Page 94 of The Hunter

The line went dead before I could reply, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

I didn’t know why the Bratva wanted Ariana.

But I did know one thing.

They wouldn’t get to her.

Not while I was still breathing.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ariana

I wasn’t trying to snoop.

Really, I wasn’t.

I was trying to do something useful.

While I could easily spend hours reading, my mind kept wandering to Henry.

To the truths we’d shared over the past few days. To everything I’d learned about his childhood this morning. To him telling me he had some work to do.

It shouldn’t have bothered me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what that “work” might be. About what he does when he’s locked in that basement.

About the girl I saw on the screen the other day.

Who was she?

And why did she look so familiar?

To distract myself, I decided to change the sheets on the bed. After all the sex we’d had in it over the last twenty-four hours, clean sheets seemed like a good idea. I remembered seeing an additional set in the closet, so I grabbed those and stripped the bed.

I was halfway through fitting the corners over the mattress when I bumped the ottoman. The duffel bag perched on top of it tipped, falling with a dull thud onto the floor.

I scrambled to pick up his things, but as I was about to place them back in the bag, I stilled when I saw the rest of the contents. There were rolls of cash, as well as a cell phone.

I stared at it for a full ten seconds, frozen in the space between curiosity and guilt, wondering what it could all mean. It could have been nothing. Considering he was raised by a survivalist who seemed to distrust the government, he probably liked to keep a large amount of cash on hand.

But I sensed there was more to it than that. Up until this point, Henry continued to keep me in the dark about why he took me. Maybe this cell phone might have those answers. Or at least a clue.

My hands trembled as I slid the phone out of the bag, my heart pounding against my chest, my thumb hovering over the power button.

Then I pressed it.

I braced to hear Henry’s thundering footsteps pounding up the stairs, having received an alert or something that I’d turned on his phone. Based on the massive computers and monitors I’d seen in that basement, it wouldn’t surprise me.

But that never happened. The house remained still as the screen flickered on. I expected to be met with some sort of barrier, a passcode or fingerprint in order to unlock it.

I wasn’t.

The home screen popped up. Unsure where else to begin in my snooping quest, I navigated to the contacts. There weren’t any.

Who didn’t have even a single contact stored in their phone? I didn’t have anyone I counted as a true friend, but even I had hundreds of contacts stored in my cell.

This phone had none.

Why?