Page 32 of Accept Me (Fate’s Choice #4)

HUNTER

When it comes to killing a man, there are a dozen ways you could go about it. But when it comes to killing a monster, there are only two.

The first is simple: you just walk up to the beast's lair and put a bullet in its head.

This, of course, involves blood, mayhem, and a high probability that everyone will link you to the scene, since DNA can be much more easily extracted in a confined space, plus there are cameras in buildings and all that.

The second is slower. You make the beast disappear quietly, bring it to some isolated place, draw out what you need, and then put that bullet in its head without anyone watching. More preplanning, for sure.

I chose the second method, obviously, so I needed to get a sense of the ground first.

Since Star was now legally my husband, our names and tax filings had to be done jointly, which also meant I had access to his registration data in the system.

And there it was. Star was still listed as registered at the original apartment, the very one where all the bad things had gone down, the one now in his stepfather’s possession.

First, I bought a burner phone.

Then I disabled my car’s GPS and covered parts of the license plate with numbers cut from another plate, enough to confuse any quick check.

When I made it downtown, I saw the building for myself. It was as luxurious as Uncle Van had described, polished lobby, a couple of guards slash doormen at the entrance, the whole place fenced in.

On paper, Star was still a co-owner of the apartment, so theoretically, that could work to my advantage. But walking up to the doorman and asking for a spare key in my spouse’s name? That would have been downright crazy.

Showing up anywhere near the beast, any kind of public confrontation, would basically announce my plans to the entire world. I had no business being here unless I wanted to kill him, and that would be obvious to anyone with even one brain cell.

Nash wasn’t an immediate threat to Star anymore, and that meant self-defense was off the table.

The law would see this for what it was, premeditated action.

I could claim suspicion about his part in the bombing, but without real evidence, it wouldn’t hold.

And Arnold didn’t connect him to it; it was only Van’s hunch.

Before I parked, I took a long look at the street, marked the angles of every surveillance camera, and slid my car into a blind spot across from the building. Then I waited.

Delivery vans came and went, drivers dropping packages and leaving again. It wasn’t a way in for me. They’d all be logged in the system; there was no chance I could pass as one of them.

On my burner, I started digging for the beast. Doug C.

Nash. I tried to track his police station first, but nothing came up on official police sites.

Hours of searching finally led me to an alumni page from his high school.

The middle initial made his name distinct enough that every hit was about him.

I found him again on a veterans’ club site, listed as one of the organizers of a fundraiser for a counseling center. There was a photo, finally, him in the middle of the group, smiling wide… uh, the perfect citizen, my ass.

Once I had the face, I tracked him down on other social media. Mostly he was tagged by friends in their photos. His own profile was bare, no pictures, just a location and a job: some private security firm where he was listed as co-owner.

Which meant he had to leave the apartment sooner or later. All I had to do was wait.

I knew weekends might not be the best time to catch him, still, I had no choice but to wait and hope I’d spot him.

Every day of delay meant living in uncertainty about what move he might make to kill Star.

So I sat in my car, watching the garage exit, sweating under a blonde wig, nursing canned coffee and peanuts.

Hours slipped by. Around two in the afternoon, just as I was starting to think I’d have to try the security company instead, three men walked out of the building.

All alphas, maybe in their mid-fifties to early sixties. I raised my binoculars, since this time I really needed to see more closely. I had been careful not to overuse them before. One look would have to be enough; staring at people through field glasses could draw some unwanted attention to me.

Yep, it was him, Nash. And the two others, with similar features and the same build, had to be his brothers. Star had mentioned that they existed, and that they’d been cops too.

Which meant three of them against me, and none of them were civilians… not ideal.

They climbed into a car, Nash at the wheel, and pulled out into traffic. I could see them talking, animated, hopefully not paying attention to tails.

I followed, two cars back, keeping my distance.

Twenty minutes later, they turned off toward the suburbs and stopped in front of a sports complex. The lot was full, families, teenagers, everyone crowding in for a game.

It gave me quite a good cover, so I parked far off, in a corner, blending in with the crowd.

The three men joined the stream of people heading inside. It was a baseball game: Local cops versus the fire department.

The three alphas took seats high in the stands. I found a safe spot a few rows away, making sure my face stayed out of view.

The game dragged on for hours. I barely noticed the innings, my eyes fixed on them the whole time. None of them even got up to go to the restroom.

By seven, the game was over. By then my nerves were frayed from the constant vigilance, but I couldn’t quit.

They piled back into the car, but instead of heading downtown, they drove deeper into the suburbs and stopped outside a big bar that was already filling up with fans.

I felt a flicker of irritation; observing them here would be harder. I was already telling myself I’d have to go in, order something, blend in. But on a smaller floor like that, Nash could recognize me, and I was sure he would if he saw my face.

So I made the call not to park directly in front of the building. My car would be caught on the bar’s lot cameras, and that was not ideal at all. I left it tucked along a tree line off the road behind the lot.

Before I stepped out, I grabbed a hat rigged with long blond hair in the back, part of an old Halloween disguise from some party with Olaf.

I pulled a green fishing-style jacket over my shoulders, something plain that anyone could own, and headed toward the bar.

I didn’t want to step directly onto the parking lot because even from a distance I could see the cameras scanning it constantly, so I slipped along the bushes, moving low, keeping my eyes on them from afar.

Right by the entrance, the whole group came across three other alphas, and they greeted each other with a kind of rough but familiar warmth, the kind you see among brothers-in-arms rather than friends.

And then, the miracle I had been waiting for finally came.

Nash slapped one of the men on the back, and then he turned and began wandering toward the far corner of the building, peeling away from the group as if Fate itself had quietly arranged it.

I had no idea what exactly he was going there for; maybe he needed to take a piss and couldn’t be bothered to head inside to the restroom, maybe he just wanted the crude satisfaction of doing it against the wall.

Either way, I congratulated myself for parking my car right on that side, on the street that bordered the forest pressing up against the edge of the lot, hidden from the eyes of any bar’s clientele who might be hanging around for a smoke.

I knew my window for action was going to be razor-thin.

I had the brass knuckles in my pocket.

When I cast a glance at the back wall of the building, I saw a camera fixed there, but its angle was locked onto the service entrance, and the bush Nash had disappeared behind was safely outside its field of view.

That was perfect, because the stretch between that bush and the tree line wasn’t covered by any surveillance at all, which meant I could move across it directly, with at least some measure of safety.

I slid the knuckles onto my hand and moved after him. Just as I suspected, Nash had gone deeper behind the cluster of shrubs, standing at the wall with his zipper already partially undone.

Of course, like any alpha, his hearing was sharp, and he must have registered me approaching.

So I pulled out my phone, tilted my head, and made it look like I was mid-conversation, hiding my face behind the screen.

In reality, the phone was powered down completely, the SIM card already removed, because there was no way in hell I’d let investigators ever track my location later.

I muttered, "Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, we’ll be there, no chance we’re late," into the dead device.

I knew he had turned his head slightly to glance at me, but then his attention dropped back to what he was doing, probably deciding I wasn’t a threat, and apparently not recognizing me from silhouette alone.

That was my opening, and I had no more than a split second to take it.

With a sharp, decisive motion, I closed the distance and came up behind him, swinging the knuckles hard into his temple.

Fuck, yeah. Got him.

The bastard staggered back, stunned, and I caught him under the arms, hauling one of them over my shoulder to make it look like I was just dragging a drunk friend out of sight. Step by step, I steered him toward the grove at the edge of the lot where my car was waiting in the shadows.

Dragging Nash through the thick brush wasn’t easy; he was heavy, and the branches fought me, but this was no time to complain.

I pulled on thin rubber gloves, bound his wrists and ankles with zip ties, fished his phone from his pocket, popped out the SIM, shut it down, and stuffed it into my own jacket.