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The way Sloan stared, his jaw clenched, his torso rigid against heavy gusts of wind, told a story of intense sadness and regret. It wasn’t the look of someone confident in their choices. It was the look I saw in Phillip’s gaze whenever he talked about his past, and it was one I likely mirrored on my own face in that moment.
Sometimes I wondered who was more human, Sloan or Phillip. After spending time with both, it felt like two sides of the same coin. While they were different, they were inherently the same. Both were annoyingly prideful and arrogant, though Sloan carried his better. Both of them put the job first, everyone else last. Both of them carried loss in their eyes whenever I pried too deep. And maybe that was what ultimately drew me to both.
Or you’re a hussy.
I really hated my self-awareness sometimes.
“Eros will be significantly slowed by what you did to him and unable to trace us from that location, but it’s better to get on the next flight out of this place as soon as possible.”
I got to my feet and eyed the other Hunter’s clothes before taking an anxious peek at my own. “Unless you want to start a mass panic over a murderer on the loose, we should change. I didn’t bring anything with us, sorry.”
Sloan nodded, thinking. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”
Curious, I offered him an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“We’ll be committing a human crime, but we don’t have any good options. We won’t be able to shop like this.”
“Fair point,” I sassed with another look at his destroyed outfit. “What do you suggest?”
The Brit’s look was the most mischievous yet. “Just a little sleeping powder devised by the jerk himself and a quick clothing swap.”
Sloan was more of a devil than I thought.
36
Coming Home
CROUCHED BY A RUSTYFord F-150, I scoped out all the potential victims for our clothing swap and run plan. Saidplanwasn’t thought out very well. Which was odd for the man currently beside me looking like he was the main hero in a post-apocalyptic zombie movie.
Sloan was a meticulous fighter. Every move was planned and coordinated beyond even top-notch Hunter standards. His carry-out, flawless. His intuition, unmatched. So to say I was surprised by the plan, or should I say lack thereof, was putting it lightly. It didn’t fit Sloan’s M.O. It went against everything I had learned about him, but we weren’t exactly swimming in options at the moment.
I’d left all our equipment back with Eros, like an ass. It was lucky Sloan carried enough on him to pay our way back home. Otherwise, we’d be forced to do something far worse than swap clothes with some strangers in an airport parking lot.
It wasn’t beyond a Hunter to use whatever means necessary to achieve a goal—and it fit the Brit’s relationship with Phillip to suggest he could be capable of some pretty dangerous crimes if the situation called for it. But Hunters also hated drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. Crimes weren’t encouraged, though a human detective would be hard-pressed to link us to any crime or find a witness for one we’d done. Still, I didn’t relish the idea of committing crimes, and I certainly would never hurt someone to make a mission possible.
I made that clear to my companion, who only smiled gently and patted me on the head like a child. Dude pulled a Phillip on me, but I ignored it so that I didn’t lose my shit in a public place.
