Page 46 of Kept in the Dark

Nicole.

Nicole, who is so easy to talk to that I use more words than I have in a decade.

Nicole, who looks so good in my clothes.

Nicole, who listened to the sorry tale of my youth with compassion and kindness and did not make me feel pitied.

Nicole, who is so curious and thoughtful.

Nicole, whose husky voice passes right through skin and muscle to vibrate deep around my bones. It thickens my blood and stiffens my cock.

Nicole, who is pleased that I was not killed.

Nicole… who will leave Ulysses to protect herself.

I have been lying to myself, thinking perhaps there was some outcome of thisclusterfuck—as James would say—that meant I could have her. But she is not for me. She will return to her small, safe, civilian life. She will leave Ulysses and all its dangers behind.

She wants to settle down somewhere. She wants a life without looking over her shoulder for men with guns coming after her for whatever mess Kyle involved her in.

Looking over my shoulder for men with gunsismy life.

After an hour’s journey north and back west towards shore, I find the protected area I was searching for. It is private, but not privately owned. The water here is deep enough that we will hit nothing and shallow enough that the current should not toss us about too badly.

After manually lowering the anchor, I am too preoccupied to read, so I grab the large dartboard from the storage container on the deck, hang it on its hook against the cab, get into place, and palm two of my knives.

I warm up with a few easy throws, feeling out the soreness in my side, then begin challenging myself. One eye closed. Both eyes closed. Poorly gripped handle. From behind on a spin. From crouching. From one leg, balancing on a rocking boat.

Center of the bull’s eye every time.

I know the instant I am not alone, and not just due to how the wood creaks underfoot and the boat dips slightly from the shifting of weight. I am so aware of her. My subconscious seeks her through layers of wood and glass and water.

She has come to the open window of the cabin and watches from the safety inside. So smart. So careful. She would not be so foolish as to approach and risk startling a man holding and throwing a knife. Her eyes are wide, and the sunlight glinting through heavy, dark clouds glitters off the water and reflects in them, even through the salt-streaked plexiglass.

“You are,” she swallows, glancing between me and the target about two meters away, “so good at that.”

When I throw another, I tell myself it is to empty my hand and not to show off.“Da.”

“The noise it makes is very… unexpected. Kind of violent. I guess all of it is, but in a graceful way. Like a dance, almost.”

Violent.

I turn the word over in my head again and again until it becomes meaningless, effortlessly tossing another knife into the bullseye, this time with my left hand.

Violent.

An observation and a judgment—cautious and respectful with an undercurrent of fear.

But I cannot blame her. It has been some time since I saw them as anything other than an extension of myself, but I suppose to someone like her, knives have inherent violence to them. Throwing them is an act ofviolence. Being good at it makes me aviolentperson.

“Well, I won’t bother you when you’re training, but I wanted to show you this,” she says, holding something small and metallic between her thumb and forefinger. “It’s… um… it’s what Kyle made me swallow.”

I squint at it, but give up after a few seconds. It is too small to see from here. So, I collect my knives, sheathe them, and climb down into the cabin.

Still gripping it daintily, she places it in the center of my open palm. I squint again. “It is…”

“A USB drive,” she remarks with a little confused laugh. “Been a while since I’ve used one of those. There’s usually a whole bin of ‘em in some forgotten drawer of the nurse’s station. Everyone uses cloud-based storage these days, but no one wants to be the person who threw away something that might be useful in some obsolete way.”

Nothing on the boat can read a USB drive, and even if there were something that could, I would want Wesley to look it over before I did anything with it. It might contain anything, and he is the only person I know equipped to handle this variety ofanything.