Hunted (2 page)

“I’m gonna need that number, boys.”

The redhead’s face wavered with uncertainty. He looked at the gun barrel, then followed it up into Will’s grim face. He cleared his throat. “It’s on my cell phone. In my front pocket.”

“Okay, carefully remove it. You do anything stupid and I won’t hesitate to shoot you.”

The boy gingerly slipped his fingers into his jeans and pulled out the phone, handing it to Will.

“What’s the name?”

“Smith. John Smith.”

Will grinned as he flipped open the phone. “Wow, that’s original.” He found the number and pressed Send.

The kid’s eyes widened in terror. “We weren’t supposed to call him until you were dead.”

“Really? Well, let’s just pretend
someone’s
dead.” Will pressed the speaker button, the sound of ringing filling the air. The ringing stopped.

“Crescent Dry Cleaning…. Hello… Hello?”

Will flipped the phone shut. “You boys’ve been played.” He wasn’t surprised. Whoever hired them never expected them to succeed. They were meant to be an annoyance. “But now, I have a dilemma. What am I going to do with you?” Will aimed his gun at the teen with the bloody nose.

Both boys looked frightened now. They had good reason to be. Will had just wasted over a week in goddamned fucking Arizona and he was pissed as hell.

“Lucky for you, I’m feeling a bit generous today. It’s hot outside and that raging fire over there," Will jerked the gun barrel in the direction of the house. "is making me hotter. But you boys look hot, too. I suggest you take off your clothes.”

They stared, their gaping mouths showing their confusion.

Will waved his gun. “You heard right. Start stripping.”

They lifted the hems of their shirts, eyeing Will warily.

"You boys are taking too long. I’m gettin’ hotter and that means I’m gettin’ crankier. This ain’t a striptease. Hurry it up." He raised the butt of his shotgun higher.

They hurried to remove the rest of their clothes until they were standing in their underwear.

Will raised an eyebrow at Ponyboy. “Huh. Tweety Bird boxers. Funny, I pictured you more as a Transformers guy.” He looked at the redhead and gave him a menacing stare. “The question is: how generous am I feeling right now? Make you strip naked or leave you in your tighty-whities?”

Ponyboy glared, but the other kid trembled.

“You know, I think being found wearing
that
underwear could actually be more embarrassing than being found naked. I’ll let you keep them. Now where’s the keys to your car?”

Ponyboy’s eyes widened in horror. Obviously, it was his. Will couldn’t help chuckling as he picked up the boys’ jeans, and dug the keys out of the pocket. With a quick toss, the jeans flew into the kid’s chest. The boy scrambled to keep from dropping them.

The corners of Will’s mouth lifted in an evil grin. “Both of you boys go ahead and pick up your clothes.”

They scooped up their clothing, probably hoping Will had changed his mind. Will almost felt guilty over what he was about to do.

“Now walk over to that giant bonfire and throw them in the front door.” Flames burst from the opening.

Ponyboy gripped his clothing tighter. “But my cell phone ‘s in there…”

“You won’t be making any phone calls. Something tells me they don’t make pizza deliveries out here anyway. Now move.”

After they threw the clothing into the fire, Will picked up their guns and slung the straps over his shoulder.

“Either of you know anything about cars?” Will asked.

The redhead nodded. “Yeah.”

Ponyboy shoved his arm. “Why’d you tell—”

Will aimed the gun three feet from the boy’s feet and pulled the trigger.

The kid’s feet jumped off the ground and his face paled.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you it wasn’t polite to shove your friends?" He jerked the gun toward the red-head. “You know where the distributor cap is?”

The redhead nodded again, his shoulders shaking from his suppressed sobs.

Will waved the barrel tip to his car. “Good, the one in this car pops right out. Take it out and hand it over.”

The boy lifted the hood and pried off the cap, then he held it out to Will.

“Why, thank you,” Will said as he took the part and walked sideways to the burning house, keeping the gun trained on the kids. He tossed the distributor cap into the fire. “Let’s take a walk to the back of the house, boys.”

He walked backward, with the teens trailing behind. The redhead openly sobbed and Ponyboy’s steps seemed to be getting shorter.

“We’re sorry, mister. We weren’t really gonna kill you,” the red-head pleaded.

“A little late for that now, don’t you think?” Will stopped in front of the garage and opened the door, then the driver’s door of the car.

The teens stood in front of the garage, their breaths coming in short pants.

“You boys stand right there until I drive off the property. If I see one of you even
think
about twitching your nose, I’ll shoot you. Got it?”

The redhead nodded in short choppy bursts, but Ponyboy’s attitude erupted. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

This kid was starting to piss him off. “I, you idiotic fool, am the man with the gun pointed right at you. Rule number one of playing with the big boys: don’t piss off the man with the gun.” To prove his point, Will shot the ground near the boy’s feet.

Ponyboy let out yelps of fear as he jumped around.

It gave Will momentary satisfaction, knowing he’d knocked the idiot down a couple of pegs. “Next time won’t be a warning.”

Will climbed in the car, relieved to feel the blast of semi-cool air from the air vents. He rolled down the driver’s window and pointed the gun at the boys as he rolled out of the garage.

“Are you just going to leave us here?” Ponyboy asked in a whine.

“Weren’t you just about to
kill
me?”

He clamped his mouth tight.

“Besides, you just sent the world’s largest smoke signal. Someone’s gonna come out to investigate. But do try to be careful and not get sunburned.” Will winked and drove off, watching them in the rearview mirror.

Chapter Two

Banter from a talk show on the television filled the stuffy motel room, but Emma paid no attention. She hadn’t heard anything from Will in several hours and her stomach balled in nervous excitement. He had warned her not to get her hopes up, but how could she not? Desperation to get her son back consumed her every waking moment since he’d been taken over two weeks ago. She was so close now.

A rap on the door startled her from her thoughts and she jumped upright off the bed, her heart racing. She reached for the handgun that lay next to her, the cold handle giving her a small amount of confidence. Will had moved them every couple of days, trying to stay a step ahead of the two groups after them. So far, no one had found them, but they’d been at this hotel for several days. Long enough for their luck to run out. The rap turned into a familiar pattern and she lowered her gun, releasing her breath.
Will
.

When Will’s face filled the peephole view, her shaky fingers fumbled with the chain and she swung the door open. His face told Emma what she feared before he even spoke.

Her eyes sank closed.

“Emma, I’m so sorry.” He shut the door behind him and wrapped his arms around her.

She sucked in a ragged breath. “Had he been there?”

“I don’t know. I think he might have been, but they must have moved him right after we escaped. I only found a couple of teenagers. They’d been waiting for me for about a week and a half, which coincides with right about the time Alex told us where Jake was.”

Emma looked into Will’s face. “What do you mean they were waiting for you? Why would they be there if Jake wasn’t there?”

He grimaced before he answered, as though anticipating her reaction. “They knew I was coming and were hired to kill me.”

Emma’s shoulders jerked with her sharp intake of air.

“Emma, I was never in any danger. They were kids and had no idea what they were doing. The person who hired them probably thought I would kill them and be none the wiser.”

Her face hardened. “Did you kill them?”

“No, even though they planned on killing me.” A slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “But I left them a little overexposed, so hopefully they learned a valuable lesson.”

“Now what? What do we do next?”

Will pressed his lips into a tight line. “Honestly, Emma, I don’t know. This was my last lead.”

Her stomach dropped. “You’re not giving up, are you?”

“No, but I’m not sure where to go. Perhaps we need to take a different tack.”

“What does that mean?”

“Instead of focusing on finding Jake, maybe we should focus on finding the people who took him.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Not exactly.” Will walked over to the window and looked through the crack in the curtains. “I’ve been chasing down leads involving Jake, a very narrow net. I need to widen it to include the Cavallo, but it’s going to mean doing some backtracking.” He turned back to face her. “It means leaving Arizona.”

“What?” Emma’s voice rose in panic. She couldn’t leave Arizona without Jake.

“Emma, he’s not here. They moved him and I’m sure they moved him far away.” Worry lines crinkled Will’s forehead. “You look tired and need to sit down. You’ve been standing on your leg too long. In fact, you shouldn’t even be out of bed.”

“Will, I’m fine. I’m not that tired and it doesn’t hurt that much,” she protested as he led her to the edge of the mattress.

He sat beside her and took her hand. “I know how stubborn you are. You’re not going to admit that you’re tired, especially when it has something to do with Jake. But Emma, you were shot less than two weeks ago and you had a nasty infection that almost killed you. Twice.”

She didn’t need any reminder that her infection was why he took her to the Vinco Potentia compound, worried that she’d die without medical care. It was the reason he planned to leave her there as their “guest.” Thankfully, he’d come to his senses and taken her with him when he escaped, but the antibiotic he had stolen ran out and the infection came back, leaving her sicker than the first time.

“Emma, you just can’t bounce back from something like that. If you’re not careful, you’ll have a setback. You just have to accept that it’s going to take a while to recover. In fact, I didn’t change your bandage yesterday. Let me check it.”

He reached for the hem of her dress and Emma pushed his hand away in frustration. “Will, I changed it myself.”

“I know but let me look anyway.”

She looked up and saw the fear lurking in his eyes. She may have been semi-unconscious most of the previous week, but there was no mistaking the love and devotion he showed her while her fever raged. He rarely left her side. Plus, she knew he still blamed himself for her getting shot in the first place. A guilt that still plagued him no matter how many times she insisted it shouldn’t. She lightly kissed him on the lips. “Okay.” Lifting the hem of her dress, she exposed the thick bandage taped to her leg.

“Has it been burning? How’s your pain?” Will asked as he gently pulled off the gauze to reveal the wound. In two days, the skin had almost entirely filled in the hole left from the entry wound, leaving a pink dimple in her thigh.

Will’s hand froze and he looked up, his eyes wide. “Emma, your leg shouldn’t look like that for another month or more. How could it heal this quickly?”

“I don’t know. I only know it itches like
crazy
.” Just thinking about it made it itchier and she scratched the skin around the now-filled hole.

“This isn’t normal. Do you always recover from injuries faster than most people?”

What was he talking about?
Jake was the one with special powers. “I don’t know, Will. I haven’t really gotten hurt much.”

Will snorted. “Really? After spending the last month with you I would’ve guessed otherwise.”

She rolled her eyes but understood what he meant. Since she met him she’d fallen off a cliff and gotten a concussion, almost drowned in a creek, become violently nauseated when her enemies became closer in proximity, and had been shot. All in all, the month pretty much sucked.

Her hand stopped in mid-scratch. “Will, how long would it take to recover from a concussion?”

He looked confused then his face tightened. “Several days, maybe a week.”

“Do you think I had a concussion after my fall?”

He nodded, and rubbed his chin. “Yeah, I don’t see how you didn’t. You lost consciousness after you hit your head on that rock. And then again later.” He looked into her eyes and she knew he was thinking what she was.

She’d completely recovered from her concussion within a day.

He reached for her leg, tracing the circumference of the wound lightly with his finger. The gesture gave her chills but also set off a new itch attack. She scratched with a vengeance.

“Emma, this isn’t normal.”

What did it matter how quickly she healed? It wouldn’t help get Jake back and they weren’t any closer than when they started. But she knew Will well enough to know he wouldn’t let it drop until he was satisfied with her answers. “Maybe I have healed more quickly in the past, but not like this.”