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The thing is, I’m not. A coward, that is. I’m a realist. A vision is only good if I can get something from it. And in this instance, all I saw were three gunshots. I saw nothing else. I don’t know a date or a time. It could happen in five days or five years. I can’t change her fate, and with so little to go on, neither could she. That’s if she believed me in the first place.
I’ve tried before—warning people. Sometimes I get full, detailed visions, and sometimes I get murkier ones that are hard to interpret, yet there is usually enough for me to get the gist. Sometimes, all I get is a snapshot like the one I just had. No sound, no color—just a single event that will have devastating consequences.
Warning that woman wouldn’t help this time, though—not that it usually does—if there is one thing I know, something that is somehow worse than finding out you’re going to be the victim of something horrific is to find out you’re going to be the killer.
And that’s what I took from that sliver of the future. It wasn’t so much what I saw as what I could feel. One day, that woman is going to pull the trigger not once, not twice, but three times.
And her aim will be true.
* * *
By the time we head back, I’m dead on my feet.I’m starting to realize how unfit I am. I mean, I’ve always been a curvy girl. I’m built for comfort, not speed, and given how inactive my job can be, I don’t get nearly as much exercise as I should. However, at home, I do make more of an effort to walk along the beach and swim in the pool. Here, I’ve just been wallowing. And if I keep doing that, I’m going to end up looking like a beached whale.
“You with us?” Jagger asks me as we pull into the garage.
“Yeah, I was just thinking about how unfit I am,” I admit with a sigh as I unclip my belt.
Jagger climbs out and grabs my door for me as Slade turns back to look at me.
“We have a gym here. You’re more than welcome to use it.”
I groan. “Whoa, horse. Let’s not get carried away.”
I climb out of the car, ignoring Slade’s burst of laughter.
“Do you want to grab something to eat at the main house?” I can smell the aroma of something cooking as he asks.
“Honestly, I’m still full from earlier. What I could use is a nap.”
“I could use a nap too. Want some company?” Slade asks, walking around the car to us as he pockets my keys.
“That depends if nap means nap or if you’re talking in code.”
He grins and grabs my hand. “I think you have a dirty mind, Miss Montgomery.”
I roll my eyes at him and look at Jagger. “You want to come too?” I flush when I realize what that sounds like. He just chuckles before grabbing the bags from the back and handing me the one containing the book I bought from the awesome little bookstore.
“I’d love to, but I’ve gotta run these packages to Oz, and I need to see Hawk about something. Go nap. I’ll catch up with you later.”
He leans down and kisses my cheek before closing the truck and leaving me and Slade alone. Slade takes my bag from me and turns me so I’m pressed against the car as he leans over me. “I really am sorry about earlier.”
I reach up and cup his jaw with my hand, feeling the spiky stubble against my palm. “You don’t need to be sorry. You weren’t a dick to me. You just needed time to regroup.”
He stares down at me, and I can see him measuring his words as he chooses what to say. What he does say shocks the absolute shit out of me.
“I enlisted when I was eighteen, right out of high school. I wasn’t like Jagger, who dreamed of becoming a soldier. I never knew what I wanted out of life until a recruiter came to our school and talked about what life was like in the armed forces. His words just resonated with me.I signed up, much to my family’s disappointment, and left for basic training a week after graduation.”
“Your family didn’t want you to be a soldier?” I ask gently, trying to be careful with my words.
“They wanted me to follow in my family’s footsteps. My father is a lawyer. My brother was a lawyer, too, before he was killed in a car accident while I was deployed.”
I stroke his arm in comfort, but I don’t interrupt him.
“Even my sister became a lawyer, which was surprising because my dad is like his dad—old school, believing a woman’s place is in the home. I think he only made the exception with Dawn because he needed someone to carry on the family business after Cliff died.”
He stops talking and looks around. I follow his gaze and notice a camera on us.
“Come on.” He tugs my hand and leads me out of the garage, around the back of the building, so we don’t have to go inside.
