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“Hadley?”

I turned at Colton’s voice.

His stare was glacial. “Stay the fuck away from my investigation.”

I mockingly saluted him. “Sure thing, Officer. As Dante said, you’ve got it well handled.”

My voice was dripping with sarcasm he didn’t entirely deserve. Colton cared—for this family, the kid. That much was clear. And he was desperate to be the hero. But he’d never find the kid. It was us or no one.

Good thing he didn’t know that.

thirteen

“A Black Annis?” Donny gasped in disbelief.

“Looks that way,” I told her, recounting the evidence of what we’d found below the window.

She sucked her teeth. “I’d fucking love to see one up close.”

I heard in her voice what I heard on occasion when I called her to help on hunts… Hunger. Need. To be back out on the road, doing something, killing something.

She still had it in her. But not enough to come off the mountain. Not enough to fight her own demons to get there.

“We’re gearing up to go tonight,” I continued explaining as Dante slid custom iron bullets into his gun. “We’ve got a general proximity based on what we know they need and the victim’s house. Need you to narrow down coordinates for us before time runs out.”

The good thing about Donny being on her mountain was that she had fucking SENTECH-level computers and data to pull from. She knew what to look for and where, and she’d get it to us if there was something to find.

“On it,” she replied, the clacking of a keyboard already audible.

“Text me the coordinates when you find them,” I said before hanging up.

And it was a matter of when, not if. I had complete faith in Donny. It was the timing that was in question. Even if she got back to me tonight with a general location, we’d be pushing it.

“The kid isn’t going to make it,” I told Dante, shoving my phone in my back pocket.

He put his gun into his holster, looking up at me. “When did you become so cynical?”

“Right about the time my parents’ innards decorated this room.” I waved my hands around the living room.

A muscle in Dante’s jaw ticked, but thankfully, he didn’t try to give me any pity. “We have time. Jackson has time,” he sounded confident.

It bothered me, him using the boy’s name. Personalizing him. It was not what you did if you wanted to avoid being haunted by all of those you failed to save.

“This is not a movie.” I moved my eyes in a slow, exasperated circle. “We don’t arrive in the nick of time, slay the beast, and save the world.” I rested the heel of my boot on the edge of the coffee table so I could shove an iron blade into the holster on the inside.

“We kill the beast, if it doesn’t kill us. We make sure no evidence ties us to the corpses it created, and sometimes bring a person home, fucked-up for life. Rinse, repeat.”

“Not a terrible description of the job,” Dante muttered. “But there’s nothing wrong with a little hope.”

“Hope is for soft-hearted civilians or hunters not long for this world.” I loaded my pistol. “How you’ve made it this far holding on to such a useless emotion is anyone’s guess. I won’t be saving you if you go in trying to be a hero.” It wasn’t a lie. Trying to save other hunters would definitely get you killed. It was bad enough trying to save civilians.

“I don’t know, I think you’ve got a bit of a heroine in you.” He winked at me. “And getting saved by Hadley Harris would be a great honor.”

I failed to smile, even though I inexplicably wanted to.

My phone buzzing in my back pocket saved me from responding. I glanced down, impressed at how quick the response came, even for Donny.

“We’ve got a location from Donny,” I informed Dante while copying and pasting the coordinates into my map.