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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHARLOTTE

J axon carries me all the way back to his house. He doesn’t even sound out of breath.

“How are you doing this?” I twist my head to try and look at him but can’t see much. Just the swamp plants, clearer in the lightening sky. We’ve been out all night.

“I’m a Hunter,” he says, like that answers anything.

“So what?” I try to lift myself up, but he smacks my ass, hard enough to feel good, and I slump back down. “Lots of people are hunters,” I continue. “And they couldn’t carry a?—”

“We’re here.” He stops abruptly. “I’m gonna let you down now. If you run?—”

His grip tightens suggestively around my waist.

“I’ll catch you.”

Heat flushes to my cheeks. And elsewhere. “You made your point.”

“Did I?” He crouches down and gently slides me off his shoulder. When my feet touch the ground, I straighten up and find myself looking him right in the eye. He’s close enough to kiss.

“I’m not running, am I?” I am thinking about it. The sun’s coming up. I’ll be able to see. If I could just get to the road, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting lost in the swamp.

But he has a car. And he’s fast even on foot. Faster than me.

“Not yet.” His eyes glitter, and I both hate and love the way he looks at me like he’s going to devour me whole.

Then he pushes past me, heading back toward the house. I turn and watch him, hesitating. We’re at the same place in the fence where I escaped, the hole in the wires big and jagged. I doubt he’ll be able to fix that anytime soon. Maybe I can wait a day. Get his guard down. Then I could?—

“Don’t make me pick you up again!” Jaxon shouts as he ducks through the fence. He glances over at me, grinning a little, and my clit throbs with a sudden, unexpected need. Well, maybe not totally unexpected.

His tossing me over his shoulder like that was pretty hot.

“I’m coming,” I mutter, following him through the fence. The yard looks strange in the grayish dawn light. Unfamiliar, like I wasn’t just here an hour ago, cowering in the dark with a gun in my face.

The gun in question is still here though, glinting in the grass.

Its owner is here, too, a dark misshapen lump. Jaxon walks over to the body and crouches beside it, studying it thoughtfully. He nudges it and rolls it over, the arms flopping like a rag doll.

I expect to feel something, seeing that. Disgust. Horror. I want to retch and vomit into the grass. But I just stand there, the cool morning wind blowing my skirt around my knees like I’m not covered in that man’s blood.

Jaxon stands back up and tilts his head toward the shed. “I need to get him in there.”

“And you expect me to help you?”

Jaxon looks over at me, his hair blowing in his eyes. “No,” he says. “I’m just telling you.”

Why the hell would he tell me something like that? I cross my arms over my chest, trying to ignore the grimy, sticky feeling of the blood on my skin. “Who was he?” I finally say, my mouth dry.

Jaxon steps over the body and walks through the overgrown grass. I think he’s ignoring me at first, but then he leans down and picks something up off the ground.

A balaclava-covered head.

“Not sure.” He peels the balaclava away and throws it on top of the body. I feel myself drifting closer to him, pulled forward by—curiosity, I think. I don’t know.

I feel so strange.

Jaxon holds the head up, frowning at it the way he did the body. All I can see is a thatch of messy brown hair and the jagged, red cut where the neck was. “Don’t recognize him,” he says, turning the head around to show me the face, like he thinks I might.

It’s horrifying, the way the man’s mouth is twisted up in fear, his stiff tongue lolling out. His wide, unseeing eyes—so much like Jaxon’s when I left him upstairs.

I look away, heart racing. “I don’t, either.”

Jaxon chuckles. “Yeah, I didn’t think you would.” He throws the head like it’s a soccer ball and it lands beside the body with a heavy, vaguely wet thump. “Did they say anything to you?”

I jerk my head up, startled, as he ambles back over to me, his hand shoved in the pockets of his jeans. The wind blows his hair around.

I hate that I notice his hair.

“Why would they say anything to me?” I ask darkly.

Jaxon shrugs. “When I came out here, they were pointing their guns at you. Which means they weren’t here to rescue you.”

I don’t say anything.

“I have some suspicions about who they might be,” he continues. “So I’m curious what they said.”

Why should I help you ? The question hangs right on the tip of my tongue. But Jaxon’s staring at me with this sweet, puppy-dog hopefulness, and I can still taste the saltiness of him. God, I haven’t been fucked that good in?—

Well, ever, I don’t think.

He’s a killer , I tell myself. And probably something more, given that I thought I was a killer, too, even though my victim is currently standing in front of me.

“Nothing?” He raises an eyebrow.

I sigh. “They said you killed someone in his house. And that you were working for some group. A gang, maybe? They told me the name, but I don’t remember what it was.” I push my hand through my hair. “I was a little distracted.”

Jaxon nods thoughtfully, his expression kind of distant and far-off. “Dennis Randall,” he murmurs.

“Yeah.” I blink in surprise. “Yeah, that was it. The guy they said you killed?—”

“I did kill him,” Jaxon says plainly. “A few weeks ago.”

I’m not sure how to respond to that.

“He was a drug dealer,” he adds. “Heroin. PCP. He was probably involved with human trafficking, too. Those guys usually are.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

Jaxon looks at me, his eyes as deep and strange as the ocean. “No.”

He turns away, leaving me standing there, struck dumb. For a minute all I can do is gape at him as he picks his way across the yard, heading toward the body that matches the balaclava-covered head. He bends over, studying it like he did the first.

“Then why?” I call out.

Jaxon hears me. I can tell by the way he pauses, the way he tilts his head toward me. But he doesn’t answer.

I sigh, exasperated, and stalk over the grass, taking a wide berth around the first body. This other body is all akimbo from where Jaxon threw it.

“Stop doing this,” I tell him. “This mysterious psycho killer shit.”

Jaxon lifts his gaze to meet mine. “I am a mysterious psycho killer.”

I do not let myself be frightened or charmed by that, even though I want to do both, simultaneously. “What the fuck is going on?” I ask him. “Why did you kill that guy? The drug dealer? And why—” I stop, swallow against the dryness in my throat. “I’d like some answers about the other thing,” I finally say. “The—” I gesture toward the house, looming up behind him. The window into the room where he kept me.

Jaxon makes a strained coughing sound. “Right,” he mutters. “Yeah. That one.” He kicks at the body, making the arms flop around. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

“I already think you’re crazy.”

He sighs. “Fair enough.” Then he jerks his head toward the house. “You want some coffee? I’ll make you some coffee. And we can?—”

“Tell me!” My voice rings out through the crisp, cool morning and echoes across the swamp, loud enough that a cloud of blackbirds erupts against the pale sky. “What the fuck! Is going on!”

Jaxon at least has the wherewithal to look sheepish. “I will!” he says. “I just thought you might want some coffee on the porch while I did. It’s been a long night.”

I want to be pissed at him, I really do. But there’s a sheepish sweetness to the way he just offered me coffee that brings me up short. It’s such a contrast to how he fucked me in the woods. To what he did to those men.

He keeps charming me, and I don’t like it.

“Fine,” I snap. “Make me a coffee.” I pause. “It better be sweet. No cream, though.”

He grins. “One sweet black coffee, coming up.”

I trudge over to the house, trailing behind him. It’s my first time really getting a good look at the place: a big, towering Victorian mansion, the dark paint peeling off in patches. It even has a turret jutting up toward the sky. It also has a wrap-around screened-in porch, something I didn’t notice when I raced out of the back door earlier. It’s actually kind of nice, the porch. There’s a swing and some cozy-looking wicker chairs. I collapse down on the swing. In the middle, though, so Jaxon can’t sit beside me.

He disappears inside, and I wait numbly on the swing, pushing it back and forth with my feet, staring through the dark mesh at the overgrown yard. I don’t let myself think about anything. I just go empty.

A few minutes later, Jaxon emerges from the house, the screen door slamming into its frame behind him. He’s carrying two pretty porcelain mugs, the contents steaming in the damp, cool air.

“I put like three spoonfuls of sugar in here,” he says as he hands me coffee.

I breathe in the steam. Feeling the warmth of the coffee on my hands makes me realize just how cold I am. The morning is damp and chilly. Chillier than you’d expect from Louisiana.

Jaxon drags one of the wicker chairs across from the swing and sits down. Takes a drink of his coffee.

We stare at each other.

“Start talking.” Then I sip my coffee, too.

It’s not exactly the Turkish coffee I drank back in California, but it’s good. Strong and sweet. Just like Jaxon , I think for half a second before I chide myself for being stupid.

“Right,” Jaxon says, shifting around. “Yeah. So—“ He takes a deep breath. “You did kill me earlier tonight. Technically.”

“Technically?” I shake my head, irritation bubbling up in my chest. “Will you stop dancing around and just tell me what you are? I know you were dead. I saw it. But now—” I gesture at him.

“I can’t die,” he finally says. “I’m—well, I’m not sure what we actually are. When I was growing up, my grandparents called us the Elect. But I’ve heard us called boogeymen. Hunters, too. That’s the most common name for us, at least around here.”

I stare at him with bafflement. “That doesn’t really—explain anything.”

“Because there’s no way to explain it,” he says. “I am what I am. I can’t die. And I have this—” He hesitates for a minute, eyes boring into mine with an intensity that makes my blood surge. “I have to kill, or else I lose my mind.”

That last bit hangs between us like the mist curling up from the swamp. I want to tell him it sounds like he’s already lost his mind, but I bite back the urge. Because the first half of what he said, that he can’t die—I saw it. I saw it, and I tried so hard to doubt it, but in the end, I was just lying to myself.

So if that part’s true, then it’s a lot easier to accept the rest of it, too.

“There are others,” I say slowly. “Like you.”

Jaxon nods, guarded caution moving across his features. I squeeze my coffee cup and look down at the dark, glossy surface.

“Edie,” I say softly. “She’s with one of them, isn’t she? Another—another Hunter?”

I’m just guessing, but when I glance back up at Jaxon, I know immediately I guessed correctly. He looks—relieved, almost.

“Yeah,” he says. “But like I told you, she’s safe. I’m not telling you anything more.”

My body buzzes. An old friend from high school. But what if that old friend wasn’t from high school, at all?

“She’s with Sawyer Caldwell, isn’t she?” I whisper. “The Fat Camp Killer?”

Jaxon flits his gaze away. Doesn’t say anything. But that’s all the answer I need.

I feel numb. Confused. And suddenly, very very tired.

“Can I take a shower?” I say. It’s the only thing that makes sense right now.

There it is, again, that expression of relief. He nods. Pushes himself out of the chair. “Yeah, of course. Just—” He looks at me again with a black intensity, and I shiver because it reminds me of the way he looked at me in the swamp as he thrust his cock inside me and choked me into an orgasm.

It reminds me that I liked it.

“Just don’t do anything stupid,” he says, and I know he means escape.