The fact that Gunner had lived after seeing his face and leaving his payroll made him something of a legend in these circles too. A lot of people thought that James Connor-Powell didn’t exist.
Gunner didn’t let them ever think differently.
“Keep in mind, if you go missing again, I’ll hunt you down. And you’d better pray I find you captured and not running.”
“Understood.”
“I know you hate me, James, but this is who you are. This is your legacy. Embrace it, the way your parents did. You do realize that the only time you get into trouble is when you fight what’s natural to you, right? When you try to break away from your roots, innocent people die.”
Gunner looked down to see the blood running down his hand. He’d probably cut it along the hull of the ship, had been lucky not to attract sharks to him.
He glanced up at Landon. Any more sharks, at least.
He looked back down, watched the blood drip off his fingers onto the sand.
Blood and sand.
That’s all it would be from now on. Blood and sand.
Chapter Four
Being inside Gunner’s shop was like taking a bullet every time Avery walked inside. It hurt worse knowing this would be the last time.
Back at the hotel, her suitcase was packed, her ticket booked to some island resort where she could drink and sun and lose herself. Follow her own advice to the others.
Her flight left in two hours and there was no turning back. No reason to, especially now, she thought from where she stood in the center of the room, close to the table where Gunner had tattooed her.
She’d thought about calling Grace. Grace, of all people, knew what Gunner must’ve grown up with. Gunner’s father had taken her in, adopted her and then attempted to destroy her, just because he wanted to see if she could survive.
But she’d tried to talk to him and Gunner hadn’t wanted to listen. If Grace couldn’t have convinced him to stay, to save him from his past, Avery probably shouldn’t have thought she could’ve been the one to do it either.
But she had. Still did.
And you let him go. Again.
“It was for the best,” she said firmly, her hand rubbing the soft leather of his favorite tattoo chair. “It was the right thing to do.”
But a small voice inside her kept telling her she was very wrong.
She loved it here. The closer she’d gotten to Gunner, the more she understood just how much of himself he’d poured into this place. It was apparent in everything, the photos of his art, framed. The meticulous attention to detail in order to make the place look sleek and modern and still inviting. A place that could combine his love of tattooing with a place where he felt comfortable and secure.
It made her sad at just how wired the place was. She hadn’t thought anything of it before, because she’d needed the security measures. She’d thought it was simply a part of his job as a mercenary to have such a wicked system in place.
But all of this ran so much deeper.
She let her fingers trail over the steel breakfast table that somehow never seemed cold or imposing, but rather, masculine, always filled with food. A place to gather.
Gunner had truly left a home—his home—behind. And there was only one reason she could think of that would make a man like Gunner, who wasn’t scared of anyone, do that.
Someone hadn’t just threatened Gunner—they’d threatened S8, and maybe her specifically.
She thought about what Billie said about knowing Gunner was in love with her. If she chose to believe that, she’d know that he would go to the absolute ends of the earth to protect the people he loved.
She hoped it was the truth. Because the alternative, that Gunner had run from her, rejected her because he didn’t want anything to do with S8 or worse—her—was an unbearable thought.
It looked so empty with his things in storage, but she wouldn’t let just anyone touch them, never mind throw them out.
One last look. She’d allow herself that before she left.
He can re-create this somewhere else, she reassured herself. She’d thought about taking a picture, but the reminder would hurt too much. It was the way things had been, not the way they were.
But a not so small part of her had been hoping he’d walk through the front door, telling her he’d made a mistake. That he’d reconsidered.
A knock on the door literally made her start. She turned toward it, had pulled the shade up from the glass to throw more light in, the way he’d liked it. She saw the man from down the street who owned the flower shop.
You’re a moron, she told herself, and waved to Alfred.
“For you, doll-face,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes when she opened the door. “I haven’t seen Gunner around in a while, but I knew I was right about you two being right for each other.”
He motioned to the flowers as he said that last part—could they really be from Gunner? “Thanks, Alfred.”
“No problem. The delivery guy left these behind. Didn’t want to leave them overnight.”
He deposited the beautiful orchid plant in her hands. “Good night, Jolie Blonde.”
She’d gotten rid of the dark hair this morning, gone back to her original blonde color but decided she’d keep it short. It suited her, framed her face.
Of course, the last time she’d looked in the mirror, she’d looked so haunted she’d been forced to turn away from her own reflection. She locked the door with one hand, the other balancing the glass vase, and then walked toward the middle of the shop.
And then she froze. She was inside what could be called one of the safest structures, built to withstand bombs and bullets. From the outside.
But the vase she held in her hands . . . there was nothing in this building that could protect her from that.
She’d accepted the flowers because she knew the man. None of this made sense.
She wasn’t trained in explosives, not until Key had given her the down-and-dirty crash course. She knew things to watch out for—tripwires and the like—knew how to check her room after having been out. They were all vulnerable with Gunner gone, no matter how much he’d wanted the opposite to be true.
The locks had been changed and security-updated. She hadn’t thought a flower delivery would kill her. She stared inside the glass, muted by cellophane wrapping, and she froze in place. Half fear, half survival.
She was alone, holding a bomb that would blow up the second she put it down.
Holding a bomb that was set to blow in ten minutes no matter what, with a note that wasn’t inside an envelope, allowing her easily to read what was written in Gunner’s own handwriting.
Never forget.
Chapter Five
Smoke rose from the fire on the half-decimated yacht and covered the beach, thanks to the strong crosswinds. It got in his eyes and throat, and even after Landon left him there, telling him he was a crazy son of a bitch, Gunner stayed.
He inhaled deeply and he was right back in that place again, disoriented, in pain . . . If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear the chanting.
He wanted to give up, but he wasn’t built like that, even though he was dying. Everything was hazy when he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw were dark eyes, dark hair. He tried to focus on the face to see if he recognized it, reached out to make contact.
He hadn’t realized he had a woman’s arm in a death grip. She was a stranger, and she didn’t struggle, looked unconcerned and somehow concerned for him at the same time.
“Am I dead?” he asked in a raw voice because he really couldn’t tell. He was floating, suspended weightlessly, suspected that if he was alive, he’d be in excruciating pain.
The dark-haired woman blinked. Smiled. “You’re very much alive, chère.”
“Stay with me.”
“I will
. Even if you don’t know I’m here,” she assured him as his mind clouded and the heavy smoke drifted back over him.
“Are they trying to kill me?”
“They’re healing you. Protecting you,” she murmured. The buzzing sound began again, etching what would turn out to be his first tattoo into his biceps.
“Who left you to die?” she asked when he woke again, even as she laid a cloth across his forehead and chest. The scent soothed him, the sound of her voice more so.
“It was my only way out.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“There are things you’re better off not knowing.” He glanced at his biceps. “You tattooed me?”
“It’s an old custom to ward off evil. It’s a charm. We have to press it with charms to keep the spell working, like we did before it healed. It’s called a gad—a guard. It’s a Voodoo charm that protects against harmful spirits. Some people say you can rub the herbs over the healing tattoo, but the right way calls for it to mingle with your blood. And you, my friend, need all the protection you can get.”
The knife remained poised over his arm. He’d never let anyone with a knife get this close to him, but she mesmerized him. “Go ahead.”
Fascinated, he watched as she used the tip of the blade to cut him so gently he didn’t feel it. He watched the thin line of blood emerge from the ink, watched her graceful fingers press the herbs along the cuts and murmur what sounded like a small prayer of thanks.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Because you needed help. That’s what we do here.”
“Not in my world.”
“You’re not in that world anymore,” she reminded him.
The reality was, he’d never escaped it. The call he’d been waiting for for over a year came on a Thursday at twelve fifty-three p.m.
He’d packed, told Josie he was going to visit a friend from the Navy who was having a rough time. And for the first time since they’d met, he’d been forced to lie right to her face.
She believed him because he was a damned good liar. The last words he’d ever said to her had been full of lies.
And the job . . . that goddamned job . . .
It should’ve worked out like this one. Perfect. Instead, it backfired terribly and would haunt him forever.
The blood on his hands was her blood. He could feel her in his arms, tried to choke out her name but couldn’t.
Gunner was still holding Josie when Mike and Andy came in. He wouldn’t let go, not until Mike forced him back so he could check on his daughter.
Gunner couldn’t look either of them in the eye.
“She was dead when I got here,” he said, his entire body numb with grief. “There was nothing I could do.”
“She’s been gone for at least twenty-four hours,” Andy said. “Where the hell were you, James?”
“In hell,” he echoed. “I went back to hell.”
And Josie had paid the price.
• • •
Six minutes. Avery wasn’t sure she was really breathing. She was flushed, sweaty, her hands holding tight to the glass, trying not to slip on the cellophane.
She didn’t know a lot about flowers, beyond the ones Gunner had etched onto her body, a riot of pink and white flowers that trailed along her rib cage, licked her breast. Magnolias were the state flower of Louisiana, although she hadn’t known that at the time she’d lain down on his table and allowed him the intimacy of etching something permanent into her skin.
At the time, they were simply beautiful.
He marked you. Pushed you away but marked you to make sure you couldn’t be with anyone else without being reminded of him. And then . . .
And then this.
“We can’t trust him. He’s been gone too long,” Jem had said, just a week earlier. “He’s not the same man.”
Then again, Avery wasn’t the same woman either.
She desperately tried to picture Gunner doing this, sending her these beautiful, graceful white orchids and planting a bomb at the same time. Orchids died and rebloomed, but she knew it took time and patience. There was a lot of waiting and hoping. The message was sadistic.
Unless Gunner hadn’t been the one to plant the bomb.
“You’re really willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” she whispered to herself angrily. She swallowed hard. Sweat dripped into her eyes and she blinked it away because she couldn’t do anything else.
But the way he’d touched her the other night . . .
The room was lined with Gunner’s sketches, the first things she’d noticed besides the man himself when she’d first burst in here on Dare’s behalf. She would take it all with her, all the portraits and the photographs, the tattoo guns, any last memories of the man she’d have.
• • •
Suddenly, strong hands were dragging Gunner off the beach, away from the choking thickness that lodged in his throat. He was shoved into a seat, an oxygen mask placed over his mouth, and told to fucking breathe.
Drew Landon was standing over him.
My hero, he mouthed, and Landon shot him the finger.
“I’m not letting you commit suicide.”
“That’s not what I was doing,” Gunner muttered. Landon held up his wrists and showed him where he’d been cutting into his own wrists. The cuts were hard to see because of the tattoos there, and Landon was cleaning and bandaging him, something Gunner thought was possibly the oddest thing ever.
Or maybe this is all a smoke-inhalation-induced dream.
Landon was muttering as he cleaned Gunner up.
Gunner in turn pulled the mask off. “You let me go. Why bring me back? There are plenty of men who can do what I do.”
“You’re wrong. You were the best. I think you still are. Your father might’ve thrown you away, but I never did.”
“Not until I fucked up.”
“You broke a rule, and you paid for it.”
“And then you paid your men to try to beat me to fucking death. So I paid, Landon.”
Landon furrowed his brow, as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to say what he was thinking. But finally, he said, “You can’t play dead forever unless you really are.”
Gunner shook his head and refused to think about that piece of his past. Because going there would bring him over the edge and he was already barely hanging on. He still didn’t know if he believed Landon had anything to do with Josie’s death, but he blamed the man just the same. Landon knew that and shrugged it off as easily as he did everything evil that tried to touch him.
One year, one month and four days was all Gunner had gotten with Josie. He’d disappeared and stayed dead for over ten years, until Avery showed up at his door.
She’d walked in and he’d known she was dangerous from the second she’d kicked the asses of two drug dealers on the street in front of the tattoo shop.
“I’m not playing dead to anyone but the people I want kept out of this.”
“You’ve said your final good-bye to your female friend then?” Landon asked.
She let you go. Didn’t even protest when you got out of bed and left. And he knew she’d been watching. “What the fuck—you’re having me followed?”
“I don’t need to, James. I know you better than you know yourself. You’ve finally given in.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re here. I didn’t have to track you down.”
“And you would’ve,” he muttered.
“Because I need you, yes.” Landon shrugged. “You fucked up after I gave you a second chance and then you ran. You thought I’d just let that go?”
“I don’t think for you. I have no fucking idea what makes you do what you do.”
“That’s not true, James, and you know it.”
“I didn�
��t fuck that mission up,” Gunner said tightly, wondering why he bothered. “I don’t care what you believe, but I would never take a chance like that.”
“Then why run?”
“A lot of fucking reasons. You killed Josie and set me up to take the fall. If her father hadn’t covered for me . . .”
Landon shook his head. “I told you that I had nothing to do with that. Nothing.”
“And you didn’t order the shit beat out of me?”
“No.” Landon sighed, reached out and put a hand on Gunner’s shoulder. “You disappointed me. I got rid of you. When the opportunity for you to redeem yourself came up, I gave you the second chance I knew you wanted. You fucked that up. I promised I’d find you and I keep those promises. Always.”
Landon’s hand lingered on his shoulder, then moved slowly down his biceps. Gunner willed himself to stand there under the touch.
“I like the new look.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
Landon smiled. “You didn’t miss anything about working for me?”
Landon was better to Gunner than Powell had been. Didn’t hit him. Treated him like an adult. Taught him things.
Lured him in, let him think he was doing things for the greater good.
“I’m not like your father,” was what Landon used to say, and Gunner wanted to believe that so badly that he talked himself into it.
“I never smuggled humans who didn’t want to be smuggled. I don’t play with life like that.”
Gunner knew that—Landon had lost his mother and sister to human traffickers, which fueled his obsession with stopping as many of them as he could. It’s what made believing he was doing the right thing so easy at times for Gunner.
Landon did, however, move people around like chess pieces on his own personal board, and Gunner reminded him of that. “You take out people to further your business.”
“That’s what business is all about,” Landon said. “Stay with me tonight.”
“Landon.”
“Guest room, James. I don’t want anything more from you that you’re not willing to give.”
“Well, that’s a first,” he muttered.
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