Page 166 of Hunt for You
“This is bullshit!”
“Clasp your hands on top of your head and turn your back to me.”
“Bridget! Tell him!”
“It wasn’t supposed to be you,” she croaked without looking at me. “I thought you were Cain… I thoughtyouneeded saving…”
The agent shifted to put himself between us so I couldn’t see her properly, and he glared. “Hands up, Priestley.Now!”
I had no choice. Not if I wanted to live.
I threw my hands up and laced my fingers over my hair, everything within me screaming in protest. I had been here. I had changed my life.I wasn’t going back!
My chest started to heave. I wasn’t sure if I was going to vomit or scream.
“Bridget,” I said through my teeth. “You have totell him—”
“Trust me, he knows. But… your last name is Priestley?” she asked faintly… and then she startedgiggling,a strange, high, unhinged sound in this black night.
“Keep your hands on your head and turn your back to me, Mr. Priestley.”
I bellowed my frustration and rage into the night, but did as he instructed. And the moment I turned, rough hands took hold of mine on my head and a sharp kick to the back of my knees forced me to drop to the ground. The men around us rushed in, guns still pointing at me, as I was planted face down in the dirt and my hands levered behind my back while I roared my protest.
Theclick-click-clickof the handcuffs tightening on my wrists felt like a death knell. My heart began to jump and quiver in my chest.I couldn’t go back—
“Bridget, tell them!”
“Tell us what, you creepy fuck? That you’re a convicted felon carrying a weapon and pursuing a woman in the dark at night? Or that you’ve been following her for the past week?”
“I wasn’t—she knew—”
Bridget’s laughter cut off abruptly. “Week?” she asked breathlessly.
“Find that weapon he threw. Get his phone, and search the vehicle. Everything by the book. This one is slippery.”
I turned my head, mashing my nose into the mud to do it, but finally I could see her, beyond the forest of legs surrounding me, still sitting, staring at me, wide-eyed, tears tracking down her cheeks.
Tears from laughter? Or tears of grief?
“I wasn’t lying,” I snarled through my teeth. “I wasn’t fucking lying, Bridget!”
“I didn’t know, Sam. I’m sorry… I really didn’t know it was you. I would never have—”
“That’s not the point—”
“This isn’t your first rodeo, Mr. Priestley. My advice is to keep your fucking trap shut and stop incriminating yourself by attempting to manipulate my colleague.”
Bridget’s head snapped up, and she glared at Special Agent Jeremy Haines like he was a piece of shit. But then his words came home to me.
Colleague?
And that was when I realized. My jaw dropped. I grunted as a knee ground into my lower back, sending a jolt of pain up my spine.
“You’re anFBI Agent?”I ground out.
“No,” she breathed, then licked her lips quickly and her eyes dropped to the ground. “I just—they protect me and… and I help them.”
“A fuckingnarc?!”