Heart of the Hunter

by Chance Carter

  “Holy shit.”

  “I know.”

  “Who’s the father?” she said.

  I laughed. “Who do you think?”

  “Rob?”

  “Nope.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not Rob’s. I know for a fact it’s not his, because we’ve never actually had intercourse. He’s too busy screwing his secretary, I think.”

  “Oh, Lacey.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I don’t care about that. I’m used to it. I’ve got bigger issues.”

  “A baby.”

  “Grant’s baby.”

  I could practically feel Faith nodding her head on the other end of the line. She’d seen the tension between me and Grant in the weeks since her wedding. She knew what had happened, or at the very least, she had her suspicions.

  “Well, are you happy about it?”

  And that’s when I burst out crying. I didn’t know how to answer that. I mean, I knew the baby was a blessing, a gift from God, but these weren’t exactly the best circumstances in which to have it. If I was with Grant, I’d have been over the moon to be having his baby. But I wasn’t with Grant. I was with Rob.

  “Lacey, stop crying. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “I know,” I said, sobbing.

  “It’s not, Lacey. You have people who love you. We’ll help you through this. Grant will help too.”

  “Grant hates my guts.”

  “No he doesn’t.”

  “Well, he doesn’t want to have a child with me, that’s for sure.”

  “How did this happen?”

  “How do you think it happened?”

  “I mean, didn’t you and Grant use protection.”

  I took a deep breath and stopped crying. “No, we didn’t. Grant didn’t want to.”

  “He didn’t want to?”

  “He said, let whatever wants to happen, happen. It would be fate.”

  “Well then, he’s going to get what he asked for.”

  “I don’t think he meant it quite this literally, Faith.”

  “You know what the funny thing is?” Faith said.

  “What?”

  “Jackson and I were talking today about trying for another baby.”

  “Oh,” I said, wiping my tears away. “Faith, that’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you.”

  “Oh, Lacey,” she said. “Where are you? I’m going to come over and look after you. We’ll make this all better.”

  “No, no. You’ve got Sam and Jackson. You don’t need to be watching me like a baby. I’ll be fine. Just don’t tell anyone what I told you.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Especially not Jackson. He’ll have to tell Grant if he finds out, and I want to think of a way to tell him in my own time.”

  “You can count on me, Lacey.”

  “I know I can, Faith. I love you, you know?”

  “I love you too, sweetie.”

  I hung up and gathered my nerves before making my way back home. When I got home my plan was to go straight up to my bedroom before anyone saw me, but Grant was in the hallway.

  “Lacey, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Grant.”

  “You’ve been crying. Did Rob do something? I’ll kick his stupid ass.”

  “Grant, calm down. Rob didn’t do anything,” I said, but then I realized I’d need an excuse for the tears that had obviously been on my face. “It’s just, I’m really sad that he’s not showing more interest in this wedding. It’s his wedding too.”

  Grant smiled at me warmly. “You look like you could use a bite to eat,” he said.

  I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want anything, least of all company, but before I knew it I found myself nodding. “All right,” I said.

  “Good. I’m going to cook for you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “It would be my pleasure, Lacey.”

  Grant sat me at the counter and opened a bottle of wine.

  “Just water for me,” I said, thinking of the baby.

  “My pleasure, Lacey,” he said, as he took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and opened it.

  “Why are you being so nice to me lately?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Flower shopping. Looking at the ring. Cooking me dinner.”

  He shrugged as he put some water on the stove to boil. Then he started cutting an onion.

  “Is pasta okay?”

  “It’s perfect,” I said.

  I watched as he prepared the meal. He’d never looked sexier to me than he did right then. Slowly, as I watched, it began to dawn on me that I wasn’t just watching Grant, the best friend I’d ever had. I was watching Grant, the future father of my child. The thought gave me goosebumps.

  “Lacey, are you all right?”

  I nodded, taking a sip of water.

  “Let me just tell you something about men,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not always their words that tell you what they’re thinking, or what they want. Sometimes, it’s their actions.”

  I smiled. “Are you telling me that Rob’s going to get more into this wedding, even if he doesn’t want to talk about it with me?”

  Grant shook his head. “No. All I’m saying is that actions speak louder than words. Especially with men. We don’t always know how to say what we feel, but if we’re smart, we know how to show it.”

  Chapter 35

  Grant

  I COULDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT. I lay in bed thinking about Lacey, and all the things guys had put her through. The worst part was that I was one of them. And it was time I changed that. Enough was enough. Sooner or later, some man had to step up and protect Lacey, and that man was me.

  Rob wouldn’t use her for money, and Lacey would never even know he’d tried. I’d make certain of that. I drove into San Francisco on my motorcycle, the cool night air clearing my head. First thing I had to do was pull off the job I’d been planning. I had everything I needed in my backpack. Timers, charges, circuit breakers, a gun, plastic explosives. I also had false plates on the bike and a fake California driver’s license. I was dressed in a tight-clad, black leather suit and my helmet had a black visor.

  I pulled up outside the loan company at exactly ten minutes after midnight. I waited in the alley and watched the building. Five minutes later, right on time, the two security guards came out of the building and walked to a donut store six minutes away. It was an unauthorized abandonment of their posts, but they both went, together, every single night. I had twenty minutes before they’d be back.

  I walked like a cat along a side alley until I reached an access door to the loan company. I tried the door. It was locked. I knew it would be. I knew also that it wasn’t attached to the alarm system. I looked at the lock. It would take too long to pick. Instead, I attached a small amount of plastic explosive to the keyhole, stuck a fuse and timer into it, set it for thirty seconds, and stepped back behind some dumpsters.

  The lock popped with a small explosion, about as loud as a firecracker, and the alarm didn’t trip. The guards would have heard it, but the guards were at the donut shop.

  I opened the door and immediately began counting down from sixty in my head. The alarm would trip sixty seconds after that door opened if I didn’t disable it first. The access panel was in the corridor. I found it and quickly opened the screws on the cover with a screwdriver. Then I rewired the circuit board for the alarm system, based on schematics I’d downloaded from the alarm company’s own website. It wasn’t easy to do with my gloves on and I prayed the circuit worked.

  With ten seconds to go, I took a step back and waited, counting down silently in my head. At zero, the alarm tripped, but the circuit didn’t engage, and the rest of the system had no idea there was a break in it. If I’d screwed up that part, I’d have had four minutes to get out before the loan company’s private security contractor showed up. But everything seemed okay. I listened for the secondary ala
rm and it didn’t trip either. I was good.

  I went down the corridor, past the guards’ post, and into the safe room. I could have picked the safe, but not in the fourteen minutes I had available to me. Instead, I attached more plastic explosive to the bolt engagement mechanism, wired them to a detonator, set the timer for forty seconds, and went back into the guard post, shutting the door behind me.

  The explosion this time was louder. The building shook. If anyone had been there, they’d have realized what was going on. But the guards were still blissfully unaware, munching on their frosted donuts and sweet coffee.

  I went back into the safe room. The door was intact but I was able to retract the bolts manually and it swung open. Inside were hundreds of personal checks. This was the way people paid for the loans, with post-dated checks. I gathered them all up, put them in a steel bin, poured fuel on them, and lit them on fire. All those people could keep their paychecks this month. It might give them a chance to get out of the cycle of debt they were in.

  Then I took out the loan ledgers, with the details of the people who’d taken out small loans during the past few days, and added them to the fire. It was as simple as that. They were poor people, unfortunate, but tonight they were catching a break. They were all off the hook for the money they’d borrowed.

  Then I loaded wads of cash into my backpack. This was the money the company loaned out, and it was in neat, ten-thousand dollar stacks, delivered freshly by the bank. I counted sixty of them, six-hundred-grand. Not bad for a night’s work.

  There was a computer on the desk by the safe and I opened the login terminal. I had the username and password from my surveillance and I ran a search for Rob Crawford. I shook my head when I saw the search results. The prick owed the loan sharks two and a half million dollars. He’d never be able to pay that back. He’d bankrupt himself, and Lacey, trying to buy off the debt collectors. Even his plastic surgery business wouldn’t be enough to get him out of that hole. I wondered what it was that got him into such a mess. A gambling addiction? A hooker addiction? Drugs? I shook my head. I printed out the record so that the loan sharks wouldn’t lose it. Then I wiped their records, immediately erasing the debts of all the people who’d ever taken a payday loan from the company. They were all free. All of them except Rob. I didn’t feel like extending him the same courtesy. Besides, the loan sharks weren’t about to forget a loan that big, even if I had deleted the record.

  I counted out six thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills and left it on the security guard’s seats. They were going to lose their jobs over this. Six grand would be enough to get them and their families through until they were able to find new jobs. Then I left the building, got on my bike, and burned rubber out of there.

  I didn’t go home. Instead I went straight to Rob’s overpriced, luxury condo. I admired the architecture of the place, and the perfect landscaping, as I knocked on his front door. I had to admit, he did have taste. His only problem was that he couldn’t afford it. He was paying for it all with borrowed money.

  Rob answered in his underwear. I’d left my bag and helmet with my bike. I was probably the only guy in the entire city who had the nerve to leave that much cash unguarded, but I was too afraid I’d be tempted to use the gun on Rob if I brought it with me. When Rob saw me he tried to slam the door in my face, but I kicked it in. He fell backwards as the door slammed into him.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he said, rising to his feet.

  “Honey,” a woman’s voice said from upstairs, “who is it?”

  “Who’s that?” I said to Rob, a look of complete disgust on my face. “Your secretary?”

  Rob nodded sheepishly.

  “You scumbag,” I said.

  “I don’t have any money here,” Rob said, as if I could possibly be there to rob him. I laughed at the thought. I had more money in my checking account than his entire life was worth. And I’d never rob someone in their home, no matter who they were. That went against my code. I only stole from corporations.

  “You’re cheating on Lacey with your secretary?” I asked.

  “It’s not like that,” he said.

  “You’re damn right it’s not like that. Because I’m not going to allow it to be like that.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Rob said.

  “You know who I am, Rob. I’m Grant Lucas. My job, my only job, is to look after Lacey Eden. If you were the right man for her, that would be one thing, but you’re nothing more than a scumbag piece of shit.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Yeah, fuck me,” I said. “I know about your plan to rip her off, too.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your little debt at the loan company. What is it? Two million and change?”

  There was a look of complete shock on his face. “How do you know about that?”

  “Let’s just say, I think they’re going to be pressuring you a lot harder for their money in the near future.”

  “What?”

  “And you better come up with a new plan to get it for them, because Lacey is off limits.”

  “Lacey is my fiancée.”

  “No she’s not, you piece of shit. You had your chance with her, and you blew it.”

  “So what? You’re going to tell her who she can and can’t marry.”

  “No. You’re going to call off the engagement, Rob. And if you don’t, I’ll make it so that your life won’t be worth living.”

  The woman’s voice called out again from upstairs. “Rob, what’s going on?”

  “Just a minute, Cassie,” Rob said. “It’s just some business.”

  “Should I call the police?” I said.

  “No,” Rob said. Then he went quiet. He looked at me. “What do you know about my debt?”

  I shrugged. “What’s to know? You’ve got some addiction you’ve been financing by borrowing money from them. I don’t need to know the details.”

  Rob laughed. “You think you’re real clever, don’t you, Grant. Coming in here, telling me what’s what. Forbidding me from marrying Lacey.”

  He was standing next to his desk and in a single, fluid motion, his hand reached for a drawer. Instantly, I leapt toward him, but I wasn’t fast enough. He grabbed a gun, a nine-millimeter, and pulled the trigger. I was diving for him, in midair, when the bullet tore through the flesh of my left shoulder, sending me into a spasm of agony.

  I landed on Rob and grabbed his gun arm before he could fire another bullet. I brought him to the floor, the gun sliding across the ground away from him. I punched him once, hard, in the face, and a second time in the gut.

  “That’s for Lacey, you son of a bitch. If you ever go near her again, I’ll kill you.”

  He looked up into my eyes, my blood flowing down my arm and onto him, and he knew I meant it.

  “All right,” he said.

  “You call her, make some excuse, and tell her the engagement is off.”

  “All right,” he said again.

  “And Rob?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If she asks if you cheated on her, don’t tell her the truth. She doesn’t deserve to hear that shit again. Not from you. She’s been through enough already.”

  “All right,” he said, clearly terrified.

  I don’t know if it was the punches that knocked the fear into him, or the fact that he’d pulled the trigger of his own gun and put a bullet in me, but he was scared now. I wouldn’t have any more problems from him. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d ever shot someone before, and it might have been the shock of seeing how small an effect the bullet had had on me, but I knew he’d back down. When it came to Lacey, it would take a lot more than a bullet to stop me, and he could see it in my eyes.

  “You’re not going to hurt me?” he said, as I climbed off him.

  “Not unless you shoot me again,” I said, a small smile on my face.

  “You seem to be taking the fact that I shot you pretty well,” he said as he cl
imbed back to his feet.

  “Well, Rob, the way I look at it, as much of a dirtbag as you are, I owe you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because until you came along, I never realized just how deeply I needed Lacey. I always thought I could live my life without her. Now, thanks to you, I realize that without her, my life is nothing. So for that, I’ll always thank you, even if you are a complete prick.”

  “I showed you all that?”

  “You showed me that there’s no one out there who will ever come close to loving her the way I do. Not even close. I’d die for her. I’d kill for her. And that’s the kind of love she deserves.”

  “So you’re going to go home and ask her out?”

  I laughed. “No, Rob.” I said. “I’m not going to ask her out. I’m going to go home, and I’m going to fucking claim her. I’m going to make her mine, and she’ll never even think about a guy like you again.”

  Chapter 36

  Grant

  FROM ROB’S PLACE, I INTENDED to ride straight home, but I was losing so much blood from the gunshot wound that I had to see a doctor. I knew I couldn’t risk showing up at a hospital, not after pulling off a robbery the same night, so I dropped by a twenty-four hour pet clinic on the edge of town and walked in.

  A receptionist in a cute nurse’s outfit greeted me.

  “How can I help you, sir?”

  She glanced at my hand, which was dripping blood, and then at the bullet hole in my leather jacket at the shoulder. Calmly, she took in the rest of my outfit, my gloves, my helmet, and my backpack. Her hand moved toward the phone.

  “I know how this looks,” I said. “I’ve been shot, and I can’t go to the hospital because they’ll ask too many questions.”

  “Yes,” she said, uncertainly. “Criminals come in looking like you.”

  “What if I told you I’m not a bad guy?”

  “They all say that,” she said, “and then they pull a gun on me.”

  I looked around the waiting room. No one was there apart from her and me. I took my backpack from my shoulders and handed it to her. “The gun’s in there,” I said.

  She took the pack and looked inside.

  “Look,” I said. “I understand that you’re supposed to call the police, and I understand that you don’t know me, and don’t know what kind of man I am, so I’m just going to be straight with you.”