The Hunter Read online

  The Hunter

  T. R. Kohler

  Contents

  Author Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Sneak Peek

  Thank You For Reading!

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  Dustin’s Books

  About the Author

  Author Note

  As thank you for reading, please enjoy a FREE copy of my first bestseller – and still one of my personal favorites – 21 Hours!

  dustinstevens.com/free-book

  The Hunter

  Copyright © 2019, T.R. Kohler

  Cover Art and Design: Paramita Bhattacharjee, www.creativeparamita.com

  Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden, without the written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.

  You can hide from the devil,

  but he’ll always find you.

  --Allen Iverson

  Sometimes a deal with the devil is

  better than no deal at all.

  --Lawrence Hill

  Prologue

  She was dead, and had been for more than a week. There was no denying it, every last bit of her new existence put into place to drive home that one incontrovertible fact.

  The song that played when she woke up. The temperature of the water in the shower. Even the type of drink she was allowed to consume to help get her through the day.

  Ember Squires was gone. At least the version she’d spent almost four decades living as, anyway. She had died in a car crash at that damn crossroads, the driving snow too much for her sedan to handle, and she wasn’t coming back.

  A reality made all the more curious by the fact that in this moment, she had never felt more alive. Standing on the precipice of the cliff, the roar of the Cimarron River more than fifty feet beneath her, there was no fear. No hesitation.

  For the first time in what seemed ages, she had perfect clarity. She knew what had to be done, what her world now consisted of, and she made peace with it.

  This wasn’t about her. Hadn’t been in a long time if she really thought about it.

  That simple thought, that realization, settled within her, bringing with it a warming calm she hadn’t known in quite some time. No longer was she focused on what came next, or what happened if she failed, or even how she might be able to circumvent the situation entirely.

  All that mattered was to keep going. To do whatever was placed before her, focusing on who she was truly serving.

  And that damned sure wasn’t her new master, no matter how much he wanted her to believe so.

  As she stood there, the glowing moon above seemed to dim, the driving wind backing away. As if the elements sensed her moment of revelation, they peeled away, allowing her to step forward, revealing her true self.

  Flicking her wrist, she let the coiled whip splay out from her hand, the braided hide almost eight feet in length. Giving it a second snap, blue-hot flames sprouted the length of it, a sliver of fire curled along her right leg. Like a fiery viper ready to attack, it seemed to writhe in place as she stared back at the pair of men inching forward, a wicked smile coming to her lips.

  She was no longer Ember Squires.

  She was a Hunter.

  Chapter One

  John Lee Tam didn’t bother with a security system. Despite living on one of the poshest streets in all of southern California in a home that was teeming with rare artifacts, there didn’t seem to be a need.

  Nobody would be foolish enough to actually set foot inside. Not with the backing he had.

  Even considering such a thing would be a mistake beyond fatal. It would carry repercussions with it that extended into eternity.

  Nor did he bother trying to keep his movements or his habits a secret, maintaining the same schedule for the better part of a century.

  Each night at exactly nine o’clock, he would dismiss his assistant. Seven days a week, he made sure the man was onsite, the two working tirelessly to oversee the empire he had amassed. Plunging forward in twelve-hour shifts, they stopped three times throughout the day, twice for meals, and a third in the afternoon for tea.

  The rest of the day, they worked diligently. If at home in California, they scoured all available resources for rare treasures, digging through online databases or making phone calls to all corners of the globe. In the event that something caught their eye, they maintained the same schedule, Tam off to secure the item personally while his assistant remained behind and saw to the day-to-day.

  In extremely rare instances, they went down to the showroom he kept in the city, a gesture he could do without but was demanded both by his industry of choice and his employer.

  The importance of maintaining appearances, and all that.

  While there, they also kept to the same rigid format, a driver waiting on the curb as the hands on the clock formed a sharp ninety-degree angle, ready to take them home.

  Once left alone for the night, Tam allowed himself one hour to unwind. A long, cold shower. A quart of ice water. A few minutes of sitting on his veranda, staring out at the Pacific, feeling the breeze roll off of it, hitting him full in the face.

  Then, at exactly ten, he went to his bedroom, intent to start the process again the next day.

  Which was precisely what he had done this evening, much like every other.

  A light sleeper by trade, he somehow didn’t hear a thing. Not the breaking of glass as the intruders entered. Not a single footstep echoing across his marble floor.

  Not until a hand pressed down over his mouth did he even know somebody was present.

  At the feel of the pressure resting on the bottom half of his face, Tam’s eyes popped up. Sweat came to his feat
ures, his body’s natural responses kicking in, adrenaline pulsating through his system.

  Time and again he attempted to raise his hands to push away the arm pinning him flat, though they were virtually worthless. Unable to so much as lift them from the mattress, he lay prone, his eyes going wide as he stared up at the person before him.

  Questions floated through his mind, handfuls of them demanding to know who the person was or what they wanted, though no words came to his lips.

  In their stead was nothing more than the feeling of helplessness. The realization of being held in a state of suspended paralysis. The deep-seated belief that, for the first time, he might have somehow made a mistake.

  Keeping one hand over his mouth, his abductor reached to the corner of the bed. Peeling up the sheet that Tam was pinned against, he brought it to the middle before repeating the process in the opposite corner. And then doing it again from the bottom of the bed.

  Once all four were brought together, the figure released his grip on Tam’s mouth, the same oppressive weight seeming to still bear on him, demanding his silence, preventing any movement.

  Bringing the corners of the sheet together, the man bunched them tight above Tam’s torso, bundling him into an impromptu hobo’s pack. Folded with his knees against his shoulders, Tam could feel his body slick with sweat, could smell his own fear oozing from his pores.

  Without so much as a sound, the figure lifted him from the bed, hefting him upward as if he weighed nothing at all, before tossing him over a shoulder. One step at a time, the person retreated from the house, Tam feeling his back and shoulders bounce against the man as they moved.

  Slow and easy they went, Tam able to feel the cooler air as they stepped outside, hear the sounds of the neighborhood around them. Not once did the pace increase as they went, nor did they ever bother climbing into a vehicle.

  Just more of the same slow and steady march, moving on to a destination unknown.

  Never before had Tam bothered with home security, because he knew there would be no need. Not with the forces that he worked for, the agreements that he had entered into years prior.

  Which begged the question as to who would be brave enough, powerful enough, to be carrying him off into the night.

  And perhaps even more so, why his employer was now letting it happen.

  Chapter Two

  “Mr. Typhon will see you now.”

  The place was made to resemble a normal working office, a move that was supposed to be calming, but instead managed to do nothing but grate on Kaia Quinn’s nerves.

  Nobody ever got within a hundred yards that wasn’t directly affiliated with the organization. And nobody under an employment contract had the slightest illusion about what it was they did.

  They were an outpost of Hell. They worked directly for the devil himself, dispatched to Earth to watch over matters that existed in the middle realm.

  None of which required a copier. Or a fax machine. Or a water cooler.

  Or a dumpy gray-haired receptionist that loved to look down her nose at the likes of Kaia.

  Rising from her seat in the makeshift waiting area, Kaia leveled a glare on the woman. She ran her hands down the front of her leather pants, moving slowly forward.

  “And do remember, Mr. Typhon is a busy man with a very tight schedule.”

  Resisting the urge to fly across the room, to grab the thin chain that held the woman’s glasses on her nose and wrap it around her throat, Kaia forced a smile into place. Saying nothing, she slowed her pace even further, walking around the edge of the reception desk, the piece of furniture serving as a barrier from the door to the office behind her.

  Lifting each foot slowly, she set it down heel-to-toe, stretching a walk that should have taken seconds into a full minute.

  Every inch of it, the receptionist sat and glared, turning in her chair until Kaia was through the door and into Typhon’s office.

  And even then, she could feel the woman’s glare on her back.

  “Close the door, please,” Typhon said as she crossed the threshold, breaking the tension of the stare-down in the lobby.

  Flicking a hand out to the side, Kaia smacked at the edge of the door, swinging it shut. Slamming home with a mighty thud, the sound reverberated through the space as she resumed her normal pace, striding forward and sliding into the single visitor chair sitting in the center of the room.

  Typhon was a face-to-face operator. And he never dealt with more than one person at a time.

  The first time Kaia was ever summoned, she had been nothing short of terrified. Having heard every last horror story before, she’d filled her head with each conceivable ill that could be waiting for her. She was so beset with nerves, she barely heard a thing that was said throughout the encounter.

  Now more than a century into their time together, such fear had dissipated.

  Even if she was smart enough to still go through the motions whenever it was required.

  “Must you really antagonize her every time you visit?” Typhon asked.

  Separated by a polished desk made from pure obsidian, Typhon sat in an elevated chair, one ankle raised to his opposite knee. His elbows resting on the arms of his seat, his fingertips were pressed together before him.

  A large man, thick black hair was gelled into place, matching the suit and undershirt he wore.

  “I get it,” Kaia said, lifting her hands in a show of submission. “Hell has Cerberus, we get stuck with her.”

  Leveling a stare at her for a moment, Typhon remained silent. He kept the look in place long enough to make his point before the corner of his mouth flickered slightly, the closest he would ever come to reacting to one of her jokes.

  Especially one that came at the expense of his receptionist.

  “Moving right along,” he managed, “I’ve asked you here because I have a new assignment for you.”

  “Good,” Kaia replied. “Been a while. Starting to get antsy.”

  Extending one of his hands, Typhon made a gesture for her to slow down before returning it to place.

  “Now, wait until you hear what I have to say first. This one is going to be a bit different.”

  Doing as instructed, Kaia fell silent. She knew the statement was nothing more than perfunctory, this not the type of employment where the merits of a particular project were debated, each person having an equal say.

  The use of an office was just for show, a quasi-effort to keep morale in place.

  At the end of the day, the place was a dictatorship, a one-way street that began in Hell, flowed through Typhon, and landed at the feet of people like Kaia.

  Never let it be said that the expression shit flows downhill was without truth.

  “Is going to be?” Kaia asked, seizing on the words used. “You say it as if the contract is already signed.”

  “It is,” Typhon replied. “I handled it myself a couple hours ago.”

  Kaia felt her eyebrows rise slightly, her breath sliding out slowly. It had been decades since Typhon handled a negotiation personally.

  What had brought about such a change now, she could only guess at, knowing that it must be quite large.

  “But that’s only part of why I say this will be different,” Typhon continued. “This one comes with a very specific skillset at a time when we are in dire need of it.”

  Over the course of the preceding one hundred and six years, Kaia had worked cases too numerous to count. On every last one of them, she had met personally with Typhon for a briefing.

  Not once had he ever said anything remotely close to this.

  Not even during the sole failed assignment they’d worked together, the wounds of which still felt fresh, even thirty-five years later.

  “I see,” Kaia replied.

  “No,” Typhon answered, shaking his head, “you don’t, but you will. Everything you need is in the file.”

  Reaching out, he tapped a finger onto the desk before him. On cue, a black folder more than an inch thick appeared.


  “Okay,” Kaia replied, her mouth going dry, already anticipating what the pages before her might reveal. “Where is he now?”

  “She, actually,” Typhon replied, “is in a pen outside of San Diego. She’s being held in stasis, will remain that way until you get there.”

  More surprise flooded Kaia’s mind. Despite the human world now being tipped more heavily toward females than males, Hell seemed to have an imbalance in the opposite direction.

  She herself was one of just a few that did what she did.

  “Ah,” Kaia said, rocking her head back slightly, “so this is a woman thing.”

  “No,” Typhon replied, shaking his head, “you just happened to best fit the profile.”

  Again, Kaia felt her eyebrows rise.

  He had been right. This was going to be a bit different.

  “Special treatment?” she asked.

  Pointing his chin toward the file, Typhon said, “Read that first. Nothing can come before it.”