Page 25 of Hunted

My left brow lifted almost of its own accord.

He shrugged, offering an easy grin. “I got him in the end, though.”

“Careful, Dek,” Van warned softly. “You could be taking out the next generation of Academy recruits.” His fingers locked together, tucking neatly beneath his chin as he pondered whatever quandary he was currently trying to decipher.

“Oh, right.” Dek’s eyes rolled. “Like Blackwing is keeping tabs on twelve-year-olds with virtual shooting proficiency.” He layered the sarcasm on so thick it was practically frosting.

Van shot him a pointed look, conveying everything he needed to say without so much as a word.

“No shit,” Dek breathed, mind visibly blown.

“Who was it?” I cut in, curious as to which initiate I needed to keep a closer eye on.

Van’s sharp gaze cut back to mine, his face going back to that there-is-a-problem-I-need-to-solve-immediately expression. And then I was slammed with the feeling that I knew exactly whose name was about to drop out of his mouth. “Sinclair.”

Bingo.

“Dibs!” Dek roared, leaping to his feet. He rounded on Van in less than a second, discarding his precious headset into the cushions with more force than I’d ever seen him use on his things. “I’ve had my eye on her for months now.” He stared at me, unblinking, imploring me to back him up. “Come on, man! You know this already. She’s the best shot out of all of them—even has the potential to be as good as me if I can train her.”

“No one-on-one with initiates,” I grunted. “But he did claim her the second he saw her fire that Barrett M82 for the first time,” I told Van.

“Yesss.” Dek fist-pumped the air, and I glared at him.

“But she still has to earn that Eagle position by graduation. If she fails even a single assessment task from here on out, it’ll take her out of the running.”

Dek nodded.

“The top end of the leaderboard is tight, though this newfound techno-skill might push her over the line.”

Van’s nose scrunched at my technologically illiterate description of his job, but refrained from further comment.

Truthfully, I’d had my eye on her for a while now, too.

She was so tiny that no one batted an eye when they drew her as an opponent during sparring practice—and sure, she’d come out battered and bloody on more than one occasion. But she was scrappy. Quick. She used every advantage available to her, especially her boxing experience from before—but more importantly, she turned every weakness her rival exposed against them.

But someone had hurt her today. I knew it the second she’d crashed into me in that hallway, immediately soaking my shirt in blood. It had to have been painful, but she didn’t even flinch, plagued instead by the demons that hunted her.

And after those demons said what they did when they thought no one was listening, I had a sneaking suspicion I knew exactly who’d made her bleed in the first place.

They’d tried to take her out on Devil’s Pass, where it could easily be made to look like an accident—and still, she had come out victorious.

“Can you access footage of the mountains for me? From today’s assessment?” I asked Van, who blinked in surprise but nodded. He pulled out his phone and started tapping on the screen, then slid it across the table where it landed perfectly in front of me.

The screen was divided into four quadrants—four different camera angles available to us at all times. I clicked the one I wanted, then scrolled through until her face popped up. I watched her trek up Black Mountain uninhibited, then clicked the next panel and scrolled until she appeared again.

Frowning, I replayed the scuffle at Widow’s Drop three times before clicking on the next panel.

“Something to share with the class?” Dek drawled in the background.

“No.”

I fast-forwarded through the footage until her flying leap registered on this camera. Watching her soar across the zipline set my hair on end—even more viscerally when Varco dove right after her. She dragged herself across, ignoring cut-up hands, and armed only with the knowledge that she would die if she paused.

“There,” I muttered as I discovered the reason for my bloodied shirt.

Varco tried to take her out across the line, and only his shitty aim was the reason she still lived long enough to slam into me in the hallway. For whatever reason, he’d decided she was the cohort’s weakest link and had taken it upon himself to tighten up their ranks.

I guess he’d realised first-hand just how resilient she could be. That explained his ire, too, though there was one missing puzzle piece I couldn’t work out.