positively nauseous over how she may have unknowingly aided the people responsible for this through her emails with Brett. How easily she’d been lured in. Somehow, he’d known all the right buttons to push to get close to her.
To learn more about the people around her.
A body jostled her from behind as she stuck close to the sidewalk near the water. She jolted, spun around, and sagged with relief at a father kneeling to help his kid with a fishing rod. “Sorry, ma’am.”
She just smiled her apology, painfully aware of how her voice would label her now, make her more vulnerable.
Had she even eased Brett’s path in staging this bombing attempt? Or had he merely worked his way into her affections so he could keep tabs on when she planned to leave? Agent Lasky seemed to think the murders may have been an attempt to keep the community contained. Either the rest of the unaccounted-for people were dead as well, or they were somehow involved in this plot.
Or worse yet, other plots.
So where was Brett now? According to his wife—Misty swallowed back bile—he was on the run and she had no idea where. Andrea Livingston was being questioned further and her home was staked out, only twenty miles away. How much more betrayed must that woman be feeling?
The wind carried the scent of the sea as she circled past a line of three boats on trailers with the power plant logo stamped along the side. Beyond the gate, a small fishing festival was well under way. Looking down the length of the dock, Misty’s eyes locked on Flynn with Sunny. His broad shoulders and back were so wide and dependable. She was lucky to have this second chance with him. She wouldn’t throw it away.
Sunny turned to step from one level of the dock to the next, her face tipped toward Misty for the first time. Misty waved and started to call out across the fifty yards or so that separated them.
Sunny’s eyes went wide. And not in happiness or surprise, but with unmistakable terror. Misty had spent too much of the past four years reading people’s nonverbal cues to doubt herself, even from a distance. She froze in her tracks, half-hidden behind the row of boats and meandering people.
“No,” Sunny signed fast, one hand low behind her back. “Gun. Hostage. Help.”
Horror iced through Misty as her sister was loaded into a security boat tied to a mooring.
Frantically, she studied Sunny closer. The early morning sun caught a glint of metal pressed into her sister’s side. Most definitely a gun held in the mystery woman’s hand. And oh God, Flynn was actually helping by hauling Sunny along? She couldn’t wrap her brain around the possibility that he could do something so horrific, that he could be involved in this criminal nightmare…
Because it couldn’t be him. Somehow, even if it seemed impossible, that had to be Ryker. Her brain began to register the differences. Now she just had to figure out what to do next.
Misty’s chest went tight with panic, her knees wobbly, and she grabbed the nearest mooring post for support. Only a split instant to make a decision whether to press ahead and scream or slip away and search for help. And if she chose wrong, her sister would die. Others could die from the stray gunfire.
Her grip numbing as she held on to the boat for balance, she looked behind her for help, but Agent Lasky was out of sight. Everyone else at least a hundred yards away on the other side of the fence. God, why had she wandered so far away?—but if she hadn’t she wouldn’t have found her sister. And why weren’t there more police on the dock?
She made her decision. She couldn’t even waste a second for a final look, or good-bye, or I love you. But then her sister had to already know.
Misty spun on her heel and ran full out toward Agent Lasky. She didn’t have to be able to hear to know the boat carrying her sister was already roaring away.
***
Wade had once held immeasurably still for five hours in a Central American jungle after stabilizing an injured pilot who’d punched out of his F-16 doing drug interdiction patrols. Their ride out had been diverted due to antiaircraft fire, and with drug lords crawling around behind every banana tree, he hadn’t dared move.
He’d only been on this frozen rooftop a half hour, scanning the perimeter for suspicious activity, but it already