Page 168 of Hunt for You
Sam. Until they hadSam.
How the hell had this happened?
I kept running through those memories in my head of when he’d taken me down. Specifically, the moment he tore off that mask and looked down at me… and his fierce eyes were pleading,beggingme to understand—
“You did good, Bridget. I gotta say, I thought you were backing out on us. But you came through.” Jeremy stood in front of me in his black, special ops gear, feet shoulder width apart and his arms folded across his chest.
Even with his blonde hair that was just starting to gray, he looked like Captain fucking America. All he was missing was the stars and stripes.
“This is all wrong,” I muttered through my teeth. “He’s the wrong one. He wasn’t the mark—and you didn’t tell me you’d been following me.”
“We weren’t following you, we were followinghim,”Jeremy said sharply. “The convicted felon who appeared suddenly in your life right when you got squirrely? God, you really do think I’m an idiot.”
“That’s not—”
“I don’t give a shit how you want to frame it in your head, Bridget. But that’sexactlyhow it happened. When are you going to realize that I’mnotgoing to let you kill yourself?”
I closed my mouth with a snap and fixed my eyes on the cement under his feet, frowning.
The truth was,Cainhad appeared in my life right after that night in the bar. But Sam was… two weeks later? Three? I couldn’t quite remember. So had Jeremy really only known about Sam for a week? Or was he hiding the fact that he’d known about Cain since I got drunk that night and started asking for someone to hunt me?
Then it hit me.
Holy shit, Sam was Cain. HadSamkilled Richard?
My blood went cold. “Jeremy?”
“What?”
“Did Sam have anything to do with Richard Fitch’s death? My old chaplain? The other priest—er, preacher?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not that we can tell. They were hours apart—confirmed—when Richard died. And the Coroner says it was definitely a heart attack. He’d been on medication for a decade.”
Relief washed through me. Then I blinked as a car rolled past with the interior lights on and I caught the briefest glimpse of Sam in the back seat bracketed by a couple of agents, his jaw tight and eyes fixed straight ahead.
I looked at him, pleading for him to see me, to see how sorry I was, how this had never been what I wanted for him. That I’d thought I was catching Cain so he’d have at least a chance of a future…
But, with the bright lights inside the car, Sam couldn’t see me outside in the dark. My chest squeezed. And then went still.
As that car rolled out of the park—slowing only to show credentials and be passed through the cordon Jeremy had placed around it the moment Sam and I disappeared in the forest—everything in my body went quiet. Still.
Dead.
It was an effort to make myself inhale.
Cain was Sam. Sam was Cain.
How was it possible? I’d kissed both of them—how could I have missed… but my mind tracked back to those moments, so few and far between. Cain’s desperate, clawing kiss, Sam’s tenderness—even when he’d gotten desperate he’d held something back.
But which of them was the realhim?
Did it even matter? They’d both been lying to me this whole time.
Why?Why would he agree to kill me as Cain, then try to talk me out of it as Sam? Sam had threatened to call the Police! It made no sense! Had this whole thing been a game? Was he somehow connected to my father?
Oh shit.
Oh, shit.