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Hobbling toward the shoulder of the road, I ignored the pain screaming from my ankle. Bending at the waist over the tall weeds in the ditch, I barfed up my heels.
“Easy, darlin’,” the man murmured, quickly gathering my hair in his fist and holding it back.
Normally, I would have been mortified puking in front of a stranger, but at the moment, I was too scared and distraught. All I cared about was putting as much distance between me and my bounty hunter savior as possible. Sadly, I knew that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.
Unlike the man now stroking my back in moral support, I didn’t believe in coincidences.
In my mind, everything happened for a reason.
It wasn’t coincidence, the Universe had put me, a violent tornado, and a bounty hunter from Richardson—of all places—on the same path. It was a warning shot over my bow. A warning that the man beside me possessed the power and know-how to destroy my well-planned future. A signal for me to re-think my plan or shore it up tighter.
A foreboding chill raced up my spine, stealing every ounce of the foolish confidence I’d clung to.
Slowly standing upright, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand as he released my hair.
“What the hell just happened?” he asked, lifting my cell phone from his breast pocket and placing it in my trembling hand.
“I-I don’t know,” I lied, dropping the device back inside my purse. “I think all that jostling around in your arms hit me like seasickness.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.” His voice was thick with remorse.
“No. Don’t be. It’s not your fault. If I hadn’t twisted my ankle—”
The blare of a car horn cut me off mid-sentence. Together, we turned toward the sound as a big black Escalade sped toward us.
“Son of a bitch.” A panty-melting smile speared the man’s lips as he gently cupped my elbow again. “We’re done walking, darlin’. Help has arrived.”
ChapterThree
Grant
The relief spilling through me when Dalton skidded to a stop, bounded out of his SUV, and nearly cracked my ribs with a fierce bro hug was immeasurable.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as he released me and blew out a huge sigh. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m damn glad you are, but…why?”
“What do you mean,why?” the big, tattooed Dom countered incredulously. “Damn, Blade, the last thing I heard you yell before the line went dead was…tornado. I tried to call you back, but it wouldn’t go through. That freaked me out so bad, I jumped in my car and flew out here. Damn glad I found you alive. You, and…?” He glanced at the woman beside me and arched an expectant brow my way.
For the first time in a long time, I felt like a fucking idiot. The whole time we were in the storage room, I’d never even asked her name.
“Aubrey.” The woman smiled, extending her hand to Dalton. “Aubrey Holden.”
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
While my head screamed,no fucking way does she have the same name as my sister, my heart slammed to the pit of my stomach, and the earth began crumbling under my feet. Gaping in disbelief, I studied the woman as she explained to Dalton how she’d spotted the funnel cloud, then me, and zoomed into the parking lot. She didn’t look or sound a thing like my sister—not that I suddenly expected her to. She wasn’t Aubrey, or her ghost. She was a totally different person…pretending to be my sister.
Why?
I knew for a fact, my sister—whose body had been interred, four and a half years ago, at Laurel Oaks Cemetery—was the only Aubrey Holden who’d ever lived in Richardson the twenty-eight years she’d been alive.
What the fuck was going on?
Why was the woman I’d saved lying? Why was she using my sister’s identity? How did she know Aubrey had grown up in Richardson? Was the hazel-eyed beauty trying to set me up? Had one of the dirtbags I’d tracked down and hauled to jail sent her to find me?
Suspicion, anger, and betrayal gnawed deep, ripping at the still open, weeping wounds Aubrey’s senseless death had left on my soul.
Like a knife, memories sliced through me, spilling open in gut-churning detail.
After completing an intense, butt-puckering mission that had FUBAR written all over it, my team had been extracted without a scratch. We were still riding high when we finally set boots back on US soil. But less than five minutes later, the thrill of victory was cut short when I was summoned to my Lieutenant Commander’s office. There, along with Chaplain Miller at his side, my LC informed me that my little sister had died. As he relayed the horrific details of her death, shock and denial melded into soul-crushing pain. I stumbled back, landing on the chair in front of his desk, and shamelessly sobbed like a newborn baby. While he continued telling me about the gut-churning torture Aubrey had endured, my agony was replaced with raw, unadulterated rage. Twenty minutes later, I boarded an Air Force Special Operations U-28 from San Diego, California to Rockaway Naval Air station in New York. Once we landed, I went directly to the morgue—a task I refused to let my mother endure—and identified what was left of my little sister’s body before I flew her back home to Texas.
