MARKED (Hunter Awakened) Read Online Free

I shook my head. Something was
gnawing at the back of my mind. What was it? It felt like something
else I should be remembering.
    “Did you see anyone suspicious when you left
the set, Miss Rhines? Anyone who didn't belong?” Detective Linden
asked. His eyes were shrewd and I didn't really like having them on
me, judging me either because I was a woman or because I was an
actress.
    I tried to concentrate, to think back and
find what I'd missed before. The sound of footsteps, crunching on
the gravel as I crossed in front of the food truck. A swish of
fabric. Then, the panic as I kept walking. There was someone
following me. I could feel it.
    I gasped as a new memory hit me. A hand in my
hair, tightening and pulling.
    “Miss Rhines?” Detective Thomas had kinder
eyes, but I could still see all of the miles in them. “What is
it?”
    “Someone grabbed my hair,” I said. My heart
started pounding again. “I hit something hard.” I reached up
towards my head, stopping short when it tugged at my IV. “Ow.” I
put my hand back down.
    “Someone grabbed your hair,” Detective Thomas
repeated what I said. “Do you know who it was?”
    “No, I don't think so.” I used my untethered
hand to gingerly touch the back of my head. It was sore, but not as
bad as I'd feared. “I never saw the person's face. I think it was a
guy because it felt like he was taller than me.”
    “How do you figure that?” Detective Linden
asked.
    “I do a lot of my own stunts.” I closed my
eyes, remembering. “It feels different if you're grabbed by someone
taller than you than it does if they're shorter than you.”
    “Anything else you can tell us about your
attacker?” Detective Thomas asked the question this time.
    I thought for a minute, trying to find every
possible detail in the blurry memory. “I think he threw me against
a car and then he was gone.” I opened my eyes.
    “Gone?” Detective Linden's eyes narrowed.
    That caught my attention. The detective's
reaction didn't seem like the interest that someone would have when
trying to gather information to capture a suspect. Something else
was going on here.
    “What do you mean gone?” Detective Thomas
asked.
    “Gone, as in, not there anymore.” I wasn't
sure how else to say it. “One minute, he was holding me up by my
hair and the next he wasn't. I ended up on the ground and that was
it.”
    “You didn't see anyone else?” Linden took a
step towards me. “Maybe a boyfriend or bodyguard who could've seen
what happened?”
    In the words of one of my favorite literary
characters, this was getting 'curiouser and curiouser.'
    I watched Linden's face when I answered. “I
don't have a boyfriend and my bodyguard had gone home for the day.
He'd left me the car and took a taxi once I was on set.”
    “We'll need his name and contact
information,” Thomas said.
    “It's Paul Stevens.” I looked around the room
as I suddenly realized that I was in a hospital gown. My clothes
were nowhere to be found. “If someone can find my phone, his
number's in there.”
    “Miss Rhines, did you fight back at all?”
Linden's voice was completely flat.
    I stared at him for a moment. “I'm not really
sure why that's relevant,” I said. “But, no. I didn't really get
much of a chance. He grabbed me, I screamed and struggled, but then
he threw me against the car and I couldn't even stand on my
own.”
    “So you'd consent to us examining your
clothes?” Thomas asked.
    “My clothes?” I was really confused now. “Do
you think some trace evidence was transferred to me during the
struggle?” When they both gave me strange looks, I added, “I've
picked up a thing or two playing in crime shows over the
years.”
    “We'll also want a doctor to examine your
hands and take scrapings under your nails,” Linden said.
    A thought struck me. I had done a lot of
crime shows and I just realized that there was one question that
they hadn't asked me, a question that was always asked if the
attacker