Page 17 of While She Sleeps (The Hunter and The Thief #1)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EMBER

I ’m officially losing the plot.

It doesn’t come as a complete surprise, especially as I pop my antidepressant to swallow it down with my black cup of coffee, but at least I know when my mind is fucking with me.

Personal growth or whatever.

I take another look around and frown.

There’s nothing out of place. Everything is exactly as I left it last night, including the razor blade on my basin and the messy file on my bedside table from where I threw it so I could fall into bed.

But I know someone has been here.

While I slept.

A shiver moves through my body, and I sigh, taking another healthy drink from my mug. Maybe it was just a dream. That would make sense. I’ve always had vivid dreams that I’ve struggled to distinguish from reality, so maybe that’s what this is.

But even as I think it, I shake off the thought.

Someone was here.

I fucking know it.

I eye the file in front of me, and my stomach clenches. What if it was him? What if he knows I’m looking into him? What if I’m next on his hit list?

But that doesn’t make much sense. If he were here in the middle of the night, surely he would just kill me and get it over with.

Or at the very least, leave some indication that he was here at all to scare me into dropping my investigation.

But there’s nothing. Not a single trace that anyone but me has been in this apartment in months.

My phone vibrates across the table, and I drop my head into my hands. The last person I feel like dealing with right now is Lucas. He’s a fucking asshole at the best of times, but when he finds out I ended things with Orion last night, he’s going to lose his ever-loving mind.

That was a nice injection of cash for both of us, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Not when I was coming to look forward to our time together.

I can’t afford to allow anyone close to me.

Because everyone who ever gets close either hurts me or leaves, and I’ve officially reached my quota for this lifetime, and maybe the next.

I let the call ring out and take another drink from my mug. The brand I use is rubbish, but it’s cheap and gives me the illusion of energy, meaning it’s good enough for me.

When the phone starts vibrating again, I sigh and reach for it. I guess there’s no avoiding him forever. If I keep dodging his calls, he’ll just send one of his guys here to collect me. A memory of the last guy that showed up here sends ice through my veins, and I quickly accept the call.

“Hey, sorry. You caught me getting out of the shower,” I lie.

“Ember,” he growls, and my stomach drops.

I knew he would be pissed about the whole Orion situation, but I can feel his rage down the phone line, and it’s putting me on edge.

“How could you cost us our biggest fucking client?” he snaps.

“Do you know how much we could have made off Orion Henderson? Do you know the connections we could have made if you kept him on the fucking hook?”

I press my eyes closed and blink back the tears that threaten to rise to the surface.

I’ve never been the kind of girl who cries all the time, but this last year has been a test to that.

Since Travis died, all I can fucking do is cry.

“Lucas, I asked you to cancel last night. Begged, in fact, because I was not in a good place. The fact that you insisted on my coming in when you knew how distraught I was is all the explanation you need for how we ended up here.”

It’s a bad idea to talk back to him like this. But I don’t really have a choice. It’s either I grow a backbone where this man is involved, or I spend the next decade allowing him to walk all over me.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” he roars, and I pull the phone away from my face. Yep. Definitely a bad idea.

“You heard me, Lucas. This is on you. The next time one of your employees calls you distraught, begging you to change something—not cancel, just swap nights—maybe you’ll do it.”

I end the call and throw the phone back onto the table like it’s going to burn me if I keep it close. Hell, it might, considering how mad Lucas was.

I’m going to pay for that, but I can’t bring myself to care right now.

I flick through the file for what feels like the hundredth time since Lucas handed it to me, but nothing jumps out at me, which is a first. I’ve been conning people and stealing for most of my life, and every time I’ve ever been handed a file like this, there’s at least one thing that stands out to me, that cracks the case, so to speak. But this one doesn’t have that.

I tap my fingers on the table and nibble at my lower lip. If I can just find a lead, I’ll be able to stop sitting here day in and day out staring at this shit, and I can actually get to the part I’m good at.

“What aren’t I seeing?” I whisper to myself as I flick to the next page, reading over every line twice to make sure I’m not missing something.

“Oh my god,” I murmur.

There’s a really fucking good reason I can’t put these pieces together.

It’s because most of it is untrue. There are sprinklings of the truth in here, but until I can differentiate the true from the false, I’m going to be left chasing my tail.

I don’t know who the hell the Hunter is, but even I have to respect how well connected he is to have pulled this off.

Shoving myself to my feet, I move into the bedroom to get dressed for the day before slipping out into the hallway.

The only way I’ll find the truth from the false is by starting all over again.

L A is warm all year round, but summer is the pits. It’s hot and sticky, and everyone you meet is even more prickly than usual, and that’s saying something considering it’s a city full of divas and wannabes.

To make matters worse, I’m forced to walk everywhere because of my irrational fear of vehicles. By the time I reach the warehouse district, I feel like my skin is on fire, and I’ve sweat through the active shorts and T-shirt I tugged on as I left the apartment.

My therapist seems to think I’ll be ready for exposure therapy in a few months, but just the thought of getting in a car has me breaking out in a cold sweat.

I check the address again and consider my options.

This isn’t the safest place for a woman on her own, even one who learned to fight when she was eight years old and can take down a man three times her size, but this is one of the only leads that I think might be legitimate.

Whoever this Hunter guy is, he’s a master at keeping off the radar. I’ll give him that.

I nibble at my bottom lip and take a few steps forward, keeping my eyes locked on my surroundings, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone around.

The closer I get to the building, the more certain I am that I’m alone. If there was security on the warehouse, they would have been out here three minutes ago when I started lurking around, but so far, I can’t see, nor can I hear, anyone.

My fingers wrap around the cool metal doorknob, and I take a steadying breath as I turn it, surprised as hell when it turns and the door unlatches.

I swallow heavily, forcing down my nerves as I pull open the door and stare into the warehouse.

The very fucking empty warehouse.

Looks like this intel was just another piece of false information that all those who came before me have found.

This is going to be even harder than I thought.