Taylor appeared at the bottom of the stairs.Ben relaxed, allowing himself to believe that Taylor would be okay.The house was empty, and there were no monsters in the basement, not anymore.
He hated being scared of this place, but the trauma he’d had to endure here wasn’t easily forgettable.This wasn’t just a basement.It had been a prison, a place he hadn’t been sure he’d ever leave.Jimmy might never have hurt him physically, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t hurt him at all.
Taylor carried a box up the stairs.His expression was serious, and he didn’t stop to explain what was going on.“You said that Tony and Jacob were in the office?”he asked.
“It sounds like it.”
“Can you show me where it is?”
Ben nodded.He hated this place, but the only room he didn’t want to see again was the basement.The rest of the place was okay.It was just a house.
Ben had been right.They found Tony and Jacob in the office, going through some bills spread out on the desk.They both looked up when they heard Taylor and Ben, their expressions serious.
“You need to see this,” Taylor said.He put down the box on top of the bills on the desk.“This guy was a hunter.”
Ben frowned.He knew what hunters were, but he could tell there was more to it by the way Jacob sucked in a breath.Both he and Taylor looked horrified.Tony looked worried, but not much more.
“I’ll get Peter,” Jacob said as he stepped away.
Tony nodded.“Can you explain what you mean by hunter?”Tony asked, turning his attention back to Taylor.
“As far as I know, we don’t have this kind of problem in Green Hill, but there are groups of people, usually humans, who think that shifters don’t deserve the same treatment as they do.I’ve never been involved in anything like that, but we’ve all heard the stories.They catch and hurt shifters.I’ve been told they also worked with those labs a few years ago, making money off selling us.”He looked around.Ben felt like he couldn’t breathe, especially when Taylor’s gaze stopped on him.“You didn’t know?”
“That Jimmy was a hunter?I wasn’t even sure what you were talking about until you explained.”
“You know what hunters are, though.”
“I’ve heard stories, but I didn’t think they were still around.Are these people really hunting shifters?”
“They are, and from what I could read in this journal, Jimmy was involved with the labs.”
“But he didn’t hand me over to them.”Ben was confused.That was what hunters did—they found shifters, grabbed them, and either killed them or delivered them to the lab facilities.Taylor had just confirmed it.
“Maybe in his own way, he cared about you,” Tony said gently.
“What he did shows me that he didn’t.”
“I didn’t say that it made sense or that it was logical.What I’m seeing is that a hunter somehow ended up in a relationship with a shifter.He knew what you were, right?”
“Yeah.I told him on our first official date.He said it didn’t matter to him.”
But if he’d been a hunter, ithadmattered.
Ben was confused.If Jimmy was a hunter, why had he dated him?Why had he locked him up in his basement instead of handing him over to whoever he was working with?It didn’t make sense.Nothing did.
Jacob and Peter appeared.Peter looked slightly confused.“What did you tell whom on your first date?”
“I told Jimmy that I was a shifter,” Ben explained.“Apparently, he was a hunter.”
Peter’s eyes widened.“Seriously?”
Taylor grabbed something from the box he’d carried upstairs.“These are Jimmy’s journals.We have names, locations, and a bunch of other stuff.I don’t know if he ever mentions the people he was working with, but he certainly kept records of the people he hunted.”
“If he was a hunter, it would make sense for him to have vanished,” Tony pointed out.“It would be easy for something to happen to him on a hunt.”
“So he’s really dead?”Ben asked.
“Considering what I know of hunters, I think there’s a good chance that he is.They view being wounded during a hunt as a sign of weakness.They don’t take care of each other, even when they belong to the same biological family.They don’t think anything of leaving their wounded behind.”
