by S. Massery
I throw back my shoulders. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” he barks. “You want out of that family? They would’ve sent you off with no fucking remorse—”
“You keep saying that,” I shout. “But Marco is the only one I need gone. I’ve already pushed the idea that he should go up against his father. Once he does, there’s no way Javier would lose—”
Dalton throws up his hands.
Colin is utterly confused, but I ignore it.
I stalk up to Dalton and push at his chest. “I can’t just abandon my dad. My friends—”
“You don’t have any freaking friends, Grace,” Dalton mumbles. “They wouldn’t have let Marco treat you like he did. And let’s face it. The chance of Marco putting a bullet in dear old unsuspecting Dad? Pretty fucking high.”
I scowl at him. “He wouldn’t do it like that—no one would listen to him.”
Colin looks back and forth between the two of us and takes a step back.
“You’re projecting, sweetheart,” Dalton says.
I go to shove his chest again—anything to expel some of this anger that he seems to draw out of me—but he grabs my wrists and pulls me close.
“Stop,” he says in my face. “Just… stop fighting.”
“I’m not,” I argue, yanking my arms. His grip doesn’t falter, and I hate him for it. I hate how being so close to him makes me want to kiss him again—either that or bite his face off.
“We’re going to go back inside and pack our bags,” he says. “And then we’re leaving.”
“I don’t—”
He squeezes my wrists. “You want Isabella and Antoni to stay in danger?” He jerks his chin at the men he shot. “That’s exactly what we’re bringing to his doorstep.”
I bow my head. This place—we had stayed here exactly eighteen hours, if that—and it already felt more welcoming than any house in Miami.
“Fine,” I huff.
He releases my wrists, and I take a quick step backward. He follows me into the house, closing and locking the door behind us.
“Quick,” he says. “In and out.”
I pop into the bathroom to gather my new toiletries and the few items Colin gave me, stuffing everything into a plastic bag. I take a second to shrug my arm out of the sweatshirt and peel back the gauze. One of the seven stitches Colin placed breaks, and blood seeps out. I do my best to wipe it away and put the bandage back in place, then slide my arm back into the sweatshirt.
Who knows how long on the back of a bike… yay.
Downstairs, Dalton has his backpack over his shoulder and keys in his hands. “Took you long enough,” he says. “Colin agreed to loan us his Jeep.”
My eyes get big. “Thank God.”
Colin bursts into laughter behind me. “See? No one likes the bike except you, D.”
My face gets hot.
Dalton scowls at Colin. “Lies.”
“I wouldn’t even like it if my arm wasn’t hurt.”
Dalton rolls his eyes. “Great. Thanks, Grace.”
I smirk. “No problem, D.”
“She’s gonna be a pain in my ass all the way up the coast,” he tells Colin.
I walk into the garage. There’s a giant truck and a sleeker, shiny black Jeep. I head for the latter and toss my stuff into the backseat. Dalton and Colin are still in the doorway. I climb inside and get comfortable.
“Have fun, kids,” Colin says.
“Tell Isabella goodbye for us,” Dalton answers.
My face turns red again. Her door was shut when I walked by, and she didn’t answer my light knocking. I didn’t really want to say anything—not after she hit on Dalton and her kid caught us kissing—but I was trying to be polite.
“She’s holed up in my room,” Colin says in a low voice.
I pretend not to hear it, picking at my nails.
“Don’t blame her. Gonna have to have the sheriff come out and do something about these bodies… it’s gonna be a hell of a night.”
“Then we’d best be off,” Dalton says, sighing.
“Right.” Colin comes over and pulls my door open a bit wider.
I meet his eyes and try to smile, but something feels off. Nerves? Sadness?
“You’ll be okay,” he tells me. “Safe Haven will always have its doors open for you—”
“Just not when I have a powerful family chasing me,” I finish.
He winces.
“It’s okay,” I say. I glance at Dalton as he ducks out of the garage. “I think he’ll keep me safe.”
Colin grins. “Atta girl.”
I push against the window, stopping him from closing my door. “Question.”
“Shoot.”
“You and Isabella?”
His eyebrows go up, and he smiles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I nod. “Yeah, sure you don’t. If we come back and that kid is calling you Daddy—”
The smile slides right off his face. “Not gonna happen, Grace.”
You pushed too hard. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“We’ll see you on the other side,” Colin says, clearing his throat.
He steps back as Dalton comes in with two huge bags. They load up the trunk, and then Colin is retreating into the house and Dalton is sliding into the driver’s seat.
“He better take care of my baby,” Dalton says. He starts the car and hits the button for the garage door. The gears grind like it’s a million years old, and finally we have a way out. He carefully backs out, and we’re off.
The clock on the dash shows that it’s three o’clock in the morning. Someone moved the vehicle and bodies enough that we can get out, and we navigate past the two burning cars. I’m surprised that they’re still here, with patches of grass burning around them. One car looks like it melted from the inside out.
Finally, he pulls out onto the main road.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
He lifts one shoulder. “Somewhere far away.” He glances at me. “Get some sleep before you question me to death.”
I make a face at him. He’s just so… abrasive. I mull his words over in my mind, then pull the hood up over my head and lean back. I can’t stay awake, staring at the dark sky, just because he told me to do the opposite. It isn’t logical.
Some part of me trusts that he’ll keep me safe—at least for a little while. Until he learns that I was the one who brought the Argentos to Safe Haven, but I’ll deal with that later.
In a matter of moments, I’m asleep.
14
DALTON
Six-year-old me was constantly getting into fights. The amount of times I got dragged to the principal’s office by my ear teetered between too many and not enough. (My mother said it was too many, and I disagreed.) It may have had to do with the fact that my parents had got divorced two weeks before school started, and they were still trying to figure out custody agreements.
I lived with my mother during the week and then my dad would pick me up at five o’clock on Friday. He’d return me promptly—well, not really promptly—on Sunday afternoon, no worse for wear but insufferably moodier.
Why was it my world that got turned upside down when my parents couldn’t keep their shit under control? Why did I have to give up my weekends in St. Petersburg and sit in my dad’s grungy new apartment in Tampa? There was barely enough furniture to keep us comfortable, let alone content.
Hand-me-down television and mattresses on the floor. Two sets of utensils—one for him and one for me. Two bowls. Four plates. Plastic cups. A folding card table with a questionable stain in the center, and cold metal chairs.
I hated that the divorce had left him like that—living in squalor. My mother, on the other hand, was the CFO of a Fortune 500 company. She had an arsenal of divorce lawyers from her colleagues on speed dial, and when the time came for her to destroy our family? She didn’t just gun for my father—she nuked everything.
So, the fighting.
I was th
e scrappy underdog, dressed in my expensive jeans and sweaters, with the best backpack and lunchbox money could buy. At six, I got hooked on it. At ten, my mother decided that my relationship with my father was to blame.
And suddenly, my last name was the only thing tying me to the family I once knew.
Mom remarried a guy named Dick. Real name: Richard Surly. Wish I was joking about both of those names, but Mom rolled with it. Rolled with him—in bed, that is.
That’s when my little brother was born.
I flex my hands on the steering wheel at the thought of going back there, but I’ve officially run out of reasonable options.
Unreasonable option #1: crash at Mom’s house.
Unreasonable option #2: get on a plane—
Nope. I stop that train of thought before sweat breaks out across my body. If my friends need help, I can be persuaded to get on a jet. The last time I agreed to that, Griffin and his childhood sweetheart were in trouble in Amsterdam. Let me tell you—that is a long flight.
Of course, we discovered Hadley in the panic room almost dead, and Griffin off in the woods fighting off a tactical assault team. So that was more emergency than this, really. More urgent than a mob family trying to get their enforcer’s kid back.
It makes me wonder how deep obsession runs. How far is too far?
Grace isn’t a peaceful sleeper. She twists and turns, on-and-off fighting against the seat belt. It’s amazing to watch someone who’s so restless while unconscious. Through it all, she never loses her grip on the handle of the Jeep.
I trade off watching her and the road. At some point, the sky lightens. There are a million ways this homecoming could go—because I’m doing it, I’m taking Grace to my mom and Dick’s house—and I really don’t want to think about any of them. I just want…
To stop moving.
My phone keeps vibrating in my pocket, but I leave them unanswered. I don’t even check. It could be Mason with more information, or Luca trying to get information. Maybe it’s Griffin or Zach checking up on me. Maybe it’s a ghost.
Or maybe it’s some wrong number, trying to reach someone they’ll never get through to.
That’s how I feel sometimes—like I could scream at the sky and no one would react. No one would even hear me. I grit my teeth, resisting the urge to try it out.
I’ve tried my best not to hunt people down. That part of my life I had retired from: the sniper part. The mercenary part.
Protective detail? Sure. Bad guys cross my path and want to hurt whoever hired me? Yeah, I’ll stop them. But the long-distance hunting that went on tonight?
“Are we there yet?”
I look over at Grace, forcing my jaw to relax.
She pushes the hood off her golden-blonde hair and smiles at me for a second. It’s like she suddenly realizes who she’s looking at—or maybe I’m glaring—because it fades pretty fast.
“Where—” She clamps her lips closed.
I scowl at the road. “You’re a thrasher. It’s a good thing we didn’t have to share a bed, because you probably would’ve covered me in bruises.”
“I was having a bad dream,” she says.
“Oh, were you being sold as a sex slave in Europe? Because I had a hand in preventing that.”
She doesn’t say anything, and I glance over at her. She’s staring out the window as we drive by huge mansions. The sky is rosy pink. If we were one street over, we’d have a view of the ocean flashing between houses.
Finally, she says, “Is that you trying to joke? You kind of suck at it.”
I roll my eyes. “Maybe.”
“Your teasing is noted and not appreciated,” she says.
“Yeah, but just wait until you see where we’re going.” I flick the blinker on, turning onto a side street. The road winds up, finally ending at my mom’s driveway. I glance at Grace, unsurprised to find her leaning forward. A huge wrought-iron gate looms in front of us. Through the gate is Mom’s house on a hill. It overlooks the water and has a staircase down to her private beach.
All is made further possible by Surly Dick, as I like to call him in my head. We were at the airport one time, before my fear of flying started, and the gate attendant called his name over the loudspeaker. That was the first time I had ever heard a name fit a person so well.
Okay, the gate person said, Surly, Richard, but it sparked the idea.
“Where are we?” she asks in a low voice.
“Don’t laugh,” I warn.
“Why would I laugh?”
“I suspect your teasing is about as practiced as mine.”
She snorts. “Yeah, fine. Pinky promise.”
She holds out her hand to me, pinky extended, and I release my grip on the wheel long enough to wind my finger with hers. My whole body breaks out in chills at the contact, and I pull away quickly.
I lean halfway out of the Jeep to type in the gate code. Once I’m back in the car, I find Grace staring at me. Like I’m the one who has done something unexpected.
“What?”
“It’s my mom’s house,” I say. “Mom and Dick.”
“Dick?” she sputters. She’s almost too busy gawking—there’s a lot to see—but her head whips back around.
“Stepdad, if I should even deign to call him that.” I force myself to smile. “They’re out of town this month.”
“The whole month?”
“They like to spend their summers somewhere less…”
“Sticky?”
I snort. “Exactly. They’re currently on a chartered yacht, island-hopping in the Caribbean.”
There are few places more terrible than southern Florida in the summer. Hell is one. I’d imagine Antarctica would feel nice compared to the heat. Nighttime? Perfect temperature. During the day, you better hibernate in an air-conditioned bubble. It’s even worse for those of us who served overseas. It’s not humid in a desert. It’s just fucking hot.
Florida is akin to drowning in boiling water.
I don’t blame them for leaving.
She chuckles as I pull up in front of the house. It’s all metal and glass, a black-and-white stamp on the earth.
New Age, my mom had told me when I asked what the hell happened to our house. They’d shipped me off to boarding school, and the next thing I knew, there was a new house standing where my home once was.
It’s hideous. Greyscale and open and so freaking clean. I get the urge to break something whenever I visit.
I kill the engine and jump out, going around back and grabbing my rifle case and duffle bags. Grace follows me, still gawking, still chuckling under her breath.
“What?” I snap.
She just shakes her head, lifting the small bag Colin had given her. “Nothing.”
“Just spit it out.”
She shrugs one shoulder. “It’s just… I can see why you’re such an asshole. Growing up as a rich white boy must’ve been tough.”
“Gee, thanks, Cinderella.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Of course it does. I’m your fairy godmother, whisking you away from the evil stepmother. Don’t confuse me for the prince.”
Her eye twitches. “In that fairy tale, both her parents died.”
I slam the trunk closed and start for the house. She trails after me, looking around as we walk through a stone courtyard to the front door. It’s large, the only piece of wood in the whole house, probably. You push one side in, and the other side swings out at you. It pivots from the center.
I type in another code and shove the door. It glides open easily.
“What kind of rich madness is this?”
“Too much money,” I mutter. “There’s a guest bedroom up those stairs,” I say, pointing to my left. “Feel free to raid my mom’s closet. I need a drink.”
I go to the kitchen, yanking open the cabinet doors above the pantry. They keep their precious liquor in a hard place to reach, but I’m not bitter. I’m tall, and I move aside their favorites in favor of so
mething a bit darker. Once I have it in my hand, I cross to the sink and stare out the window.
Whiskey makes me feel like I’m floating. I think that’s why I like it so much—I can pull apart my brain and yank out the nightmares without feeling a thing.
Half of the time, when I close my eyes, I see people through a scope. But I’m not the one controlling the gun. Every time I try to check on my friends, they die. I always wake up sweating. The other half? Plane crash.
Everything filling with water. My friend and business partner unmoving beside me.
“Dalton?”
I spin around, away from the sink. Grace hovers at the doorway, her arms crossed over her middle.
“Um, can you pull this sweatshirt off? My arm…”
I squint at her for a second, contemplating taking a swig of the whiskey before I get close to her. In a moment like this, I want some liquid courage.
“Yeah,” I mumble. I walk toward her, trying not to take in how her chest rises and falls a bit faster. It’s hard not to think about the last time we were closer than three feet away. She kissed me, and I damn well liked it.
You’re not supposed to be kissing the enemy, D.
Part of me is starting to wonder if she even is the enemy.
I tug on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Relax.”
She lets out a small breath. “I would if…”
“If what?”
I lift the hem of her sweatshirt and freeze when my fingers touch her bare skin.
“If I was wearing a shirt under this,” she mutters.
“When did you take your shirt off?”
She starts to move away, but I fist my hands in the fabric and hold her steady.
“I was in the middle of changing when the cars exploded,” she says. She puts her hand on my chest, keeping distance between us. “I didn’t have time to struggle into a shirt—”
“I get it,” I say. I know what that sudden fear feels like. I’d love to say I didn’t—that I was untouchable, invulnerable—but the truth is, I’ve seen too many people injured or killed because I was too far away to help them.
If only you were on the ground to pull them to safety, a voice in my head regularly whispered. If only you were there instead of three klicks away, hidden by shrubbery and sand.
