Page 21 of Hunted

The way he looked at her when he didn’t know what the fuck to do with her, but wanted her anyway.

Just… Gunn.

Part of her heart—the weak, traitorous part—still leapt at the sight of him. No matter what he’d done, no matter how much of a criminal he was, no matter how badly he’d wrecked her.

But she wasn’t going to give in. She was better than that—better than a bullshit pretend bond with a man who couldn’t be trusted.

She was Michelangela Conners, the most stubborn wolf in existence, the product of two generations of warriors and survivors, and she still had some tricks up her sleeve. Or under her skin, to be exact.

She made a fist with her right hand and rubbed the star-shaped tattoo that spread across the lowest joint of her first two fingers, right above her knuckles. There were things about her that weren’t listed on her resume, and this was one.

She went to the door of her room and knelt in front of it, examining the electronic lock, finding the place on its surface closest to where the wiring came through. Then she made a fist once more and pressed her tattoo against the most vulnerable point.

It flared to life, creating an electric charge that short-circuited the lock. “Kaboom,” she murmured, like the asshole who’d knocked her out.

Only this time she intended to get the last laugh.

Now she just had to hope that her breach of the system hadn’t set off any alarms. And that no one had yet been assigned to monitoring the security cam in her cell.

First thing: get her clothes and equipment back. There were two other doors along the hallway, and the first one she came to was an office. Her clothes and gear were all there, scattered across the desk and spilling onto the floor, like Gunn had thrown them down in frustration. Psych.

She dressed quickly, and even though her clothes were still nasty and smelly, she felt infinitely better with something between her and the outside world. She checked the lower left pocket in her combat vest—the flat box that held her illegal drugs was still attached to the backing inside it. It matched the vest fabric and was also made by dragons, with a spell on it to make people look right past it during a search.

Nice job, my Draken friends.

She repacked the combat vest double-time. Noting she was low on ammo, she raided Gunn’s weapons cabinet. It wasn’t even locked.

She guessed that since everyone here walked around armed, he saw no point in locking it, but it was still sloppy.

How much time did she have? No one had come bursting in yet and no alarms had sounded, so she risked a short search of his desk. There were some files on current jobs, and she slid them into the large flat zipper pocket on the inside of the back of her combat vest, made just for that.

There was also a not-very-well-concealed secret drawer. It held the usual—cash, fake IDs. Gunn’s real ID, too—assuming the name she knew was his real one.

And underneath that, a photo, face-down.

She turned it over, and almost lost her breath. It was her.

She didn’t even know when it was taken, or who had taken it. She was looking over her shoulder, as if someone had called her name as she was walking away, and she was laughing.

She couldn’t remember when she’d last laughed like that.

Her first instinct was to tear it up. Gunn of all people didn’t deserve to have this memory. But somehow she couldn’t—it would be like saying that woman was gone for good.

And she couldn’t stand that thought.

She dropped it and slammed the drawer shut, forcing herself to focus.

This place was a bunker. It would withstand a siege—but sieges eventually worked because people ran out of supplies and starved. Gunn wouldn’t be stupid enough not to have a secret exit.

And it would lead out of his office, where the weapons were.

It couldn’t be that hard to find.

Shrugging on her vest, she found herself hesitating. Dobe Harrelson. When she’d shot him, she’d never intended to let him die. He’d been her key to Gunn—a means to an end.

Yeah, okay, he was a criminal, but not a killer as far as she knew. There were no murders on his Wanted poster. Once she was free and could alert the authorities, the kidnapping could be prevented regardless of the intel he carried.

Let him die, her wolf said.