He was nothing but a shadow—a man with no name, as far as anyone else was concerned. The lone swimmer headed for the surface of Last Chance lake, dragging a computer tower by the rope it was tied to. A flashlight held between his teeth, he navigated through the dark waters and kicked his way to the top.
The second his head breached, a gunshot rang out across the water. He opened his mouth to let go of the flashlight so it didn’t alert anyone to his presence. It slowly began to drift down into the depths of the lake.
He could do nothing about it, and lose the only light source he had. Or, he could use his only spare hand to grab it, losing the tower to the bottom in the process.
At the last minute, Jeff switched his grasp from the rope connected to the computer tower and grabbed the flashlight instead. Just in time. This job could wait. His life was about survival.
He turned to the tiny, metal fishing boat he’d salvaged and began to swim away from the people trying to kill him.
A woman screamed.
He twisted in the water just in time to spot a dark figure running. The shadow streaked in front of the headlight beam belonging to a truck parked on the shore, far side. The side where people lived, worked, and recreated. Jeff lived on the opposite bank. Away from humanity. Alone, where he could keep the people he loved safe—and fall asleep at night wrapped in his honor; the knowledge he’d done the right thing. It was the only way.
Honor as cold as the water of the lake.
Another gun blast flashed in the night, and this one illuminated a dark figure by the truck. A woman, if he had to guess. By both the scream and the shadow’s stature. She fell to the ground, hit by the assailant’s bullet.
The cold permeated to his soul. This might have been an execution, but they weren’t here to kill him.
He clicked off the flashlight and stowed it in a tiny pocket he’d sown into the leg of his wetsuit as he continued to tread water.
The truck door slammed shut, and the driver gunned the engine as he tore up the bank of the river in reverse. Job complete. She was dead.
He should swim to the boat, leave the way he’d come, and continue to remain anonymous in this town. The one where he’d grown up. Where his father had hauled them all to church in their Sunday best and then screamed and cursed at them the rest of the week for whatever infraction he’d considered unacceptable. Usually everything his mother did or said, or even an expression on her face. When he’d begun to accentuate the screams with his fists, Jeff and his brother tried to convince their mother that leaving was their only option. The day their father had taken a fist to their younger sister, she’d finally agreed.
Leaving a woman dead on the bank of the lake didn’t sit right. Not at four in the morning, and not at any other time.
Jeff kicked with his legs. His body automatically turned onto its side, left shoulder down. Face toward the horizon. His right arm snapped through the water as his legs kicked in that familiar calming rhythm. Just him and the water.
As soon as his feet touched bottom, he tugged the flippers off and tossed them onto the sand. He flipped the flashlight back on and swept it across the sand until he found her.
Yellow T-shirt and worn-in jeans. Sneakers on her feet. Hair secured back with a bandana. He stared for a moment while everything in him warred between the urge to check for a pulse and the knowledge he would leave a fingerprint on the woman’s skin.
He stared long enough he caught the inhale. She wasn’t dead after all; just unconscious.
Jeff planted his knees in the sand beside her body and rolled her over. His flashlight beam illuminated luscious dark skin and full cheeks. She was a beautiful woman, even with the freshly broken skin stretched across a goose egg. She’d hit her temple on a rock when she fell. Knocked out cold.
Surely she had a phone on her. He’d left his back at the cabin when he ventured out earlier to dredge the lake, and its underwater secrets, looking for salvageable goods, but everyone else in the world seemed content to carry a device that tracked their every move in time and space—and evidently weren’t bothered to have their conversations listened to as well.
The line of her jeans meant he didn’t have to dig. She had no phone on her. Nor was there one on the sand, dropped when she fell.
He set the flashlight down and checked for a key or ID. In a front pocket, he found a folded scrap of paper. He got his thumb under a corner and flicked it open one-handed while the chill on his left shoulder reminded him of what he was missing.
What he could never get back.
His skin, exposed where he’d had to cut the unneeded sleeve off the wetsuit, bristled against the cold. He hadn’t liked the way the empty sleeve had flapped around and caused drag whenever he swam. He also didn’t need the sleeve getting caught up on anything while he was underwater. No one would even know he was down there, except maybe Zander. At least his friend would have an idea where to look.
No one else even knew he was alive.
Jeff angled the paper to the beam of the flashlight. Elegant handwriting, clearly female. The words were spotted with blood smears. Hers? Had she touched her head after she fell, and then put her hand in her pocket? No, she was out. She’d have been out as soon as she hit the sand.
The blood wasn’t from this incident.
Quit ignoring reality. Jeff often talked to himself. It might be a sign he’d lost his grip on reality, but being in denial meant a healthy self-chastisement was warranted. On occasion. Like right now when he was clearly missing the obvious here.
He stared at the words.
This woman had his home address on a bloody paper in her pocket.
“Who are you?” His voice sounded like gravel shifting. Far too loud in the still of four in the morning when not even the birds were awake.
The unconscious woman didn’t answer.
Jeff pocketed the paper back into her jeans and stowed his flashlight. He stooped down in a low squat and tugged her arm over his shoulder so her front would be across his back. He got his feet under him and steadied himself as he lifted her and started walking. It was tricky, but he managed to keep her weight on his shoulders all the way to the hidden path through the trees. The spot he’d parked his truck; out of sight.
It was two miles to the tiny cabin nestled in a clearing on the far side of the mountain.
By the time he reached his front steps, Jeff was sweating from the tension. That, and the wet suit seriously chafed. He needed out of it, but he had to get her inside first.
The door was still shut. He never locked it since he never had visitors. No one knew he lived up here except two people, and he trusted both men.
Jeff braced her weight on his back and got the door open. He deposited her on his couch and retrieved the paper from her pocket before going back to close the front door. He started a fire from wood he’d split just yesterday. He didn’t need light to change, and why look at what life had done to him. Scars. The tight skin just below his left shoulder, where his flesh had been sewn together into a stub where his arm used to be.
Every time he closed his eyes he could remember having two arms. Lifting both, simultaneously. Firing a gun two-handed. Riding a motorcycle. Playing basketball. Rock climbing.
That was the worst of it, the remembering. Not that he had to live with only one arm and re-learn everything. The hardest part was that he could recall so vividly how it felt to have two.
Until that IED had exploded.
He hadn’t even been the only casualty. Plenty of people had died that day. But one, in particular, still hit him in the gut.
I’m sorry. She’s dead.
Jeff shoved the drawer shut too hard and heard coins jingle on top of his dresser. He’d only ever heard her voice on the phone. And yet, that had been enough for him to want to find her as soon as the mission was over. Now he wouldn’t ever get that chance.
She was as gone as his ability to operate.
As gone as his military career.
He pulled the T-shirt over his head and stuck his right arm through the sleeve. Sweats. Socks, until the fire got going. He treaded back toward the kitchen and heard a meow.
Mittens was in the laundry again.
He tugged the basket over and heard the cat tumble, along with the pile of clothes he needed to wash. At least she sat in the dirty stuff rather than nestling in a warm stack, fresh from the dryer. Then again, she lay on everything else in this cabin—including him—so maybe he shouldn’t be bothered by it. But it was the principal of the thing.
“Out.”
A “rawr” was the only answer she gave. He left her to her throne of dirty socks and went to put his kettle on. Tea. Maybe soup. She would need medical attention when she woke up.
He flicked a blanket over her from the back of the couch and took his pistol from the top of the fridge and laid it on the kitchen counter while he filled the kettle.
Jeff leaned his hips against the edge of the scarred linoleum and watched her. In the light, she was no less beautiful. Lean and packing some strength in the line of her muscles. Circular face and full lips. Hair secured. She looked like she was ready for work. Practical, but there was really no way to genuinely downplay her beauty or hide the way her skin shone with that deep, resonant color.
He’d never met her before. She had no ID. Anyone else would have called the police by now, but Jeff couldn’t allow his name—even his fake one—to land on any report. If he hit the radar instead of flying below it, people he cared about would be in danger.
He would be in danger.
Jeff grabbed his cell and called Zander’s team doctor. There was a guy closer who wouldn’t ask too many questions, but Dean’s family now included a cop and there were just way fewer ties to life here in Last Chance this way. Zander lived separate and his work took him all over the world. Besides, he still owed Jeff.
The doctor didn’t answer, so he left a message for a callback about a head injury. That should pique his interest. Usually their only communication was the doc calling to ask Jeff how his arm was doing.
He didn’t have one. That’s how it’s doing.
The kettle whistled. He shut the burner off, and the woman stirred. He watched her wake up and flipped the latch on the canister of instant coffee grounds. Twist-top jars were a thing of the past these days. No point in them or having to do things one-handed if he didn’t have to. The day he’d get his groceries, he usually dumped the entire contents into the canister before tossing the jar into the trash.
She moaned.
Jeff grabbed the gun and moved the coffee table away from her with his foot. He sat on it and faced her as she blinked. Shifted. Moaned again. She fought the glassy look in her eyes and finally realized he was watching her. He had one arm. He had a gun. She was in a cabin.
He could see each realization register in her expression before it blanked, as though a shutter fell over her features.
Someone who knew how to hide their feelings and intentions.
He held the gun loose in his lap. “Are you here to kill me?”
She’d been shot at. Probably by a rival contract killer, taking out the competition so he’d have a straight shot at completing the job.
She lifted a hand and touched her temple. Her eyes started to roll back in her head, but she fought the pull of unconsciousness and won.
“Who are you?”
She still said nothing. Just studied him with a calculating air.
“I could march you outside and shoot you. It’s not like anyone would know what I’ve done.”
But he couldn’t. Nor would he. That guy, the one who would murder an unarmed, injured woman was the man his mother had left when she took her children and moved out. Not the kind he wanted to be.
“Tell me who you are.”
She blinked. Her eyes were still glassy from what was probably a killer migraine. “I…don’t know.”