Page 2 of Hunter's Game
“See something you like?” Her voice carried clearly over Metallica’s bass line as she smoothlypalmed the interceptor out of sight. Up close, he caught more details: the faint scar along her jaw that suggested intimate knowledge of violence, the calluses on her trigger finger that spoke of regular range time, the way she maintained perfect awareness of everyone in the room while appearing completely focused on him.
“Just wondering what a woman like you is doing in a place like this.” He settled at the bar, angling for a view of her hidden screen while making it look like simple male appreciation.
Hunter was aware of how he looked to her—six-foot-two of hard muscle and visible scars, with the kind of face that had been broken and reset too many times to be called handsome. The tattoos covering his forearms told stories of military service and brotherhood, visible beneath rolled sleeves as he leaned casually against the bar. He caught the quick, professional assessment in her eyes as she cataloged every detail—from his short-cropped dark hair to the slight limp from an old combat injury he usually managed to hide.
The glimpse he caught of the screen she tried to hold just out of view showed lines of code tracking wireless signals. Definitely not standard bartender equipment.
“A woman like me?” She leaned forward, giving him a view that tested his self-control while her fingers danced across what he now realized was a disguised keyboard. “And what kind of woman would that be?”
“The dangerous kind.” The words came out rougher than intended as he watched her hands move with lightning precision, cutting through digital security as smoothly as she poured drinks.
Memory flashed—another bar, another undercover operation that had gone sideways when he’d underestimated a beautiful woman with hidden motives. The scars from that particular lesson in trust had healed, but the memory remained sharp as razor wire.
A smile curved her lips, sharp as broken glass. “You have no idea.”
“Whiskey, neat,” he said, not missing how her screen flashed with an intercepted signal as Romano—their suspected connection to the international art theft ring—walked in. “Unless you’ve got something stronger.”
“Careful what you wish for.” She reached for the top-shelf bottle, the movement allowing her to adjust what he now spotted as a highly illegal signal booster disguised as a liquor display. “I hear the Devil’s Mark has a way of giving a man exactly what he asks for—right before it kills him.”
The warning could have been simple biker bravado, but Hunter caught the layer of truth beneath. She was telling him something without actually saying it. This place was more dangerous than even Darkness suspected.
The next hours were a careful dance of observation and calculated risks. He played his role—ex-military mechanic with skills the MCneeded—while watching her work both the crowd and her hidden tech.
She was good. Better than good. The kind of good that came from years of undercover work and a desperate need to prove something.
Eden. The name hit him like a physical blow when one of the patches barked it across the bar. Darkness’s briefing hadn’t mentioned the Devil’s Mark president had a daughter—a daughter whose surveillance setup could crack their digital security wide open.
He caught glimpses of her true capabilities as the night progressed. The way she cloned Romano’s phone with a casual brush past him, the movement so smooth it looked like simple flirtation. How she used the bar’s sound system to mask the hum of a wireless packet sniffer, the technology seamlessly integrated into everyday operations. The elegant brutality of her coding style as she sliced through firewalls between serving beers, each digital intrusion precisely targeted.
More details emerged through careful observation. The way she tensed slightly whenever Merrick Mitchell entered a room, a daughter’s instinctive reaction to a father who inspired fear rather than love. How her smile never quite reached her eyes when talking to the club’s inner circle, suggesting years of practiced deception. The carefully hidden rage that flared wheneverRomano was nearby, personal hatred masked by professional courtesy.
This wasn’t just an operation for her. This was personal.
The pieces started forming a pattern he didn’t like. A father in a position of power. A daughter with federal training and a talent for technology. An operation involving millions in stolen art and antiquities. And running through it all, the kind of bone-deep hatred that only came from intimate betrayal.
“Hunter,” she called eventually, “be a dear and help me get some bottles from the back?”
The storage room was dimly lit and cramped with servers humming behind locked cage doors. Eden closed the door with a soft click that sounded like destiny—or doom.
“You’re not just a mechanic.” She didn’t back away, leaving barely inches between them. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to kill.
“And you’re not just a tech-savvy bartender.” He should step back. Instead, he found himself swaying closer, drawn into her orbit like a moth to a flame. Something about her called to the darkness in him, the part that understood vengeance and necessity.
“We’re both playing dangerous games here.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as her fingers traced over a rack of hard drives. “The question is, are we playing the same one?”
The smart answer would be to deny everything. To maintain his cover at all costs. Instead, he heard himself say, “Depends on what stakes you’re playing for.”
She studied him for a long moment, then reached up and brushed her fingers along his jaw. The touch was feather-light but it burned like fire. “High enough to get us both killed if we’re not careful.”
“Careful’s not really my style.” He caught her wrist before she could pull away, his thumb finding her racing pulse. “Is it yours?”
Memory flashed again—another woman, another mission that had ended in blood and betrayal. But this felt different. Eden’s eyes held too much raw pain, too much desperate purpose to be playing him.
Unless that was exactly what she wanted him to think.
A noise from the bar shattered the moment. Eden stepped back, but her eyes promised this wasn’t over. “Romano’s been moving files through our secure network,” she said quietly. “Watch the artwork on the walls. Especially the new pieces. They’re not all what they seem.”
Before he could respond, she was gone, slipping back into the bar with that lethal grace that had first caught his attention. Hunter took a moment to steady his breathing, to lock down the surge of attraction that threatened to compromise everything.
