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The Ramsey family. Seth, one of Becca’s attackers. No extreme risk, according to the file, but obviously they were only talking about the Elemental kind.
Hunter didn’t know the next family, but he wondered if the Merricks did.
In the fourth folder, as soon as he opened it, he recognized the kid in the picture.
It was the boy who’d shown up with Calla when they’d been trashing his grandfather’s kitchen. Hunter felt ready to choke on his heartbeat.
Noah Dean. So he was related to Calla.
But there were no pictures of her, just this boy.
Well, of course. Calla had only just moved here a few years ago, to live with her aunt when her father was deployed. All these files were ages old.
Hunter checked the birthdate and quickly added. Noah was thirteen. Too young to be in high school.
No wonder Hunter hadn’t seen him anywhere around school. He’d been next door to the high school all this time, at the middle school.
Hunter wondered if Noah was among the missing from the carnival. He’d have to check the news.
Then something else occurred to him: had his mother gone through this folder?
He stared at the pages in his hand. The rubber band on the Pendaflex had been old, or else it wouldn’t have snapped so readily. But why would she have given him a stack of files and papers without going through them? His name wasn’t on any of it, and it certainly wasn’t packed up the way he kept his things. He’d never seen these files, so she hadn’t found them in his room.
He quickly shoved all the papers back into the Pendaflex, trying to keep them in the order he’d found them. Then he ripped the cover off the other box.
His quilt. His sheets—again, really, Mom? Frigging threadbare beach towels that he didn’t even consider his.
When he flung them to the side, something heavy clattered free.
Two of his father’s best knives.
The breath left Hunter’s lungs in a rush.
He pulled more towels free, more carefully this time, just in case there were other knives that might not be sheathed.
No more knives.
But between the last two towels, he found his gun, an extra magazine, and a box of bullets.
He picked up the weapon and checked the safety automatically. Just feeling the steel in his hands was as reassuring as if she’d packed his old teddy bear.
She’d packed this folder and these weapons.
I can bring over anything else you want.
His mother knew.
CHAPTER 19
Hunter wasn’t sure how much he needed to keep secret.
The gun, for sure. If nothing else, it was a safety thing. He had too many of his father’s lectures rattling around in his head to leave a loaded firearm lying around—especially if Hannah’s kid was going to be in the house. He didn’t have a lockbox, but he could lock the gun in the glove compartment of his jeep—or he’d keep it on his person.
Considering the events of the past few days, he was ready to sleep with it holstered inside his waistband.
But the folders . . . He just didn’t have a history in this town, so he’d have to tell someone about them, if only to find out who the kids in other folders were. He’d only recognized Noah’s face, but that wasn’t enough.
He needed help. And the Merricks would probably give it to him, if he could play it straight.
