The Hunted Girls by Jenna Kernan (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

Jack lifted his head and glanced about. His wrists and ankles were now tied with leather straps. Each tether was anchored to a metal stake driven into the damp ground. He wore only his trousers. His shirt, shoes, socks and slacks had been stripped away, leaving him in only his boxers. Where was his gun—his phone?

His breathing accelerated as he recognized that he was staked spread-eagled. He tugged at the bindings and found them fast.

Helpless. Sweat poured down his chest as fear locked his aching joints. His hesitation might have cost him everything.

He listened for some sign of human activity. He’d been on the short trail from the archery range, heading for his vehicle when…

Cattle prod. It had to be.

Jack flexed his leg and found it ached, as if he’d suffered the worst cramp of his life.

A breeze rippled through the trees, fluttering the sheets of moss. The quiet and the peace were illusions. He needed to get free before whoever did this to him came back.

He tested the bonds again, wondering if he could yank one of the stakes from the earth. Given time, he might.

Then he heard the scraping sound. Rhythmic. Familiar. It took only a moment to find his captor. The man sat on a stump six feet behind Jack’s head, whittling. Beyond him stood a weathered, windowless shack. Someone had tacked a huge gator skin to the graying boards. Long ago, judging from the rusty nails. The man thumbed over his shoulder to the hide.

“Gonna tack you up there when I’m through. Leave you as a gift for posterity.” He checked his work, rubbing a thumb over the pointed tip of the sliver of wood. “You’ll probably end up in an FBI textbook of what not to do when confronting a predator.”

Jack’s stomach twitched as the man stood and sidled forward. If he had seen him before, he did not recall. The man was clean-shaven, dressed in camouflage, laced military-style boots and wearing a red cap. There was a pistol fixed in a leather holster at his hip and fastened to a nylon belt around his waist. Jack made him at five-seven, one-sixty. Slim, athletic and maybe thirty-five. He had the gaunt cheeks and rasping voice of a habitual smoker. Dark hair and eyes.

In other words, he looked unremarkable.

“Got me memorized yet?” His captor folded the blade and tucked it away. “Did you see I’m missing the tip of this finger?” He held up his right hand, indicating his index finger. “Shrimping accident. Winch. Unfortunately, you won’t have a chance to give that description to anyone.” He thumbed at the gator skin again and smiled.

“You should let me go. Kidnapping a federal agent—”

“Hush now, or I’ll muzzle you.” He didn’t raise his voice. The calm was chilling.

“You’re the Huntsman?”

He doffed his hat and then tugged it back in place.

“And you are the man who dared to touch my intended.” He squatted beside Jack. His eyes blazed, intent, as his smile broadened, curving into a terrible mockery of contentment. Anticipation, Jack thought. The look of a cat the moment before…

He pounced, capturing Jack’s left hand, and pinning it to the ground.

Jack struggled, in an ineffective attempt to escape. The Huntsman slipped the sharpened wedge of wood under Jack’s nail and shoved.

The pain exploded up his arm and Jack screamed.

The agony finally receded to a pulsing throb and he could think once more. He looked at his left hand. Blood trickled around the wooden shiv rammed beneath his index fingernail. Jack glanced back, finding the huntsman again sitting on his stump, whittling a new sliver of wood.

Nadine and her team sat with Agents Coleman and Wynns in the safe house on the video call with Skogen’s supervisor.

Nadine closed her gaping mouth, still wrestling with the revelation that Jack had released her name to the media after promising to keep her involvement private. He’d betrayed her to get his investigation moving. And he’d succeeded, but at great personal cost.

From the monitor, Agent Gabriella Carter fixed her attention on Clint.

“Detective Demko, right?” asked Carter. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“None of it good, I’d imagine.”

“Little. But it seems you are the closest we have to a liaison with local law enforcement, so I’m putting you in charge of that.”

“I don’t work for the agency,” Demko reminded.

“I’m making you a special agent, effective immediately.”

Special Agent Carter scanned Nadine’s group.

“We’re landing. I’ll be there in eighteen minutes.”

TUESDAY

From then on, everything happened very quickly.

The FBI took Nadine’s phone and gave her a replacement. The substitute worked, but the FBI now had the ability to record all incoming calls and listen in real time. Agent Wynns told her she’d never know the difference. Even the cover was identical.

Unfortunately, as the afternoon dragged to evening, they still had not located Skogen, and, at Tina’s insistence, Nadine had finally dragged herself to bed.

So when the phone rang at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, it startled Nadine from a sound sleep.

The disorientation lasted only a moment and she had the phone in her hand before the third ring. Her first thought was that it was Demko with word on Skogen. She had tried to get Demko to stay with her but, as liaison with local law enforcement in the hunt for a missing FBI field supervisor, he had too much to do and left as soon as he was assured that she, Tina and Juliette were secure in the safe house.

She lifted her new device and checked the caller ID: SKOGEN.

Her heart rate tripled as she pushed herself to a seat, frozen as the phone rang again. The Huntsman had Jack Skogen. So he also had Jack Skogen’s phone.

Nadine swallowed, her mouth now a salt mine, clogging her throat.

“Hello?” she whispered.

“Dearest one.” The male voice was unfamiliar, high-pitched and unnatural. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Yes. I was asleep.”

“That doesn’t bode well for your fiancé, Jack. He’ll be grieved to know he is so easily forgotten.”

“Do you have him?”

“Of