case I lose power and can’t get them down without attending to each one manually.
I’m used to this by now. They’ve been freakishly overprotective since I was thirteen. Add in a successful kidnapping two years ago, just before I bought this place, and yeah. It just got worse. I’m locked up tight in here, that’s for sure.
My bedroom is on the first floor, even though I have two more floors above me where I keep all my stuff. It’s easier to escape the house from the first floor. But there’s a planned escape route from every room in the house. I have a basement too, a really old, creepy one that no one in their right mind would use. But it’s fitted with access to a storm door that leads outside.
It’s overkill. I know that. And I resented all the security insisted on all through my teen years, but that last incident really shook me up.
It still does.
I drag my suitcase to the laundry room and stuff all the clothes into the hamper, and then put the suitcase away on a top shelf. The rest of my baggage is all little things. Trinkets I collected from the village near the dig site while I was in Peru. Little souvenirs I kept.
Twenty minutes after I arrive home, I’m done. And after an entire summer of meticulous, backbreaking work, I’ve got nothing to do… except think about what just happened.
Nick.
My promise who left me behind. To give me a chance at a regular life, he said back then when I was thirteen. But I didn’t believe that then and I don’t believe it now. In fact, this visit today from that Jax guy is my long-awaited proof.
Because if Nick did leave to give me a new chance, then why is he back? Why come looking for me ten years later when my life is on track, when the stark reality of who I am has faded, when the sting of his rejection is finally dying away to nothing… why come back and open all that stuff up again?
There is only one reason to do that.
He lied. Nick Tate is a liar.
He lied back on that beach in Santa Barbara when he said was there was no us. He said we had no future, even though he and I were promised. In Company terms, that promise is law. I was destined to marry Nick Tate. We were friends—even though he was several years older than me. And we had even talked about it a few times when he first found me back when I was an innocent eleven-year-old with braces.
And I don’t know if that was all a lie to get me to go along with his plan to end the Company and free himself and his sister, but I was a little girl and I took that shit seriously.
Maybe it was just as hard for him to walk away from me that night as it was for me to watch him do it?
Or he was telling the truth back then and now he needs me for something. Some job, probably. He wants me to watch his back as he does something dangerous.
Ford would flip his lid and insist I join him in New Zealand if he knew this was happening.
James would probably just kill Agent Jax, no questions asked.
Merc would kill Nick. And everyone else who stood in front of him. He was never happy about how that ended.
But they see this through the eyes of men. And while I’m quite capable of seeing things that way too, when it comes to Nick, I see what my heart feels.
My phone starts buzzing in my purse, reminding me where I should be right now instead of home.
But she would not call me. She knows better than most that this secret we have cannot leak. We’re on our own.
I grab my purse and fish the phone out, tabbing the lock off with a swipe. It’s a text message from that asshole, Agent Jax.
Wanna get some dinner? We can talk.
I text back, Fuck you.
He does not reply. Wise man. And I don’t need to leave the house for food, anyway. It’s called a freezer. I don’t have anything fresh, but hell, I drank plenty of powdered milk in my day.
I laugh at that as I plop down on the couch. Gross. Some things you just never go back to. And powdered milk is one of them. But I’ve eaten all kinds of shit.
Growing up with