Destiny Kills

I’d slept with him—but it had never been anything more than that. Not for me.

And not for him.

Yet he’d still given his life for me.

Nothing could ever repay such selflessness.

Nothing except stopping this. Stopping Marsten.

I looked back at the stranger. “No. Who are you?”

“Egan’s brother.”

I blinked. Of all the answers I’d been expecting, that certainly wasn’t one of them. And it made me even more wary. “Egan hasn’t got a brother.”

“Egan has three brothers, two sisters, and one half brother. That last one’s me.” His gaze went past me again as the hound barked, closer than before. “That dog seems to have found the scent of whatever it’s chasing. You want to stay, or do you want to go?”

I hesitated, but really, what choice did I have? It was either stay here and confront the police—try to explain why I wore stolen clothes, and had no ID and no memory—or go with this man who could be spinning me more lies than a used-car salesman desperate to close a deal.

“They’re almost on us,” he prompted.

“Let’s go. Please.”

“Good decision. Come on.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me forward, the heat of his fingers seeming to burn through the sleeve of my sweatshirt and brand my skin. He opened the car door, then ran around to the driver’s side.

A prickle of awareness ran down my spine, and without turning around, I knew we were no longer alone on the road.

“Oh, fuck,” the stranger said, about the same time as another voice said, “Hey, you two, stop right there.”

“Get in,” the stranger said. “Quickly.”

I wasn’t about to argue. I got in as fast as I could, then slammed the door.

“Police. Stop,” the other voice called.

I looked around, saw the big cop accompanied by another man wearing a checkered shirt and holding two dogs in check. Then the stranger gunned the big car’s engine, and we were speeding off.

“Thank you,” I said, after a few moments.

“Forget it,” he said, his voice holding an edge. “But why are they chasing you?”

“I broke into a house to get some clothes.”

“And that outfit was the best you could come up with? Lady, you make a pretty poor thief.”

“It wasn’t as if I had a whole lot of choice,” I muttered. “And what would you know about thieving, anyway?”

“A whole lot more than you, apparently.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror and swore softly. I twisted around. The cop had the radio to his mouth. He was either calling in the troops or calling in the registration. Either way, too much heat would soon be swarming around my hard-won ride.

“Look, I don’t want to get you into trouble—”

“Well, good, because I can manage that quite well by myself.”

“If you’d just drop me off at the nearest town—”

“And you’ll what?” He glanced at me briefly. “You appear to have no clothes, no money, not even shoes, for God’s sake. Besides, you’re not the only thief in the car.”

I raised my eyebrows, not entirely sure whether he was being serious or not. “Really?”

“Yes.”

He glanced at the mirror again and his expression grew grimmer. I took another look behind us. The cop was climbing into a squad car—obviously, that’s what he’d been calling. The stranger’s car seemed to leap forward, the engine a howl that filled the interior with ear-splitting noise. Either he really was a madman, or he was speaking the truth about being a thief.

“You’re not the man who’s been breaking into various houses around these parts, are you?”

He snorted softly. “No.” He glanced briefly at the rearview. “Where’s Egan, Destiny?”

Shock rolled through me and, for a moment, all I could do was stare at him. Destiny. It felt right, that name, felt comfortable.

Question was, how did he know it? Had I stepped into an even worse situation than being chased by the cops? God, was he one of the hunters?

I licked my lips, and repeated, “Elsewhere.”

“Where? Damn it, tell me where my brother is!”

“Why should I?” The retort came out before I could really think about it, but I was growing more and more convinced that I’d made the biggest mistake yet by getting into this car. “How do I know you’re really even his brother?”

“I haven’t exactly got time right now to stop and show you my credentials,” he said coldly.

“Well, until you do, you get nothing from me.” I crossed my arms and stared out the windshield. The trees were zipping past way too fast, making my stomach feel queasy. Looking at him seemed a better option. “How did you even know he was back in the country?” And how did he know we’d be here? That was just too weird a coincidence, and another reason to be wary.

“He contacted me last night.”

He had? How, when he’d died last night? “Why did he contact you?”

His gaze met mine. The cold depths were assessing. Distrusting. “We were supposed to meet in Florence. So what happened?”

“Florence? Where the hell is that?”

“Oregon.”

So I was in Oregon? God, that was a country away from Maine. And if I needed to get there so urgently, why would I have even agreed to come here?

And how did he know about me? Even if he had somehow talked to Egan before he’d died, I doubted Egan would have told him much about me. We were both too aware of the need for secrecy.

“How did he contact you?”

“If you knew anything at all about Egan, then you’d know how he contacted me.” He gave me another one of those cold glances. “Unless, of course, you really are a thief, and the police are after you because you stole Egan’s ring.”

Again the shock rolled through me, but this time it was accompanied by a sick churning in my stomach. “What makes you think this is Egan’s ring?”

He smiled, and this time it was a cold, harsh thing to behold. “Egan had that ring on his hand the last time I saw him.”

“You know, I find it very strange that Egan never mentioned having siblings, let alone a half brother, in the ten years I was with him.”

Even as I said the words, sadness washed through me. Ten years was a long time to be with someone you could never love. But it wasn’t as if we’d had any other choice. We’d been locked up, caged like animals. The two of us, my mom, and the little ones—some of them barely more than toddlers who had never really known the freedom of the skies. . . .

The memories faded yet again. I flexed my fingers and resisted the urge to scream.

“That’s the second time you’ve used past tense,” he said softly. “Why?”

I briefly closed my eyes. God, I was an idiot. Yet now that he’d picked up on the mistake, part of me desperately wanted to blurt it all out—all the confusion, all the pain. I needed someone to talk to, someone to confide in. Someone to be what Egan had been to me.

Someone to end up dead just like him?

Besides, no matter how good it would feel to confide in someone—anyone—about the stuff I could remember and the stuff I couldn’t, the truth was that I didn’t know if I could even trust this man. His sudden appearance