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“I’m going with you,” Talon insisted, walking to join Julius and me by the door.
I pushed both men back a step. “None of you are thinking straight. Get off your high horses and consider what this means. Of all the times the Hunter could have sought me out, he chose the moment when I needed answers the most—the day that Garrison was taken. If I don’t follow his demands, do you think he’ll tell me anything? I can’t risk losing whatever information he’s willing to share. It could make the difference between whether we find Garrison or not.”
Julius’s muscles flexed, but his mouth pressed into a flat line rather than arguing. He understood the stakes just as well as I did. “What if he’s the one who took Garrison?” he said finally.
“Then he’ll definitely know where to find him, won’t he?” I shot back, and let out a huff of frustration. “But most likely, he noticed something about the Maliks with his surveillance that tipped him off to what they’ve done. Look, so far every time we’ve been attacked here in DC, I’ve been ignored and even shoved out of the fray while they focus on you guys. I’m the one who’s the most safe out there. If I see anything remotely suspicious, I’ll leave. I won’t take any risks I don’t have to.”
Talon’s jaw worked. He marched away and returned seconds later with a pistol in his hand. “You’re not going out there unarmed,” he said, and I knew he’d accepted my plan.
I accepted the gun with a nod of thanks and tucked it into the back of my sweatpants. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Julius exhaled roughly. “For the record, I don’t like this at all. But you’re right. Just—don’t get too close to him and keep an eye out for anyone else suspicious nearby. And if you’re not back in ten minutes—or if we hear shots fired—we’re coming after you.”
I let out a humorless chuckle. “If he doesn’t manage to say anything useful in ten minutes, then I’ll already be leaving. Maybe after shooting him for wasting my time all over again.”
Confident that my self-appointed bodyguards wouldn’t stand in my way any longer, I tucked my knives back into their usual places and quickly donned a second gun in an under-shoulder holster that I hid beneath a lightweight hoodie. Plenty of options was always a good thing. And my bare hands were weapons all on their own. I couldn’t get much better armed than this.
Looking at the men around me, I gathered my resolve. The message said to come alone, but I wasn’t completely alone. They were with me in every way they could be.
The Hunter had probably known where I was staying from the moment I’d given the address to the Uber driver he’d conscripted. He’d asked me to come a few blocks down the street from the house to a parking lot beyond an old office building that was now boarded up.
As I approached, I heard the rumble of a motorcycle’s engine before I saw anything. Coming around the building, I found a tall, broad-shouldered man sitting on a thrumming chopper. A helmet covered his head, the visor reflecting the mid-morning sunlight back at me rather than revealing his face. I could only make out the vaguest shapes of his eyes and nose when a tuft of cloud briefly passed over the sun.
I walked closer, keeping my hands in easy reach of my weapons. There was no sign of any other figure around. It was just me and him.
When I was about ten feet away, he held up his hand. “That’s close enough,” he said, and his voice confirmed my suspicions. Even slightly muffled by the helmet and the drone of the engine, I knew it immediately.
This was the Hunter himself.
I stopped, setting my hands on my hips. “You called me out here, and now you’re acting like I’m a threat?”
A hint of amusement came into his tone as he pitched his words over the engine’s rumbling. “I have to be careful, you understand. I don’t know where your loyalties lie. You are a Malik, after all.”
I grimaced at him. “Just because I was born a Malik doesn’t mean I am one.”
If I’d expected him to lead with information about Garrison, he was just as disappointing as usual. “Have you done any more investigating to substantiate what I told you about them?” he asked.
Was that all this was again? Another excuse to badger me, at the worst possible time?
My teeth set on edge. “Are you here in person because that way I can’t just hang up on your shit?” I demanded. “I’m done with this game.”
As I spun on my heel, his voice stopped me in my tracks. “Then you haven’t found any concerning photographs?”
I froze, unable to decide whether I wanted to entertain this conversation after all. Whether I wanted to give away what I had found to this man.
But he must have already been able to guess. “You did, didn’t you? You’re sharp enough to have gotten that far. Then you saw a little blond girl along with the others.”
The memory of the photo smacked me with enough horror to make me glance back at him. “What about her?” I said, the question coming out raspy.
Even though I could barely make out his face, I felt his stare boring into me through the helmet’s visor.
“That was my daughter,” he said. He kept his voice even, but rage reverberated through it all the same. “The Maliks stole her from me and killed her as brutally as you saw. I’ve never been able to prove it definitively, but I know it was them. That’s why I’ve been investigating them, and it’s why I was worried about you coming into the fold.”
My stomach roiled with the urge to puke. He was confirming my worst nightmares about my family—but I still didn’t know for sure if I could trust him. It still didn’t make any sense. But then, how could he have known about the photographs if his story wasn’t true?
How could I focus on that right now when Garrison’s life hung in the balance this very second?
My back straightened as I realized that there was one answer that would help me solve both problems. “Do you know where the killings might have been carried out? Where they took the kids?” It’d have to be someplace they felt was secure. Someplace that’d work just as well to hide a kidnapped hitman.
