At the edge of the forest, she said goodbye to the dogs, biting back fresh tears as she hugged each one. Of all the animals, she felt closest to the dogs. She’d found the pack of puppies in the forest, huddling close to their dead mother. The poor bitch had been shot. The farmers in the area had been complaining about a fox killing their sheep and had been out on a rampage for a month. One of them claimed to have shot a wolf. Turned out he’d shot a husky.
The hunting didn’t stop, not until every wild fox, wolf, and stray dog had been cleared from the forest. Clelia had hidden the puppies in the shed where Erwan kept his nets and fishing gear, and had raised them with a mixture of buckwheat porridge and milk. They were her family as much as Erwan was, and all she had in the world.
She kissed each of them one last time before pointing a finger in the direction of their island. “Home, boys.”
Her heart nearly cracked in two when they tilted their heads, staring at her in confusion.
Ignoring the knot in her throat, she made her voice hard. “Go home.”
They yelped.
The knot unraveled, her voice breaking on the command. “Now!”
Tails between their legs, they dropped their heads and scampered back down the path. Her chest squeezed as she watched them, the throbbing in her throat echoing in her ribcage. Abandoning them was torture. Erwan had been wise to avoid goodbyes.
The dogs looked back every few seconds, their slow progress evidence of their reluctance. They paused at the bend for a hopeful few seconds, but when she didn’t call them back, they disappeared behind the pine trees.
With every step she took away from the forest, her chest grew tighter. By the time she got to the harbor, Snow’s sad howl pierced the quiet morning. She’d trained them not to bark or howl near the village in fear that the townspeople would come after them with their guns, but Snow was an intuitive dog. He knew this was forever.
Forcing herself not to think about it, she rushed to the jetty. The bigger boat Erwan kept there was one with a rope start that didn’t need a key. Every step was a step away from what she loved and a step closer to the unknown, to that world that didn’t exist to islanders. From that unacknowledged place, a sound ripped through the sky. Her hands grew clammy. Her head spun. It couldn’t be.
A helicopter.
She recognized the sound long before the aircraft rose from behind the trees of the island across the water.
Chapter 5
The helicopter made another circle over the ocean. From the passenger seat, Joss scanned the meager scattering of boats on the water through a pair of binoculars. His stomach twisted when they dipped. A headache pounded in his temples. Swallowing back bile, he scrubbed a hand over his face. The prick of his stubble reminded him he looked like he felt—like dog shit.
That was the price of drowning his memories in Calvados and waking up in a megalith site drenched in rain in the middle of the night. He could put his cock on the block that he’d also had the best sex of his life, except he could only remember bits and pieces—a tight little body, soft lips, sexy as sin moans, and a climax that just about fried his brain. He would’ve thought it all fragments of his drunken imagination if not for the evidence on his naked body.
He’d fucked a virgin.
Without a condom.
Fuck.
Unease tightened his chest when he tried to remember and failed again.
What kind of asshole fucked a woman, her first time no less, and couldn’t remember her face? What kind of man fucked a woman when he was on the verge of passing out drunk? In the state he’d been in, he shouldn’t have even kissed her. Maybe he’d been even worse of an asshole and been rough. Was that why the mystery woman had left him unconscious? Not that he’d deserved better. However a number or name would’ve been nice.
Determination hardened his jaw. He’d find her. With his professional resources, he could pull satellite footage to throw light on the identity of the woman, but that would mean Cain or someone higher up would get to watch the footage before releasing it. He couldn’t do that to whoever the woman was. That would make him a double douchebag. Anyway, resorting to such measures wasn’t an option. When whoever got to watch the recording realized he was squandering government resources for personal reasons, his request would be denied and he’d end up with a warning.
On top of everything, he’d lost his mother’s necklace, the only thing of hers he’d kept. He had to have hooked the necklace on a branch and broken the chain. He’d combed the site and retraced his steps, but to no avail. The memorabilia, a birthday gift he’d bought with the money he’d earned from working all summer in one of the many new age shops that littered the streets of their village, had been his mother’s most prized possession. Now it was lost. It was as if a cord to her memory had been cut.
He rubbed a palm over his chest where the weight of the pendant was absent. Not even a day back in his hometown and he was already fucking up. He grimaced. He shouldn’t have accepted this assignment. The memories were too much. But what choice did he have? It wasn’t as if he could turn down an order from Cain.
Refocusing his attention on the moving boats, he eliminated one after the other
