Page 72 of Hunted

Plucking the licence out of his hand, I flipped it over, revealing his smiling face accompanied by an unfamiliar name.

“Well, hello there, Egan Thomas from Tupelo, Mississippi.” I smirked. “Nice to meet you.”

Eth scowled. “There’s no way they’ve given me some fucked up, cookie-cutter name like—” He cut himself off after discovering the identification page of his US passport revealed the same. “Well, what did you get then?” he whined.

“I haven’t got mine yet, but there’s no way it’s gonna be that bad.” I grinned up at him, snickering at his curled lip. “What do you get to drive?” I asked, almost drooling at the prospect of being behind a wheel again.

He held the sleek black rectangle up to his face, squinting at the brand emblazoned along the side edge. Eyes wide, he almost dropped the key, gawking up at Beckett.

Beckett, ever the stoic, did not react. He simply grunted, “Range Rovers are standard.”

Well, shit. I whistled, my whole body lighting up at the thought. “Do I get one too?”

Beckett’s brows lowered into his usual frown. “No. Mars,” he barked, summoning Varco’s bodybuilder-sized personal assistant.

Mars, furious at said summoning, prowled over, two envelopes left in hand. One mine, and one… Mercy’s. I was sure that was no small coincidence.

Beckett held his hand out, waiting. When Mars refused to relinquish them, he snatched the files with his left hand while his right dropped to the Glock holstered at his side.

Mars, daft but not suicidal, departed after a long, hard glare in Beckett’s direction.

I raised a brow, curious. Mars was higher ranking than Beckett, but the latter apparently scared the former into submission.

Huh.

Seeing my name printed in typewriter-style lettering across the top of one of the envelopes, I attempted to snatch it from his grip—but Beckett was quicker, lifting it out of reach.

“Hey! That’s mine!”

Okay, so maybe I pouted just a little.

“And you are apparently mine,” he growled.

“I am no such thing, you arrogant, assuming⁠—”

“Don’t forget beastly,” Van cut in, grinning, as he walked up.

“And ass,” Pearce added, a wicked gleam sparking in his hazel eyes. Eyes that were now conveniently pinned on mine.

“Don’t even get me started on you,” I seethed—severely enough to warrant intervention.

Eth slid his body between me and our former instructors, his gaze flitting between us like he was trying to work out who was in more danger. When he angled a little more my way, I almost smirked knowing that he’d apparently decided they were.

“Couldn’t look at me all morning, and now you can’t look away,” I snarled, imagining all the ways I could make Pearce hurt for what he’d done. “At least tell me if you tanked my ranking on purpose.” I didn’t mean for it to, but my voice wavered, betraying the hurt that cut deeper than any knife.

His gaze snagged on my wobbling lip. The spark in his eyes dimmed, but he offered no answers. Nor did either of his pals, each of them staring at me in melancholic or inscrutable ways.

Fuck ‘em.

I held my hand out, wordlessly demanding my file. My future.

Beckett just shook his head slowly, eyes softening for the briefest of instances, before barking, “Lopez.”

Mercy—who’d been standing within the sea of filtering bodies, adrift—jerked to attention. She slunk over to stand on Ethan’s left, right in front of the man who’d called for her.

“Sir?” she asked, her voice trailing up at the end.

Handing Mercy her file, Beckett warned her not to open it, and to go find the man owning the second name—the one printed below hers. “Then meet us in the medlab.”