“Hope.” Liam’s low tone came over the line. “I’m thinking maybe it was more than a hunch, considering you got your source to toss tracking dust on this guy.”
She winced. “You know I’m always prepared.”
Triple sighs came through the line, along with a small chuckle from Libby.
Hope winced. “Honestly, I didn’t think we’d actually find him here.” She’d been chasing this guy all over the world for the last two years. She leaned forward. “Wait a minute, he’s gone south.” There was no tunnel to the south. It looked as if his body was moving through solid rock. “Twenty feet ahead of you, Derrick and Libs. He somehow turned left.” Liam and Collin approached from the other direction. “Ten feet ahead of you, guys, there’s a doorway. There’s a passage or something.”
“We don’t see it,” Derrick said. The sound of tapping and pounding came over the line.
“It’s solid brick,” Collin muttered.
Panic rose in Hope. “It’s not. I can see him moving.” She’d made it her mission to catch the man she’d dubbed the Interloper, and she was the best strategic planner in her generation. She didn’t know how and she didn’t know why, but she felt like her first big test was to catch this guy. “There’s got to be a way in. Derrick, if you have to use fire, do it.”
“Copy that. Forming now,” Derrick said calmly.
Good. “Throw it at the brick. I’m telling you, there’s some sort of tunnel in there.” As Hope watched, her quarry climbed up and emerged out onto the street. She flipped on an external camera feed. Maybe she could actually see him instead of just following him as a freaking blue dot. “Damn it, he’s exited the tunnel in the Christmas market.” She yanked a bulletproof vest over her head and reached for her weapon.
“Don’t do it,” Collin snarled. “Hope, you’re not covered. You need to stay there.”
“We’re losing him,” she said, cocking her gun and then yanking a jacket over her vest and weapon. She hurried toward the door.
Something blasted over the line. “We’ll find the tunnel,” Derrick said.
“We’re headed back and will rendezvous with you,” Collin said, his tone grim.
Hope snatched a combat knife off the weapons table and shoved it into her boot, pulling her phone free to watch the blue dot. “He’s right below me.”
“Hope Kayrs-Kyllwood,” Derrick snapped. “Do not even think of leaving that control room.”
She unlocked the doors with their multiple bolts and dashed into the hallway, running full bore down the steps out into the Christmas market. Tourists milled around, looking at the colorful booths with cups of glühwein in their hands, chatting happily. She kept her phone in her hand and followed the trail of the enemy through the crowd, dodging out of the way of an elderly man moving fragile Christmas ornaments on a rickety cart.
“Hope, where are you?” Liam called. “We’re headed back out. We’ll be there in about three minutes, tops. Do not engage this guy on your own.”
Ignoring his command, she ran down an alleyway, turning, headed toward one of the many nearby buildings with their curved copper roofs.
The Interloper was quick, but she saw a way to cut him off.
“He’s moving toward the east corner of the Albrecht-Durer-Haus in about thirty seconds,” she said. “If anybody is near, green light granted on taking him down.” Or she would do it. She ran, watching the tracking device. He was so close. Finally.
Her quarry turned suddenly around a booth and cut through another alley. She dropped into a full run, going as fast as she could, avoiding tourists and wine on her way. Her heart rate sped up. He turned down a blind corner where the town had just erected several new Christmas market tents that weren’t normally there. They completely blocked the way.
She had him now.
The crowd pressed around her, and she searched frantically for a glimpse of him before glancing down at her phone. Somehow he’d managed to get around one of the booths. She followed, smiled at a man who tried to sell her a pretzel, and ducked behind the booth and down another alley.
The snowy cobblestones fought her boots and kept her slightly off-balance, and soon the sound of the crowd disappeared. She hissed an updated location for her team. Her prey swiftly took another corner, fast. A quick look at the map on her phone confirmed she could intercept him. She veered the other direction and then saw him slip behind a brick building where there was no escape. They were alone in the alley. She slid to a halt on the rough, snow-covered cobblestones.
“Stop,” she yelled, pulling out her weapon and instantly firing green lasers—the ones that harmed immortals—into the brick building next to him. He paused, his back to her. She moved cautiously toward him, speaking to her team. “I’ve got him. Get here fast.”
He was bigger than she expected for somebody who moved so quickly and gracefully. He still faced away from her, at least six and a half feet tall, with solid muscle and a broad back—short for a Kurjan but unusually broad for one as well. He’d dressed in black cargo pants and a dark sweatshirt and wasn’t even breathing heavily after his run.
A hat covered his head. Yet there was something about him. “Turn around,” she ordered, her voice trembling just a little. She couldn’t believe she’d caught him.
Slowly, he put his hands down at his sides.
“I will shoot you,” she said, meaning every word.
Slowly he turned around, and she took a step back. Her vision filled with silvery-blue eyes, black hair, and a roughly chiseled face.
Her breath stopped. The entire world tilted. “Paxton?”
“Hi, Hope.” He looked behind her, his gaze scouting the area.
She set her stance as memories assailed her. Pax playing with a stuffed dragon when they were toddlers. Him defending her to a bully. His lips lowering to hers for her first soft kiss. Years later, that same mouth taking hers after a motorcycle ride—not so softly. She still wore the silver ring he’d given her as a child and the pink quartz necklace he’d bought for her as a teenager. For luck.
He edged toward the side. Paxton was supposed to be a scientist working with his uncle. But what exactly had he been doing? Her best friend was a traitor.
The betrayal wasn’t sharp; it didn’t cut like a knife. It was the full swing of a baseball bat, right to the center of her heart, smashing the silly organ into useless bits. “It’s you.”
His body bunched to attack. “Yeah.”
Without hesitating, she fired three times, hitting center mass.
Chapter Four
He couldn’t believe she’d fucking shot him. Paxton Phoenix sat on his ass on the frozen cobblestones, his back to a brick building as fury slid through his veins. Oh, she hadn’t damaged his heart, and she could have. He’d practiced shooting with her enough to know that she could have easily put him in the hospital for a month.
Instead, blood poured out of his left shoulder, the right side of his rib cage, and his gut. Then she’d nailed him in the left thigh, forcing him to go down. He met her furious glare squarely. He’d always known that someday it would come down to this. Oh, he hadn’t expected to get shot, but he’d been certain that sooner or later he’d see this stark betrayal in her indigo-blue eyes.