Hunt (The Primal #2)

1

What happened to the baby?” I asked Judith as she leaned against my door and swept her jacket back to reveal a Glock on her hip after escorting me to my room.

“There was no baby,” she exhaled impatiently. “The whole thing was a setup.”

“Why?” I questioned. “Are you still in the police force? Is that badge you flash about actually valid?”

“Yes,” she answered bluntly, and I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. Silence fell, and I felt utterly perplexed, betrayed, and furious.

“So, you deliberately persuaded me to come to this university to be closer to the Kaisers, my enemies, the men who probably want me dead,” I seethed. “I don’t understand. If you wanted someone to be a spy in the club, then why not choose an undercover…” Then, a horrifying thought occurred to me. “You want me as bait? You knew they’d figure out eventually who I was. That’s it, isn’t it? The plan was to have me walk into the line of fire…hoping they’d kill me. Because if they killed me, you could arrest Mikael since I worked in his club. Is that it? Am I warm?”

“I will be calling you twice daily, and you will answer and update me on what is happening in Savile Gentlemen’s Club under Mikael Kaiser's iron fist,” she explained. “Life goes on. Go to class. Do your normal activities. Nothing changes except that you will be watched and followed twenty-four-seven, so don’t bother trying to run. And don’t bother trying to communicate with Sergeant Tindale.”

“So, I’m right. You want me to be the meat you lay in the trap for the lions?” I challenged her, but she wasn’t admitting to it, not that she needed to because it was pretty damn obvious.

She glanced down the hallway as heavy footsteps approached and stood away from the doorway to greet the incoming person. Then she returned with my phone in her hand, which they had taken from me after I called Sergeant Tindale. “Here,” she said, handing it back to me.

“What have you done to it?” I asked precariously as I took the phone from her poisonous claws.

Planted a device to track your calls and text messages. The SIM card and your number haven’t changed, so you won’t need to inform your contacts,” she explained as suppressed rage boiled inside me, so close to exploding. But there was no point. She won. I lost. By being the loser, I became her puppet, allowing her to get what she wanted.

“That’s fine. Nothing is stopping me from buying a new phone to make my personal calls,” I protested.

She shot me a warning look. “Don’t even bother trying.”

“I don’t want you listening to my private romantic conversations,” I proclaimed firmly. Then it occurred to me that my romantic conversations were with the masked man, the one and only Gunner Kaiser, my foster brother. Oh hell, what have I done?

As soon as it was revealed that I was attending the same college as Gunner, I knew it was him. I could see it in his eyes, his movements, and the sound of his voice. Like his father, he had grown tall and broad, as I had known he would. Wearing his grief on his skin in the form of ink and razor cuts into his skin. I wonder how many cuts he made after I hurt him because I knew I’d hurt him badly.

But how long did I have to keep up the charade of pretending I didn’t know who the man behind the mask was? This war isn’t over until Mikael is arrested, or maybe she has another plan for him. She seemed to be still working for the police, so I was confused about how Judith could get away with what she was expecting me to do.

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” she pointed out flippantly, clarifying that she didn’t care about my personal life and was more interested in particular damming evidence on the Big Boss. “Now, off you go to class like normal, and I will call you later today.”

“Fine,” I sighed, my stomach twisting in nervousness and frustration.

It will be difficult going to work and pretending that I wasn’t aware that it was owned and operated by the men who want to kill me. And how was I supposed to carry on as usual with Gunner? He was practically my brother.

The fatigue was wearing me down, but I needed to devise a plan to escape my cage. I planned to leave Gothenburg in the middle of the night.

“Do you think the Kaisers know who you are?” she asked just before leaving.

“I don’t know,” I lied because I suspected Gunner knew who I was, or perhaps he wore the ski mask because he was suspicious of me. Then it occurred to me that Ronan Byrne had turned up at the forest pool, so maybe he knew who I was and had followed me. However, that didn’t make sense because the Kaiser family didn’t do the dirty work; they hired someone else.

“I’ll let you go to class,” she said flatly and left as I listened to their two sets of footprints walk down the hallway's wooden floorboards.

My middle finger shot up as she left, too chickenshit to do that to her face, although I was so enraged with nothing left to lose that it was going to be hard to be civil to her. Bitch.

My face dropped into my hands, and I rocked back and forth as I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to figure out how I could get out of this. I couldn’t see an option. If I ran, they’d find me. I know it’s a prominent place, but I have limited financial resources, so I had to live on the streets…I couldn’t see a way out of this except to do what she said and hope like hell the Kaiser didn’t kill me. But who was I kidding…of course, they’d kill me and throw my body into the lake or bury me alive in a wasteland.

The first time around, dirty cops persuaded me to make up a story about Mikael shooting Lars, Gunner’s father, through constant harassment and threats against me and my biological mother’s life. They put pressure on them by calling her a trailer trash drug addict and saying that it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t wake up at all.

The Kaisers paid for her to go to rehab, and she’d be clean for a couple of weeks before falling off the wagon. They bought her a lovely little house out of the drug-peddling slums, but she always found her way back there again.

When my mom overdosed and wound up in the hospital, then back to rehab, the dirty cops told me that they had organized her death, and she was lucky to dodge that bullet, and next time she won’t be so fortunate.

Then, when that didn’t work, they pulled the King’s gambit, the ultimate move. The swines produced footage of a little boy, aged 3, who they said was my half-brother, and my mother sold him to a loving family for drug money, so he was thriving and doing well, but could all change. They threatened to arrest those concerned, take the boy from the family, and place him in foster care.

I didn’t believe them, so I rang my mom, who confirmed it. She had a baby boy and sold him to a loving family, apparently. The dirty cops prompted me to call her, and I remember her words as they slurred down the line, “Please don’t visit him because he doesn’t know you exist. That was the deal. They paid me money, and you and I cut all ties with him.”

I didn’t think I could ever hate anyone more than I hated my mother at that moment. She sold a baby. She sold a sweet, innocent baby for drug money. She deserved death, no, she deserved worse than death, so it was easy to drop contact with her and pretend she didn’t exist anymore when I, after being the target of so much badgering and threats, resigned to making up a story about Mikael Kaiser shooting Lars Kaiser.

The police wanted their man so badly that they were prepared to break the law for him. As soon as I went underground with a new alias, I didn’t see those dirty cops from the Larsson Police Department again, but Judith emerged with her warm, calming demeanor. She seemed oblivious to what had occurred, and I was too afraid to tell her what had happened, not realizing she had been part of it all along.

Now, the dirty cops are back. They might have different faces in different towns, but they had the same objective – to take down the Kaiser empire.

If this were a movie, I’d be rooting for the Kaisers, but since this was my life, squashed between bad cops and a dangerous family, I was most definitely on my own.

A gentle tapping caught my attention, and I lowered my hands from my face. However, my glasses were stuck to the sweat on my palms, and I had to rescue them before they fell onto the floor.

“Cheetos?” I blinked several times to make sure I was seeing correctly.

“That looked bad,” she said, pointing her thumb down the hallway where the dirty cops had just been. “And you with your hands in your face in reaction to their visit.”

“Don’t you mean…face in my hands?” I asked to clarify as the muscles in my face flexed to smile.

“That’s what I said,” she frowned, stretching her neck to gaze out the window. “They’re leaving now.”

“Ah, that’s no big deal,” I quickly fell into my acting role, shrugging dismissively. “Family stuff.”

An awkward tension came over her as she started chewing her fingernails. “Your family are cops?”

“You could tell they were cops?” I was surprised because they were plain-clothed and in an unmarked vehicle.

“I mean, yeah, it’s pretty obvious,” she said, her brow furrowing as she started digging her fingernail into the edge of the door. “You didn’t…ah, tell them about me?”

“You?” That comment surprised me until I remembered why. “Why would I tell them… oh wait. You’re worried about the fake ID thing?”

She shrugged. Well, it’s illegal, and I could get into much trouble. Not just with police, but with the university.”

“Well…I assure you I won’t tell another soul, least of all the damn police. Besides, how can I tell them about you when I don’t even know your name or anything about you?” I waited several beats for her to tell me anything about herself, but she remained quiet, preferring to be an enigma. “Do you live in this dorm, Cheetos?”

A funny look crossed her face, and then she made a show of glancing at the time on her phone. “You’re late for class.”

“C’mon, Cheetos, give me something. Anything. Tell me one thing about you,” I practically begged. “Hang on, how do you know I’m late for class?”

“Because it’s my class too. The class I go to, except…I don’t go to it. Instead, you go to it, then share your notes with me,” she rattled off almost abstractedly.

“Oh, that class,” I sighed, rising to my feet, and started unpacking one of my bags, searching for my workbooks and laptop.

“Were you about to leave?” The lines in her brow deepened even more.

“Yes. I thought I had to leave, but I was mistaken and came back,” I retorted, my voice wavering.

“Leave Gotland?” she asked to clarify. “You were going to leave Gotland?”

“I thought I had to leave Gothenburg altogether, but it looks like I don’t have to,” I told her without giving too much away.

“Why the urgency? What happened?” she pressed. Finally, I started to see animation and curiosity light up in her usually suspicious eyes.

I wagged my finger at her. “No, no, missy, I’m not telling you a single thing until you tell me your name.”

She made a strange sighing growl, and it was evident she was conflicted. “Laws,” she stated under her breath.

“Laws? Your surname is Laws?” I asked in surprise.

“No,” she shook her head and pointed her finger at me, “No, that’s your surname.”

“How do you know? Have you been prying on my stuff?” I joked to see how far I could go before she ran away or yelled at me. Everyone had a limit, a barrier they didn’t want to cross, but some people’s limits were further away than others. “Was it you who broke into my room?” I pointed my finger accusingly at her startled face. I knew it wasn’t her, and she seemed horrified that I would even suggest such a thing.

“No,” she said, swallowing as those eyes behind her glasses grew larger. I didn’t know someone had broken in here. What did they take? Was there any damage?”

“Why should I tell you anything? You tell me nothing about yourself. You deal in illegal activities, so why should I trust you?” I spat to see if she’d drop her guard and reveal a small piece of personal information. Anything would do.

“I researched you one day. That day, when the masked man was staring at you. That day,” she told me honestly.

“Good for you,” I hissed, losing my cool. “I bet you found an array of wonderful things about me, while I don’t even know your name, Cheetos.” I bustled about as anger burned through my body – anger toward Judith and the dirty cops, anger toward my mom, anger toward my twin standing two feet away from me. “Would you excuse me…I have my bags to unpack.” I hinted for her to leave and nodded toward the door.

She received the hint loud and clear and shuffled backward to the doorway, her eyes fixed on my face. “Katerina,” she finally expressed after watching me for a few seconds as I aggressively shoved my clothes back into my drawers.

“And?” I frowned, wondering why she hadn’t left yet.

“Katerina is my name. My family calls me Kat, but I don’t particularly like that,” she confessed.

“Okay,” I said, and shrugged as if I didn’t care. Right now, I don’t care about anything except keeping myself alive. That was my number one priority, keeping me alive so that once my job was done, I could hit the road running and disappear from this place.

“ Ivanov is my surname,” she announced as if that should mean something to me. “That’s why I hesitate to tell people who I am.”

“And who are you?” Her cheeks burned red as if divulging this information was difficult and might get her in trouble. But it was her name. She couldn’t tread the earth of Gotland and attend class without eventually telling someone her name.

“You haven’t heard of my surname before?” she questioned.

I shook my head. “I’m new here, so…”

“Do me a favor,” she said, backing away. “Don’t Google my surname, and…it’s okay to call me Cheetos.”

“Okay,” I agreed casually, then she vanished from view, and I called after her, “That’s a Bart Simpson, Cheetos. Telling someone not to do something, you know, it makes them want to do it even more.”

I expected her face reappear at my door after making a false threat, but she didn’t, so I closed the door and continued to unpack while my head spun with everything that had occurred in the last two hours.