Page 16 of Only the Hunter

“Well, there is a chance my brakes just failed. It’s an older car.”

“Jetta. Well-maintained. Brake failure’s unlikely.” Gabe says, and I wonder how he knows what kind of car I drive. The answer occurs to me immediately. I don’t like it.

“Given what you do, it’s unlikely,” Rhodes says, agreeing with Gabe all too easily. “MIA contacts? It moves it out of the realm of coincidence, and I don’t believe in coincidence anyway. Of course, you work on more than one case, right?”

“Of course.”

“Unsavory types,” Rhodes comments, almost to himself.

“The worst,” I concur. “But not with the financial backing to pull DOJ strings.”

“Financial backing that you know of,” Gabe says.

“A lot of these guys, they’re like waterways. The tiniest creek leads to a river which leads to the ocean,” Rhodes says. He raps his knuckles against the table. “Be careful.” He scans the restaurant and looks down at us. “Does your dad know what you’re working on?”

“My department? Yes.” I cut my gaze to Gabe, and back to Rhodes. “No specifics. Why?”

“It’s just always surprised me that he’s okay with you working these cases—a man with his reach, his instinct for protecting what’s his. He loves you. It’s a good thing.” His emphasis means he believes it, but I don’t always agree. And somewhere in the way he says it—his reach, his instinct—I hear something I wasn’t meant to hear. My father’s fingerprints are on this. Not a contract, not a direct order. Just his long reach, operating the way it always has, through people rather than directly.

That’s almost worse.

“I’ll be in touch with what Daisy finds.” To Gabe, he says, “Look out for her.”

Gabe doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to—Rhodes is already walking away.

I let the conversation with Rhodes drop and pick up the lunch menu. There’s nothing more to say—not here, not yet, not with Rhodes barely out of earshot and Gabe watching me like I’m a problem he’s already trying to solve.

I’ll have questions for him. I’m just not ready to ask them.

But for the first time since the crash, it’s clear my concerns are founded. I’m not being rash, or paranoid.

And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Chapter 5

Gabe

Lunch ran longer than I expected.

Not because of Rhodes—he was gone inside of thirty minutes, which is about what I’d anticipated. But Evie, once she’d set down the weight of everything she’d shared with Rhodes, became someone slightly different. Lighter. Still sharp, still precise, but there were moments—a dry observation about the sandwich selection, a story about a judge who’d fallen asleep during closing arguments—where she laughed, and I found myself doing the math on how many years it had been since I’d heard that sound.

Too many.

I watched her more than I should have. The way she held her coffee cup with both hands. The way she’d tuck a loose strand of hair back with one finger and then forget about it until it fell again. The way her expression shifted when she was thinking—a slight stillness, like she was running calculations behind her eyes that she had no intention of sharing.

I’ve spent weeks observing her from a distance. Watching her patterns, her routes, the way she moves through the city. I told myself that was professional. Assessment. Due diligence.

Sitting inches away from her in a hotel restaurant booth, I understood that was only partly true.

What Rhodes confirmed over lunch sits differently now. She was on her way to follow up on a lead—alone, at night—when her brakes failed. Not a coincidence. Not a maintenance issue. Someone made a decision about her life, and she’d survived it by luck and fast reflexes and a gap in a stone wall.

The thought had a particular quality to it. The kind that doesn’t announce itself loudly but settles somewhere low and doesn’t leave.

“You’re quiet,” she said as we reached the car.

“Thinking.”

She glanced at me sideways. “About?”