Page 2 of Guarded Knight

Don’t let him live in your head.

Vigilance isn’t the same as surrender.

There’s a faint scrape behind me, and the sound jerks through me like a wire snap. I spin. Nothing.

I practically bolt the rest of the way…

My house is just ahead. A hop up the stairs of my little Adobe, and I fumble the latch with cold fingers, get the door open, and slam it behind me like that’ll keep whatever’s out there from getting in.

As if he’s not already been inside. How did he get inside?

He could be in here now.

I listen intently but I’m met with only silence. No footsteps. No voices. Just my shallow breath and the ticking of the clock Freya and I got at an art fair.

I let my bag fall to the floor and lean against the door, eyes closed.

Maybe I imagined it.

I do that sometimes now.

Imagine things.

I toss my keys onto the console table beside the door, and they land on something that wasn’t there before.

An envelope. Plain. Unassuming.

My name.

My pulse spikes so fast I swear I taste copper.

I open it, and inside is a single, hundred-dollar bill and a note in block letters…

A slut deserves to be paid.

1

We’ve been sittingin this car for three hours, parked on a quiet street outside a McMansion two hours from Echo Valley. The whole neighborhood smells like sprinklers and overpriced fertilizer. Not one sighting. Not even a flicker in our binoculars moves behind those picture-perfect windows.

Anton lets out a long, suffering groan beside me, stretching his legs and propping his boot against the dashboard.

“So this is what my life has come to…”

I don’t need to look at him to see his exaggerated misery. I hear it in his voice, feel it in the way he drags his hand down his face.

“I survived the SEALs, then thirteen years in captivity, and now, all that grit is truly being put to the test tracking cheating spouses.” He waves a hand toward the house, a monument to suburban monotony. “I swear, if I have to sit through one more night shift like this, I’m gonna lose my mind.”

“Put in your two weeks,” I say, adjusting the rearview mirror, not because I need to, but because I need something to do.

Anton snorts. “Yeah, right. Like you’d survive without me.”

I sure as hell wouldn’t beherewithout him.

After leaving the SEALs, I spent years bouncing from place to place, never putting down roots. Never wanting to. Hell, even when I visited Starlight Canyon or Echo Valley to see family, I never stayed long.

But that was the point. Keep running, and the demons won’t catch up.

Only they did. Every damn time.