Absolution Read online

  Absolution

  The Hunter Mercenary Series Book 2

  By Morgan Kelley

  Copyright © 2018 Morgan Kelley LLC

  All rights reserved. Without limiting rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, introduced into a retrieval system, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including without limitation photocopying, recording, or other electronic or technical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The scanning, uploading, and/or distribution of this document via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and is punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. For permission requests, email [email protected].

  Content Advisory: This book is intended for mature audiences and contains, explicit sexual activity between various couples. This is considered an erotic thriller. If you are offended by sex or prefer no sexual details, you should stop reading now.

  © Copyright 2018 cover by Celestia Abraham

  Dear Reader,

  Since my books crossover a great deal, I recommend reading them as they are written. I tend to mention characters in books they don’t generally occur in, and later in the series, there are full crossovers.

  Some readers have contacted me for this list, and I figured I’d pass it on to the rest of you.

  While you can read the books by series only, it only enhances the reading experience if you go in order of how I wrote them. I tend to give away secrets…

  I’m sneaky like that.

  On the next page, I’ve given you the list.

  MK

  Here is the reading book order:

  The Killing Times (FBI)

  Sacred Burial Grounds (FBI)

  True Love Lost (FBI)

  Deep Dark Mire (FBI)

  Fire Burns Hot (FBI)

  Celestia is Falling (Croft & Croft)

  Darkness of Truth (FBI)

  Vegas is Dying (Croft)

  Devil hath Come (FBI)

  Christmas is Killing (Croft)

  Blood Red Rage (Littlemoon)

  Consumed by Wrath (FBI)

  Sinner Repent (Carter trilogy 1)

  Love is Bleeding (Croft)

  Lost & Broken (Littlemoon)

  Illegal Fantasies (Anthology 1)

  Redemption is Here (FBI)

  Sinner Realized (Carter trilogy 2)

  Romance Under Arrest (Anthology 2)

  Heaven is Weeping (Croft)

  Unthinkable Games (Littlemoon)

  Dead Shall Speak (FBI)

  Sinner Reborn (Carter trilogy 3)

  Pledging to Die (FBI)

  Hell is Burning (Croft)

  Truth is Found (Littlemoon)

  Slay Bells Ring (FBI)

  Holiday Reinforcements (Trilogy 3)

  Oracle Rising (Oracle)

  Past will Haunt (FBI Flashback 1)

  Choices will Destroy (FBI)

  Justice is Dead (Final croft book)

  Haven of Nightmares (Littlemoon)

  Blood Shall Run (FBI)

  Oracle Seeing (Oracle)

  Dark Justice (New Croft Series)

  Forbidden Secrets (Littlemoon)

  Act of Blood (FBI)

  Oracle Saving (Oracle)

  Stalked by the Past (FBI flashback 2 )

  Dying to Love (FBI)

  Lost Justice (Croft)

  Kiss of Souls ( Littlemoon) (FBI/Littlemoon crossover)

  Oracle Haunting (Oracle)

  Revenge has Come (FBI)

  Paid Justice (Croft)

  Wedding of our Dreams: Steele and Dante

  Lost Souls (Littlemoon) Sept 2017

  Discarded by Fate (FBI)October 2017

  Atonement (Hunter Mercenary 1) November 2017

  It’s Good to be the Boss (Romance Anthology 1) November 2017

  Dawn of Evil (FBI) Jan 2018

  Dead are Forgotten (FBI) Jan 2018

  True Justice (Croft/FBI crossover) Feb 2018

  Love Knows No Bounds (FBI) Valentine’s Day 2018

  Mob Justice (Croft Mob) March 2018

  Curses Found (Littlemoon) April 2018

  Absolution (Hunter Mercenary 2) May 2018

  All the King’s Henchmen (FBI) June 2018

  Honor Thy Anger (FBI flashback) July 2018

  All Justice (Croft Mob) August 2018

  Choice of Despair (Littlemoon) Sept 2018

  All the Queen’s Men (FBI) October 2018

  Amends (Hunter Mercenary) Nov 2018

  Angel of Death (FBI) Dec 2018

  Cause of Death (FBI) January 2019

  Time of Death (FBI January 2019)

  Harcourte books do not cross over and can be read anytime.

  Dangerous Revelations

  Dangerous Choices

  Dangerous Misery

  Dangerous Retaliation

  Dangerous Influence

  Dangerous Sacrifice

  Dangerous Destruction

  ~~~~ About the Author ~~~~

  Morgan Kelley lives in the beautiful Pocono Mountains with her husband and two children. After attending college at Penn State University and studying Criminal Justice, Morgan knew her only true passion in life would be murder and books. She put them both together and began her career as a writer. Other than books and writing, you can find Morgan hanging out in her garden and digging in the dirt.

  Her other works include: The Junction, Serial Sins, The Blood Betrayal, The Killing Times (1), Sacred Burial Grounds (2), True Love Lost (3), Deep Dark Mire (4), Fire Burns Hot (5), Darkness of Truth (6), Devil Hath Come (7), Consumed by Wrath (8), Redemption is Here (9), Dead Shall Speak (10), Pledging to Die (11), Slay Bells Ring (12), Past will Haunt (13), Choices will Destroy (14), Blood shall Run (15), Act of Blood (16), Stalked by the Past (17), Dying to Love (18), Revenge has Come (19), Discarded by Fate (20), Dawn of Evil (21)Blood Red Rage (1) Lost & Broken (2), Unthinkable Games (3), Truth is Found (4), Haven of Nightmares (5), Forbidden Secrets (6), Kiss of Souls (7), Lost Souls (8), Celestia is Falling (1), Vegas is Dying (2), Christmas is Killing (3), Love is Bleeding (4), Heaven is Weeping (5), Hell is Burning (6), Justice is Dead (7), Dark Justice (1), Lost Justice (2), Paid Justice (3), Wedding of our Dreams: Dante and Steele (3.5) Dangerous Revelations (1), Dangerous Choices (2), Dangerous Misery (3), Dangerous Retaliation (4), Dangerous Influence (5), Dangerous Sacrifice (6), Sinner Repent (1), Sinner Realized (2), Sinner Reborn (3), Oracle Rising (1), Oracle Seeing (2), Oracle Saving (3), Oracle Haunting, (4), Atonement (1), Illegal Fantasies (Anthology 1), Romance Under Arrest (Anthology 2), and Holiday Reinforcements (Anthology 3), It’s Good to be the Boss (1).

  Please feel free to visit Morgan at her website: www.morgankelley.com, email her [email protected] or visit her blog at www.morgankelley.blogspot.com or her website at www.morgankelley.com.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you all for your reviews for the first book in the Hunter series. Sadly, we didn’t win the literary contest, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you enjoyed Dakota, Zayn, and Rogue’s first adventure as a team.

  What’s coming next?

  Well, we’re going to hunt for a sex ring, bring Rosemary Harrington to justice, (if you’ve read the Croft Mob series, you know who she is) add a few new characters along the way, and bring back a few older ones.

  Brace yourself.

  The Hunters are about to get down and dirty in New Orleans. Calling it ‘The Big Easy’ isn’t doing it justice.

  It’s about to get dangerous…
>
  For everyone involved.

  Much love, mayhem, and murder,

  Morgan

  Rogue Ravenscroft, life is never mapped out for us to follow. Sometimes, there are twists and turns.

  Here is your adventure. Meet your girl…

  She’s going to rock your world.

  Diary Entry Week Two…

  A nd nothing is ever going to be the same in New Orleans for anyone. Chesky Jensen has started a war that no one saw coming. Had they, they would have at least been able to prepare for the shitstorm.

  It caught them all by surprise.

  Killing Charlotte Shaw has opened the gates of Hell for all who live here—whether they know it or not—or whether they want to accept it.

  Purgatory is on fire.

  It’s not pretty.

  The people who flocked to Charlotte are on the verge of rising up and committing all kinds of mayhem to protest the scum who took her life. While she was one of the bad guys, she was tame—tamer than some of the filth that calls the city home.

  To say it’s not going to be pretty is an understatement. The wicked are about to run amok.

  It’s going to be a nightmare.

  The second her body was found at that abandoned airstrip, the seedy underbelly of the city got their marching papers and were ready for war.

  The sides are divided.

  Some are fighting for justice for Charlotte, and some are just glad she is finally dead.

  They are the ones we are all worried about. They are the true scum of the city.

  The drug dealers.

  The sex sellers.

  The killers.

  They are the ones who make even us—ex-law, killers, and crooks—shake in trepidation.

  The Hunters are worried—to put it mildly.

  To make it worse, all of this shittiness hit some of us harder than others.

  Frankly, it took Rogue by surprise—not her death.

  No.

  Honestly, he expected that the second he found out that she was playing with fire.

  Once you did, you were destined to be burned, and that was exactly what had happened.

  Charlotte was tending bar on the brink of chaos, and she mixed one hell of a Molotov cocktail.

  It blew.

  IN her face.

  These were the things that happened when you screwed with the evil buried deep beneath the fun of New Orleans. It wasn’t all shiny beads and tit shots from tourists.

  No.

  This city…

  It was a mire of so much wickedness, and Charlotte had stirred the pot a little too hard and fast. Now, she wasn’t the only one suffering.

  Rogue…

  He was rocked—and not in a good way.

  Her death, while expected, still, it was a shot to his heart, and we all saw it. He found out some vile things about a woman he once loved. He saw the truth of the snake beneath the pretty wrappings, and they were worse than his worst expectations.

  They were bad.

  NASTY.

  HIDEOUS.

  EVIL.

  Yeah, a lot had happened since Charlotte and Rogue had broken up, and this yank of the curtain had proven it all. The woman had more secrets than a magician.

  She was one trick after another, and each one was worse than the next.

  What had attracted him to her at the beginning was her innocence.

  Only, she never was.

  AT ALL.

  It was a front.

  At Charlotte’s death, the truth came out, and it hit Rogue where it hurt.

  His heart.

  Soul.

  Ego.

  He’d been a means to an end to the woman, and nothing more. She’d never really cared about him, and she was only out to help herself.

  The entire time, Charlotte was playing a very dangerous game behind his back. She began collecting contacts—HIS contacts.

  She’d betrayed him.

  Charlotte had screwed him over, digging into Rogue’s business, pretending she was oblivious, but stealing money from him.

  She’d played him.

  HARD.

  She was hedging her bets, laying down the odds, and playing both sides right under his nose, and this continued the years they were apart. It had been her way of getting into the game. All the years of his dealings, stripped bare by a woman who had said she loved him.

  Only, she hadn’t.

  There was no way it was true.

  She’d hated him for his wealth, and she’d used him for his criminal connections.

  It was a shot to his heart.

  And…

  It was what got her killed.

  It was what ended her life.

  It was what put his on hold when she died.

  In the end, when the cops found her body with one gunshot wound to her throat, they began the hunt for her killer. All of the trails led back to him.

  Not only had she screwed him over, but she’d been a thorn in his side. She made him, in her ignorance, the most likely person involved in her death.

  She’d put the bull’s-eye on him.

  An innocent man.

  That wasn’t something he could ever say about himself before, but this time, it was true.

  Rogue had NOTHING to do with her murder.

  Nothing at all.

  Only, no one bought that.

  The cops began seeking the person who put a bullet in that ‘innocent’ woman, and as ex-law enforcement, we all know who that meant.

  Rogue was their number one suspect.

  Why?

  The cops were looking at the people in her personal life—since she looked all sweet and innocent on the outside—they couldn’t figure out what had done her in.

  Sweet?

  Innocent?

  WHAT?

  They honestly believed that Charlotte Shaw was an angel in a city gone bad.

  They really thought that she was a victim of some nefarious killer who didn’t care about taking innocent life.

  They honestly bought her cover.

  That was laughable.

  Innocent?

  Angel?

  BULLSHIT!

  She ran bets.

  She ran guns.

  She ran numbers.

  Their ‘angel’ was running right into the darkest pit of danger, and anyone who lived on the shady side knew it. She was leading the march in a war against anyone who fought for law and order.

  The cops?

  Clueless.

  To them, she was one more victim in The Big Easy. To them, she was one more case on some detective’s desk, and now she was a giant pain in their ass.

  Dead.

  Charlotte Shaw was more trouble dead than she ever was alive. In fact, the cops were gunning for them.

  Thanks, Charlotte.

  You screwed us good.

  Her death opened Hell for them, and she likely knew it was going to happen too. From what they learned about her, she was a double-dealing snake in the grass, and she did nothing without intent.

  She knew this would happen.

  How could she not?

  The bad guys were about to get worse, the city was on fire, and they were about to be the ones who had to keep it all together.

  The Big Easy had become anything but—for them.

  For now, the city is bracing itself for what is going to happen. The mood was set, and the tone…it was evident. If your ear was to the ground, you could hear the grumblings of something big coming.

  Would the evil rise up?

  Would the scales unbalance?

  It was yet to be decided, but the potential fallout was huge.

  Thanks to Charlotte’s death, the Hunters now have even more on their plates—plates they didn’t ask for to begin with but were saddled with out of some FBI plan.

  It was ongoing, and it was a shitstorm.

  They still had to find the person who was selling women in the city. Chesky Jensen was on the run, and they were going to stop him.


  Somehow.

  On top of that, they needed to find Mercedes Harrington for her sister, Stella—and, preferably, before she was dead or moved from the city.

  Oh, but that wasn’t all.

  Not even close.

  They needed to find Rogue’s father, who was there—somewhere—hiding from the law. Word on the street was the man was setting up his own businesses, under his son’s nose.

  Smart.

  Really, really smart.

  There was nothing wiser than poking a sleeping bear when it had been disturbed once in the last week.

  The man was going to die too.

  It was evident.

  After they found a man, who was a ghost, it would be even more fun in the nonstop shitfest. They weren’t done going after the people who killed Zayn’s sister.

  That was on their list too.

  No one’s mission was complete unless they could take down that child-molesting scumbag too.

  And last, but never least, they had one of the biggest evils to take down. The Hunters had the wickedest witch to locate.

  Who?

  Oh, Bonnie was on their plates too.

  For Dakota, they had to help find Lottie Tipton, so he could end his hunt and move on with life.

  AND MARRY HIS GIRL!

  Their lives, as they fought for this hard-sought justice, all hung in the balance. They were precariously poised on the tip of the razor, not knowing who to help first or what move to make.

  Themselves?

  The city?

  The victims?

  For now, they were digging into the filth, digging into the mire, and trying to find Danforth Harrington. He’d nearly gotten Stella killed, and that wasn’t going to fly with any of them.

  A family protected its own.

  They were ragtag—unusual—but a family—nonetheless.

  Cherokee.

  Iroquois.

  And a white man with no sense of self-preservation.

  Oh, what a freaking group they were.

  They came from different worlds, some from the law, and some from running from it. They were soldiers. They were fighters. They are mercenaries now, doing battle for the souls in The Big Easy.