by Amie Stuart
Scamp trotted a few paces away, drawing my attention back to the here and now. I finally decided to go right; my flip-flops quickly grew gritty from the road, my feet covered with a thin later of dust. Around me, the world seemed to have stopped. My fingers itched for my journal. I wished I could empty my brain of all its clutter, but I had a feeling Will wouldn’t appreciate me cataloging my adventures in Hitman Land.
I passed a few empty doublewides and kept going until I hit a dead-end. I stepped onto the porch of a rickety white house that actually looked worse than the cabin we were in. Despite the boat I’d heard earlier, everything was pristine and quiet, the lake like rippling, liquid glass. I sat for a while, letting myself get lost in the day and letting Mother Nature soothe me in a way all of Will’s reassuring words couldn’t. I stayed put until Scamp’s scurrying around and the movement of the sun got me on my feet again.
As I headed back toward the cabin, it crossed my mind that I should probably be more afraid, that I was. I should leave Will here and let fate deal with him, but in some strange way, I felt like I owed it to him to stick around after he’d saved my ass twice in El Paso.
Because, yes, a part of me feared Will was right and whoever was out there would come after me. I wasn’t just mad at Will; I was mad at myself and I didn’t just want to live. I feared death.
The ugliness and the violence of seeing it firsthand had left an inedible mark on me. But I didn’t doubt Will could keep me safe.
He was sitting on the porch angrily masticating a sandwich when I returned.
I climbed the steps and walked past him, silently reminding myself once again that it was my van (even if he had bought it—and swiped my keys once we’d arrived). I could leave any time I wanted.
“Do you have a hearing problem?” He scowled up at me. If anything, he looked worse than before his nap.
“No, but I do have an ordering problem. And you’re not the boss of me.”
CHAPTER NINE
Will was in deep shit.
Real deep shit.
When he couldn’t find Sabrina, he’d dashed outside. At the sight of the van still parked next to the cabin, anger had replaced his fear. He’d immediately headed back inside and re-hid the keys. Then he’d waited and waited for Sabrina to return. He’d moved from his spot on the porch just long enough to fix some lunch, then settled back on the steps where he’d spent most of the previous night. He figured, and rightly so if her dusty feet were anything to judge by, she’d gone out for some fresh air.
Figures she couldn’t be bothered to listen.
But what really got to him wasn’t the sense of relief when he’d spotted her at the top of the drive, but the way he’d found himself watching her. The sun made her hair look all fiery; her curls and breasts bounced, and hips had rolled and swayed as she closed the distance between them. He’d nearly choked on his food. His blood had warmed, thickened, pooling in the most uncomfortable of places. He would have killed for a cold shower—figuratively speaking.
He’d never kill for something so mundane, but Sabrina Walker? He’d kill for her.
Sabrina Walker was a beautiful woman. Not that he hadn’t noticed before. He had. Plenty. But in the last twenty-four hours, things had changed drastically.
When she sassed him and said he wasn’t the boss of her, instead of getting angry or feeling butthurt, he’d almost laughed.
“You’ve got forty-eight hours to figure something out and then I’m leaving.”
Her words had the same affect as the cold shower he’d wished for only moments earlier. “You can’t leave. You know that”
“I can, and I am.”
“If you leave, they’ll find you.” And they’d use her to get to him. How many times did he have to say it?
“No, they won’t.” She shoved open the cabin door.
“Sabrina.”
“What,” she said, her poker-straight back to him.
He inhaled, wishing he hadn’t as he caught a whiff of her, female sweat, her sex and whatever it was that made Sabrina smell like...Sabrina. He shoved the thought of investigating further away. “You can only run for so long.”
“And then what happens?”
“They catch you.” The end result of her being caught hung between them thick, heavy and unspoken.
“I can run for as long as I have to.” She stepped inside the cabin, but Will would have the final word in this round.
“God knows you’re good at it.”
She slammed the door, and he retrieved the gun he’d tucked under his leg at her appearance.
Will knew human nature.
Sabrina knew how to run.
But she couldn’t run forever. He knew better than anyone at some point they’d have to turn and fight, and no matter how badly he wanted to protect her...he shook his head. Failure was not an option.
He left Sabrina alone, the sound of running water keeping him outside, away from her and her shower, his head filled with images of her naked, wet and warm, slick with soap bubbles running down her lush tanned body. Her laughing up at him, those odd green eyes flashing and teasing. He could almost feel her slippery skin under his fingers.
Groaning, he lurched to his feet and took a walk of his own. How the hell was he going to survive the next few days stuck in the middle of nowhere with Sabrina.
While she was gone, his curiosity, and more than a touch of anger, had driven him to grab another journal from the van. He glanced at the cabin, pulled it from the back of his pants and tucked it under his arm, finally settling on the porch of a rickety house at the end of the road. Sabrina had been here, he could tell by the tiny paw prints Scamp had left behind in the sandy soil. If anything, the writing in this one was curlier, more girlish and the reason was quickly apparent. It dated back a few years before the other one, from when Sabrina had still lived at home.
My mom is so dumb. How dumb is she, Sabrina? She’s so dumb, she married the first jackass who asked her. I will never be dumb.
I will never be dumb about men.
I will never ever be dumb ever!
What had Sabrina wanted, planned? How had she thought her life would turn out? Apparently, she hadn’t been much of a journaler then. The next entry was dated six months later.
My mom is so dumb? How dumb is she, Sabrina? She’s so dumb, she’s pregnant. Hell, even I’m on the pill. Not that she knows it, which goes to show how super-dumb she is. She’s not even happy. Neither is Walt. I wish she’d never married him. Mom said she thought everything would be fine. Marrying Walt would fix everything. When I asked her what everything, she didn’t have an answer for me. Adults are dumb.
The next entry was dated three weeks later—and water stained.
My mom is so dumb. How dumb is she, Bree? She’s so dumb, she’s dead. Just dead.
No way in hell am I staying here with Walt either.
It was dated almost eight years ago.
Will knew in the nauseatingly twisted depths of his stomach that those were tearstains not watermarks. Though her journal had gotten wet at one time. The pages were stiff, some stuck together and water had smeared some of the ink on other pages. There were no clues as to how Sabrina’s mom had died, but it obviously hadn’t been pretty. From what he could gather, she’d taken Scamp—Walt’s dog—and hitchhiked to Florida.
Back at the van, he quietly replaced the journal, resisting the urge to grab another. If she found out he’d been reading them, she’d have his head for dinner. He smiled slightly at the thought, and then forced himself to wipe the grin from his face as he stepped into the cabin. The fading sun had made the room almost unbearably warm, and he left the door open to help cool things off.
“There’s not much for dinner.”
The table was set nice, and she’d fried some hamburger patties and made box macaroni. The kind with the powdered cheese. Her peace offering. “It’s fine.”
“Go wash up.”
He didn’t just feel like hell, he looked like it, too.
She didn’t have to say it. He stepped into the bathroom, promising himself a shower after dinner and wondering how he’d get through the long evening ahead.
Turns out, he didn’t have to worry. Sabrina apparently had no interest in speaking with him beyond what she couldn’t get away with. Even Scamp ignored him.
Will ate quickly to ensure his body had the fuel it needed. He wished Wynn would call him with information. He hated sitting here, like a lame duck waiting for an invisible bullet to pierce his skull and take him down.
He did the dishes without being asked, his mind turning over the who, what, when, where, and how of it all.
Who wanted him dead?
What had he done to warrant a hit? Had he killed the wrong person? Botched a job? What had triggered it all? And how had they found the Monte Carlo? How was it all tied together?
When had he crossed the line from hunter to hunted? And how had he not known?
Where would he die? He’d never imagined it would be like this.
And most important of all, why?
Why had someone taken a hit out on him? Why did they want him dead?
If he really thought about it, dying by hired killer was fitting in some twisted way. Maybe even no better than he deserved. But he was the oldest, the strongest, the fastest Collier. He’d been blessed with the best instincts of all his brothers.
And, if he could help it, he wouldn’t die today, or tomorrow or anytime soon.
CHAPTER TEN
Wondering what had Will so deep in thought, I reached over and flicked off the kitchen tap. On second thought, it was pretty obvious. He was thinking about us, here, trapped like fish in a barrel.
He looked down at me, his eyes hotter, more intense than I’d ever seen them, his sexy mouth grim. “We’re not going to die.”
Sorry, but I wasn’t convinced. And, as a rule, life-altering events didn’t come with a money-back guarantee. “Everyone dies.”
He nodded in acknowledgement and said, “Maybe so, but not us. Not anytime soon.”
“You don’t know that,” I insisted. “Or we wouldn’t be here.” Surely he wasn’t that naive.
“You are the most confounded fucking woman I’ve ever met in my life.”
I turned away and bit my lip, unsure of what left me more tickled: The use of confounded or the fact he’d said fuck. I was too tickled to even get mad over being insulted. “I am what I am, Will.”
“I know.” He said it in a way that made me stare. Almost smug. As if he knew me so well when, in fact, he didn’t know me at all. He wiped his hands on a dishtowel, and then proceeded to wipe down the counters. Maybe it made him feel better to clean. Maybe cleaning was second nature for him, like walking was for me. Plus I guess in his business, you had to be tidy.
Will folded the towel with deliberate, precise movements. He had beautiful hands, long fingers, trim tidy business-like hands. I guess hands were important in his line of work, too. Will had amazing hands—the kind that made me wish I was a palmist instead of a card reader just so I could touch them.
The night stretched out in front of us, with no television beyond a fuzzy rerun of something I couldn’t name, no radio, nothing. As repulsed as I was by how Will made a living, there was a part of me that wanted to know more. To understand him. Chalk it up to research, but maybe, if I understood him, I could figure out my attraction to him. “How many people have you killed?”
He smoothed the dishtowel out as the longest five seconds of my life ticked by. Finally, his head slowly swiveled so he could look at me through narrowed eyes. “What?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and repeated myself through lips numb with fear. “How many people have you killed?”
His face was chilly-cold, scary-cold—his eyes the color of stainless steel. “A lot.”
I should shut up now. I really should have but I couldn’t seem to stop despite his obvious anger. I struggled to keep still, keep breathing. “Up close?”
“I think there’s some cards in the nightstand drawer. Why don’t you go get them?”
“Answer the question first.”
“Go get the cards,” he countered.
“Answer the question.”
“A few times. When I had to. Now—” He gave me a pointed look, one eyebrow arched. It said, if I knew what was good for me, I’d shut the fuck up...like ten seconds ago.
I shut up and went to get the cards, tossing the rubber-banded pack on the table. “How do you usually kill people?”
“It depends.” He straddled a chair, ripped off the rubber band and started to expertly shuffle the cards. “You play poker?”
“No.” I moved closer, wanting to ask him more even though I sensed he wanted me to shut the hell up. “Why?” I asked, taking a seat.
“Why what?” He started dealing, one stack for each of us.
“Why do you kill people?” I scooped up my cards, organizing them by suit and color, even though I had no idea what we were playing. “Why do you read tarot cards?”
“It’s my job.”
“Exactly.”
I watched him organize his own cards, once again drawn in by his hands. They were lovely, sensual and capable of so much more than his chosen occupation. I wondered what it might be like to let him touch me, then pushed the thought out of my head, refusing to remember the comforting weight of his arm draped across my shoulders last night, or even, yesterday’s kiss.
“The game is Go Fish.”
I frowned over at him in surprise. “Go Fish?”
“You said you didn’t know how to play Poker. So the game is Go Fish. You do know how to play?”
Of course. Everyone knew Go Fish. I’d played with my mom lots of times and told him so.
“So you and your mom played. Good. Do you have any nines?”
“Go fish.” He pulled a couple cards from the stack in the middle of the table, and then set down a pair of nines.
“Where’s your mom now?”
I studied him over my cards, but his face was impassive. “Dead. Do you have any tens?”
“It’s still my turn.” He eyed me briefly; his expression gave nothing away. “How did she die?”
“Someone shot her.” I stacked my cards in my hand, ready to take another walk if he didn’t stop. “Planning on going anytime soon?” I didn’t want to talk about my mother. She was none of his business. Maybe turnabout was fair play, but that didn’t mean I had to like it any more than he did. “What about your mom?”
He glanced at me really quick, then back down at his cards. “She’s alive.”
My knee started to jiggle underneath the table. “How does she feel—”
“Do you have any twos?”
I handed over a two and finished my sentence, “About what you do for a living?”
“I never asked her. Never had to because it’s a family business.” He fiddled with his cards a bit, rearranging them. I found that hard to believe. Not that Will struck me as a mama’s boy, but how could his mother not have expressed an opinion over his chosen occupation?
“So your dad...”
“Do you have any sixes?” he asked, ignoring my question.
“No.”
“Go fish.” Will looked up at me, something about his expression making me think this was a life and death game, something more serious.
I frowned back at him. “Huh?”
“You’re supposed to say ‘Go Fish.’”
“Okay," I drawled, "Go fish.” The absurdity of playing Go Fish with a hitman wasn’t lost on me.
He drew a card, sighing when he apparently didn't get what he wanted.
“You’re funny.”
He grunted.
“You kill people for a living but you follow the rules for Go Fish to the letter. That’s funny, ya know? Real ironic.”
“Why are you so hung up on what I do for a living?” Cheeks flushed, he slammed his cards down on the table and pushed his chair onto its back legs.
I set my own card
s in a neat stack and let my shoulder slump from fatigue. “I’ve just never met anyone like you.”
“It’s my job,” he ground out roughly. “It’s not who I am.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“What do you do for fun...besides play Go Fish?” I waved a hand at the cards.
“I fish.”
Unable to help myself, I laughed while Will lurched to his feet and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. I felt bad, sort of...a little.
Okay, not much, but I had to admit that it was funny. In a twisted sort of way. I just hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings.
Sighing, I gathered the cards together and put them back in the nightstand. Scamp scratched at the door, and I let him out, watching as he nudged Will’s elbow. He lifted his arm, letting the dog crawl onto his lap. I could feel myself frowning, and a hot, jealous ache sunk its claws into my chest.
For the first time ever, I found myself wondering about my dog’s ability to judge people. He’d always been really good at it. Even better than me. Then again, we never usually spent a lot of time with other people. Even those times we lived on-site at a Ren-Faire for weeks at a time, I tended to keep to myself. As much as I moved around, it was just easier.
“Are you single?” I finally asked as curiosity got the better of me.
He turned and smiled up at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yes.”
“Why are you smiling?”
“You’re very different from my ex.”
I snorted. “You mean because I live in my van?”
“No.” He shook his head for emphasis.
I didn’t want to ask, I didn’t what to know what type of women Will liked, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Her name is Tilly and she was...she didn’t know.” He gave me a pointed look and I nodded.
“So you had to lie a lot?”
“She was also pretty high maintenance...and complicated.”
“You’re pretty complicated, too.”
He shrugged and turned away, signaling an end to our Q and A and making me regret my last comment. I wasn’t ready to apologize, not with Scamp’s abdication so painfully fresh. I stepped back inside and stretched out on the bed, watching what was left of the sun travel across the ceiling until the cabin was almost completely dark. I dozed, slipping into that dark place that gave me murky, restless dreams, until something pierced my sleep. I lay there blinking against the dim assault of the kitchen light, heart pounding as the sound of gunfire prickled my ears and finally registered in my brain.
