Page 42 of Gunnar

He leans forward until his mouth is inches from mine and his faintly, coffee-scented breath blows over my lips.

“Gun,” Jagger calls from the doorway, sounding apologetic but insistent as he interrupts. “We’ve got a little something we need you to help with in the den. Now.”

Gunnar stills, his forehead resting against mine. He lifts his hand and cups my jaw. “Fuck…” he breathes, low enough that only I can hear. He sits back, his hand lingering and thumb dragging lightly over my lower lip. “I have to go.”

“I know,” I whisper, though I want to beg him to stay and ignore whatever crisis has Jagger looking harried.

He leans back into me, pressing a kiss to my forehead and the tip of my nose, before finally—softly, and far too briefly—my lips. It’s chaste and restrained, but I can feel the tension in his frame from the effort it takes to hold himself back. “I’ll come find you when we’re done.”

I follow Jagger down the hallway, each step taking me farther from her and deeper into what I can only assume is a reality I don’t want to face. Jagger walks fast, faster than his usual loose-limbed saunter, and the set of his shoulders—tense and rigid—sends a shard of ice through my gut.

“Jagger,” I call, my voice low to keep Devyn from hearing my concern. “What the hell is going on?”

He doesn’t look back. “Better you see it, Gun. Better you just see it.”

When we reach the den, the door is already open. I step inside and stop short, the atmosphere in the room hitting me like a physical blow. Hawk sits at the makeshift conference table, his massive frame hunched, his hands steepled beneath his chin with his eyes fixed on the laptop. Damon stands beside him, his usually impassive face drawn tight, a darkness churning in his eyes that I’ve only seen on the worst days in the field.

“What’s going on?” I ask again, my hands finding the doorframe for stability.

Hawk looks up. His eyes meet mine, and the concern in their depths makes my stomach clench. “Shut the door,” he instructs, his voice gravelly, stripped of its usual calmness.

I push the door closed behind me, and the room suddenly feels smaller, like the walls are closing in.

“Mattis is on comms,” Damon shares, taking a seat and tapping his finger on the laptop between him and Hawk. “He’s got something. Something bad.”

As our resident tech guru—or ethically ambiguous hacker—Mattis has an innate ability to find secrets so deep, you’d think they were buried. He’s been working this case since Abby assigned it to us, digging for anything that could lead us to the identity of Devyn’s stalker. “Gunnar?” His voice comes through the speaker. “You there?”

“I’m here.” I answer, crossing the room and pulling out a chair. “Talk to me. What did you find?”

“I was digging…” Mattis pauses for a moment, his voice careful and measured when he continues, “In some questionable places. Places I shouldn’t have been, maybe—definitely. But I had this gut feeling I couldn’t shake. It was just a hunch⁠—”

“Spit it out,” I growl, impatience coiling tight in my gut. I don’t have time for his cryptic bullshit. “Just tell me what you found.”

I can hear Mattis breathing through the speaker, and I can almost see him in whatever dark room he’s holed up in, surrounded by monitors and the glow of code. “I was on the dark web,” he shares finally. “And I found a site. A very specific and questionable site.

“Everything on the dark web is fucking questionable,” I snap, leaning forward, my hands flat against the table. “That’s the point of the dark web, Mattis. Get to the part that matters.”

“This is fucking disturbing.”

“It’s about Devyn.” Damon says what Mattis is struggling to. The expression on his face is solemn, so grave my blood runs cold. My heart slams against my ribs, a violent percussion that deafens the rest of the room. The air leaves my lungs in a rush, and I stare at Damon, waiting for him to say more.

“Show me,” I rasp, my voice sounding like it belongs to someone else.

Hesitantly, Damon turns the laptop toward me, and my heart thumps into my chest wall with such force, it leaps into my throat as the blood whooshes through my ears. The screen glows with a sickly light, illuminating a web page that looks innocuous at first—a black background, white text, and layout that could be any blog or forum. But as my eyes skim the content, the blood drains from my face, replaced by a rage so pure it burns.

It’s a shrine to Devyn. The header image is a photograph of her: a candid, taken from a distance without her knowledge. She’s walking down a street I don’t recognize, wearing a sundress, her hair catching the sunlight, and head turned slightly, as if she’s laughing at something just out of frame. She looks alive and beautiful. Below the header, the page scrolls endlessly, a nightmare gallery that my brain struggles to process

I run my fingers over the trackpad, weeding through photo after photo. Candid shots taken from windows, cars, and from shadows. Devyn at a coffee shop, head bent over a book. Devyn in workout clothes, leaving a gym. Devyn sleeping—fucking sleeping—in what looks like a hotel room, the angle suggesting the photographer was a few feet from her bed instead of the other side of the window.

The further I scroll, the worse it gets. It’s like watching the site’s owner decompensate before my eyes. The images shift from candid to manipulated, photoshopped horrors that make my stomach lurch. Devyn’s face edited onto bodies that are bruised, bleeding, and clearly mid-torture. Devyn with eyes glazed and lifeless, staged in positions that suggest violation, abuse, and death. Images of her throat slit, wrists opened, her body arranged like a doll in scenes of explicit, graphic violence. Snuff fantasies that make my skin crawl.

There’s a section titled The Collection that has exhibits photographed like museum pieces—hair ties, coffee cups, a ring—all labeled with dates and locations where they were acquired.

Links lead to elaborately written prose so grotesquely detailed I’m forced to swallow the bile rising in my throat. I scroll faster, disgusted but unable to look away. The author—or more correctly, fucking psychopath—isn’t just writing about his fantasies to own her in the most obscene ways. This is a fucking plan.

My vision floods with crimson rage that makes my hands shake and my teeth grind together until my jaw aches. The room disappears around me, all of it fades beneath the tidal wave of fury that crashes over me. I want to kill someone. I want to tear the internet apart with my bare hands, find this sick fuck, and make him suffer in ways that would make these images look like fucking mercy.

“Gunnar.” Hawk’s voice cuts through my murderous haze. “Gunnar, look at me.”