The Hunters - Jason Pinter [3]
I sat down on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. Looked around. Amanda sat next to me.
“Everything okay?” she said.
I looked over at her. Smiled.
She was a true beauty in every sense of the word. That auburn hair that fell around her shoulders like a sunset, the small mole on her collarbone that I loved to kiss. When we met, I felt like the luckiest man on earth simply because she’d saved my life. Now, I felt like the luckiest man on earth because she’d saved my soul.
“Thinking about Jack?” she said. “I didn’t know he was still alive, let alone in our neighborhood. The least he could have done was brought over a housewarming gift.”
I shook my head. “Not thinking about Jack,” I responded.
“Then what is it?”
“Stephen. I’m thinking about Stephen.”
Amanda nodded, stayed silent. I didn’t know what to say—how would she?
A few days ago, I found out that I had a brother. A man I’d never met in my life, who until he was thirty years old had never met or tried to get in touch with me. And the day he finally did reach out to me…he was murdered.
I wasn’t exactly a good luck charm when it came to family reunions.
I checked my watch. It was nearing midnight. I’d promised Jack to be at the office early the next morning. Which meant that if I was hoping to go in refreshed, I’d have to hit the sack pretty soon. And considering that our bedsheets were sealed inside any one of twenty boxes and that it was likely underneath pounds of junk (the penalty for packing quickly and not labeling your boxes), it’d be 2 a.m. at the earliest.
Not that I could fall asleep.
There was too much at stake. I still didn’t know who was behind Stephen’s death, and I still wasn’t exactly sure what Jack had in store for me in the morning. And hardest of all, I had a beautiful girl that I loved sitting right next to me.
“I don’t think I can sleep,” I said.
“Want to unpack?” Amanda asked. “Take your mind off of things?”
“Not really,” I replied. “Just…not sure what I want to do. A little scared about how things are going to play out. Worried that this thing runs a lot deeper than I thought it did.”
Amanda sighed. She understood as well as she could, but also knew I was going through something that she wasn’t a part of.
“At least let me help a little,” Amanda said.
“Oh, yeah? How can you do that?”
When I felt her lips caressing my neck, that answered the question for me.
“We don’t even have any sheets on the bed,” I said as Amanda lowered me onto the mattress, throwing her leg over mine.
“Then I guess,” she whispered in between kisses, “we won’t have to worry about doing laundry.”
“I like the way you think,” I said. And gave in completely. I can’t say I wasn’t still thinking about the next day…but Amanda had a pretty good way of making me focus on the pleasant things in life.
Chapter 2
“We’re gonna be late,” the blond man said. His manner conveyed a slight annoyance, even a sense of frustration, but he never would have let his emotions cross the line. The woman he was speaking to deserved more respect than that, and he considered any lack of patience on his part a reflection of his own personality defects, not of her tardiness.
He was a solid six foot two, and though he was wearing a bulky coat it was clear that beneath the fabric was a well-oiled machine. It was easy to tell from the way he walked, the way he carried himself, like a leopard that might move gracefully but could strike at any moment.
His hair was so blond it was nearly translucent, the dark roots only visible if you got close enough to look. And very few people got that close.
Everything she had worked for and planned for until now had come together perfectly. This was not the time to second-guess anything. When she needed to be on time, she was. When she wanted something to happen at her convenience, she made sure it did. So the fact that they were half an hour