Vivi Anna: Releasing the Hunter

Balling her hands into fists, she followed him out of the house, down the front steps and to the truck. After he swung the bag into the back of the truck, she rounded on him. She poked him in the chest with her knuckle.

“Listen to me. I told you this was my way or the highway. So either do what I say or you can get lost. I don’t need your running commentary about what I am doing or not doing.”

He regarded her with his lips twitching. She didn’t like how he was looking at her. As if she was an amusement to him. “Do you ever relax?”

“No,” she sneered. “Relaxing gets people killed.”

“You know what else gets people killed? High blood pressure.”

Grinding her teeth, she spun on her heel and jumped into the truck. Ronan got in on the other side. She started the truck, put it in gear and drove away from the house.

Under her breath she counted to ten slowly. When she reached ten she looked over at Ronan and asked, “Where are we going?”

“Inner East Bay, down by the harbor.”

“Once we do this, then what? What’s your next big idea?” She opened her window a crack. She felt like she was suffocating. Ronan’s presence was crowding on her. He was a big guy and took up a lot of the space inside the cab. “Sallos knew we were coming. How?”

Ronan rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. “I don’t know. Maybe because he knew what you would do next.”

“So this is my fault?”

“He obviously made you the second you walked into that club. You don’t exactly fly under the radar, Ivy.”

“What about you? Maybe he made you,” she suggested. “Or I know, how about, you’re working with him, so he knew we were coming because that was the plan.” She thought about his stolen car. Maybe that had been the reason, so it would be easy for him to hook up with her. Except as a hunter she’d stolen plenty of vehicles. It was part of the game.

Cocking his head, he regarded her. “I know there’s a brain in that pretty head of yours. So maybe you should use it. What you’re proposing is just ridiculous.” She hated the mocking tone in his voice.

Without a thought, she yanked the steering wheel to the right and pulled up onto the curb. “Get out.”

“What?”

“I said get the hell out of my truck.”

“You’re being overdramatic, don’t you think?”

That was it. She had enough of his lip and they’d been together for only two hours. She balled up her fist and punched him in the side of the face. The force was enough to snap his head back. She had the satisfaction of seeing him bump the other side of his head against the door.

He turned his head back to her, then rubbed at his jaw where she’d clocked him. “Feel better? Got it out of your system? Can we move on now?”

She nodded. “Definitely feel better.”

“Good, because we need to keep moving. A cop just pulled up behind us.”

Ivy glanced in her rearview mirror. He was right. A police cruiser had just pulled onto the street where they were parked. It would be very bad if he found their big bag of body parts in the truck bed. She suspected that even she wouldn’t be able to talk her way out of it.

She put the truck back in gear and pulled out onto the street. The cop car followed her. She kept glancing in the mirror, holding her breath, hoping she didn’t see the flashing lights come on.

After they drove another four blocks, the cruiser put on his signal and turned right. Ivy let out the breath she was holding.

Ronan rubbed at his chin again. “You punch pretty hard. Not like a girl at all.”

She swiveled in her seat to tell him a thing or two, but the smile on his face had her biting back the words. She couldn’t help the grin that lifted her lips.

“Aha, I knew you could smile.” His eyes sparkled in amusement. “There’s a running rumor out there that it would never happen. That it couldn’t.”

She shook her head, but she couldn’t help the laugh bubbling out of her. “Well, I’m happy to bust that rumor to hell.”

“Yeah, I wonder what other rumors we can bust along the way.”

Her smile faded then and she turned back to the road. “Keep dreaming.”

Although his words bothered her, it was the lusty gleam in his eyes that worried her more. Because truth be told, the butterflies in her stomach had not stopped fluttering since setting her eyes on him in the back alley. And that was always a sign of bad things to come.

Ronan made her body react in ways she hadn’t felt for a long time. Lusty thoughts finger walked their way through her mind when she looked at him. He had that dark and dangerous swagger about him that sent her libido into a tizzy. This job was going to be one of the toughest of her career so far. And it had nothing to do with the mark.

Ronan directed Ivy down to the bay. He knew of a perfect spot to dispose of a body. He’d unfortunately had to use it himself a time or two.

She didn’t speak as she parked the truck near the water’s edge. She got out and went around back, pulling down the tailgate so they could get at the bag of body parts. Ronan slid out of the truck and then jumped into the back. He thought he surprised her with his agility because she looked at him with those wide blue eyes and a snarl on her lips.

Fog swirled around the tires of the truck. It gave the whole area a creepy vibe. The fact that they were dumping a body just upped that vibe to the nth degree. Moisture settled onto the back of his neck and the backs of his hands. A shiver rushed down his spine as he breathed in the cool night air.

Together they wrestled the bag out of the truck and onto the ground. From there, Ronan dragged it to the bay’s shoreline. He opened the bag and began to stuff it with rocks he found around the water’s edge. Once Ivy realized what he was trying to accomplish she helped out by finding big boulders to weigh the bag down.

“I see you’ve done this before,” she commented as she dropped a particularly large rock into the bag.

He nodded. “A time or two. Nobody that didn’t need killing, though.”

“Uh-huh.” She barely glanced at him.

He stood back and eyed her curiously. “Is it that you absolutely despise demons in any shape or form, or do you generally loathe everything?”

She didn’t give an answer, just took a step back and wiped her dirty hands on her pants.

Ronan tied off the bag and shoved it into the water. It buoyed at the surface for a second or two, then sank down into the inky depths. If it was ever found, it would be quite a ways down the shoreline.

He wiped his hands on his pants, and then looked at Ivy. She was watching the water ripple where the body had gone down. He couldn’t read the look on her face, but it wasn’t a happy one. Guilt, maybe. Remorse? Interesting considering her hard-assed reputation for slaying demons and the like.

“Now what?” he asked her.

“Regroup, I guess, and try to figure out where Sallos has gone to ground.”

“We could go to my place and—”

“Not likely. We’ll go to one of my safe houses.” She smirked at him. “You’ll be blindfolded, of course.”

“Well, of course I will.” The sarcasm rolled off his tongue.

She ignored it and headed toward the truck. Ronan followed her. “You don’t trust much, do you?”

“I trust only one person. And he’s unfortunately not around.”

Ronan knew she was talking about her brother, Quinn. He’d heard that Quinn had gone to ground a couple of years ago. No one knew where he was or why he was hiding. He wondered if Ivy even knew. And if she didn’t, why not?

Maybe this was why she had misgivings about everyone she met. The one person in her life she probably thought she could rely on had left her. Or at least, Ronan could speculate. There were rumors floating around about the Stroms and their lives and how they’d been born into the hunting community. He didn’t travel in those circles, just on the fringes, so he heard things now and then. Which is how he’d known where to find Ivy in the first place.