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It was a dash of cold water. So this was it.
He’s actually leaving.
The man who shadowed my every move wouldn’t be there anymore. There was nothing I could think to say that would make my stray come home with me.
“Oh, well, safe travels,” I stammered.
He watched me carefully. “Goodbye, bella.”
There was something to those words. Some finality I didn’t want to hear.
“If you do come back, we can take a walk so you can see the flowers,” I blurted out, not thinking the statement through.
If the captains of my organization knew the darker details about this man, they would shoot him on principle. But I couldn’t stand the thought of not looking into the shadows and seeing the wild grey gaze watching me.
“If I come back.” He seemed to taste the words.
I nodded. “Yes. Do that. Come back.”
“Would you like that? To see me again?” he pressed.
“More than anything.”
It was madness—it was the truth. I would pay whatever price for this fairytale.
“I don’t know if I can change,” he whispered. “But if ever there was a bloody good reason to try, this is it.”
He lingered a moment longer, his presence like gravity pulling me in despite every rational thought screaming to keep my distance. Then, with a slight incline of his head, Jaxon turned and walked back to his truck, each step widening the space between us.
I watched him go, paint roller forgotten in my hand, dripping white specks onto my boots. The truck pulled away, and I felt something inside me leave with it.
“Chi è quell’uomo?” Signora Gaetani asked, her eyes twinkling with interest.
“Just a neighbor,” I answered, though the words felt hollow even to my own ears.
I returned to painting with renewed vigor, trying to focus on the task rather than the man who had just disappeared around the corner. But my thoughts betrayed me, circling back to him with frustrating persistence. I said what I could; now it was up to whatever puppet master controlled my life.
Chapter 24 – Jaxon
The surf was an unkind tyrant, frothing and smashing and making every other sound in the world irrelevant. My ears rang with it, stifling every other sound. The sun, in its relentless brutality, forced tears from my eyes. I could not see, could not hear, could not breathe without the beach shoving some new kind of discomfort at me. I hated the beach. It damped three of my senses, and the other two didn’t work here anyhow. I felt blind. Vulnerable. An enemy could sneak up on me, and I wouldn’t hear or see them.
Yet it was the perfect defense, natural and ever-present.
The sand yielded with every step, so it was hardly running at all, more like a slow-motion jog with my heart hammering too fast for the pace. After fifteen minutes, the landscape shifted; the trees ahead thickened their ranks and blinded the sky. And then, a discreet break in the trees marked the turn. Slight and barely perceptible, even a keen observer would miss it unless they knew it was there. I swept one last lingering look over the beach to assure myself that I wasn’t followed before I stepped into the dense shroud of greenery. The path that cut through the junglewas a subtle flattening of leaf litter, a certain regularity to the saplings that grew along the margins, and the absence of spiders at face level.
Another fifteen minutes passed, winding and twisting, making it seem as though I were lost. A spring of wildflowers popped from behind a tree, their violent shade a stark contrast to the green.
I paused.
She asked me to come back. The flowers were meant as a gift, so that she might think of me on her daily walks. So that I was there, even when I was gone. But then…she asked me to come back.
I shook my head and kept moving. There was no way I fit into her life. It didn’t make sense. After one final turn, I came face to face with the exterior of our lair.
The concrete wall was grey and ugly and built to withstand the kinds of things that visited at night. Not that they ever did, not here. The wall looked new, the barbed wire less so, the curls of rust catching the equatorial sun in a way that made them appear almost decorative, crafty. What couldn’t be seen from the beach was the network of sensors, motion-activated cameras, and redundant alarm systems hidden among the vines and orchids and in the knotholes of the palms. There were at least eleven ways in or out. But only Chase and I were in possession of that information.
Chase had a sixth sense for trouble, or for boredom, or maybe just for me. I heard the pneumatic hiss before the metal panel slid aside, exposing a corridor of reinforced steel and polycarbonate. The tunnel ran straight through the exterior wall, dead-ending at a heavy blast door. It was all overkill, but Chase liked overkill. I ducked inside before the panel snapped closed behind me, then jogged through the tunnel, the airsuddenly oven-hot but at least not salty. When I emerged, an overwhelming sense of nostalgia hit me.
Home sweet home.
