Fearless Read online

  He could barely hear over his breathing.

  More screaming. A woman, but Hunter couldn’t tell if it was Clare. No one was dead yet, because they sure were making a racket. Casper barked.

  Another shot. A bullet hit the storage shed across the yard. Hunter flinched.

  If that was the 9mm, there would be at least five bullets left, unless shots had been fired before he got here. He and Clare had fired two in the field, and now someone had fired three.

  Hunter should have grabbed a bulletproof vest out of the locker.

  He fished his phone out of his pocket. He started to dial, but the screaming upstairs cut off abruptly.

  Casper growled softly.

  Hunter held his breath again. If he made a call, they might hear him.

  He didn’t exactly want to be noticed by someone shooting wildly.

  He switched to text message and found Uncle Jay’s number—his dad’s texting was sporadic at best.

  Shots fired at house on opp side dairy farm. Send help.

  A text came back almost immediately.

  U OK?

  Hunter moved to text back, but another gunshot exploded somewhere above him. He shoved the phone back into his pocket and slid toward the front of the house.

  The front door was half open, the lower level a well of darkness. Was this a robbery in progress? He might have believed that—if Clare hadn’t already stolen his gun. Hunter ducked inside. He waited for his eyes to acclimate, then eased around furniture toward the staircase.

  Someone was crying upstairs.

  Clare?

  But then he heard Clare’s voice, cold and hard and definitely not full of tears.

  “You leave her alone. I swear to god I will shoot you.”

  Then a man’s voice. “Shoot me. They’ll lock you up, and then what’ll you do?”

  “I’ll shoot. I will.” Clare’s voice sounded strong, but Hunter heard the slightest waver beneath the words. He kept the .45 in his hands and eased up the steps.

  And then he turned the corner and they were right there, in the hallway. Clare had the gun in her hands, held at chest level in both hands, just like he’d shown her.

  The gun was pointed at a man in his forties wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. Hunter could smell alcohol from here.

  And on the floor behind Clare lay a crumpled woman, crying, her hands over her face. Hunter could see blood between her fingers.

  Hunter trained the gun on the man. “Clare,” he breathed carefully, not wanting to spook her with the gun in her hands. “It’s okay. I called the cops.”

  Almost on cue, he could hear the thready sounds of a siren.

  “Hunter,” she said. Her voice broke. “Hunter, you have to go.”

  “It’s okay,” he said again. “I’ll hold him. Just . . . just put the gun down. Slide the safety, remember?”

  The man sneered at him. “You won’t hold shit, kid.”

  Hunter snorted. His own gun didn’t waver. “Some pacifist.”

  “I just said . . . I just said that because—” Clare’s voice broke again. She still had the gun pointed at the man, but her grip was wavering badly. “My brother used to stop . . . used to stop him—”

  “It’s okay,” said Hunter carefully. “It’s okay. Just put the gun down. The cops are coming. You don’t need to shoot him.”

  The sirens were very close now. Tires crunched on the driveway, and a car door slammed.

  “See?” said Hunter. “They’re here. You need to put the gun down so they don’t shoot you.”

  “They’re here?” said Clare.

  “They’re here. They won’t let him hurt you. Or your mother.”

  “Okay.” Clare turned toward him with the gun in her hands.

  “No!” Hunter dodged to get out of her line of fire—especially since her father had lunged forward to grab for the weapon.

  The gun went off. Clare cried out. She fell to the ground, just as her father raised his arm, pointing the gun at Hunter.

  Hunter didn’t think.

  He pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 5

  “So what did you learn?”

  Hunter slumped in the free chair in his dad’s office. He’d been up all night—and his dad had already made it clear that he expected Hunter to go to school.

  Clare and her mother were in the hospital.

  So was her father, under police guard. He had a bullet hole through his left shoulder.

  “A lot of things,” said Hunter.

  “Specifically?”

  “I should have told you she took the gun.”

  His father smiled, but there was an edge to it. “No, that one I understand. What did you learn about her?”

  Hunter set his jaw and looked out the window, where sunlight was just beginning to crawl into the sky. “She was using me.”

  “And what did Jay tell you about girls?”

  Hunter rolled his eyes. “To use them first. That doesn’t even make sense. You want me to go through life using everyone I meet?”

  “If it will keep you safe, yes, I do.”

  Hunter didn’t say anything.

  “Even last night,” said his father. “Even knowing she’d stolen from you. You wanted to help her. Didn’t you?”

  “Who wouldn’t want to help her? Can’t you imagine what she must have been going through? Do you blame her?”

  “She could have told you, Hunter. If she cared about you, if she trusted you, she would have. Jay was here in uniform last night. She could have told him.”

  Hunter scowled.

  “If nothing else,” said his father, “say you used her for the lesson.”

  “What about you?” Hunter snapped.

  “Me?”

  “Do you use Mom?”

  “You keep saying the word use like it’s a bad thing. As if there’s nothing given in return. Your mother wanted security. A family. A husband who would take care of her. She got those things.”

  Hunter snorted. “You make my whole existence sound like a barter transaction.”

  “Good. Start thinking of every relationship in your life that way.”

  “What fun.”

  “You can think about it while we’re gone. I think you’ll figure it out.”

  “Gone?” Hunter straightened in the chair. “You’re leaving?”

  “We got another message about this family in Annapolis. It sounds suspicious. We’ve decided to go a few days early, get the lay of the land before they know we’re there. Jay’s packing the car now so we can beat traffic.”

  Hunter looked out the window. “This is bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Hunter flew out of his chair. “I said this is bullshit. I can do this. You know I can do this. I should get to go. You even said yourself—I could be a decoy. I could help. I could—”

  “You’re not ready.”

  “I am ready! Look at last night! Look at—”

  His dad raised an eyebrow. “I am looking at last night, Hunter.”

  Hunter flushed. “I don’t mean the . . . the using. I mean—”

  “I know exactly what you mean. I also know that man had every thought to kill you, and you shot him in the shoulder.” His father paused and put his hands on Hunter’s shoulders. “You’re not ready. And that’s fine.”

  Hunter shoved his hands off and moved to brush past his father. “Fuck you.”

  Hunter didn’t realize his dad had grabbed him until he’d been spun around and pinned to the doorjamb.

  His father didn’t even raise his voice. “Want to try that again?”

  The door frame was pressing into his cheek exactly where he’d gotten the bruise yesterday—and Hunter could swear his dad knew that. “Let me go.”

  “Acting like a cocky teenager isn’t the way to convince me you’re ready.” But his dad let him go.

  Hunter shoved him, hard.

  And then his dad came after him.

  “Hey. Hey.” Uncle Jay was there, draggin
g them apart. “Leave him be, John. The kid’s had a long night.”

  “Forget it,” said Hunter. “I’ve got to get ready for school.” He didn’t look at his dad, just turned for the steps. “Have a great time on your trip.”

  When Hunter came out of the shower, his father and uncle were gone.

  It figured.

  Hunter slammed through the underbrush surrounding the property. He was exhausted, but fury rode him hard. He kept replaying those last minutes with his dad.

  And a small nagging voice at the back of his head kept insisting that his dad had left for a potentially dangerous assignment, and for the first time, he hadn’t said good-bye.

  Hunter hesitated and pulled the phone out of his pocket. He tapped out a text to Uncle Jay.

  Tell Dad I’m sorry.

  Before he could press SEND, someone tackled him from behind. The phone went flying, disappearing beneath the leaves.

  “Payback’s a bitch, huh?”

  Jeremy Rasmussen.

  A foot kicked Hunter in the side. “Someone’s a bitch.”

  Garrett Watts.

  Normally Hunter would fight them enough to stay alive, to keep his dignity. Anything more always seemed to up the ante.

  Today wasn’t the day for that.

  It took him less than three minutes to have them both on the ground. Jeremy’s head had collided with a tree trunk, and he lay unconscious in the leaves. Garrett’s arm was pinned behind his back, and he was whimpering. Hunter was all but kneeling on his throat.

  And for the first time, Hunter considered driving his knee down, crushing Garrett’s windpipe.

  He thought of his father’s question, of whether he could do it.

  Thinking and doing were two very different things.

  The world would be a better place without a jerk like Garrett Watts.

  Just like the world probably would have been a better place without a man like Clare’s father. Hunter’s dad was right—he should have shot to kill.

  But Garrett was a kid. He still had time to figure out what kind of man he was going to be.

  So did Hunter.

  He stood. “Get your friend out of here,” he said. “If you guys ambush me again, I won’t stop there.”

  Then Hunter picked up his backpack and started walking. But he headed for home, instead of school. If his dad was gone, there was no one to crack the whip. He had a lot more use for a day spent sleeping.

  When he got there, the car was back in the driveway.

  His dad and Uncle Jay were in the kitchen.

  They didn’t say anything when Hunter walked in, and he wondered if he could feed them a line about forgetting a textbook.

  Then his dad said, “I changed my mind.”

  Changed his mind? After everything? Hunter could count on one hand the number of times his father had changed his mind. Now it made Hunter wonder whether he’d made the wrong decision in the woods just now—or the right one.

  He dropped his backpack. “You . . . what?”

  His dad glanced at Jay. “Your uncle convinced me. Go pack a bag. You can come with us.”

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at

  Spark,

  the second book in the exciting Elemental Series, available this September.

  CHAPTER 1

  Gabriel Merrick stared at the dead leaf in his palm and willed it to burn.

  It refused.

  He had a lighter in his pocket, but that always felt like cheating. He should be able to call flame to something this dry. The damn thing had been stuck in the corner of his window screen since last winter. But the leaf only seemed interested in flaking onto his trigonometry textbook.

  He was seriously ready to take the lighter to that.

  A knock sounded on his bedroom wall.

  “Black,” he called. Nicky always slept late, always knocked on his wall to ask what color he was wearing. If he didn’t, they ended up dressing alike.

  Gabriel looked back at the leaf—and it was just that, a dead leaf. No hint of power. Behind the drywall, electricity sang to him. In the lamp on his desk, he could sense the burning filament. Even the weak threads of sunlight that managed to burn through the clouds left some trace of his element. If the power was there, Gabriel could speak to it, ask it to bend to his will.

  If the power wasn’t, he had nothing.

  His door swung open. Nick stood there in a green hoodie and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. A girl on the cheer squad had once asked Gabriel if having a twin was like looking in a mirror all the time. He’d asked her if being a cheerleader was like being an idiot all the time—but really, it was a good question. He and Nick shared the same dark hair, the same blue eyes, the same few freckles across their cheekbones.

  Right now, Nick leaned on a crutch, a knee brace strapped around his left leg, evidence of the only thing they didn’t share: a formerly broken leg.

  Gabriel glanced away from that. “Hey.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Gabriel flicked the leaf into the wastebasket beneath his desk. “Nothing. You ready for school?”

  “Is that your trig book?”

  “Yeah. Just making sure I told you the right assignment.”

  Gabriel always attempted his math homework—and then handed it over for Nick to do it right. Math had turned into a foreign language somewhere around fifth grade. Then, Gabriel had struggled through, managing Cs when his twin brought home As. But in seventh grade, when their parents died, he’d come close to failing. Nick started covering for him, and he’d been doing it ever since.

  Not like it was a big challenge. Math came to Nick like breathing. He was in second-year calculus, earning college credit. Gabriel was stuck in trigonometry with juniors.

  He was pretty frigging sick of it.

  Gabriel flipped the book closed and shoved it into his backpack. His eyes fell on that knee brace again. Two days ago, his twin’s leg had been broken in three places.

  “You’re not going to make me carry your crap all day, are you?” His voice came out sharp, nowhere near the light ribbing he’d intended.

  Nick took it in stride, as usual. “Not if you’re going to cry about it.” He turned toward the stairs, his voice rising to a mocking falsetto. “I’m the school sports hero, but I can’t possibly carry a few extra books—”

  “Keep it up,” Gabriel called, slinging the backpack over his shoulder to follow his brother. “I’ll push you down the stairs.”

  But he hesitated in the doorway, listening to Nick’s hitching steps as he descended the staircase, the creak of the banister as it supported his weight.

  Gabriel knew he should help. He should probably be taking the place of that crutch. That’s what Nick would do for him.

  But he couldn’t force himself through the doorway.

  That broken leg had been his fault. Thank god Nick could pull power from the air, an element in abundance. He probably wouldn’t even need the brace by the end of the week.

  And then Gabriel wouldn’t need to stare at the evidence of his own poor judgment.

  He and his brothers had always been targeted for their Elemental abilities. Being pure Elementals, they should have been put to death as soon as they came into their powers. Luckily, their parents had struck a deal with the weaker Elementals in town.

  A deal that had led to their parents’ deaths.

  Their oldest brother, Michael, had been able to keep the deal in place—until a few weeks ago, when Tyler and Seth, two of the other Elemental kids in town, had attacked Chris. It started a snowball of events that led to an Elemental Guide coming to town to do away with the Merrick brothers for good.

  He’d almost succeeded, too. After the Homecoming dance, they’d been attacked.

  They’d fought back the only way they knew how. But Gabriel had let Nick call storms that were too strong. He’d begged his twin for more power. When Nick fell, the accident had practically shattered his leg—if they weren’t full Elementals, he probably would have
needed surgery.

  That night, Gabriel couldn’t keep him safe. The Guide had kidnapped Nick and Chris, had held them prisoner.

  Becca and Hunter had found them. But Gabriel couldn’t do anything. Ineffective and out of control, just like always.

  But now they were safe, and things were back to normal. Nick was his usual self. Life’s good. Move on. No use complaining. He hadn’t even said a word about what had happened on the field.

  As far as Gabriel was concerned, he didn’t need to.

  Just like with math, Nick was used to his twin being a failure.

  Gabriel pulled onto Becca Chandler’s street and glanced in the rearview mirror at his younger brother. Chris was chewing on his thumbnail, leaning against the window.

  “Nervous?” said Gabriel.

  Chris looked away from the window and glared at him. “No.”

  Nick turned in his seat. “Make sure you open the door for her. Girls eat that crap up.”

  “Nah,” said Gabriel. “Play it cool. Make her work for it—”

  “For god’s sake,” Chris snapped. “She just broke up with Hunter, like, yesterday, so it’s not like that. Okay?”

  Jesus. Someone was worked up. Gabriel glanced back again. “But she asked you for a ride.”

  Chris looked back out the window. “I offered.”

  Nick turned his head to look at his twin. “Very nervous,” he whispered.

  Gabriel smiled and turned into Becca’s driveway. “Very.”

  “Would you two shut up?”

  Becca was waiting on the front step, her arms around her knees and her hands drawn up into the sleeves of a fleece pullover, dark hair hanging down her back.

  “She looks upset,” said Nick.

  She did, her eyes dark and shadowed, her shoulders hunched. Or maybe she was just cold. Gabriel wasn’t one for figuring out emotion.

  Her face brightened when she saw them, and she sprinted for the car almost before Chris had time to jump out and hold the door for her.