said again, angry. “I don’t know why I did this. All I knew was that I needed to.”
Yeah, that wasn’t telling me much. And it wasn’t a huge declaration of why I should trust him, but that was the thing. Hunter hadn’t asked me trust him. I don’t think he ever had.