Unbreakable

him.”

“He didn’t want to?” Avery asked.

“Partly. And Josie didn’t help. She wanted him here, with her. They were like two kids. I think it was the first time Gunner actually had a childhood.” Mike smiled as he remembered.

“They were good together,” Andy agreed, and then looked at Avery. “Sorry, hon—does this bother you?”

“No, it doesn’t. Anything that made Gunner happy . . .” She trailed off and Jem put a hand on her shoulder.

“We’ll get him back if I have to drag him by the hair,” he assured her.

She laughed a little, then pointed to Mike’s arm. “Did Gunner do any of those tattoos?”

He pointed to one. “This was one of his first. He learned from Josie.”

“I think I really would’ve liked Josie,” she said.

“You two are very different,” Andy told her. “But I think you would’ve been tight.”

That meant a lot to her. She felt as though she needed the dead woman’s blessing to move forward with Gunner.

“Gunner was a natural with the tattooing. He’s a great artist.” Mike pointed to the wall behind her. She turned to see a charcoal drawing of a young woman, hugging a dog and smiling.

Josie. So pretty. So young.

I knew he loved you because he drew you, Billie told her in so many words. And Avery would hold on to that with everything she had.

* * *

Josie was the first person Gunner had sketched since he’d moved to Powell’s island. He couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d tried, found himself scratching the pencil on paper, watching Josie playing with Petey. She hadn’t interrupted him, not until he put the paper down and stretched his cramped hands.

He’d drawn several versions of her, because he’d been rusty—and determined to get it right.

“It’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful. My art needs work. Been a while.”

“Why’s that?”

He didn’t tell her that killing people and art didn’t exactly go together. “I haven’t wanted to. Not until now.”

“I can’t really draw,” she admitted. “I can freehand things when I tattoo, but it’s basic stuff. Charms and things like that. But you’ve got talent.”

She’d known some traditional tattooing methods, using sticks and ink and man, were painful but beautiful, and she was also handy with the tattoo gun. Her mother had dated a tattoo artist when Josie was small and she’d taken to it easily.

The first several weeks when Gunner was hiding and healing, she’d noticed him doodling and drawing on any scrap of paper he was near. He hadn’t noticed—it was something he hadn’t done since his mother had died. Before that, his mother used to tease him that any available space would be filled with his drawings.

When she’d died, he’d opened one of her suitcases and found a large stack of his drawings, from some of his earliest doodles to some of the most recent. He’d lost that suitcase after moving to Powell’s. He had little doubt that Powell took one look at it, dismissed it as sentimental rubbish and burned it.

Thankfully, you couldn’t burn memories as easily.

Josie had let him give her a tattoo, the first one he’d ever done. He’d been nervous, hadn’t wanted to mar her beautiful skin. Hadn’t wanted to make a mistake. But the bold, funny, raunchy woman told him that mistakes were what made life interesting.

“We can fix anything, James,” she’d added.

He’d used the gun, not the sticks. It took him months before he was comfortable with that method, and it still wasn’t exactly his bag. He’d let the buzz of the needle mesmerize him. She’d insisted that he use it freehand, tattoo the first thing that came to his mind.

He’d drawn a butterfly.

“I love it, James,” she’d told him.

“I don’t think you want to get involved with me.”

“Then stop thinking,” she’d said, right before she’d kissed him.

They’d made love for the first time that night. Lying on her mattress stuffed with cypress leaves and smelling like lavender and other scents that would forever remind him of Josie, he’d told her that he loved her.

Didn’t know how he was capable of that still, but he hadn’t wanted to question it.

Those were some of the good memories. The escape he’d made from the life with Landon into Josie’s arms was one he’d never chosen, but he’d been happy with it. Would he have stayed that way?

He’d never gotten the chance to know.

“Maybe your past will just let you go,” she’d said. And, for a year, it had. And then it had sunk its claws back into his life with a vicious vengeance that rocked his life to this day.

Don’t go there, he warned himself, but too much whiskey brought up too many memories, and he was in the right mood to torture himself.

Josie had been raised by two men who were both SEALs. She knew how to fight, how to use weapons. She hadn’t fought, hadn’t seen it coming. She’d never been given a chance.

He wanted to run out the door, follow a trail to her killer before it got cold. But all he could do was kneel in slow motion beside her body and gather Josie in his arms. He didn’t know how long he’d sat there holding her when he realized Andy was shaking him. Moving him aside so Mike could check the body.

“Look at me. You have to leave. James, do you understand? You have to get the hell out of here now,” Andy was saying to him. Somehow, even in his state of mourning, he heard that. Pushed himself shakily to his feet.

“I’ll go.”

Andy propelled him onto the back porch. Started stripping him, and it was then Gunner realized his clothes were stained with Josie’s blood. His body shook and he got sick over the side of the porch. Andy held him so he didn’t fall over.

He wanted to ask why Andy was helping him. Wanted the man to punch him out. To stab him, shoot him, accuse him outright. But the being nice was the biggest and most effective dagger that sank directly into his heart.

He was paralyzed with shame and fear. And he couldn’t admit to Andy where he’d been, although the man was far from stupid. He and Mike had to suspect something.

He let Andy strip him, take his clothes and burn them out in the swamp, where the remains would be quickly swallowed by the bayou. Mike brought out a packed bag, new clothes, while Gunner washed with the pump in the back so he didn’t drag any more blood through the house.

“I’m going to call the police in a couple of hours. We’re going to say this was a home invasion and that you’re away, visiting a friend. I have a Navy buddy who’ll provide the cover story for you,” Mike said. “You have to leave. James, do you understand?”

“I’ll go.”

“James.” He was forced to look into Mike’s eyes. “We’re not kicking you out. We’re protecting you.”

“Why?”

“Josie would never forgive us if we didn’t.”

He hadn’t seen Mike or Andy since he’d left that night. They hadn’t lied about helping him. They’d set him up to have shelter, to get new identification and paperwork, to create an entirely new life that led him into the Navy and then the SEALs and finally into a shop back in New Orleans where he tattooed people and helped mercenaries like himself in an attempt to pay back the penance he owed.

He’d learned lessons. Done what he could to erase a past he’d stepped back into.

But Avery was safe, and he’d never regret that.