1
If someone would’ve told Hunter Odenson a year ago he’d be playing babysitter to some spoiled ditzy Hollywood bombshell instead of dodging sniper bullets and landmines in Mosul, he would’ve laughed in their face.
Yet here he was, striding onto a Tinseltown backlot searching for the bombshell in question. He ignored the stares of people he passed and searched the numbers on the huge warehouse-sized buildings, squinting in the ever-present southern California sunshine.
Sound stage eleven loomed ahead and he walked down a shaded alley to a side door with a red light beside it. A sign below warned not to enter if the light was flashing. Hunter gave the thing some serious side eye then snorted. Not a flicker in sight.
He’d wanted to set up this initial meeting at a nice restaurant, maybe get to know his client over a casual lunch, set the ground rules for their new, temporary partnership right away—when they were in public, he was in charge. Behind closed doors, Alexandra Valentine could do what she wanted with whoever she wanted, as long as it wasn’t illegal and it wasn’t with him. End of story. Besides, this was all a front anyway. His real reason for being here was a missing persons’ case the firm had been hired to investigate on behalf of Ms. Valentine. The whole bodyguard thing was just a front to keep nosy people away from the truth.
Inside the cavernous building, it was pitch black. Hunter stood in the gloom, blinking hard to clear his vision and figure out where to go next. Obviously, this was the wrong place, even if the numbers matched the information Loki had given him earlier. He added misdirection to the growing list of things he intended to discuss with his boss when he talked to him again.
Once his eyes had adjusted, Hunter walked farther inside the empty sound stage, hoping maybe the crew had left some clue behind as to where they’d gone. He didn’t have to wait long. As a man who’d done three tours of duty as a Navy SEAL and led countless special ops, he recognized the sounds of gunfire.
The minute the click-click-boom of bullets rattled through the building, Hunter went into stealth mode, cursing the fact he didn’t have his usual weapons with him. All he’d brought was a standard issue Glock, thinking even that would be overkill for guarding America’s reigning comedy queen. But as he peered through the open door on the other side of the sound stage and into the alleyway beyond, it became clear he’d just gotten a whole lot more than he’d bargained for.
“Fuck.” He pulled his gun and clicked off the safety, peering through a crack in the door to see two thugs standing over a woman tied to a chair. How the hell this could happen in the middle of a huge movie production company, Hunter had no idea. Then again, terrorists always used the element of surprise to wreak their havoc on the world.
He rolled his neck, hating the way the starched white collar of his button-down shirt cut into his skin and the way the tie he’d worn felt more like a noose. Fighting in this damned monkey-suit was going to be hell. One more beef to chew over with Loki.
Go to Hollywood, his boss had said. If you do well with this assignment, maybe I’ll promote you to Group Leader.
And yeah, maybe Hunter’s ultimate goal was to prove he was more than an imposing tower of brawn, that his brains were as impressive as his muscles, that he was smart enough to do more, be more. He wished this particular scenario had played more to his mental skills than his physical ones, but he did what he needed to do to get the job done.
“Where should we start?” one of the thugs asked the other, drawing Hunter’s attention back to the task at hand. The woman tied to the chair was facing away from him and there was a burlap bag over her head, preventing him from seeing her identity. Her hands were zip-tied behind her back and her ankles were tied to the front legs of the chair. She looked small, much tinier than the assholes leering at her. If it was one thing Hunter hated it was a bully, so now these pricks would not only feel his wrath in general, he’d have to whoop their asses into next year too.
“I don’t know,” thug number two said. He had a knife in his hand and traced the shiny blade down the woman’s arm, not hard enough to cut her pale skin, just enough to let her know wh
at was coming. The thug leaned in to speak close to her ear. “Maybe we just slowly peel her skin off, inch by inch until she tells us what we want to know.”
Hunter clenched his jaw, his nostrils flaring. These scumbags were talking about torture—or Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, as the CIA liked to call them. They were technically illegal around the world but still in use anyway. Hunter was far too familiar with such tactics and they made his already knotted stomach churn. Whoever the fuck these pieces of shit were, they were going down.
He kicked the door open, gun drawn, and used the distraction of the loud banging of metal against metal to grab the first thug from behind, slamming his head into the building and knocking him out cold. Thug number two faced Hunter, his wide eyes dropping to the Glock before meeting Hunter’s gaze again. All the color drained from his face and he dropped the knife immediately. He raised shaking hands into the air.
“That’s right. Not so brave now are you, asshole?” Hunter sneered, kicking thug number one’s legs out of the way as he crouched beside the woman’s chair. The bag was still over her head so he couldn’t tell for sure, but they must’ve gagged her too, if her muffled grunts and groans were any indication. Keeping his gun and his attention focused on the trembling thug before him, Hunter reached down and grabbed the knife from the ground to use it to cut the zip ties around the woman’s ankles. Except when he brought the blade to the plastic, it was dull as dishwater. Couldn’t slice through butter, let alone a human being. His confusion increased as he discovered the zip ties were loose too. Loose enough for the woman to escape herself, if she gave it half an effort. He checked the tie around her wrists and found the same.
What the—
A low murmur grew from behind him as Hunter reached up to tug the hood from the woman’s head and a fall of pale blond hair spilled out around her shoulders.
Shit. Just shit.
“Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air where we can see them,” a voice boomed over a bullhorn from behind him as Hunter peered up into the face of the very woman he’d been sent here to guard. A woman whose eyes sparkled with fury. She freed her hand from the ill-fitting zip tie behind her back and yanked the gag from her mouth.
“Nice work, idiot,” Alexandra Valentine said, her tone frosty despite the warm California day. “That’s a whole day’s shooting down the drain.”
Hunter carefully placed his Glock on the ground then turned slowly to face the camera crew and security guards filling the opposite end of the alleyway. He’d missed them upon his initial explosion out of the building, being occupied with rescuing what he’d thought was a damsel in distress. Turned out it was just more Hollywood bullshit.
Why in the hell had he ever agreed to do this job?
The armed security guards rushed over, kicked his gun out of the way, then proceeded to pat Hunter down while another man Hunter assumed was the director checked the guy he’d slammed into the wall and knocked out.
“Look, I’m really sorry,” Hunter said, remaining as non-threatening as possible while the guards questioned him. Well, as non-threatening as a man who stood six-five and was two-hundred and eighty pounds of solid muscle could look. They had him facing the wall of the building as they frisked him then put him in handcuffs to await the police. “This was all a big misunderstanding. I’m here on assignment.”
“Yeah?” Security guy number one asked, the radio at his waist crackling with unintelligible voices. “What kind of assignment is that? Resident Idiot?”
Security guard two snorted. “Maybe. Lunks like that are usually dumb as dirt. Look at him, he’s big as a house.”
Hunter gave the men a deadpan stare over his shoulder. Wasn’t like he hadn’t heard it all before. From the day he’d turned six, he’d always been the biggest kid in his class. Hell, even the teachers had been afraid of him. Didn’t do much for a guy’s self-esteem or his social skills, but the SEALs had made his size into an asset. They’d shown him that he could turn his biggest weakness into a force for good. “I’m here as the personal bodyguard for Miss Alexandra Valentine.”
“Like hell you are,” Alexandra said, deftly shedding the rest of her restraints then stalking over to lean against the wall beside him, her arms crossed and her expression pissed. “You realize you ruined the end of my movie.”
“I said I was sorry.” He didn’t look at her and instead stared at the ground, doing his best not to notice how plump her pink lower lip looked or how she smelled faintly of strawberries. “It won’t happen again.”
“Damn right it won’t.” She scuffed the toe of her shoe against the pavement. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
“I got stuck in traffic.” He took a deep breath for patience. Hunter was used to being the man in charge of the operation, not some lackey to be ordered about. “Then I got lost on the lot.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a crappy sense of direction.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a shitty attitude.”
She watched him, silent, one brow raised, and Hunter could feel the promotion he’d worked so hard for trickling away like rainwater down a storm drain. She was going to call Loki and have him pulled from the case. And why not? He’d fucked everything up since the moment he’d set foot in Hollywood. He didn’t belong here in the land of the beautiful and the home of the perpetually perfect. He was too big, too rough around the edges, too broken. He never should’ve agreed to take this assignment. He should’ve stuck with what he was good at, what he was known for—running ops and kicking ass, not necessarily in that order.
“What’s your name, tough guy?” Alexandra asked, flipping her long blond hair out of her eyes.