Her Hunter

Elmira had three rules for breaking into a crime lord's warehouse. One: Never go through the front. Two: Never go alone. Three: Never, under any circumstances, tell Kina about rules one and two. "You're alone, aren't you?" Elmira winced. The voice in her earpiece was calm, which was always worse than shouting. "Define alone," she whispered, pressing herself against a stack of shipping crates. "Elmira." "I have you. You're in my ear. That's practically a plus one." "I am in a car, four blocks away, with a laptop and a cold coffee, watching your tracker blink on the one street in this city, your father's security detail is not allowed to follow you into." A pause. "Get out. Right now." "Ten minutes." "Elmira." "Ten minutes, Kina. The shipment logs are in the office upstairs. Three weeks ago, a truck left the state armory with a full manifest and never arrived. Somebody signed off on that, and every road leads here." She peeked around the crate. Dim lights, concrete floor, the smell of salt and diesel from the docks. Two guards by the loading door, both bored. "I'll be in and out before anyone notices." Kina sighed the sigh of a woman who had said this is a terrible idea so many times it had worn smooth. "Jade has texted me fourteen times asking where you are." "Tell her I'm at yoga." "You've never been to yoga." "She doesn't know that." "She knows everything about you. That's the problem. I'm muting her. You have ten minutes. If I don't hear from you, I'm calling your father." "You wouldn't."Try me." Elmira grinned in the dark, tightened the strap on her black jacket, and slipped along the wall like she had been born there. The truth was, she had been trained for this. Not the sneaking, exactly. Her father's people had taught her to shoot, to fight, to read a room, and find the exits before anyone thought to guard them. They had done it so that she'd be safe. What they never understood was that teaching a girl to survive a war makes her want to go find one. The stairs to the office were metal and open, and she took them two at a time, light on her feet. The door was locked. The lock was not a problem. Ninety seconds later, she was inside, and the phone flashlight between her teeth, flipping through a filing cabinet that was far too neat for a criminal. There it was. A folder marked with a government seal. Her stomach dropped. She knew that seal. She had grown up under it. It hung in her father's office, stamped every letter she had ever been handed, and now it was on a manifest inside the warehouse of the most notorious man in the country. "Oh no," she murmured. "Oh, no.""What?" Kina said sharply. "What is it?" "I don't know yet." A soft click sounded behind her. Not a gun. Something worse. A lamp. "Most people," said a low voice, "knock." Elmira turned slowly. He was sitting in the dark corner of the office, in a chair she had walked right past, one ankle propped over his knee like he had been there for hours. Black suit, no tie, sleeves rolled to the forearm. A scar cut through his left eyebrow. He wasn't holding a weapon. He didn't need one. The room seemed to bend around him. She had seen his photograph exactly once, in a classified briefing she was never supposed to read. Digel, the file said. No surname. No confirmed history. Every problem the city had, somewhere behind it, his name. "Elmira," Kina whispered in her ear. "Elmira, your tracker just spiked. Talk to me." Elmira did the only sensible thing. She took the earpiece out, dropped it, and crushed it under her heel."I'm not breaking in," she said. "I'm auditing." One corner of his mouth moved. It was not quite a smile. "Auditing." "Your filing system is a mess." "It's alphabetized." "That's the mess." Now, the smile was real, small, and dangerous. He rose, slowly, and he was taller than the photograph had suggested. "You have sixty seconds before my men come up those stairs. Do you know what they'll do when they find someone in my office?" "Be disappointed you didn't handle it yourself?" Boots hit the metal steps. Four sets, maybe five. "Fifty seconds," Digel said. Elmira did the math, and then she did the reckless thing, which she always did. She shoved the folder inside her jacket, kicked the chair between them, and went out the window. The drop was twelve feet. She landed in a roll, came up running, and the whole warehouse woke around her. Shouts. A gunshot into the ceiling, meant as a warning. A guard lunged from her left, and she caught his wrist, twisted, and put him on the floor. Another came in fast from behind. She dropped low, swept his legs, and drove her elbow into a third man's ribs hard enough to make him rethink his career. Four down. Five. She was already at the loading door. The sixth man was bigger than the others, and he wasn't slow. He caught her around the waist, slammed her back against a crate and pinned her wrists with a grip like iron. "Let go," she said, "or I break something." "Please try," he grunted. She did. He howled. She almost got free. "Enough." The word wasn't loud. But every man in the warehouse went still. Digel walked down the metal stairs unhurried, the way other men walk to their own front doors. He crossed the floor, stopped an arm's length from her, and studied her the way a person studies a very expensive, very unexpected problem. His men stayed frozen. Her jacket was torn at the shoulder. Her hair had come loose. She lifted her chin. "You fight," Digel said, "like someone who's been taught by professionals."You run a warehouse," Elmira said, "like someone who's been taught by amateurs." Someone in the crowd coughed to hide a laugh. Digel's gaze flicked toward the sound, and the coughing stopped, instantly. Avana, Digel's private secretary, had appeared at the top of the stairs, tablet in hand, dressed perfectly in gray. She looked at Elmira, and then at Digel, and then at Elmira again. It's just a beat too long. "Sir," she said smoothly. "The cargo manifest is missing from your office." "I know," said Digel, not looking away. "Shall I call someone?" "No. Go back to your desk." She obeyed, but her eyes stayed on Elmira as she went. "Let her go," Digel said to the man holding Elmira's wrists. "Boss?" "I said let her go." He did. Elmira rolled her shoulders, and for a moment they simply stood there, in the middle of a room full of armed men, neither of them backing down. It should have been terrifying. It was, in a way, she didn't want to look at, thrilling. "Now," Digel said softly. "You're going to tell me why a girl who fights like a soldier is stealing my paperwork." Elmira reached into her jacket, drew out the folder, and held it up so he could see the seal. Then she smiled, all teeth and no fear. "Because," she said, "you've got something of mine."