Page 11 of Theirs to Hunt (Girls Like Us #1)

Chapter eleven

D ad wants me to keep an eye on Reagan. As if I wasn’t already. I started Friday night, the second we let her slip through the net.

Right now, I’m parked at a café across from her apartment. Corner table. Back to a pillar, helmet on the chair across from me, leather zipped to my throat. I’ve got one coffee in front of me, cold now. A beignet I’m not going to eat. Doesn’t matter. I’m not here for the food.

I’m here for the view.

Her place is on the ground floor, left side. Shared courtyard, central fountain. Enough jasmine in the landscaping to distract from the rust on the gate.

No motion sensors. Just solar lights tucked into the hedges. Charm for the tourists. False sense of security for everyone else.

Devon’s crew installed the surveillance while we were at the Fête. Mics, cameras, all Bluetooth-enabled. Tight signal range. Nothing that pings wider systems. Nothing that leaves a trace.

I kept it off our internal radar for a reason.

Devon knows how to work in the quiet. He always has. When he called after the Navy, I gave Dad his name. I didn’t expect him to build all this. I should have.

Devon makes things happen.

He came in with a modular surveillance setup built out of military scrap. Good tech. Sharp execution. We backed him.

He never forgot.

Now he runs half the Quarter through clean fronts. Nightclubs. Real estate. Restaurants. We get access when we need it. He gets backing that never shows up on paper. That’s the deal.

We help launch veteran-owned ventures that deserve a shot.

Cookware based on combat tech. Water filtration systems. MRE upgrades. Our newest vacuum-seal tech adds ten years of shelf life to long-term supply kits.

We sell to government buyers. But it’s the prepper market that keeps our margins healthy.

It looks good on paper. Feels even better in the headlines. And if it keeps our network wide and our allies close, all the better.

Not everything we do is clean.

Some of it is quiet. Some of it is dark. We help the people the law won’t. The ones it forgot. Or ignored. Or failed.

Calhoun Industries was built to look clean on the surface.

Infrastructure. Defense. Civil innovation .

But behind the curtain? We move fast. Quiet. Precise.

Dad builds the empire. I keep it protected.

And right now, something’s off.

Small gaps. Wrong names on travel logs. Vendor shifts that don’t trigger alarms in accounting, but still hit wrong in his gut.

He hasn’t said it yet, but he’s gearing up for a purge.

We’ve been moving through all thirty-two locations. Quiet checks. Watching staff. Feeling for the soft spots.

Here in New Orleans? We didn’t just find home. We found pay-dirt.

Which means I need to stay sharp. Even here. Even now.

Powdered sugar on my fingers. Helmet beside me. Her shadow behind the curtains.

From this spot, I could be anyone. A neighbor. A commuter. A guy killing time on a Monday.

But I’m not.

I’m the one making sure Reagan knows, long before she sees me, that she was never alone to begin with.