She frowned, shocked and not quite sure she could believe him. But as he held her stare, she saw deep shadows in his cold silver eyes. She saw the same haunted, bleak abyss that she still glimpsed in Asher’s deep blue eyes sometimes.
“I’ll help you get somewhere safe,” he said, his tone too solemn to be a lie, even for a killer like him. “You can come with me right now, Naomi. I promise, you can trust me on this.”
Maybe she could, but she didn’t want what Cain was offering her. Her life was here, and if she needed a safe haven she had Asher.
She shook her head and stood her ground. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m already right where I belong.”
Cain studied her, then exhaled a slow breath. “You’re making a mistake.”
“I don’t run for anyone, not even Slater. Especially not him.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not talking about Slater. I’m talking about Asher.”
That took her aback. Suspicious of this killer now, she hiked up her chin. “You’re going to warn me about him? That doesn’t mean much coming from someone like you.”
“Like me?” Those sharp eyes narrowed on her in question.
“I know what you are. Asher told me. You’re a cold-blooded killer. A trained assassin.”
Cain said nothing, not for a long moment. “I am all of those things, Naomi. I was born a Hunter. But so was he.”
“What?” A frisson of uncertainty crept along her spine now. She knew the term Hunter, if only in broad terms. There had been a madman among the Breed twenty years ago who’d been raising a homegrown army of killers in his hidden labs for decades. All boys, all bred off the same monstrous father using dozens of imprisoned Breedmates. The babies born inside the lab were enslaved from the moment they took their first breath and raised to be killing machines by Dragos until he was finally destroyed by the Order.
Was Cain saying he and Asher had been part of that awful program? If so, why wouldn’t Asher have mentioned it?
“You didn’t know.” He chuckled, but it was a sympathetic sound, one that said he might even pity her. “I’m not surprised that you don’t, considering the fact that he actually seems to care for you. Never would’ve thought a bastard like Asher to be capable of the emotion.”
The bag of money in her arms had been heavy before, but now it was beginning to feel like a lead weight. “Tell me what you know.”
He gave a gruff shake of his head and started to walk past her. “Never mind. It’s not my place.”
“It is now,” she said, taking hold of his shirt sleeve. “Dammit, tell me what you know about Asher.”
“You already know the worst of it just by saying his name.”
“What are you talking about?”
“One of the tenets of the Hunter program was obedience to our master, Dragos. But there were always some who resisted, headstrong boys, cocky teens . . . adult males who refused to be broken. Dragos believed in discipline. He believed in making examples for others to follow or to learn from. And to help him maintain his control he had mind slave servants to monitor us, but he also had enforcers—other Hunters who’d excelled in their training and who could be called on to mete out justice as he deemed fit.”
“What does any of this have to do with Asher?”
After the wracking pain of what she’d already been through today, she was surprised she still had the capacity for more fear or dread. But she did. They were carving a chasm in her as she waited for Cain to tell her the rest of what he knew.
“All of us in the Hunter program wore ultraviolet collars that would detonate if we tried to run or if we fought back against our training. Or if we gave Dragos any reason to want us gone. There was one enforcer he relied on the most. One Hunter within the program who had no qualms about pushing the detonator that would ignite the ring of UV light around a Hunter’s neck—his brother’s neck—and reduce him to smoldering dust.”
Naomi closed her eyes as a wave of understanding swamped her.“Asher.”
Cain grunted. “There were rumors that he enjoyed his role so much he would touch the condemned in the seconds before he killed them. Just to savor their pain. To feel their terror while some of them begged for mercy in the seconds before he ashed them.”
Naomi felt sick thinking about Asher’s gift to recall—to relive—the worst of someone’s memories with his touch. God, if this were true it would make him an animal. Worse than an animal, a sadistic monster. She didn’t want to think it. Part of her refused to. She’d only known Asher a handful of days, but she could hardly reconcile the man she loved with the cold killer Cain was describing.
“I can’t believe he’s using that name after all this time. He could’ve chosen to call himself anything once he was freed—we all had that choice.” He shrugged. “Hell, maybe it’s a badge of pride for him.”
“Stop.” Naomi shook her head, overwhelmed with everything she’d heard. She had wanted to know, but she couldn’t take any more. Not now. Not after today.
“He hasn’t told you any of this.” It wasn’t a question, because the look of shock on her face must have been enough to remove any of Cain’s doubt. But then he seemed to clue in on something more. “Ah, Jesus. You’re in love with him?”
Part of her wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t force the words out of her arid mouth. Not even when Cain’s steely gaze was looking at her as though she were the biggest fool on Earth.
