Hired Hunter (The Rover 2)

Sol shouted my name. “Zoey!”

She reappeared again across the field, her hands bound behind her, tied to her legs like a deer ready for the slaughter. I didn’t make it one step toward her before the captain grabbed the back of my collar and slammed me into the ground. I reached out and caught hold of the knife tucked into the captain’s boot.

He missed it, so I grabbed the hilt and brought the knife down into the top of his foot. He crumpled with a shout.

“I told you I didn’t care about hurting him,” I said, spinning out of his grasp to stand again. “What is it with men and never listening when a woman speaks? You hear only what you want to hear, never the truth.”

He laughed and spit out a wad of blood onto the ground.

“It’s not that we don’t listen,” he said. “It’s that we don’t fucking care.”

I rolled my eyes and darted around him, hoping to keep him off balance and on the defense.

“You couldn’t have just been a bad guy,” I said. “You had to be a misogynistic pig bad guy to boot? I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

He didn’t look concerned, and that worried me.

“Killing me in someone else’s skin only pushes me back into my own. You won’t kill me. You will kill this man though. I’ll simply hop back into my own body and go about my day.”

Yes, please keep bragging about your abilities. Keep telling me your plan like a Scooby Doo villain.

I made another circle around him and slashed out with the knife. He barely dodged it and I caught the captain across his chest. There would be time to feel guilty about it later.

While I loved a good ‘bad guy spills his secrets’ moment, I would not be able to hold out much longer. The wound in my side had been steadily dripping blood since I gave everything in me to Fin. Which, upon reflection, might have been a bad idea considered he still hadn’t woken up to help here.

The captain struck his fist at the side of my face. I went down hard and stayed there a moment, dazed.

He leaned over me and pointed the knife under my chin. “Don’t move, or I’ll gut you. I’ll hook you up to an IV and use your body like a breeding machine. Then I won’t have to deal with your mouth as a consequence of keeping you alive.”

If this guy didn’t stop threatening to rape me and use me to breed his babies, I was going to rip off his limbs, in the captain’s body or not.

I tried to push off the ground, but my arms gave out and I collapsed.

Something sang through me. It took me a moment of hazy focus to realize it was the bond between Fin and me. It shimmered and flexed inside me, soaking in the magic and life force I’d shoved into it.

Then Fin sat up with a gasp of air, clutching his throat. The captain spotted him at the same time I did.

Fin couldn’t protect himself yet. I launched myself at the captain from the ground and took him down.

Fin scrambled to his feet somewhere behind. The captain got me around the neck and squeezed, then he pulled the gun from his thigh holster.

“Come any closer and I’ll blow her head off,” he yelled at Fin.

Well, Fin looked like shit. I probably looked just as good. He walked toward us, dragging a sword in his hand. Isolde. It drew a line through the pine needles as dirt as he lumbered toward us.

“Let her go,” he said, his voice only a whisper.

Esteban laughed “Oh sure, I’ll just let her go and you can take me prisoner and end this entire bloody campaign. Shall I?”

“God, you’re a dick,” I said, struggling in his hold.

He bit my earlobe hard and whispered fiercely. “I know you're eager to have me but please don’t make me shoot you on accident. Or your lover.”

I didn’t waste the breath telling him again that Fin and I weren’t lovers. He’d obviously gotten it into his head and let it run free into his imagination.

His legs wobbled around my hips, and his calves held my own locked tight with his. He used my body as a shield. The only good spot to hit would be part of his wider torso he exposed from behind me.

I calculated the odds of me getting stabbed at the same time if Fin struck, and they were pretty high.