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“N-n-no.”
Give me strength.“So whatdidyou see, hun?”
“Scooby made this noise like…like…like a scream, so I ran along the path, and Scooby was there, and he was hurt, and I saw thisblurdisappearing into the trees.”
“And what made you think the blur was a cougar?”
“I guess… I guess it was a beige colour?”
“I called Luca,” Brooke offered.“He’s on his way, but he’s down near Bandon.”
Luca was her fiancé, a former Army Ranger and a current sheriff’s deputy.At one time, I’d thought his profession might cause me a problem, especially when I’d carved up a guy who abducted Brooke, but Luca had remained delightfully oblivious to my extracurricular activities.And lately, it seemed he’d actually been encouraging them.Tsk-tsk-tsk.
Anyhow, he’d be at least half an hour, and the non-cougar would be long gone.“What about Colt?”
Colt was the other deputy, the one who’d rescued a princess at the side of the road and somehow ended up dating her.
“He has the day off, and he went sailing with Brie and Kiki.”
Sailing.Which meant they’d be on Nico’s boat, and hopefully, Nico was with them.The local hotel owner was a man I avoided whenever possible.I considered it unlikely that he’d recognise me—we’d met just a handful of times prior to his arrival in Baldwin’s Shore, and under very different circumstances—but I only took risks when the potential upside outweighed the downside.
I heard the snap of teeth, and the blonde leapt back.She’d managed to roll the dog, something the dog hadn’t appreciated in the slightest.
“Here’s where the blood’s coming from.”She pointed at a wound on Scooby’s neck.“But it doesn’t look like a bite mark to me.”
No, it wasn’t a bite mark.It was quite clearly a knife wound, but I couldn’t admit I knew that.
“Maybe someone should take him to the veterinarian?”And by someone, I meant Shauna because her crying was getting on my last fucking nerve.
Brooke spoke up, as I’d known she would.She had a kind heart, too kind at times because with that kindness came a naivety that had gotten her into trouble in the past.
She saw the good in people.
I saw the bad.
“My car’s right outside,” she said.“Paulo, can you help to lift the dog?We’re gonna need a towel or a blanket to lay him on.”
“The throw from the couch in the break room?”
“That’s perfect.”
Speaking of bad, who was running around in the trees with a knife?I’d admit to being curious, and perhaps a little scouting was just what I needed to blow the cobwebs off and liven up a dull day?
Paulo reappeared with the throw, a multicoloured woollen thing I’d knitted soon after I arrived in town.I’d been broken back then.Cracked down the middle with pain and anger and sadness spilling out.The only man I’d ever cared about was gone, and I was left with two options: return home to face the music, or run.Lieutenant General Zacharov didn’t tolerate failure, so returning home would have been distinctly unpleasant, and if he ever found out that I’d sabotaged the operation, I’d have been dead anyway.What did I have to lose by running?
My sanity, as it turned out.
The first couple of years in Baldwin’s Shore hadn’t been too bad.As my fractured soul healed, I’d taken pleasure in the mundanity of everyday life.Working as a live-in nurse to East Baldwin had been a piece of cake compared to my former life, even when I had to deal with his family, who ranged from milquetoast to malicious to murderous.I’d taught myself to knit, learned to bake, and wheeled East along the seashore every morning with the wind in my hair.
When Nastya hadn’t come, when Vik hadn’t come, I’d begun to relax.For a while, I carried one knife instead of two and only packed a gun on special occasions, and I cut myself slack if I missed an early-morning run.Target practice became entertainment rather than necessity.Boredom crept up on me like a slow-rolling fog, and I couldn’t find my way out of it.Wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.What need was there for a spy-slash-assassin in sleepy little Baldwin’s Shore?
Then Nico came to town, and everything changed.
At first, I’d been spooked.Now, I was ninety-nine percent sure his presence was a coincidence, a big cosmic joke.But there was still that one percent of me that askedwhat if he knows?
I’d started training again, hard, the way I always used to.And in the scraps of spare time I eked out, I began to have fun.To enjoy myself.They’d given me a nickname—the Bad Samaritan—but at heart, I’d always be Nine.Nine of Ten.Only seven of us had made it through the initial training.Three more died later.There were only four of us left now, or perhaps three if Ilya had let his greed get the better of him.
“We need to get the dog onto the throw,” Paulo said, snapping me back to the present.“I don’t want to get bit.”