Page 3 of Hunted

Rex’s lips tightened, but finally he nodded. “I just hope they bring him back in one piece—and that they take out that woman, whoever she is. She has no idea how many lives she’s fucked up.”

Gunn nodded. “You and me both.”

Chapter 2

Michelangela Connors—formerly an Enforcer, now a bounty hunter—crouched behind a boulder on a rocky slope in the Adirondacks, hidden by the late afternoon shadows.

From where she sat, Mikey could see rows of thickly forested mountains disappearing into misty blue, and catch a glimpse of a small, serene lake. A hawk wheeled overhead, and she could scent small animals hiding nearby.

Her wolf was hungry; she wanted to hunt them. But Michelangela had bigger prey in her sights.

Below her was a half-concealed cave opening. Right now, she was working out how to get Dobe Harrelson out of the cave without killing him.

Not that she’d cry if he were to suddenly expire on her watch. The man was scum—a kidnapper for hire. It was sheer dumb luck that when she’d tracked him down as her latest bounty, it was just in time to prevent him from abducting the seven-year-old daughter of a diplomat.

Of course, she’d never admit to the luck part. Appearing at a potential crime scene like an avenging angel only added to her Bounty Hunter from Hell rep.

At least the kid was safe now. But Harrelson, damn him, had slipped through her fingers. She’d followed him north out of New York City three days ago, until he’d ditched his vehicle in some tiny backwoods town, gone wolf, and headed off into the wilderness of upper New York State.

She’d been tracking him ever since. Not only did she want to get him off the streets and collect the bounty on him, she had a personal agenda on this one. Dobe Harrelson had information she’d been trying to unearth for over a year.

The location of Gunnar Jorgenson.

She didn’t even need to look at Harrelson’s creased, tattered Wanted poster, folded into one of many pockets of her combat vest. She’d memorized it: face, name, stats, aliases. And the most important part: Known Associates.

Gunn Jorgenson was first on the list.

It was over a year since he’d disappeared, breaking every promise he’d made to her, leaving her with nothing but a bullshit note:

Something came up. I won’t be coming back. Don’t look for me. Gunn

A year of Mikey and the best skip tracer and hacker she knew trying and failing to find a single sign of him. Because what the fuck even was that “Don’t look for me” bullshit? All his talk of love and forever got canceled because “something came up,” and the guy really thought Michelangela Connors would just hole up with chick flicks and a tub of ice cream and wallow?

Even the idea of it made her start growling. Gunn Jorgenson had no idea what he was dealing with.

The problem was, although past Gunn was still wanted by both shifter and human law enforcement, present Gunn might as well have vanished into a puff of smoke after he’d left her.

The question was, who had made that happen? And why?

When she’d known him, he’d been a high-end mercenary operative on the trail of a corrupt politician. Or anyway, she’d thought he was.

Now his friends were kidnapping little children.

And what the hell was he doing? Where had he been all this time?

After she punched him in the face six or seven times and got her answers, Gunn Jorgenson was going down, and his friend Dobe was going with him. She just had to catch him.

Michelangela cautiously approached the cave from the side, all her senses alert. She couldn’t hear any movement, but she could smell Harrelson inside. He was still bleeding from where she’d shot him two days ago with a toxin-laced bullet that inhibited healing.

It was supposed to be a short-term thing, to negate a quarry’s shifter healing long enough to bring them down. After they were in custody, the antidote could be administered.

Most shifters would have collapsed before now, but this sucker was tough. Or just stubborn.

Normally she would have admired that.

She scented the air coming from the cave. There were residual scents of other shifter wolves, but nothing remotely recent. And underneath that, the faint tang of gunpowder.

Pressed against the sun-warmed rock, she shut her eyes and sniffed again. Definitely gunpowder. This might be some kind of hideout or supply cache, which meant there could be anything in there. Guns, ammunition—hell, there could be grenades and land mines for all she knew.