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He kept going back to that conversation with Michael in the truck, about turning off his conscience. Was that the problem here? Had he been going about everything all wrong? Was it really so simple as needing to focus on the goal and forget how he got there?
Kate was full of rage against pure Elementals—and he got it, if they’d killed her mother. He hadn’t been able to kill Michael and Gabriel a few weeks ago. He hadn’t been able to kill Calla.
He hadn’t been able to do the job he’d been born to do.
The Merricks were a family. They’d stick together. They’d do whatever they had to do to keep themselves together and safe.
And was working with Silver even a betrayal? They were leaving.
With a sudden flash of understanding, he wondered if this was the true reason his mother had hidden those weapons, those files. She thought he was living in enemy territory. She thought the Merricks might be a danger to him.
And they were, in a way: they’d made him a target. A bullet through his shoulder had proven that.
He’d been off track for a while now. But here, talking to Silver, a man who’d tried to kill him, he felt like he’d found the rails.
He squared his shoulders and looked up. “I’m not your enemy,” he said. “Tell me what you want to know.”
CHAPTER 21
Kate sat with Hunter outside the middle school. He was nursing a bottle of water, twisting it between his hands until she was reminded of Silver with his weapons.
“Nervous?” she said.
“No.”
“Which one are we waiting for?”
“I’ll know when I see them.”
He was different this afternoon, more determined, maybe. It reminded her of the first day in the cafeteria, when she’d seen him so tightly coiled, so full of control. She wondered just what Silver had said to him.
And what it would take to make him snap again.
“Did I miss anything exciting in History?” she said.
He didn’t look over. “Do you really care?”
“I care deeply about the Treaty of Versailles.”
His eyes flicked her way. “Really. Describe it.”
She could call his bluff since she’d read the chapter last night, thinking she’d be in school today. If Silver hadn’t been so damned overbearing, she would have been. “It ended the First World War and made Germany realize they weren’t the badasses they thought they were.”
Hunter sniffed and looked back at the door of the school.
“Look,” she said. “I don’t get what your problem is.”
“I don’t have a problem, Kate.”
“What’s with the attitude?”
“No attitude.” His eyes cut her way again, his gaze sharp as steel. “I’m just done being played.”
“I never played you.”
“Okay.”
“The sarcasm really isn’t attractive.”
