Page 53 of Hunted

I’m going to take my time with you.

I cleared my throat and stepped back, dropping my hand down to my side.

“It’s my job as your instructor to prevent your death if I’m able. But it was also my job as mark to deal with whatever came of that scenario.” Then, almost as if I’d wanted her to understand more—to read between the lines like I knew she was more than capable of—I added, “on Varco’s orders.”

Her expression hardened. “I see.”

“And as for this,” I said, holding up the incriminating piece of paper with her face printed on it. “These were your capture orders.”

Her brows creased adorably in the middle. “Capture?”

I hummed an affirmative. “The orders my team and I were given to retrieve a”—I read from the notes on the page like a script, like I didn’t already have every detail memorised—“five-foot-three blonde, with a slim-to-athletic build, blue eyes, no distinguishable scars or tattoos, no known home address or phone number, a penchant for petty theft, and a habit of frequenting Cardinal Place.”

She fidgeted with the cold, white sill beneath her.

I hated that I’d made her uncomfortable. That I’d reduced her to little more than a sentence.

“And if you’d looked at the rest of the papers in that drawer, you’d have noticed that they were the capture sheets for the rest of your classmates.”

It was a bald-faced lie.

I hedged a bet that she and Mercy had stopped at the top sheet—Addie’s sheet—without going further. Because if they had, then they’d have only discovered a stack of code printouts, a pad of neon yellow Post-it notes, a pack of strawberry gum, and a handful of half-full pens.

I knew I’d guessed right when the most beautiful pink I’d ever seen stained her cheeks and she refused to meet my gaze.

Thank fuck for that.

The truth was vastly more complex.

The truth was that from the moment we’d been handed this particular capture sheet, Beck, Pearce, and I had been caught off guard by the woman staring back. Even more so when we met her in person.

When Dek pulled up curbside—after Beck wrapped his arms around her, dragged her in, and I’d thrown the blindfold over her head—Adelaide Sinclair had sunk her dainty claws into each of us.

She didn’t fight; didn’t cuss us out, or plead for her freedom.

She just sat there in the back of the van, quietly accepting her fate—whatever that may be.

I dug into her after that. And what had I found? Three fifths of fuck all.

Adelaide Sinclair was a ghost. She had no digital footprint to speak of—and what twenty-four-year-old didn’t at least have an old social media profile or embarrassing teenage email address professing their love for Justin Bieber or a deep, obscure Taylor Swift lyric?

She had no education record, no medical record anywhere in the country or overseas. She didn’t even have a locatable birth certificate. And when I reported as much to Beck, who had in turn reported it to Varco, it was dismissed with an indifference that was so out of character it inherently threw red flags up all over the place.

Beck told me to keep looking. Dek tried another tactic: getting close to her. And I kept watch. Always watching through one way or another.

And yet—she snuck up on me anyway.

“Thank you for explaining and not calling me out for my shitty behaviour, Sir,” Addie said, straightening into military-precise posture.

I nodded, knowing I couldn’t do anything else—say anything else—without giving something away.

Something that wasn’t mine to give.

So I watched her leave just as thunderously as she’d arrived.

She had unsettled me. Not on the outside, but internally, where my heart was askew. Knocked sideways by her mere presence and the fact that I was so close—and yet so far.

Adelaide Sinclair was an enigma, alright—I just didn’t know if I had the time to work her out.