Table of Contents
The Secrets We Keep
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Perfect Drug
About Melinda Owens
Credits
Cover design by Meg Murray Designs
Cover Photography by Wander Aguiar
Cover Model: David Wills
Editing by Kimberly Dawn
Interior Design and Formatting: Uplifting Author Services
2019: Thanks for the humility. 2020: Fuck you. 2021: I think we can be friends.
About the Book
Ten years ago they brutally killed his wife while he was tied up, forced to watch, then they got off scot-free.
A decade he's been planning his revenge.
One phone call, and now everything's changed. They're after her twin sister, and Theo's the only one who can help her.
Dusty wiped her forehead before picking up the last two bags of garbage to take out to the dumpster. It had been a hell of a Thursday night. The bag jangled from the broken glass she’d cleaned up after a fight that almost had her shutting the place down. She was pissed when that shit happened. It made her want to make everyone leave. She’d locked up her bar for the night and was finishing up her duties before she could go home and collapse in bed. She’d already sent Bruce and Aaron home, so it was just her, and she liked it that way.
After hours, the bar brought her a peace she rarely found anywhere else. Putting chairs on top of tables, hearing the echoes of laughter, getting rid of the smells of spilled alcohol and replacing it with the scents of clean polish and soap gave her a sense of stillness. It allowed her to reflect on where she’d been and where she’d come in her life. The good parts of it anyway. She’d spent years leaving the bad stuff behind.
The nighttime air in the alley behind the bar was crisp with the first chill of fall. She knew, like most everyone else in town, that it was temporary. Later this week it would be warm again, with temps in the upper eighties, but for now, it was amazing. She inhaled deeply as the door slammed shut behind her.
She heard footsteps, but that wasn’t all too out of the ordinary. It was a party area of the city, and while it was only Tuesday, it had been busy, and she could only assume something was going on she hadn’t been aware of that was keeping people out and about. They’d figure out soon enough everything was closed now and go home, or do something stupid like pass out on a corner and wake up in the police department’s drunk tank.
She hefted the bags, one by one, over into the dumpster with the clank of bottles breaking loudly in the darkness. She heard footsteps getting closer, a small group. Freezing, her senses picked up the nearness of the echoing footfalls, registering danger. The scent of clove cigarettes filled her nostrils. One of her customers, Susan, used to smoke those, but she’d quit two years ago when her emphysema got too bad.
Before she could react, hands from behind her shoved her into the side of the dumpster.
Dusty had the fleeting thought about the griminess and disgusting surface of the dumpster her cheek was pressed against, before awareness took over.
This was the first time in six years she’d been mugged.
Jesus, she hoped she was being mugged.
“I don’t have any cash on me,” she managed to grit out while twisting her lips away from the dirty metal.
A low, clove-scented chuckle sounded in her ear. “We don’t want your cash.” Large hands spun her around so she could see the face of her attacker, as she told herself to pay more attention. He’d said, “We.” There were more than one of them. Sure enough, the black-papered clove cigarette hung out of his mouth. As if she was such easy prey, he didn’t even have to snuff it out before attacking her.
A familiar face was grinning at her in a way that tightened her chest and squeezed her insides into a tiny ball. She almost wet herself. She forced her eyes away from his face to the men behind him.
There were three of them. Three familiar men stared, leering at her. A skinny guy stood, shoulders hunched with ape-like arms hanging at his sides, near the side of the dumpster. Another was shorter, squatter, and cracked his knuckles like he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her.
Fuck.
She struggled to figure out where she knew them from, hoping that could give her leverage against them, against this situation, even though it felt hopeless. She was outnumbered, outmuscled.
The taller one moved into the dim light of the motion detector light fastened to the building and she saw his face. Remembrance slammed into her—a recognition that sent cold tendrils of fear snaking throughout her entire body, leaving her a shaky, quaky mess. The smoke was heady, filling her like the fear, tendrils she inhaled with each shaky breath.
She knew these men. Dusty had sat through the trial of the murder of her sister. Had listened to the testimonies that described, in detail, the awful things they’d done to her, imagined the fear she’d felt in the last moments of her life. She had etched their faces in her memory, knowing if Sunny had been alive, she would have done it too.
And then they’d gotten off on a technicality.
Her mouth gaped open, eyes wide, as she took in their sudden appearance in her life. They grinned at her, seeing her recognition, and apparently relishing the fear it evoked.
Tears pricked the backs of her eyes, and she knew she was fucked. There was nothing she could do to get away now. Her fate would be the same as Sunny’s, and that meant she would die a horrible, painful, gruesome death.
In a filthy alley behind her bar.
Shoulders slumping in defeat, she wondered where they’d been for the last decade. They looked older, like they’d lived a little bit of life, but judging by the paunches at their beltlines and definitive dad bods they sported, she guessed they’d been living soft lives.
Bastards.
Well, she wouldn’t go down like Sunny. She made that decision with a surge of energy that surprised her.
She kicked out as hard as she could and her aim was true, landing squarely in the balls of the guy in front of her. Falco, the supposed leader of the trio, went down like a sack of potatoes, his cigarette falling onto the pavement beside him. Surprised and bolstered, she bent her knees and got on the balls of her feet, fists up in a defensive stance, daring the others to come at her. Pina took the challenge and made a step forward but was hit over the head with something by somebody in the shadows, and fell to the ground.
A lamp shone over the dumpster, the motion detector she had installed for safety reasons. The guy who hit Pina was still in the shadow cast by the light of that lamp. She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or not. Regardless, there was still one more bad guy standing.
Daimler, the last of them, looked at his two comrades on the ground and took off at a slow jog around the dumpster and into the night.
Now Dusty was looking at the shadows, while Guy moaned. She could almost see a figure standing there, and she wondered if he was a danger to her or not.
“Go. Get home.” The voice spoke, but bathed in the darkness cast by the light of the lamp, it was disembodied, unreal.
“They’ll come back.” Sh
e spoke toward where she thought the voice came from, adrenaline leaving her body. She could practically feel it seeping out of her pores, leaving behind a lethargy. “I know them,” she added uselessly, hearing the futility as much as she felt it.
“I’m taking care of them.” The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She tilted her head at the shadows, questioning everything. Why, after so long, had they just now come after her?
Well, if they’d done it right after the trial, it would have been obvious, wouldn’t it? Stop it, Dusty. Get inside like the shadowy figure commands. She told herself to follow instructions for once in her life, but she couldn’t make her feet move. They were stuck like glue to the pavement.
“Who are you?” she asked, sounding braver than she felt with the man clutching his balls and looking up at her with pure hatred in his eyes, not five feet away.
There was no answer, and Dusty decided she’d been standing next to a murderer long enough. The others had clearly gone, so she unglued her feet and ran back inside the back door of the bar, locking it behind her.
She could sleep in her office chair tonight. There was absolutely no way she was walking the three blocks to her car with these guys around and clearly targeting her.
Tomorrow, she had to call Theo. She hadn’t talked to him in years, and there was more guilt attached to that than she wanted to acknowledge. But he needed to know these guys were still around. And he might know what to do.
Dusty didn’t want to. She’d worked so hard to put her past wounds behind her and become someone her family could be proud of. But now, her past had come roaring down that alley and practically hit her over the head.
And Theo was the only person who could possibly understand her fear.
The next morning, Theo stood over the kitchen sink in the tiny house he shared with Jeremy, his roommate, former teammate, and only friend in the world, eating a piece of toast and chugging coffee.
Sex noises came from Jeremy’s room, and he’d been listening to them most of the night. At least most of the night he’d been home.
Hitting Pina over the head with an old liquor bottle had been satisfying, but it wasn’t enough. And the look on the woman’s face was too much to stand. Fucking Dusty.
A ghost he had tried not to think of for a decade. He’d filled his mind with thoughts of Sunny these past years, trying to eek Dusty out of his memory bank while plotting against Falco, Pina, and Daimler. And here she was, as big as life, kicking men in the junk and protecting herself like the badass she was.
God, he fucking hated her.
“Oh fuck. That feels good.” Jeremy’s low voice was his cue to get the hell out of here. It was his first day on a new job, and he didn’t want to be late anyway. He was curious how the new job would work with his “night life,” but it couldn’t be helped. He hated his old job, and when Jeremy got work at the security firm and found out they needed one more experienced guy, Theo had jumped at the chance. The company he had worked at before was a group of symbiotic parasites under the guise of doing “good” work for concert venues and gatherings in the city. It was all about who you knew, what you could do for people, and how to make everyone’s life better.
Theo didn’t have time for all that.
As he walked out the door, his suit coat over his arm, his phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket as he locked the door behind him, the sex noises cutting off with the door slamming.
“Hello?”
Expecting his new office to be the only people calling this early, he almost dropped his jacket when he heard the voice.
“Theo? I need help. And you’re the only one—” He might not have realized who she was right away, except he’d just heard her voice last night.
Fucking Dusty.
“I can’t.” He knew what she needed. Probably better than anyone. But he’d be damned if he got into this with her. He was nobody’s damn hero, certainly not hers. Last night had been a bit of serendipity, certainly not intentional. “I got a new job. I’m about to be late for it.” He lied. He was about to be almost an hour early, so he could avoid listening to his roommate having sex.
“I’ll meet you anywhere. Name the place. The time. Please.” Desperation clung to her words like an old man clung to a cane. He couldn’t ignore the stirring in his gut at the sound.
He faltered at his car door. He’d seen them last night. Now she was on their radar, and clearly they wanted a repeat performance. Who better than Dusty? She was clearly in danger, she knew it, and she was terrified. Something inside him twisted.
His firmly shaped reality was tearing and he didn’t like it. Theo had spent a decade thinking about this, planning it, and now Dusty was calling him with her fear, and he didn’t like the way it was going to change everything.
She was crying, and that messed with his head. He’d never seen her shed a tear. The sign of weakness was a sign of maturity, she wasn’t infallible, maybe?
Or a trick to get him to do what she wanted.
“Fine. Meet me at this address. It will cost you, but you can get help…”
The address Theo had given her was an office building downtown—one of the many buildings built in the twenties and thirties—and had recently been remodeled and updated. Dusty liked downtown, always had. It was why she’d stayed here. Crime was high, but during the day it was fine. Her bar was on the outskirts of downtown, and since it was where visitors went for the nightlife, police presence was pretty heavy. She felt safe here, even with what happened to Sunny.
There was no sign outside, but inside the lobby Dusty found a sign for Serpent Executive Protection Specialists. It pointed to the floor Theo had told her to go to.
Well, they had to be better than the conversation with the police she’d already had this morning. With a fortifying breath, she steeled her insides and got on the elevator. It was a glass elevator, and she glued her eyes to the receptionist at the front desk, watching her get smaller as Dusty went higher. Her stomach dropped out from her insides as she rose, and she had to breathe deeply to overcome it. Her sense of unreality was immense.
Is this what her life had become? Jumping and running scared at the first sign of trouble? Yes. When the trouble came in the form of those men, she would run to the only man who understood the danger.
The office space was neat and decorated sparsely, exactly as she would imagine a securities firm. She wished she’d known what this address was. She would have done some research first. Were these guys even legit? Jessica, the receptionist, fussed over Dusty as she led her to a conference room.
It was easier to check out and observe her surroundings than think about why she was here. The artwork on the walls were bold pieces done by local artists she recognized. One piece was done by a regular at the bar. Jessica settled her in a leather seat, one that matched twelve others around the enormous table, and she started fussing with the notepad and pen in front of her, noticing that four other seats had the same in front of them.
Dusty declined the woman’s offer of coffee but poured herself a glass of water from a large pitcher in the center of the table, eager for something to wet her parched mouth.
A large man came in, wearing a suit, and he introduced himself as Liam Holder, shaking her hand and giving her a kind smile before settling himself in a seat on the other side of the table.
Then came an awkward silence. She was out of place here. She had only called Theo Samson for help out of a sense of desperation, but he’d told her he had a new job, and she should meet him here. He couldn’t work on her case off the clock, and these guys would help her.
She needed help. If this was how she was going to get it, then so be it. But hell, Theo knew what was going on. She’d have to go through everything with a bunch of strangers. Things she wasn’t ready to talk about.
Another man came in and silently sat at the farthest end of the table without speaking or introducing himself. Dusty did a double take before schooling her features. He had tattoos
everywhere, except his face. His hands were covered, his neck, and she imagined everywhere else.
Weird. But whatever. The guy seemed good-looking, although, not as traditionally handsome as Mr. Holder, but that may have been because Holder actually smiled and stuff. This guy looked like he was ready to eat her.
“This is Po. He’s our computer specialist, but he doesn’t talk much.” Holder was chuckling at something he’d said. “He’ll do the initial background assessment on whatever your case is, and then if any special equipment is necessary he can take care of it. We’re just waiting on Samson to get here and we can get started.”
As if he’d heard Liam, Theo came bustling into the room, a woman following behind. Dusty’s breath hitched in her throat before leaving her in a soft gasp.
“Ah, Theo. Lilith. I was just about to go looking for you.” Gesturing to the woman who sat next to Liam, he said, “This is Lilith. She’s friendlier than she lets on; you just have to get past the prickles.” His grin as he spoke was disarming, and Lilith’s features softened into some semblance of a smile.
Theo looked so different. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a pencil-pushing accountant for one of the firms in the business district. She’d heard he’d gone into the Army after the incident with her sister, but she couldn’t dream of how that would affect him physically.
He was bigger. Harder. His face was chiseled into a frown, as if he hadn’t smiled in years. He might not have, knowing what she knew about him. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a long scar that ran down one side of his face, over his neck, and under his tie. He wore a vested suit, very sharp, in charcoal gray, and his form under the suit was way bigger than before.
Theo sat in the chair across from her, next to Holder, while the woman who had followed him in sat next to him. Dusty was busy looking at everyone at the table, in an effort not to stare at Theo. The woman was beautiful in a hard, zero-fucks-given sort of way. While she was slender and looked delicate, she was tall, and Dusty figured she had unseen muscles that kept her fit because this was a security firm, after all.
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