He glanced past her and saw something odd on the floor of the truck’s cab.
A tourist-style tote bag emblazoned with a glittery Las Vegas slogan. The bag was filled with cash. Lots of it.
What the fuck?
He searched her face, dread snaking up the back of his skull. “Naomi, no. Tell me you didn’t go to see Slater . . .”
But no, he rationalized. If she’d done that, she wouldn’t be alive and standing in front of him now.
She blinked dazedly, and a frown pinched her brow. “You’re burning, Asher. You can’t be out here.”
He didn’t even feel the pain of the angry red patches sizzling on his bare forearms and face. All of his focus, all of his concern, was on her. “Let’s go inside.”
Grabbing the tote in one hand and her in the other, he shut the truck’s door and brought Naomi into the house. Sam immediately trotted over, showering her with affection she barely seemed to notice.
“Come on,” Asher said, leading her into the living room and sitting her down on the sofa.
He put the tote bag on the floor then sat beside her. When her eyes met his again, he felt a withdrawal from her that had nothing to do with Michael or her ordeal today.
Something else was wrong here. If her wounded eyes hadn’t told him so, the stab of anguish that pierced him through the bond left no doubt.
“Talk to me, Naomi. Tell me where you’ve been.” He looked back at the tote full of large denomination bills and cursed under his breath. There had to be tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into that bag. “What are you doing with all of that money?”
“I was leaving Michael’s house after I talked with the police,” she murmured, her voice sounding rusty and unused. “I got a call. Michael’s number. Only it wasn’t Michael.”
“Slater.” Asher practically spat the name.
“He told me he wants all of his money back. Not just the money Michael and I took the other night. All of it. Everything I’ve ever stolen from him.”
Asher recalled the steep figure Cain had tossed around. “You don’t have that kind of money in that bag,” he said, dread coiling inside him when he realized where this conversation was going. “Tell me you didn’t plan on doing what Slater asked. You aren’t planning to go bring him that money, are you?”
“I’m not planning to,” she murmured. “I already did. Tried to, that is.”
He vaulted to his feet on a savage curse. “Holy fuck. What do you mean, you tried?”
She gazed up at him, a bleakness in her expression. “I ran into someone you know. I was on my way to find Slater at Moda and Cain was on his way out. Quitting and leaving town, according to him.”
Asher would consider that surprising newsflash later. Right now, the only important detail was the fact that Naomi had evidently come face to face with the former Hunter.
“What else did he have to say?”
“A lot of things, Asher. Mainly what he said was that I needed to be wary of you.” She stared at him, her soft sherry-colored eyes leaving him nowhere to hide. “He told me about your past. About the fact that you were part of the Hunter program, all of it. He warned me that I should leave Las Vegas and you and never look back.”
His chest felt as though it were being cracked open from the inside. He didn’t need to know the specifics of whatever else Cain had told her. The details didn’t matter. Everything between them had changed because of her conversation with the other Hunter.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to learn it from someone else, Asher?”
He took a step away from her, unable to hold her accusing expression. “I didn’t want you to know.”
She exhaled sharply. “I guess that’s understandable. Hard to sell me on the fact that only you can protect me from a man like Slater, or even Cain, when it turns out you’re more dangerous than either one of them. Is that it? Don’t you think I deserved to know?”
“In the beginning, I saw no reason to tell you. And then . . . it wasn’t long before I hoped you’d never find out.”
She stood up on slightly shaky legs, then turned to head out of the room. Asher told himself he should let her go. She was right. He was worse than Slater and Cain combined. The things he’d done. The deaths he’d dealt at Dragos’s command. Scores of them, each one seared into his memory in total, vivid detail.
If Naomi left after learning all of that, he could blame no one but himself.
But he wasn’t ready to let her go.
God, he would never be ready for that.
Moving faster than her eyes could track him, he blocked her path. “You do deserve to know. As much as I wish you’d never find out all the things I’ve done, I owe you the truth. Even if it does make you leave me and never look back.”
“Is it true? Were you not only part of that awful program, but its executioner too? Did you really kill little boys and men—your brothers—for Dragos?” Her questions came rapid fire and hitching, a barrage of ugly truths. “Asher, my God.” Her breath caught sharply as her stark gaze studied him. “Did you really enjoy it so much that you used your gift to revel in their pain?”
So, Cain hadn’t spared a detail about his past. That came as no surprise. His Hunter brethren had plenty of reason to despise him, but Cain had one thing wrong.
“No. I didn’t revel in my duty. I hated every second of it. But I did it because I wanted to survive . . . and because if I didn’t carry out Dragos’s orders, someone else would. Or he would do it himself, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, least of all my brothers.”
He saw her struggling to accept what she was hearing from him. He felt her recoil emotionally through their bond. But she didn’t turn away from him. She wasn’t trying to leave and never look back. Not yet, anyway.
“Cain said you made a point of touching the ones you—” She broke off, briefly closing her eyes. “He said that before you executed another Hunter, you used your Breed ability to feel their fear as they begged you for their lives. He said you wanted to feel their agony before you killed them.”
Asher slowly nodded. “That much is true, yes.”
“Oh, my God.” Revulsion seeped through their connection, oily and bitter. “Oh, shit. I didn’t want to believe him . . .”
She was repulsed by his admission, he could see it in her stricken expression as much as he felt it in her blood. She drew back from him, but Asher caught her around her nape.
“It’s true that I laid my hand on every Hunter I had to execute. I did want to feel their terror and their anguish.” He spoke over her strangled moan, forcing her to hold his gaze as he bared the blackest pieces of his soul. “I did it, Naomi, because I never wanted to forget them. I wanted to remember every face, every pair of fearful or defiant eyes that fixed on me as the last thing they saw. I never wanted to let myself forget the brothers I killed in order that I could keep living. That was my penance, to never forget.”
She relaxed in his loose grasp, only the slightest bit. Her body sagged with the weight of her heavy exhalation. When she spoke, her voice was almost too soft to be heard, her eyes turning tender on him, even pitying. “How many, Asher?”
He shook his head. “Too many. I was selfish, even then. And without honor. If I hadn’t carried out Dragos’s edicts I would’ve been the one to die. I made certain that when I delivered death it was swift, even when Dragos called for suffering.”
“I can’t imagine how terrible your life was,” she murmured. “All of the Hunters’ lives.”
No, she couldn’t. He wished no one could be able to imagine that kind of brutal, bleak existence. But he and Cain weren’t the only Hunters walking the Earth with memories of those years, and sins to be reconciled.
There were others. Scythe in Italy now, along with Trygg, another former Hunter serving the Order over there.
Countless more scattered to each corner of the globe in the two decades since the program, and Dragos, were destroyed.
Asher smoothed the pad of his thum
b over Naomi’s slackened lips. “As awful as my life was back then, I didn’t want to die. For a long time, I didn’t know why it was important to me to keep going, to keep living.” He stroked her cheek. “Now I know what I waiting for.”
She wept softly, but kept her arms down at her sides, refusing to touch him.
“It was unfair of me to drink from you before you knew who I was . . . what I’ve done. I don’t deserve your bond, and I know I won’t ever be worthy of it. I’ll never be worthy of your love, if I haven’t already lost that.” He held her face tenderly in his palms and searched her bereft, hurting gaze. “I love you, Naomi. All I want is a future with you at my side, but I don’t know if you can ever look at me the same way as you did before.”
“No, I can’t,” she admitted softly. “But I can’t blame you, either. I won’t blame you for doing what you’d been born and trained to do, Asher. What hurts the most is that you didn’t give me the chance. You didn’t trust me enough to be honest about your past and how it shamed you. Instead I had to learn it from someone else. I’ve never felt like a bigger fool.”
“I know,” he muttered, his own self-loathing like acid in his throat. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for so much where you’re concerned.”
She eased out of his reach, her voice constricted. “It doesn’t matter right now. Michael’s dead, Asher. Because of me, my best friend is dead. And Tyler and the other kids could be anywhere in the city now with no place to go.”
“We’ll figure that out,” he vowed. “And as soon as the sun goes down, I’ll take care of Leo Slater.”
“No.” She shook her head, wearier than he’d ever seen her. “He’s taken everything he can from me now. I’m finished fighting him. He won. He doesn’t matter anymore, only those kids do.”
She stepped away from him, bringing her arms across herself. Then she turned and headed down the hall to the master bedroom and closed the door, quietly shutting Asher out.
He stood there, knowing she wouldn’t want him to follow. Not this time.
He felt her sorrow in his veins as she broke down in private behind the closed door and mourned her friend alone.
CHAPTER 23
A quiet knock sounded on the door. Naomi had dozed off on the bed at some point, exhaustion and grief finally dragging her down into a deep sleep. She roused now, feeling both rested and yet utterly drained.
“Come in.”
Ironic to be granting Asher permission to enter when it was his bedroom, his house—his life—that she had intruded upon with all of her problems.
She sat up on the bed as the door swung open and he stepped inside accompanied by Sam, whose entire body wiggled in excitement as he trotted up to her looking as though he hadn’t seen her for a week.
“Hey, sweet boy,” she said, unable to resist ruffling his neck and stroking his floppy ears. Tongue lolling, he danced and whined in front of her, his blissful ignorance of the day’s many traumas somehow comforting to her now.
“How are you doing?” Asher asked, watching her pet and scratch the happy hound. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I was awake when you knocked. What time is it?”
“Just after five.”
She blinked, stunned. “You let me sleep all afternoon?”
Asher’s smile was hesitant. “You needed the rest.”
She had needed it, if only to escape the grief that was still clawing at her over losing Michael. But sleep was only temporary relief. Sooner or later, she had to wake up.
Just like sooner or later, she would have to deal with all of the arrangements and adjustments that would now need to be considered not only for her friend but for the kids who’d just lost their only port in a storm.
And then there was Asher and her.
Eventually, they would have to decide what things might look like for them moving forward from today too. Whether that meant together or on their own, she wasn’t ready to contemplate.
His brow was knit as he looked at her from where he stood, just inside the room. “I thought you might be hungry, so I made you something to eat.”
She didn’t know if she was hungry or not, but the fact that he had thought to take care of her warmed her when all she’d felt before was aching cold. “Thank you.”
She couldn’t look at him now the same way she had before. Cain’s revelation, and Asher’s own confession afterward, had cast him in a different light. As a man Asher was now less of a mystery than when she first met him, but even more complicated than she ever could have imagined.
Her feelings for him were complicated too.
Her love hadn’t dimmed, not even after Cain had given her more than enough reason to doubt Asher. To despise him, even. But she couldn’t stop loving him, not even before she knew the full truth from Asher himself.
Asher, she thought, her heart aching for everything he had endured.
As for his name, the epithet he’d kept all this time, she understood now that it wasn’t a badge of pride as Cain had assumed. Asher had kept his derogatory name for the same reason he kept the memories of all the Hunters he’d been forced to execute—as yet another reminder of his remorse, his penance.
Cain had totally misunderstood Asher.
So had Naomi, until today.
She glanced at the pile of splintered wood that lay on the floor of the bedroom. “What happened to your beautiful headboard?”
He shrugged, his mouth pressed in a flat line. “After you found Michael . . . feeling your pain and fear through your blood . . . knowing I was miles away and couldn’t do anything to help you if you needed me?” He abruptly stopped speaking and let out a low curse. “It tore me up, not being able to be there with you.”
“Oh, Asher.”
The hand-carved piece she’d seen him labor over for days and which had obviously been a project that he’d been perfecting for far longer than she knew was completely destroyed. The center of it looked as if it had been smashed with a sledgehammer.
Or a Breed male’s driving fist.
“It’s just a slab of wood,” he said. “Maybe I’ll make another one someday.”
Naomi got off the bed and walked up to him, laying her palm against his cheek. It astonished her, how much this man meant to her after only a few short days and nights together. How deeply would she tumble if they had forever?
She went up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. She intended it to be only a small kiss, but she didn’t realize how much she’d been missing his contact until his strong arms wrapped around her, holding her close to him.
They kissed for a long moment, tenderly, apologetically. When Asher finally released her, his irises were glittering with flecks of amber light. He wanted her, but he was holding that need in check, if only barely. Naomi felt it too, the yearning to lose herself in something good after all of the bad they’d been through today.
But she couldn’t indulge in her own needs or desires.
Not when there were still things to be done back in the city.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “Once you get something in your stomach it’ll be dark outside. We can head in to Vegas and start looking for Tyler and Penny and the rest of the kids.”
“Thank you.” She twined her fingers through his as they walked, grateful beyond words for the fact that he understood without her even saying so. “What did you make me to eat? It smells delicious.”
She stared in surprise—and amusement—when she saw the feast he’d prepared. Waiting for her on the table was a large bowl of canned chicken soup, cooked chicken breast on a plate of salad, a bowl of cereal and a cup of fresh fruit, plus the entire loaf of French bread they’d brought home from the grocery store the other night.
“I didn’t know how hungry you’d be,” he murmured. “So I made all of the things I know you like.”
She laughed in spite of the anguish that had ridden her all day. “It’s perfect. I think I know who to call the next time
I need to feed an army of starving kids.”
She sat down and ate, amazed to find she did have an appetite after all.
Once she’d had her fill, she and Asher headed out from the ranch and made the drive in to Las Vegas to begin searching for the kids.
They started with the parks and shelters in and around the Strip. They’d found plenty of kids and young teens hanging around, but none of the group they were hoping to locate.
They had even driven past some of the seedy areas of the city, through industrial lots and freight depots, some of the places desperate kids tended to look for shelter when they had no better options.
As the night wore on, Naomi couldn’t hide her frustration. Or her fear.
“I hate knowing they’re out here somewhere and don’t know I’m looking for them. What if they run, Asher? What if we never find them?”
“We will,” he assured her, his deep voice determined. “We’ll search the whole damned state and more if we have to.”
She nodded and sat back, looking out the truck’s window at the flashing casino lights and soaring high-rise hotels. Casino Moda stood out like a tower made of diamonds, all the way up to the winking beacon lights on its rooftop helipad. Sleek, inviting. No hint at all of the monster who dwelled inside.
Asher cleared his throat. “Maybe we should drive past Michael’s house.”
She had deliberately avoided asking him to go there, not at all ready to revisit the place that would always be the source of her worst nightmares now. But Asher was right. They had to try everything.
At her nod, he turned on to the street that would take them into the residential area off the Strip. She reached over and grasped his hand as they turned on to Michael’s street. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until the truck approached the darkened house and Michael’s van still parked in the driveway. The air in her lungs leaked out of her on a ragged sob.
“It hurts so bad, Asher.”
“I know, sweetheart.” He brought her fingers up to his lips and kissed them.