48. Orion
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
ORION
K illian’s in the driver’s seat as we head across town to our first potential lead.
Everything else we’ve let our teams deal with. Knowing the chance of Ember being on the other end of any of them was minuscule, it was better we stayed put in the penthouse.
Max and Darius stayed behind, just in case something else pops up, but they weren’t happy about it. If I ever doubted how much the two of them care for my girl, those doubts are long gone.
Their love for her is so different to mine, meaning I’m able to rationalize away my need to kill them, but I’m glad she has more than just me in her corner.
“What are you going to do if this doesn’t pan out?” Killian asks carefully, his eyes glued to the road ahead.
“You mean, am I going to expose myself if it comes to that?”
He nods, and I suck in a breath, dropping my head back against the headrest.
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “My instincts scream at me to do whatever it takes to get Ember back, but if I unmask the Hunter, it opens us up to so many new problems and threats, which just puts Ember in new kinds of danger.”
“But the alternative is letting her marry Lucas.”
A low growl fills the car, and it takes me a few seconds to realize it came from me. “That won’t be happening.”
Killian pulls to a stop at a red light and turns to face me.
“Those may be our only two options here, Orion. Unmask the Hunter and expose yourself, or let Ember go. We have a few more leads to run down, and I don’t think we’re at the point you need to make that decision right this second, but it’s something you need to consider before we run out of time. ”
I rake a hand through my hair and sigh. “I know. But there’s also the possibility Lucas is fucking with us. What if I unmask the Hunter, and he still forces Ember to marry him? Then I lose everything, and that fucker would love that.”
“That’s a very real possibility,” Killian agrees. “Let’s see what we find in the next twenty-four hours, and then we can reevaluate.”
I nod, but the idea that my girl could be missing for another full day has my heart aching in my chest. The organ that I thought would never feel a thing now feels every single second of her absence.
K illian pulls the car to a stop outside a derelict old house on a street of houses that looks even worse than this one.
Where the hell are we?
I shove the door open and step onto the sidewalk, taking a moment to look around at our surroundings.
If there were somewhere to ambush someone, this seems like a pretty good place.
No one who lives around here is going to call the cops or intervene, and it’s secluded enough that even if they did, it would take them a while to get here. More than enough time to take Killian and me out.
I meet his eyes over the roof of the car, and we both tug our guns from their holsters.
Better to be safe than sorry.
We approach the house that our hacker found buried in Lucas’s financials. He bought the place a few months back, but as far as we can tell, he’s never been here.
Which begs the question, why does he have an empty house on the wrong side of town? We’ve already hit all his other safe houses, including the one Ember told us about when we were initially trying to locate Lucas.
We approach the front door, our weapons trained on the space ahead of us as we move carefully over the worn decking.
Killian checks our six before nodding to his right, indicating he’s going to check out the windows down the side.
I keep my body on high alert, trying not to let hope creep into my mind.
Because hope is a dangerous thing, and one I can’t afford to buy into right now.
He returns after a minute, shaking his head. “There’s no one here.”
“Are you sure?”
“The dust patterns indicate no one has been here in at least a week, probably longer. It’s another dead end.”
I sigh and reach for the door handle, surprised when it turns without any resistance, and alarms start blaring in my head.
Why would you have a derelict house in a bad part of town that you’ve never stepped foot in?
To set a trap.
I meet Killian’s eyes, and a smile drags the corners of my lips up.
For the first time since we realized Ember was missing, I have a plan, and it might actually work.