Releasing the Hunter

Her smile faded then and she turned back to the road. “Keep dreaming.”

Although his words bothered her, it was the lusty gleam in his eyes that worried her more. Because truth be told, the butterflies in her stomach had not stopped fluttering since setting her eyes on him in the back alley. And that was always a sign of bad things to come.

Ronan made her body react in ways she hadn’t felt for a long time. Lusty thoughts finger walked their way through her mind when she looked at him. He had that dark and dangerous swagger about him that sent her libido into a tizzy. This job was going to be one of the toughest of her career so far. And it had nothing to do with the mark.

Chapter 4

Ronan directed Ivy down to the bay. He knew of a perfect spot to dispose of a body. He’d unfortunately had to use it himself a time or two.

She didn’t speak as she parked the truck near the water’s edge. She got out and went around back, pulling down the tailgate so they could get at the bag of body parts. Ronan slid out of the truck and then jumped into the back. He thought he surprised her with his agility because she looked at him with those wide blue eyes and a snarl on her lips.

Fog swirled around the tires of the truck. It gave the whole area a creepy vibe. The fact that they were dumping a body just upped that vibe to the nth degree. Moisture settled onto the back of his neck and the backs of his hands. A shiver rushed down his spine as he breathed in the cool night air.

Together they wrestled the bag out of the truck and onto the ground. From there, Ronan dragged it to the bay’s shoreline. He opened the bag and began to stuff it with rocks he found around the water’s edge. Once Ivy realized what he was trying to accomplish she helped out by finding big boulders to weigh the bag down.

“I see you’ve done this before,” she commented as she dropped a particularly large rock into the bag.

He nodded. “A time or two. Nobody that didn’t need killing, though.”

“Uh-huh.” She barely glanced at him.

He stood back and eyed her curiously. “Is it that you absolutely despise demons in any shape or form, or do you generally loathe everything?”

She didn’t give an answer, just took a step back and wiped her dirty hands on her pants.

Ronan tied off the bag and shoved it into the water. It buoyed at the surface for a second or two, then sank down into the inky depths. If it was ever found, it would be quite a ways down the shoreline.

He wiped his hands on his pants, and then looked at Ivy. She was watching the water ripple where the body had gone down. He couldn’t read the look on her face, but it wasn’t a happy one. Guilt, maybe. Remorse? Interesting considering her hard-assed reputation for slaying demons and the like.

“Now what?” he asked her.

“Regroup, I guess, and try to figure out where Sallos has gone to ground.”

“We could go to my place and—”

“Not likely. We’ll go to one of my safe houses.” She smirked at him. “You’ll be blindfolded, of course.”

“Well, of course I will.” The sarcasm rolled off his tongue.

She ignored it and headed toward the truck. Ronan followed her. “You don’t trust much, do you?”

“I trust only one person. And he’s unfortunately not around.”

Ronan knew she was talking about her brother, Quinn. He’d heard that Quinn had gone to ground a couple of years ago. No one knew where he was or why he was hiding. He wondered if Ivy even knew. And if she didn’t, why not?

Maybe this was why she had misgivings about everyone she met. The one person in her life she probably thought she could rely on had left her. Or at least, Ronan could speculate. There were rumors floating around about the Stroms and their lives and how they’d been born into the hunting community. He didn’t travel in those circles, just on the fringes, so he heard things now and then. Which is how he’d known where to find Ivy in the first place.

Ronan thought it was kind of a lonely way to go about life. Always looking over your shoulder. Always wondering who was going to stab you in the back. Never being able to let down your guard for one second just in case someone or something came calling to kick your ass.

He supposed his life wasn’t all that different. He didn’t always have to look over his shoulder to see if someone was sliding a knife into it, but he did have to be cautious. He survived by procuring things. Usually the hard-to-find type of things. Items that were not for sale on eBay. Things like ancient talismans and old lost documents written in Aramaic. And most of these things he had to steal. He was good at what he did. He moved like the shadows and had never been caught. And he never planned to be.

His career wasn’t perfect. Most of his clients were ruthless and manipulative and shrewd. People he needed to be wary of, or he would be the one always looking over his shoulder.

She started the truck and they pulled away from the deserted spot near the water. As she pulled out onto a gravel road, she glanced at him. “There’s a blindfold in the glove box. Put it on.”

“You’re serious?”

“If you don’t want to wear it, I can pull over and you can get out right here and now.”

He pressed the button on the compartment. It sprang open and he reached in and took out the black cotton blindfold. He ran it through his fingers. “You know the rumors didn’t say anything about you being so kinky.”

“Did they say anything about me killing you for talking too much?”

“Why, yes, yes they did.”

She turned her head to look back at the road, but he caught the little smirk on her lips. Interesting. Maybe she wasn’t so indifferent to him after all.

“I’ll play your game,” he said, wrapping the cloth over his eyes and tying it in back, “but only because I find you quite fascinating.”

“I should have brought a gag for your mouth.”

“Next time, we can experiment.”

He heard her little chuckle and smiled. He then turned his head to the left and listened to the sounds outside the truck—the gravel crunching under the tires, a blast from a ship’s horn, the thump of music from one of the dive bars nearby. He may not be able to see where he was going, but he certainly could hear it. Despite her fears about him, he wasn’t about to tell anyone where her safe house was located. He needed her trust. If he was to achieve his grand plan, he needed her more than she would ever know.

An hour later, the truck slowed, turned left up onto a cement pad then eventually came to a soft rolling stop. Ronan heard the telltale drone of a garage door closing. They were in a suburb somewhere to the north. Since pulling away from the bay he’d known what direction they were going and had adjusted his inner compass with every turn she took. It wasn’t an exact science, but he felt more secure knowing roughly where he was in the city. Just in case he needed to disappear in a hurry.

Once the door was fully down, his blindfold was yanked from his eyes. He blinked at Ivy and smiled. “Are we there yet?”

She shook her head at him, then opened her door and got out. He did the same. He looked around the garage, noticing the starkness of it. There was no lawn mower parked in the corner, or workbench with tools spread across it. No lawn furniture or boxes of past things stacked in a neat pile along one wall. There was nothing there. No memories, nothing to hold a person to a place.

It suited Ivy to a tee.

“I never pictured you as a suburbanite.”

“Which is exactly why this is the perfect cover.” she grabbed her bag from the truck and headed for the door to the main house.

As she approached it, a rush of adrenaline kicked in Ronan’s gut. He nearly doubled over from the shock of it. Something was off. Something was wrong. He could feel it crawling over his flesh like angry army ants.

Before Ivy could grab the doorknob, he grabbed the back of her jacket and yanked her backwards. He wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides.

She struggled against him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Something’s wrong. I can feel it,” he said between gritted teeth.

She looked around the garage. “Are you sure? I don’t smell anything. No sulfur, no brimstone.”

“Sallos has revenants working for him, remember.”