The Hunt

by Chloe Neill

  They jumped out, the man from the front passenger seat holding up a piece of paper and pointing at me.

  “I’ve got a duly authorized bounty on that woman,” Crowley said, in that unusual gravelly voice of his. “On Claire Connolly!”

  Every system in my body seemed to freeze at the word “bounty.”

  Before, I’d been just a person of interest, a human with an outstanding warrant. Creating a reward for my capture would bump me right up on the hunters’ priority lists. It wasn’t much of a surprise that they’d done it, not after what had happened at Broussard’s house. But it still sent a wave of sickness through my stomach. It was one thing to live quietly, to stay out of Containment’s sight. It was entirely another to know that hunters had been actively searching me out.

  Apparently refusing to abandon me, Liam and Gavin ran across the street. Gavin waved a piece of paper in the air like a competing bounty. Probably registration on the vehicle. But I doubted that would stop the Quinn boys. And neither would the fact that there was definitely a bounty on Liam, and probably one on Gavin now, too.

  “Hey!” Gavin called out. “Hey! Over here! She’s ours!”

  Everyone looked back, their expressions surprised or confused or concerned as they moved forward. Gavin held up the paper one last time, then shoved it into his pocket. “We’ve got dibs on Claire Connolly. Agent Jackson offered us the bounty personally.”

  Crowley stepped forward. “You know that’s not how it works,” he said, then slid a look to Liam. “We got here first, so we get the bounty.”

  “How the hell’d you get off Montagne Désespérée?” Gavin asked.

  “Shrimper,” Jimmy said, just as Gavin had predicted.

  Crowley’s and Liam’s eyes narrowed as they looked each other over. “You attacked them?” Liam asked.

  “I tried to bring your friends here in for questioning.” Crowley’s jaw was tight with anger. “I’m guessing this is your brother.”

  “You’d be right,” Gavin said. “Bummer you didn’t figure that out when you had your chance.”

  Crowley’s gaze didn’t leave Liam. “Seems like I’ve got a pretty good chance now. If you aren’t careful, the both of you, we’ll take the couple other bounties available to us for the Quinn brothers. I’m not going to do that now due to professional courtesy. Unless you get in my way.”

  Liam’s features were hard, his eyes shifting blue and golden. And that hadn’t escaped the other bounty hunter’s notice. “You’re going to want to back off and walk away.”

  Crowley’s stare stayed steady. This was just business for him—a lot of money and probably a little pride. “Why should I?”

  “Because she’s mine.”

  Crowley’s brows lifted. “So that’s how it goes, is it? And what if I don’t walk away? You going to kill me, too?” Several heads in the group turned to stare at Liam. “Or maybe we should just cut to the chase and execute all our bounties right now.”

  “Everyone step back,” Chenille said. “We’ve got the prisoner, and we’re taking her in.”

  “Can’t step back,” Crowley said. “You don’t even have a wagon here. Rules are, we locate a target at the same time as Containment, the one with wheels wins the prize. We got transpo, we get the bounty.”

  “We’ve got a superior claim,” Gavin said again, shaking his head.

  “Bullshit,” Crowley said, slid his glance to Chenille. “How about a trade? I’ll take Connolly, and you can take the brothers Quinn.”

  Chenille’s lips curled in the way of villains everywhere. “They’re wanted, too?”

  “They are,” Crowley said. “Might even go without argument, if they think they’ll make it to the prison same time as Ms. Connolly here.”

  “You’ll take us in over your dead body.” Liam’s voice was fierce.

  “Or yours,” Crowley said. He pulled a toothpick from his pocket, slipped it between his teeth, chewed. “Makes the transport easier.”

  For a moment, there was nothing but tense silence, everyone gauging the others, watching to see who’d strike first. With the sun beating down, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see tumbleweeds drifting by.

  We played chicken . . . until Crowley made the first move.

  He jumped forward, grabbed my arm, dragged me across the parking lot, and shoved me behind him, his meaty hand still around my arm. He was bigger than me, stronger than me, and I wasn’t going to dislodge his fingers by sheer force. I’d have to get creative.

  His other men took that as their signal to move. They jumped out of the truck, and two of them began engaging the Containment officers. The third, either brave or stupid, headed for Liam and Gavin.

  “I like these odds,” Gavin said, swinging when the man lunged for him. The man was big, but spry enough to dodge the shot. He ducked, then grabbed Gavin by the waist and tried to throw him down.

  He was bigger than Gavin, heavy and bulky compared to Gavin’s lean ranginess, but Gavin managed to stay on his feet as they moved backward, hit a light pole.

  Liam strode forward, chin down and a bullish expression on his face. He grabbed the man by his shoulders, ripped him away from Gavin, and tossed him bodily a few feet away.

  “That’s my baby brother, asshole.”

  “Oh, now you come to my rescue?” Gavin asked, using one hand to push himself up, the other to support the spot on his back where he’d been mashed into the steel post.

  “Better late than never,” Liam said, adjusting his stance while the man rose again and made another lunge.

  “You need better moves,” Liam said, neatly dodging to the side and avoiding the blitz. But the man skidded to a stop on the concrete, came back again, tried to jump on Liam’s back.

  “Son of a—,” Liam yelled, his body bowed under the weight of the man.

  Instinctively, I yanked my arm away from Crowley, but barely made a dent. “Not yet, little lady,” he said, and began dragging me toward the truck.

  No way was I going in the back of that truck.

  What the hell? I figured. They already knew I was a Sensitive. Seeing me do magic now was just icing on the cake.

  I reached out for power, felt a few delicate tendrils in the air. By some freak of geography, there weren’t many out there, so I was going to need to make this count. Best way to threaten a bully? With his own weapon.

  I wrapped magic around the butt of his gun, yanked it out of his holster, then popped it into my hand.

  “You’re going to want to get your hand off me.”

  He instinctively felt for his holster, and I saw the jolt when he realized it was empty. Slowly, he looked at me.

  “Well,” he said with a leering grin, “looks like the bounty was telling the truth.” He raked his gaze over me, making me feel grimy. “But maybe I’ll have some use for you.”

  I whipped the knife from his other holster, and when it was seated in my hand, I pointed it toward his balls. “Say that to me again, Crowley. I dare you.”

  “Put the gun down!”

  We looked back. Two of the agents and two of Crowley’s men were rolling on the ground. Liam was helping Gavin stand. Chenille had a gun and swung it from person to person, unsure which of us was the best target.

  It was time for us to take our leave. I had a pretty good idea how to make that happen.

  I put the knife in my pocket, raised the gun at Crowley. “Turn around and face her.”

  Crowley muttered under his breath, but turned around.

  I glanced at Liam, gave him a nod, then used the rest of the magic I’d gathered to push Crowley toward Chenille. He hit her like a bull, sending both of them to the ground.

  We took our chance, running back across the street toward the SUV. Along the way, I snatched up my ball cap, rolled and stuffed it into my back pocket.

  Liam was in the lead. “Keys!�
� he shouted at Gavin, who threw the keys over Liam’s head and into his waiting hands. Liam yanked open the door and we jumped inside. Then his keys were in the ignition and we were zooming down the street.

  We were a quarter mile down the road when their engine roared behind us. The bounty hunters were giving chase. Booms echoed through the air, and we ducked as metal pinged against the vehicle’s exterior.

  “Son of a bitch! This is my brand-new car!”

  “It’s neither new nor your car,” Liam pointed out, speeding up along the straightaway.

  “Plan?” I asked.

  “Not getting taken to Devil’s Isle”—Liam winced as the car caught a pothole—“and not leading them to Moses.”

  “I like both of those plans,” Gavin said, grabbing the chicken stick as the vehicle bounced.

  “Need enough of a lead,” Liam murmured, his eyes shifting between the road and the rearview, “and then we’re golden.”

  He gunned it, putting a half mile between us and the truck.

  “Now we need a switch,” Liam said, and jerked the car into a hard right turn onto a side street that slung us all against the left side of the car.

  “Damn it,” Gavin muttered. “I liked this car.”

  “They’ve seen it.”

  “I get that, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Alley coming up on your left, two hundred feet.”

  Another tight turn, and Liam slid the Range Rover into the alley with scant inches on each side, then floored it over pockmarked asphalt and gravel.

  “There!” Gavin yelled. “There’s a truck in the garage twenty feet back. On your right.”

  Liam threw the car into a stomach-hurling reverse, and we lurched forward as he drilled backward through the narrow lane, then screeched to a stop.

  He parked the Range Rover kitty-corner so it blocked the alley behind us. We climbed out of the SUV and walked past a dilapidated house and into the garage Gavin had spotted.

  Weeds grew through the garage’s dirt floor. But the truck was . . . interesting. It was a Ford, probably from the forties, relatively small and plenty curvy, the original paint long ago rusted into mottled red.

  Liam’s gaze narrowed. “This isn’t a truck. It’s a paperweight.”

  “Probably runs better than yours,” Gavin said. “Just need to find out if it moves.”

  I walked toward the cab, running my fingers over the bed. The body felt solid, and the tires were new. And there was something I liked about the narrow bed, huge curving wheel wells, and chrome details.

  There was a thin layer of dust on the door handle. The truck hadn’t been driven in a while, so at least we weren’t poking around in someone’s everyday car. That didn’t give me much comfort about the mechanics, but I liked the look of it. It was love at rusty first sight.

  “I want it.”

  They both looked back at me.

  “This thing?” Gavin asked.

  “This thing. I like it, and I want it. Keep an eye out,” I said, then opened the driver’s-side door. I checked beneath the floor mats, behind the visors, but didn’t find a set of keys. Fortunately, the car was old enough to work a trick I’d learned from my father, who’d been afraid I’d find myself stuck in New Orleans without a way home.

  I grabbed my hat, pulled it on and stuffed my hair beneath it. “Pocketknife?” I asked, holding out a hand to Liam. He watched me curiously while Gavin stood at the edge of the garage, keeping an eye on the street.

  Liam pulled a multi-tool from his pocket, handed it over.

  “Thanks,” I said, and slid onto the front seat.

  Either the leather was in really good shape, or it had been part of the apparent restoration. Half the work was done for me on the hot-wiring, too. The panel that covered the wires beneath the steering wheel was gone, the wires new and labeled with tape. That was a very good sign. Even if the body was rough, someone had taken the time to replace the wires. That meant there was a pretty good chance the mechanics were good, too.

  “Thank you,” I murmured, carefully stripped a bit of insulation from the ignition wires, twisted them together, and connected the bundle to the battery.

  The engine roared to life, echoing like thunder in the narrow garage.

  I stuffed the bundle back into the cavity, then sat up and revved the engine. “Squeeze in, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Gavin climbed in, slid over on the leather bench seat. “Damn, Claire. You are a badass.”

  “I can fix things,” I said simply, but I noted the pride and interest in Liam’s eyes.

  I patted the dashboard. “I’m going to call her Scarlet.”

  “She’s not exactly subtle,” Liam said, but there was no disapproval in his voice. Just caution. “You’ll have to be careful.”

  “Oh, I will.” Because she was mine now.

  I put Scarlet in reverse, stretched an arm on the back of the bench seat, and brought her into the light again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I learned, when we were bumping back toward Mid-City, that while I liked Scarlet’s curves, I did not like her suspension.

  “Well,” Gavin said, “that was an interesting trip.”

  “What was that paper you were waving around?”

  “Vehicle registration,” Gavin said with a grin.

  Nailed it.

  “You want to tell us what happened out there?” Gavin asked the question, but I could feel Liam’s gaze on me.

  I forced words out, even though my chest had gone tight with emotion. “That’s Laura Blackwell. The woman whose name was on the ADZ Logistics invoice. The president of the company.”

  The car was silent for a moment, and I assumed they were debating whether to ask me to elaborate. I saved them the trouble.

  “She’s my mother,” I said, looking out the window to watch the buildings pass.

  “Your mother?” Liam said quietly. “She wasn’t dead.”

  “No. My father lied to me.” And I was still working my brain around that one. “She apparently left my father, and didn’t want to revisit that part of her life. I guess he wanted to close that chapter.”

  “I’m sorry, Claire.”

  I nodded. “She didn’t tell me anything about Icarus. She said she’d ‘protect what was hers.’”

  “And yet she called Containment on her own daughter,” Gavin said, then whistled low. “What a stone-cold bitch.”

  “Can’t argue with that. And I guess Containment has issued a bounty on me now.”

  “And me,” Gavin said happily, adjusting in his seat and squeezing his shoulders between me and Liam on the bench. Maybe people had been smaller when this car was built. Or it hadn’t been meant for the tall, broad-shouldered Quinn boys. “About damn time. I was beginning to feel left out. Now we’re the Three Wanted Amigos.”

  “Oh, good,” Liam murmured.

  “Here’s my question,” Gavin said. “How’d Crowley manage to get there at just the right time? That’s a pretty damn big coincidence.”

  “No way that was coincidence,” I said. “Either they’d been watching the building, thinking we might show up if we connected it to Icarus, which seems really unlikely, or someone inside called Crowley when they saw me.”

  “Containment guards were patrolling,” Gavin said. “More evidence this is a Containment problem.”

  I didn’t like the implications. But the connections to Containment were undeniable.

  “The more we learn about this,” Liam said, “the deeper into Containment it goes.”

  Gavin nodded. “And the more they try to rein us in.”

  “We’re running out of time.”

  Liam meant me and him and Gavin—and everyone else on the run. And he meant New Orleans. And he meant Paranormals. Everyone still touched by a war that had never really ended. Only the tactics
had changed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Something is brewing again. And someone doesn’t want us to know what it is.”

  • • •

  Without a better option, we went back to Moses’s place. Our being there was enough to put him at risk, but there wasn’t any help for it.

  We walked inside, found Moses at the computer table with an open can of beans, the lid ragged-edged and sticking up from the can.

  “Lunch?” he asked with a smile, but it faded when he looked at us. “What the shit happened? You get into a scuffle again?”

  “Containment showed up at the building, as did Crowley’s bastards.” Liam pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, then came over and pressed it to my temple.

  “Glass, I think,” he said quietly, his brow pinched in concentration as he dabbed carefully at my forehead. I hadn’t felt a cut there—at least not separate from the million other little injuries—but the pressure stung a little.

  I winced, hissed air through my teeth.

  Liam went still. “You all right?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  He lifted my hand, held it to the handkerchief. “Keep pressure on it.”

  “Sure.”

  Moses was looking at me when Liam walked away, and he raised his brows comically a few times. The narrow-eyed stare I gave him put a little pink in his cheeks.

  Malachi walked into the room, looked us over, then frowned at the sight. “What happened?”

  “Long story short,” Gavin said, “Claire just outed herself to her mother, who works at ADZ, there’s a bounty on all of us now, and Crowley and Containment got into a gunfight over the bounties.” He held up a finger. “And I had to get rid of the Rover, and Claire knows how to hot-wire a car.”

  Malachi looked at me, a mix of pity and anger in his eyes. “That was a dangerous thing to do, to confront her. But necessary, I suppose.”

  I just nodded, feeling miserable by the reminder.