Stalking the Others Read Online Free

knew something bad would happen to me there, Jack. You tried to warn me ahead of time. How did you know something was up?”
    Jack had folded his arms over the counter and was using it to support most of his weight. He shifted, his boots squeaking on the cheap tile, not answering me right away. He coughed and mumbled something, so I dragged my attention back to him to see what was wrong.
    So help me, the man was blushing.
    “Come on, Jack,” I said, smiling despite myself. “You can tell me.”
    The big bad hunter covered his eyes with one hand. “We never stopped watching you. Didn’t have a choice.”
    Didn’t have a choice? That sounded ominous. Odd to think the hunter was embarrassed about spying on me. Or maybe it was due to his failure to recruit me?
    “I kept hoping you’d change your mind. Leave the leeches and the dogs alone. There was some word on the local OtherNet message board that the Sunstrikers were planning a trip, and that you’d be going with them. There was a group of people calling themselves the Nightstrikers who were making threats and saying they were going to cause some kind of trouble.”
    “Oh,” I said, unable to think of something more coherent to give in response. This was not the first time I’d heard of the OtherNet, but things were becoming clearer to me now. I’d have to investigate it further, once I had access to a computer again.
    “I should have stopped it somehow. Should have known there would be trouble like this.”
    Nikki lightly punched his shoulder. “Don’t start that shit again....”
    “Jack, please don’t beat yourself up over it. Nobody could have foreseen the trouble I ran into out there. The Nightstrikers weren’t after me, they were after Chaz. They’re decent guys, and they wouldn’t have hurt me.”
    I hated to think that Jack was looking like hell because he had been worried about me, but I was starting to suspect it. He took his work far too seriously.
    His icy response made me blink and wonder whether I’d really seen that chink in his emotional armor at all.
    “You don’t understand, do you? Don’t you know why I wanted you to join us?”
    I blinked at this sudden turn in topic. This conversation was giving me whiplash. “Uh, no. Not really.” I couldn’t say I had cared before now, either.
    Jack rose to his full height, which would have been more impressive if he wasn’t skinny as a rail. He came around the counter and pulled out a chair across from me, studying me intently. I shifted uncomfortably under that probing look, finding both the topic and his scrutiny to be out of place. Though I’d known in advance that this conversation was coming, I had hoped he wouldn’t want to hash all this out right from the start.
    “You really don’t,” he said, something like wonder tingeing his voice.
    “Just tell her,” Nikki said, using her foot to nudge a box aside from the counter so she could lean her hip against it and watch us from across the room. Her blue eyes, so like Jack’s, blazed with some emotion I couldn’t place. With the two of them staring at me like that, I was starting to feel a bit like a kid caught with her hand in a cookie jar.
    “I was hoping Devon would replace me,” Jack said, and I started at the mention of the other hunter’s name. Devon, too, had unsuccessfully tried to reach me before I left on my vacation to the Catskills. He’d also abandoned the White Hats to come play with me on the side of the good vampires about a month ago. I hadn’t seen him since the morning after the fight against Max Carlyle in Royce’s basement. “He seemed like a good choice. He was smart, capable, a fine leader, and an experienced hunter. It’s unfortunate he decided to leave.”
    “Why do you need a replacement?” I thought the question was safe, but the sound Nikki made clued me in that it was an uncomfortable topic. “And what does that have to do with me?”
    Jack laughed, though there wasn’t any humor to the sound.