“That’s not why you don’t want me to talk to him.”
“Do not go down there, Isabel.”
I set my jaw firmly. “Let. Me. Go.”
His chest moves steadily under his tense breathing. For a moment, I think I’ll have to wrestle free, but he surprises me by letting go.
We stand there a moment in silent opposition. The last thing I want to do is hurt him when we’re finding our way back to each other, but Kolt didn’t ask to have me ripped out of his life. Guilt on top of guilt compounds on me, but Kolt’s voice downstairs prompts me into motion.
“I’m sorry for just dropping in on you like this. I can come back tomorrow.”
“Sure,” my mom answers. “I think that would be best.”
I hurry down the stairs, my heart flying as Kolt’s figure comes into full view. He looks like hell—skin dull, hair unstyled and sticking up in places it shouldn’t, his button-down a wrinkled mess. I’ve no doubt he traveled all night and came directly here.
“Isabel.” My name breaks on his lips. “You’re here.”
I halt at the foot of the stairs. He steps between my parents. When he reaches for me, I can’t deny him. He clutches me firmly against his chest and buries his nose in my hair.
So much more than my absence has come between us. He has no idea I’ve been falling in love with Tristan all over again. Still, Kolt is the closest friend I’ve had for months. The cute coworker who kept me smiling and laughing until he became the lover who warmed my bed on lonely nights. Then I disappeared without a trace and followed Tristan into the jungles of Brazil. I’ve thought of Kolt from time to time, but the guilt of leaving him so suddenly has never been this heavy.
And he’s right. Only days ago we were negotiating the terms of our relationship—a relationship I was reluctant to define and eager to diffuse.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “So sorry.”
He looks into my eyes, cradling my face in his cool palm. “What’s going on?”
“It’s complicated. I can’t explain it all right now. I just needed you to know I was okay.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”
I shake my head tightly. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
He opens his mouth to speak, but his attention is taken away. Creaks down the stairs have my heart plummeting to my stomach. I press my palms against Kolt’s chest, loosening his grasp. He backs off slightly, very likely distracted by the man behind me.
Tristan drops from the last step with a notable thud.
Stoic, deadly Tristan has arrived. Everyone in the room seems to feel it. Except when I chance a look at him, his eyes are fixed on me as if no one else exists.
“Hi there, I’m Kolt.” Kolt extends his hand.
Tristan regards him coolly, making no effort to return the gesture. Undeniably, he’s dark and damaged in ways he never was before. Somehow that makes him even more beautiful to me, though. And somehow all the other people in the room bring this truth into stark relief. Kolt is inches away, yet I’m drawn to Tristan so strongly, I worry Kolt must feel it too. That energy that hums between us, nearly palpable in its intensity.
“This is Tristan,” I say lightly, as if introducing the love of my life to the friend I’ve been casually fucking is the most normal thing in the world.
“There are matters at play here that you don’t understand and you don’t need to understand,” Tristan says without ceremony. “Isabel’s in danger, and no one can know that she is here. Can you keep your mouth shut?”
Kolt grimaces. “Excuse me?”
“I said can you keep your—”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Kolt leans in, his words and body language offering a challenge that has me in an instant panic. He has no idea who he’s dealing with.
“Kolt, please don’t.”
I reach for him, but he brushes me off like a fly trying to distract him from more important things and shoots daggers at Tristan.
Tristan reacts, grasping my hand in his. He takes a threatening step toward Kolt, wedging his body between us. I wrap my free hand around his bicep and squeeze, a silent plea for him to exercise restraint when I’m worried all he wants to do is write Kolt’s name in his little red book just for breathing.
“I know exactly who you are. You’re Kolt Mirchoff. Harvard University dropout, class of ’18. Your family’s made a fortune slinging legal drugs through one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. You’ve got too much money on your hands and all the time in the world to piss it away.”
“I didn’t drop out. I’m on a leave of absence. And my family’s business doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on with Isabel right now.”
“Maybe not. But you need to get out of my face before they think you’ve gone missing too.”
Kolt slides his gaze from Tristan to me and back again. “I’m not going anywhere unless Isabel says so.”
Tristan brings his face dangerously close to Kolt’s. “You’ve been fucking with the wrong girl, Mirchoff. She’s not in love with you.”
My father’s face reddens with anger. “That’s about enough of that.”
Thankfully, my mother gets between the two men before my father can. “Kolt, Isabel needs her rest. It’s been a long journey for her too. Come, I’ll walk you out and we can talk.”
Just like that, my mother manages to pull Kolt away from the house and lead him down the front path, but not before he pins me with a look filled with such confusion and defeat.
I resist the urge to go to him and apologize once more, but Tristan’s not wrong. I’m not in love with Kolt. I never could be. If Tristan hadn’t shown up on the street that afternoon, I would have explained it to Kolt that night. We can never be what he wants us to be.
He turns away, but the crushed look in his eyes won’t leave my memory anytime soon. My mother’s voice disappears when my father shuts the door behind them.
“Happy now?” Tristan works his jaw, doing nothing to mask his frustration. “I know you’ll do whatever you damn well please, but may I suggest we leave before someone finds out you’re here? The probability of that just increased substantially.”
I meet his challenging stare, all too ready to defy him.
“He’s right.”
We both turn toward my father’s voice. “But first I’d like a few words with you, Mr. Stone.”
Tristan’s anger seems to cool. Or maybe it goes inward. Something about his energy and posture changes. He’s black ice on a cold night. Dangerous if ignored. Of all people, my father might understand this.
“I’m going to get some things from my room. Give me five minutes,” I say.
Tristan nods but doesn’t look my way. He follows my father into his office and closes the French doors behind them.
I watch them a moment through the glass. Tristan’s rigid stance, my father circling his desk and dropping into his chair. I could watch and wonder, but I’ll have to pull it out of Tristan later. Our safety may be an issue, but right now, I’m more concerned about getting Tristan out of the house before someone snaps.
I don’t waste time. I go upstairs, tear open boxes from my old apartment that I’d stored in my closet, and put together a bag of warmer clothes so I can return Brienne’s. I have no idea why I kept so much stuff. I lived on next to nothing in Rio. A simpler life. A richer life. I’ll tell my mother to donate the rest before I go.
I hear the front door open and shut and, a few seconds later, my mother’s voice in the kitchen. Then Tristan’s and my father’s join hers. I hurry, gather the last little things, and take a last look around my room, certain I won’t be seeing it again for a while. I’ve said goodbye to this place before, but I could always come back.
So much has changed…
TRISTAN
I’m a clusterfuck of emotion. I have no idea what to do with any of it. I brew over all the ways this is Isabel’s fault as we speed toward Brienne’s apartment in tense silence
. I could blame her all day long, but I’m the one who’s given her this much power over me. I’ve been giving in to her little invitations to be the Tristan she used to know. The man who cared and felt things. The naïve, fucked-up kid from the slums of Baltimore whose heart beat to love one woman. This one particularly infuriating woman.
I am not that kid. I slam the door behind us with that thought, grateful to find the living area void of her screen-obsessed friend. I’m not sure I could pretend to care that I’m being a rude houseguest.
Isabel bends over the coffee table and lifts up a note. “She went out. Be back soon.”
“Great.” I go to the fridge, pull out a bottle of water, and wham the door shut.
“Are you going to talk to me, or are you going to keep slamming things around like a toddler?”
She’s right in front of me when I spin around.
“Am I going to talk to you? What good would that do?”
I advance on her with no regard for how thin my self-control is at this moment. When she stumbles backward, I catch her. I tuck my hand into the band of her jeans and roughly tug her toward me. She huffs out a breath as our chests clash. My lips hover over hers. The hunger I have for her claws at me—a gnawing, nagging hunger that doesn’t let up no matter how much I tell myself she’s got unfinished business with the guy I watched grope her not that long ago.
“Tristan…I’d love to talk this out, but—”
“But what?”
She licks her bottom lip. The movement shoots straight to my groin. A fresh hit of lust razors through me. Her eyes have that hazy look that tells me we’re already on the same page. Needing her to this degree is akin to a thousand tiny blades under my skin, but I’m still pissed about her insolent behavior, not to mention the way she all but ran into another man’s arms.
“What makes you think I’d give you the satisfaction?”
I revel in landing the blow. Then I regret it when the lusty fog in her eyes is replaced with the pain I’ve inflicted. Because I feel things now, and I’m irrationally resentful that I do.
“You’re entangled, Isabel.”
She rests her forehead on my shoulder. “Despite what you saw, you have to understand that Kolt is more a friend than anything else. If you could see past your jealousy, you’d understand that leaving him in the dark would be cruel.”
I let her go. “Jealousy?”
“That’s what that pissing contest in the foyer was, wasn’t it? What else would you call it?”
“That was me crushing any hope he had of getting you back. For his safety and yours, I needed him to back off.”
She lifts her hand to my face, caressing over my tight jaw. The silent gesture seems to call me on my bullshit. I’m obviously jealous, which is so foreign and unsettling, I have no idea what to do with that emotion either.
“Would you rather I pretend like I don’t care if he puts his hands on you?”
“You’re making excuses. Kolt isn’t your enemy or mine.”
“Maybe not, but he’s your lover.”
“He was,” she says quietly, not meeting my eyes.
I wrestle with her confirmation of what I already suspected to be true. I saw them together in Rio. That was before I cared, though. Before I committed to saving her life, not ending it. I touch her chin and force her gaze up, hoping to see the truth in it. I’m putting my life on the line for her. I need to know.
“What exactly does this guy mean to you?”
She steps away, disconnecting us. I hate the sudden distance between us as much as I hate this conversation. Why the hell did he have to show up?
I pace toward the living room window. It’s a clear day. Views like this are always peaceful from a distance. The chaos lives under the trees, inside the buildings, down on the streets. That’s where we are now, existing in the quiet, invisible chaos of life.
“I care about Kolt, but we were never really a couple.”
She’s a few feet away, arms crossed defensively, making me wonder what she has to defend.
“He was starting to have feelings for me,” she says. “Deeper feelings I couldn’t reciprocate because I was still so wrapped up in losing you. I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship with him. I didn’t know if I ever would be, and that’s what we were going to talk about the night I left with you. Leading him on wasn’t fair to him, but disappearing without a trace and letting him believe the worst wasn’t fair either.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that he knows you’re alive. He knows you’re back in DC. He could tell someone, and all the pains Mateus and I took to get you here undetected will have been wasted.”
“I don’t think they will be.”
“Let’s hope not. Your mother assured me she’d do everything she could to keep this quiet.”
Isabel stares down at the floor, dragging her toe along a seam in the tile. “What did you and my father talk about?”
“He asked where we were staying. Offered to help us find a place to hide out for a while.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that I’d keep you safe and I didn’t need his help.”
She rolls her eyes. “Amazingly, nothing has changed between you.”
“If it’s the difference between me keeping you safe and you being dead, what choice does he have?”
“Not much, I suppose.”
“We have to get out of here, Isabel. We can’t stay anywhere too long. We have to keep moving.”
“I know.” She glances at the couch, and I can read her thoughts.
“Write her a note if you want. We can’t wait for her.”
She doesn’t answer and disappears into the bedroom. Meanwhile, I open my laptop and scope out hotels downtown. We’ll have to put DC behind us soon, but not before I get more answers. Meeting with Brennan filled in some of the blanks on what happened, but I’m no closer to figuring out why someone wants Isabel dead. Morgan had assured me, though, that he would follow every lead until he got to the bottom of it.
Isabel comes back and drops a note on the table. “I’m ready,” she says. “Where are we going?”
“I booked a room at the St. Regis. We can stay there for a few days.”
“I have to tell you something.”
I close my laptop and look up.
“My dad told me that after you transitioned out of the military, you went to a rehabilitation center for vets here in DC called Trinity House.”
“And?”
“I went there yesterday. They wouldn’t give me any information or even acknowledge that you went there, but I met with the director.”
She twists her fingers. Dread pools in my gut.
“And?”
“At first, I thought I must have imagined it, but I didn’t. I know I didn’t. I wrote Isabel Santos on the sign-in sheet, and I was on my way to leave and she called me Miss Foster. She knew my name, Tristan.”
My heart slows to a near stop. “You’re sure.”
“I’m sure. I don’t know how she knew my name, but she looked at me like she wanted to turn me inside out. I don’t know how else to describe it. That’s how it felt. She creeped me out, and I got out of there as fast as I could.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
She throws her hands up. “I went to my parents right after, and then you showed up at my window, and we started talking about everything else. Never mind that I can’t think straight when you’re touching me.”
“Fuck.” Fuck!
I go into the bedroom and pull my own bag together. When I come back, Isabel’s eyes are wide and she’s clutching the strap of her backpack like a life preserver.
“What did she look like?”
She blinks up at me. “What?”
“The woman. What did she look like?”
“Professional. Maybe early thirties.”
“Her face, Isabel.”
“She was fair skinned. Red hair. She wore it pulled back tight. Blue eyes. Lik
e, a deep, dark blue.”
I harness the lecture she deserves, because nothing matters more than getting out of this building and back on the move. I grab her arm and lead her to the door. “Let’s go. Right now.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Isabel
We get into Tristan’s car. Everything about our situation is stressing me out, but Tristan’s new tension threatens to push me over the edge. My heart beats fast with fresh anxiety. Going to the Trinity House was a mistake. I realize that now.
“What’s going on, Tristan?”
He starts the car, and the heater blasts cold air on us.
“That woman you met with was Jay.”
I’m momentarily paralyzed by this information. “What? Are you sure?”
“I have no recollection of going to that place. I do remember her, though. The woman you described sounds exactly like the first memory I have.”
This can’t be real. Could I have really walked directly into the lion’s den, the office of the woman who sent the directive to kill me?
“That would explain how she knew me.”
“What was her name?”
“Jude McKenna.”
“Look her up. I’ll know her face.”
I reach for my phone when Brienne knocks on the window. I fumble with the buttons on the door and roll down the window.
Brienne leans in. “Hey, where you guys off to? You never came back last night.”
“I decided to visit my parents, and we ended up staying the night. Sorry, I should have called to give you a heads-up we wouldn’t be back.”
“No worries. Hey, I got takeout. Chicken tikka masala. Your favorite.” She smiles and holds up a bag of stacked Styrofoam containers. It smells delicious.
“Thanks, but—”
A whizzing bolt of sound. Tristan’s window spiders around a massive gap in the glass.
Another whiz, and the crack of her face against the car door.
Blood. So much blood.
I try to scream, but nothing comes out.
A third sound and a fourth. Rapid-fire thunks hitting the car, jolting Brienne’s lifeless body on its way to the ground.
Tristan grabs me by the shoulder and yanks me down. My temple hits the center console. He jams the gas pedal to the floor, and we lurch forward. I can’t breathe. Can’t speak.
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