Hired Hunter (The Rover series Book 2)

by Amelia Shaw

  Between breakfast and now, he somehow appeared older. His voice came out rough when he asked, “What is that?”

  Was he kidding me?

  “That this might be one more big fancy trap to lure us in and finally finish us off. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of shoes to buy with my million dollars.”

  His eyes softened. “No, I have enough shoes. But I understand what you are saying. However, Sol wouldn’t set us up like that.”

  “Sol might not, but what if she’s not the same woman you knew? What if she is being forced by Esteban to create sendings to me? What if the sendings are Esteban wearing Sol’s likeness? I could go on with ten more scenarios where we end up six feet under.”

  I needed unbiased third-party backup here, and I couldn’t believe what I was about to say.

  “Where’s the captain?”

  “You think the captain would convince me out of going to that forest?”

  I pulled my coffee toward me. “No, but I think he prioritizes your well-being above anything else.”

  A voice came from my couch, which I barely even noticed against the same wall as my door.

  “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me,” the captain said, from his prone position on the couch. His boots rested on the armrest, and his hat had been laying on his face. How long had he been there? I raked my mind. Had he been there the entire time?

  I cleared my throat, covering my confusion. “Don’t get used to it. Being competent at your job doesn’t mean we’re BFFs now.”

  He swung his legs over to the floor in one smooth motion as he stood. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I don’t carouse with bounty hunters.”

  I pushed back my chair, standing up and glaring at the captain over Fin’s shoulder. “First, who says carouse, and second, what is that supposed to mean?”

  Before he could answer, Fin stepped between us. “A little professional courtesy between colleagues.”

  I ground my teeth together and exhaled, then focused on Fin again. “Back to my argument, have you forgotten the last little trip we took to Esteban’s territory?”

  Fin rounded toward me and closed the distance between us. “How many times are we going to have to review this? I promised I would approach our plans differently, and I am. This is me, right now, discussing things with you.”

  Reasonable Fin pissed me off the most. “You have been discussing things with me, and you’ve been compromising. I see it and I appreciate it. However, eventually, we are going to disagree and you’re going to run off and almost get me killed again.”

  He took my hands in his. “What promise do I have to make to ensure you trust me?”

  I winced. He was trying to do this right. I had to give him that.

  I relented a little. “It’s more about me than it is about you. Mostly.”

  “Then tell me how to help you believe in me.”

  Damn it. I wanted to trust him. Hell, I wanted to walk around and take everyone at face value, but too many people had shown me how easily trust could be twisted and used for manipulation.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I think it’ll just take time.”

  Time he had to offer. More than me, probably.

  He squeezed my hands gently and whispered, “I have an idea.”

  “No,” the captain barked from across the room then closed the distance between us.

  He stopped right next to Fin and stared him down. Fin shook his head and met his eyes.

  Wait a minute.

  “Are you two in each other’s heads?” I asked.

  Fin’s gaze narrowed at the captain. “You are not my keeper. You are my employee. If she accepts it, then you will abide.”

  The captain’s jaw tightened, and he flicked me a look lined with contempt.

  If he didn’t like what Fin was getting to, I was even more interested.

  Fin shrugged the captain away and turned to me. “I offer you an iusiurandum.”

  The tension in the room stretched tight. Whatever he’d said was serious.

  “Cool,” I said. “Tell me what it is first.”

  The captain interrupted before Fin could explain. “He offers you a great honor. You will share a bond. The iusiurandum is a vow.”

  I blinked at the captain’s scowl and then tried to diffuse the moment between all of us. “That’s sweet, Fin, but I need at least a two-carat rock to consider a man’s hand in marriage.”

  The captain cursed and stalked back across the room.

  “Funny, Zoey,” Fin said, no humor in his tone. “I offer you more than marriage. I offer you my life, my magic, until we finish our work.”

  “Your what now?” I tried to pull my hands from his, but he tightened his grip.

  “If something happens to you, then you’ll be able to tap into my own life force, my magic, to protect yourself. I don’t want you to feel like I’m sacrificing you again. This way, you’ll be protected no matter what happens.”

  I shook my head and jerked my hands from his. “Are you nuts? I don’t even want my magic, so why would I want yours? And I have no interest in your life. You don’t even know me. Why would you offer this to me?”

  “A show of trust.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  A sadness weighed down his face, his shoulders. “I do trust you. If I didn’t, why would I be in your home, giving you my money, making this choice?”

  I took his hands in mine again. “Then show me why. Make me believe it.”

  He didn’t hesitate, but shot an image straight into my head like it zoomed across on a zipline. It was me at the Citadel, saving his life. Me dying.

  I sucked in a breath and slid back onto my chair to steady myself. The bastard had failed to tell me emotions came with the memories. As fast as the images and onslaught appeared, they dissipated. Fucking hell. He did trust me.

  The ability to protect myself against Esteban and his men wasn’t something I should pass up. But I didn’t understand his willingness to give so much to me when I held back from him.

  I stood and met his eyes head on. “Fine. Do it. And then we’ll try to find your forest.”

  “Harlan,” Fin called out.

  The captain walked over and handed Fin one of the knives strapped to his forearm.

  I wrinkled my nose at Fin using the captain’s first name. Considering this was the first time I’d heard Fin call him anything at all, it was too weird. It made sense though: if they shared some kind of mental connection, then he wouldn’t need to call him aloud very often.

  “Step forward, Zoey,” Fin said.

  Sensing if I made one wise crack the captain would take off my head, I kept my jokes to myself and did what Fin told me to do.

  He took my hand in his and made a shallow cut horizontally under the crease of my elbow. I hissed out a breath and watched him do the same to his own arm. Then he took his blood and mixed it with mine by pressing our flesh together. Magic swamped me, dragging me hard to my knees on the floor. He followed me down, grabbed my arm, and brought it to his lips. With one smooth swipe of his tongue, he cleaned away our mixed blood.

  “I give you this iusiurandum, Zoey Salix,” he said. “My life and my magic bound to yours until the day you release me from this vow.”

  His words eddied around me, pressing the magic in tighter to my body, to my face, my neck, my hair, my teeth until I could feel them inside and outside and all around us.

  When he dropped my arm, the sensations dissipated, and I could draw a full breath again.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  Fin helped me stand.

  I batted him away. “I’m fine.”

  From beside me, the captain leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Don’t make him regret that, or my face will be the last one you ever see.”

  Chapter Eight

  I wish I’d discovered that I hate helicopters... before I was flying at ten thousand feet. Fin seemed right at home flying the chopper. Sitting amidst the beeping contr
ols, knobs, and levers. The headset he’d clapped on my head dug into my skull, but it was the only way I could hear him over the roar of the engine.

  It was a little like I was flying through the sky strapped to a lawn chair propelled by a high-speed balloon. I’d left my stomach somewhere above the skyscrapers we flew over.

  “You look a little green.” Fin’s voice cut through the headset, static-laced and flat.

  “Aw, thanks, you look pretty today too,” I managed.

  With my eyes squeezed tight, and my hands dug into the seat, it was all the smart-ass I could give him. My arm still burned from he cut he’d made, and my head felt too tight, crammed with this extra presence. It wasn’t his mind—we didn’t share a mental connection—but I could feel something hovering at the edges waiting for me to assimilate it.

  He chuckled, and I ignored him. Once we landed, he would get my knees in his balls for putting me through this. I hadn’t even wanted to go to the forest of doom to find his sister. Hell, it was likely a trap, anyway.

  Fin kept ordering me to look out at the view, but every time he suggested it, I flipped him off and then resumed my death grip on the harness-like seatbelt he’d strapped me into. Every so often I whispered ‘I hate you’ into the headset so he knew my opinion about our travel method hadn’t changed.

  “Honestly,” he said, “I’m an excellent flyer. You’d be in more danger riding in a car on the highway.”

  That statement earned him another bird. “That’s just something people say to people like me who don’t like flying. If I fall out of this helicopter, I’m going to die. If I fall out of a moving vehicle, I’ll likely be in a lot of pain, but my odds of survival are higher.”

  “You’d be a human pancake if you fell out of a moving vehicle,” he pointed out.

  “Well, I live to give the captain something to clean up.”

  He laughed at that one, and I squeezed my eyelids tighter together. “How did you learn to fly a helicopter, anyway? Don’t fae have a thing about steel and machinery?”

  He remained silent, so I risked a glance and then promptly shut my eyes again as the fog strewn view outside his window threatened to bring up my breakfast.

  “Were you a Vietnam fighter pilot?” I asked.

  He didn’t respond, so I continued prodding him.

  “No, that would require a haircut.” I thought about it for a few more seconds. “Secret celebrity chauffeur, taking Marilyn and Elvis to all those places no one is really quite sure how they got into?”

  That one earned me a snort from him, but still no answer to my question.

  “Oh, I know. Former secret service piloting Marine One, until you had to leave before all the other boys realized you weren’t quite like them. Of course, you're strong and capable in the practice ring, but out on the job you’re always a tiny bit more together, a tiny bit faster.”

  Nope, nothing. His face remained a stone wall I was determined to crack.

  “Drug runner for the cartels?”

  I kept my eyes open now just to watch his face for any micro-expressions. “Magic smuggler from the great Canadian Covens? The captain’s sidekick during the Gulf War and now he’s your henchman because you saved his life and he owes you a debt for the rest of his?”

  His eyebrows drew down, and then his face cleared a millisecond later. It wasn’t the reason he could fly a helicopter, but it spoke to the casual relationship I witnessed between employer and employee. Interesting.

  A flash of the captain laying in blood-streaked mud and Fin kneeling over him wreathed in light bounced around the inside of my skull. Fin couldn’t access my mind but when he felt something strongly, he might accidentally shove it down the bond. I chose not to bring it to his attention. He had to know already, right?

  “Rescuing snow bunnies when they get in too deep on their sun-dappled mountainside vacations?”

  He cracked a slight smile on that one.

  “I can do this all day.”

  “I can ignore you all day,” he countered. “You have a very active imagination.”

  “Ouch. For one, it was my job to consider all the ways a person could maim me in my pursuit of them. I’m very good at imagining my own death, and it sucks every time. Secondly, you’re the one who dragged me out in this death machine on a field trip, which will probably leave us riddled with bullets or turned into walking zombies when Esteban catches us. I should have put ‘no stupid plans’ in my contract.”

  “You haven’t signed a contract.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Then we need to go back and sign that contract and I need to make sure it has an addendum to never include helicopters.”

  To that, he only shook his head.

  “So, tell me then, when did you save the captain's life?”

  He sputtered, his knuckles going white on the steering controls. “How did you...what...I didn’t?”

  I pointed toward my eyebrows. “Yours are very expressive. A tell, if you will. Don’t play poker unless you get that under control or buy some oversized sunglasses.”

  He straightened and regained his composure. “It’s not something I’m prepared to talk about.”

  “On a scale of one to ten, how quickly will the captain try to stab me if I bring it up to him?”

  Fin gave another chuckle. Each one felt like winning something.

  “I can say probably a twelve,” he said. “The captain doesn’t enjoy owing anyone a debt. Or being reminded of his own mortality.”

  “Sweet. I’ll be adding it to my ‘annoy the captain’ rotation.”

  He turned the death machine, angling us toward something, but I closed my eyes and gripped my harness.

  “Oh, stop that. Please stop that.”

  I didn’t recognize the whine in my voice, and I didn’t care.

  “Oh, now you don’t want to land?” he said, his voice low and breathless in my ear with his laughter.

  I kept my eyes closed until I felt the jerk of the helicopter landing, and Fin removed my headphones.

  “Get me out, get me out,” I said, trying to figure out which buckle went where so I could unsnap myself.

  With a few deft motions, he got me out of the rigging, and I threw myself out of the helicopter onto the ground.

  He came around to my side and stared at me sitting in the grass. “Wow, I finally found the one thing to bring Zoey Salix to her knees.”

  I glared up at him. He reached down, and I took his fingers to allow him to pull me to my feet.

  Considering I had to go back up in that thing to get home, I decided not to bait Fin further.

  Instead, I fixed my gaze out onto the forest. We’d landed in a small clearing, which I had no idea how he saw from the sky. All around me were the same trees from my dream. Except now, the same creepy, weird feeling I experienced in my dream felt compounded.

  I shook my head and retreated toward the helicopter. “No, I don't think I want to go in there.”

  Fin smiled and waved at the trees. “It’s just a forest, Zoey.”

  “Oh, fuck you. Don’t placate me. Hell is just a sauna, right? I know something is off here. I feel it, vibrating in my bones. It’s like it’s trying to speak to me.”

  All traces of mirth were gone from his face now. “I’m sorry. You’re right. To mages, this is a sacred place. It’s called the forest of shadows.”

  “You knew what this place was the whole time?” I demanded. “We're right back where we were before, with you knowing everything, and me knowing nothing. Just because I wasn’t born into this world doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to know.”

  He held his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, Zoey, truly. I was born to this world, and sometimes I forget how much I do know, and how much others don’t. Forgive me.”

  If he had tried to defend himself, I could have stayed angry.

  I waved at the trees. “Let’s go see if we can find something. But I’m not staying here a moment longer than necessary.”

  “Understood,” he
said.

  I took a step forward. “On second thought, maybe I should stay here with the helicopter. This looks like a seedy neighborhood. I would hate for someone to steal it.”

  His look told me he wasn’t buying my shit. I crossed the clearing to stand beside him, and then he marched off into the trees. We walked in silence for a little while, with no signs of any other life present, not even the steady tweeting of birds in the branches.

  “How do your dreams usually go?” he asked as we walked.

  I refused to look at him as I answered. “They usually start with me wandering around until I get frustrated. And then often I’ll see a flash of color, Sol's dress. It always takes me a few minutes to find her, but when I do, she’s often sitting on a log in the center of the clearing.”

  He nodded. “Then I guess we’re looking for another clearing and a log.”

  “You are,” I muttered. “I’m looking for another way home.”

  As we wandered farther into the woods, Fin studied every fallen pinecone, and I itched to make a run for it back to the helicopter.

  I didn’t know how long we walked. Long past snack time, that was for sure, but I refused to be the one to break and ask him if he brought any provisions with him.

  When the sunlight stopped twinkling through the tree branches, nervous butterflies began to flap in my belly. Surely, he didn’t expect us to stay out here all night. I didn’t care how much he paid me—I was not sleeping here.

  “I know I've been saying I want to leave since we got here,” I said, “but I honestly think we should go. It’s getting dark, and I don’t want to see what comes out at night in a place like this.”

  He glanced over at me, like he’d forgotten I was here. “No, you're right. We should get going.”

  Relief washed through me. I’d prepared myself for an argument. I didn’t know if it scared me more or less that he agreed.

  Maybe he didn’t know what came out at night here either.

  We turned around and started the trek back toward the helicopter. This time our pace was more determined. All the trees looked the same to me. I didn’t know how he knew exactly where he had parked.

  His long legs ate up the distance. I scrambled to keep up, only because I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.