“Walk away, Naomi. From Slater. From Asher. From all of this shit. Do it for yourself . . . before you end up regretting it any more than I think you already are.”
CHAPTER 22
More than a dozen calls and twice as many texts and she still hadn’t responded.
Asher paced the house like an animal in a cage, hisglyphswrithing all over his skin and his eyes burning like hot coals in his skull. His fangs filling his mouth, he snarled and cursed as he wore a hard track in the living room rug while Sam stared anxiously from his position nearby.
Asher wasn’t angry at Naomi. All of his self-hatred and futile rage was directed entirely at himself.
He never should have let her go today. They could have found another solution for the boy stranded at the doctor’s office—anything but the one that had sent Naomi back to Las Vegas without him. But even as he thought it, he knew she’d never stand for shirking her responsibility to a child who was counting on her. Hell, even Asher wouldn’t have suggested it.
And none of that would have changed the fact that Michael Carson was dead.
Murdered in cold blood.
He could hardly believe the kind, smiling young man was gone now.
Asher blamed himself for that too.
He should have known Slater wouldn’t take such a big loss at his casino in stride. He would have been scrutinizing Michael with laser focus, sniffing around for any cause he could find to renege on the payment or snatch it back before it was fully out of his grasp.
Killing the winner was certainly not the smartest way to go about that, but if Slater thought he had another way to get his hands on the money . . .
Fuck. Where the hell was she?
He took out his phone again and started to hit her number when he heard the crunch of gravel in the distance. Finally.
It was just after noon with the sun shining high overhead, but he didn’t give a damn. As Ned’s old truck bounced on the narrow dirt lane out front, Asher practically yanked the latch off the screen in his haste to meet Naomi as she pulled to a stop at the house.
The light seared his vision and the rising cloud of yellow dust gathered in his throat like cinders as he raced to the driver’s side of the vehicle and tore open the door.
“Thank God you’re okay. I’ve been going fucking crazy here.”
She didn’t answer. She hardly looked at him as she stepped down from the seat and onto the ground. He gathered her close, ignoring the sharp sting of the sun’s deadly rays on his exposed skin. Relief rocketed through him to be holding her again and seeing for himself that she was still in one piece and not a mark on her.
“Naomi.” He didn’t want to let go, but she was wooden in his embrace. Her breath was shallow, her expression blank. “Baby, are you all right?”
He could feel that she was—his bond to her blood told him she hadn’t been injured. But she was awash with a shell-shocked quiet that shredded him inside. He knew that look. He had seen this kind of numbness before, in other Hunters back when he was a boy. He’d felt it himself after he’d completed his first kill order from Dragos.
A shock and horror so deep it hollowed you out.
Touching her now gave him a jolt as a new and awful memory flowed out of her to take root in his mind and senses. Naomi’s grief and horror as she discovered her friend slumped in his bedroom, his face almost unrecognizable for the awful color and swelling the leather garrote around his neck had caused.
He ran his hands over her face, smoothing her slack ebony hair out of her eyes. “What happened after you left Michael’s? I’ve been calling and texting all this time. Why didn’t you respond? Have you been out there looking for Tyler or the other kids?”
She swallowed and shook her head, her gaze still vacant. How she managed to make it home in her state of shock, he had no idea and he didn’t want to consider.
He glanced past her and saw something odd on the floor of the truck’s cab.
A tourist-style tote bag emblazoned with a glittery Las Vegas slogan. The bag was filled with cash. Lots of it.
What the fuck?
He searched her face, dread snaking up the back of his skull. “Naomi, no. Tell me you didn’t go to see Slater . . .”
But no, he rationalized. If she’d done that, she wouldn’t be alive and standing in front of him now.
She blinked dazedly, and a frown pinched her brow. “You’re burning, Asher. You can’t be out here.”
