Hired Hunter (The Rover series Book 2)

by Amelia Shaw

  Hired Hunter

  by Amelia Shaw

  Book 2 of the Rover Series.

  Hired Hunter

  The Rover, Volume 2

  Amelia Shaw

  Published by Tamsin Baker, 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  HIRED HUNTER

  First edition. January 19, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 Amelia Shaw.

  Written by Amelia Shaw.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  The downside to receiving a lot of money after you almost die is that it feels like guilt money. During the fight against the Black Mage, I was badly injured and when I woke up still alive, I left Fin’s mansion and hadn’t gone back.

  After I’d gotten home, an embarrassing amount of money had landed in my bank account and now every time I peeked at my bank balance I was flooded with pain. In my mind, all I could see was Fin lying flat on his back under a rocky ceiling, slowly being tortured to death. I saw Olivia’s red-tipped nails forever still against her lifeless body.

  We’d both survived, but I hadn’t recovered. Not physically, and certainly not mentally.

  I shuddered and wrapped my arms around my knees while I sat, curled up on my couch in my tiny apartment.

  My cell phone vibrated in my pocket for the tenth time in the last hour. It was barely nine a.m. and Fin continued to call, even though I’d told him to leave me alone. After my last night at his mansion, and seeing Sol in my dreams, I’d left.

  I made the excuse that I needed to get back to work, my real work, and fix the damage I’d done between the chief and me. Despite whatever I felt for Fin, the office was my home, and had been for fifteen years. The fact that I couldn’t go back cut deeper than I wanted to admit.

  My phone vibrated again, and then a series of dings followed. I stared down at the screen to watch a barrage of text messages cascade in a line. Obviously, because I wouldn’t answer Fin’s calls, he’d switched tactics and now resorted to text message. Two words. Every single message said call me.

  I flipped the silence switch on the side of my phone and tossed the phone toward the corner of my desk. It clattered against the department store plywood and remained still. I folded my hands on the desk and lay my cheek flat on top of them. I’d been awake since four a.m. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw Sol.

  A fresh wave of acid turned in my gut. How could I tell Fin about his sister? He might be happy for five minutes thinking she was still alive, until I told him she contacted me through a sending.

  One minute, the warm morning light was seeping through the window next to my desk and the next, cool mist rained down my arms. It took a second for me to get my bearings, standing around the same forest from my dream. The scent of peat and moss pressed into me, along with trees. So many trees. Miles and miles of them. Evergreens and oaks, redwoods and other species I couldn’t recognize by sight.

  Why did I keep coming here? If Sol had mage power, then why didn’t she escape this place and come home? It was obvious her brother loved and missed her. The fact that she was now a power-sucking mage might throw him off for a second. But if he faced her standing in front of him, I was pretty sure he would work around it. Or at the very least, learn to live with it.

  I opened my eyes and I was in that dream again. Shit!

  I pushed off the ground and brushed the pine needles from my pants. After the incident at the Black Mage’s compound, my clothes fit a little looser than usual. I stared through the trees, trying to figure out where I was, and instinctively looking for a way out of here. But from what I could see, there were no roads, no sidewalks, no trails, nothing but chirping in the trees and the rustle of the limbs as the wind broke through their branches.

  A flash of purple caught my eye, and I spun trying to spot where it had come from. I crouched down and attempted to get a view from a ground angle, to see if the purple returned. It had to be Sol. She was the only person I met in this place.

  Something about the vibe of this place rubbed me the wrong way.

  Another flash of purple. I stepped forward and then ducked between underbrush and a large oak.

  There she sat, cross-legged on the ground. Her honey brown hair, the same shade as Fin’s, hung down to mingle with the fallen evergreen needles. Even her eyes were the same crystal shot blue as her brother’s eyes. I swallowed the wave of longing pressing into my lungs.

  “Sol?”

  She waved me forward. “We meet again. I keep trying to reach out to you, but you are getting better at blocking.”

  I approached slowly, carefully, unsure. “Well, I’m here now. What can I do for you?”

  I tried to instill some of my usual sass into my words, but the guilt and anger which had eaten out my insides for the past few days made it impossible. I couldn’t even muster up a smile.

  She shook her head. “No, we can’t talk now. You have a guest.”

  I glanced around the eerily empty forest. Maybe she’d fallen off her rocker while under the Black Mage’s care.

  Then I was back. Awake.

  A shot of pain kicked up my side as if to remind me I was still healing from my injuries I’d sustained when we’d gone up against the Black Mage a few days ago. My heart took up a heavy thump, then I jerked upright in my apartment. Everything in my body was on high alert now and someone was pounding at my door. I took a few deep breaths to settle myself down, then pushed off the desk, using my furniture to brace myself as I made it to the door.

  I opened it, expecting Fin. But it was Hawk who stood glaring on the other side, arm raised to give my door another beating.

  “Don’t you answer your phone?” he grumbled.

  He wore a black t-shirt and jeans, heavy boots, and a glower he reserved only for me. His biceps barely fit into his shirt.

  I shrugged. “Nah, I stopped answering it. Means people show up at my house and annoy me in person instead.”

  “I’ve been calling you for two days.”

  He scanned my features, no doubt catching sight of the yellowing bruises and purple smudges across my arms and neck. “You look like shit.”

  I opened the door wider and gestured for him to come in. “Aw, Hawk, you big softie, you always know just what to say to make a girl feel good.”

  He entered and assessed my apartment the same way he did my face. Then he spun to face me, enormous arms crossed. “When are you coming back to work?”

  I glanced behind me like he’d been speaking to someone else. “Uh, did you miss the part where the chief fired me?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I was there, remember? You deserved it, but the chief misses you. I hate seeing him mope around and pretending like your desk doesn’t exist. He won’t let anyone else touch it. You know you’re his favorite.”

  “So why couldn’t he come here and tell me that himself? You his emotional support animal now too?”

  He threw up his hands. “I know you have to
be the biggest bitch in the room, but I can see you are wrapped in something you can’t handle. Let us help you so you can finish the job and come home.”

  He plopped down into the oversized chair by the window, dwarfing the dark gray piece of furniture I spent most of my time in. “I’m not leaving until we figure this whole thing out and I convince you to come back.

  I sagged and then winced from the pain it caused in my ribs. I took the couch opposite him and eased myself into it. “I’m on a case. You know that, but it’s not that I can’t handle it—it’s that we went into something, and it didn’t go as planned.”

  “And how often did that happen when you were at the office?”

  “Never,” I mumbled.

  He didn’t even bother making me repeat myself so he could gloat. “Exactly. Let us help you.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  Hawk leaned forward and braced his forearms on top of his knees. “Look, if it's about the money, you know the chief isn’t going to let you starve.”

  “Even when I actually might have starved, I didn’t ask for help,” I said with a glare. “This isn’t about the money. To be fair, it sweetened the deal, but now, I just want to see this bastard in a noose.”

  We stared at each other, the silence tense and uncomfortable, but neither of us willing to break it.

  Then, he slapped his beefy hands on his knees and stood. With a sharp nod, he walked toward the door and opened it.

  Before he left, he turned back and met my eyes. There was something soft there, something gentle when he looked at me. It gave me another pang for home.

  I couldn’t let him walk out the door like that, not without a bit more of an explanation.

  “Hawk, it’s not that I don’t miss you guys or miss the chief. I can’t bring myself to come back, not after what I did, not without finishing this first. If I come back now, I’ll never leave again, and I'll always wonder if I could’ve avenged my parent’s deaths.”

  Hawk nodded and walked out the door, closing it softly behind him.

  I sank back into the couch and scrubbed my hands down my face with a long groan. Despite what I had said to Hawk, I really had no idea what to do next. Not without Fin.

  I heaved myself up out of the couch and went back to my desk. Papers littered the surface, invoices and bits of scratch paper I’d scribbled addresses and phone numbers on. I’d been trying to get a hold of old clients, call in jobs, and generally find anything to distract myself. There were some harsh realities I wasn’t ready to face. The fact that I missed Fin, the fact that somehow, I had mage powers, and Sol was haunting my dreams.

  I went back to my bedroom, shoved my legs in the first pair of jeans I could find, and grabbed a pink T-shirt from my drawer. A quick check in the mirror revealed bruises everywhere. Mot even makeup would hide most of it. I grabbed a hoodie from the closet, zipped it up, and flipped up the hood to hide my hair and most of my face. It was the best I could do for now. At least, if Hawk returned or the chief himself showed up, I would be more prepared.

  I went back to my desk, sank into the old chair, and stacked the papers into a neat pile, then I shoved them into the first drawer where there was room and surveyed the clean surface.

  There wasn’t exactly a wiki page for fairies or their family trees, but the mystery revolving around Sol and her appearance in my dreams needed to be my priority. Or I’d never get a good night’s sleep ever again.

  I grabbed my laptop from its black leather bag next to my chair and set it on the empty surface of my desk and turned it on. Then I leaned my forehead on the edge of my desk while I waited for five million years of updates to take hold.

  Once the updates finished, I pulled up a search engine and typed in Sol and Fin. As I expected, nothing related to the siblings popped up.

  I tried searching for Fin alone, and I got a few hits on his philanthropic works. Pictures of him in tuxedos with beautiful women on his arms shouldn’t have made me so angry, and yet my teeth were cracking under the strain of my clenched jaw. I’d been one of those women, and he’d left me for dead, so I had to guess the women in the pictures meant nothing to him too.

  I held onto the anger and dove deeper into the rabbit hole. Fin spent most of his money on charities and hosted various events.

  An idea struck me.

  I typed in Esteban’s name. The same type of results popped up as they had for Fin. It looked like our Black Mage spent a lot of money on other people and enjoyed giving lavish parties. I wondered how many of those in attendance were mages, or were they just clueless humans hoping to rub shoulders with fellow rich people?

  I scanned the search results, but couldn’t find information on Esteban’s family, his origins, or anything at all useful. Everything about him was fluff and pandering. I checked the reporter’s names for the society pages on the articles and the same woman had wrote them all: Tosha Mackey.

  Something warm bloomed in my chest. It was a start. I searched for the reporter’s name and found a heap of fluffy society pieces. The woman liked to attend parties. Her social media was equally vapid.

  I wrote down the contact details for her publications, including all her social media handles, and made a note to go through them later.

  It sure would be nice to have Fin’s security right now. Many of them were trained in intelligence, and could hunt down things faster than I could.

  I scribbled out a few more notes and tucked the papers and my laptop into my desk. My muscles ached, and it felt like everything in my body had been set on fire. I needed to take a walk to try to clear some lactic acid out of my system so the soreness would improve. That was lesson one when I started physical training, even when it hurts, just keep moving.

  I grabbed my keys from the side table and opened the door, expecting to encounter the flickering light that the superintendent kept promising to change in the hallway.

  Instead, I almost walked into a six-and-a-half-foot faerie.

  “Fin,” I croaked.

  He caught my shoulders in his graceful hands and held me still. “You’re not answering your phone.”

  Why did people keep pointing out the obvious to me?

  “Funny you should say that. You’re not my only visitor today saying I refuse to answer my phone.”

  “Did you happen to think we have a point?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “No, this is way more fun. This way I get to see who really wants me.”

  He stepped forward, walking me back into my apartment, and closed the door behind him. “We need to talk.”

  I pulled from his grip and spun to face away from him. If he saw the look in my eyes, he would know something was wrong.

  “I thought me leaving would be a strong hint that we were done working together,” I said. “You almost got me killed.”

  “Yes, but I thought we worked past that.”

  I sighed out loud and schooled my features before turning back to face him. “Yeah, well, the thing about trauma is it can pop up whenever the hell it feels like.”

  He took a step forward, and I retreated. The soft lines of his face hardened as he surveyed the way I tensed and backed away from him.

  “Zoey, I’m sorry. I really am. But you’re the only person who can help me find my sister. I need you.”

  Tears lined the bottom edge of his eyes, and they had to mirror my own as I stared at the ceiling so they wouldn't fall.

  “Just give me a minute,” I said.

  I went back into my bedroom and slammed the door, then I sank down against it until I sat on the floor and cupped my face in my hands.

  I couldn’t say no. We had to save Sol and put an end to the Black Mage, and we had to work together to have any hope of succeeding. That hope, however, was increasingly smaller by the moment.

  Regardless, Fin wasn’t going to back down, and neither was I. I was going this alone. I didn’t want his help anymore. Even if continuing on this path would get me killed.

  Chapter Two
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  “Get off the floor, Zoey. You know he’s not gonna wait for you forever,” I mumbled to myself.

  I hauled my ass up carefully and braced my hands on the wall. Sharp stabs shot through my body.

  No more sitting on the floor with healing ribs.

  I limped into the bathroom adjoining my bedroom and splashed some water on my face. Wasn’t I just thinking about how much I missed Fin? And now that he’d showed up, I ran scared?

  I dabbed the water from my skin and tossed the towel on the edge of the sink. Then I took a minute to stare at my reflection, hoping I could intimidate myself and grow some balls. I didn’t run away from anything, though it felt like I’d been running from Fin since the day we had met. Maybe my body knew something my heart had yet to grasp.

  I heaved a long sigh. Fin wouldn’t leave until I talked to him, and if I were honest with myself, I would admit I didn’t want him to go in the first place.

  Time to get back in the game and figure out all this shit. Time to stop running.

  I exited the bathroom and stepped into my bedroom, then jerked to a stop at the end of my bed. Fin lay flat on the now freshly made coverlet. I rarely made my bed, and usually only when I put on fresh sheets.

  The bastard had made my bed before he lay himself down on top of it. It took a minute for all that to sink into my brain. Then I picked up an empty soda bottle from my vanity table and chucked it at him. The green plastic bounced off his t-shirt-covered abs to land beside him on the bed.

  “If you’re trying to hurt me, you should have chucked that paper weight over there,” he said, not even looking at me, still staring up at my popcorn ceiling.

  “How did you get in here? I locked the door behind me.”

  He scoffed. “Really, that is your question? Obviously, I’m not going to let you hide from me when we desperately need to sort some things out.”

  I waved at the door and stepped toward him. “And you couldn’t give me five minutes of privacy to gather my thoughts? Why are you so damn controlling?”