For Avery, he would have to come out of hiding.
“Hiding won’t stop your connection with Section 8,” Adele said, as if reading his mind.
“I’m not hiding,” he ground out.
“Then go to Avery—show her this from Darius.”
She handed him a CD—the cover was a photograph of Avery. He glanced at the picture of the woman, and yeah, she resembled her father—the same arctic frost blue eyes—but her hair was light, not dark. She was really pretty. Too innocent looking to have committed murder, but he’d learned over the years that looks could never be trusted. “And then what? I’m no good for this.”
“You’re better than you think.”
“Bullshit—I’m just the only one you’ve got.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
He looked at the picture stuck into the clear CD case again, and something deep inside him ached for his lost childhood. He hoped Avery had had one. “I’ll think about it.”
With that, she walked away, turned to him when she was halfway to her car and stood stock still-in the driveway. The back of his neck prickled. “Best think fast, Dare.”
It was part instinct, part the way Adele paused as if posing. She gave a small smile, a nod, her shoulders squared.
He sprang into action, yelled, “No!” as he leaped toward her, Sig drawn, but it was too late.
The gunshot rang out and he jumped back to the safety of the house, cutting his losses. Adele collapsed to the ground, motionless. A clean kill. Sniper.
She’d made the ultimate sacrifice—going out like a warrior to force him to get off his ass and into action—ending a life that was almost over anyway. His father would’ve done the same.
Now there was nothing to be done here but get away and live. A hot extract involving just himself.
He shot off several warning rounds of his own to buy himself time. He took a quick picture of Adele with his cell phone camera and then went inside, grabbed his go bag and the guitar, then ignited the explosives he’d set up for a just-in-case scenario because, as a kid of a Section 8er, he was always a target.
That entire process took less than a minute, and then he took off in the old truck down the back road, the CD still in his hand.
Adele was too good not to know she’d been followed. She’d trapped him by bringing the trouble literally to his front door.
He cursed her, his father and everyone in that damned group as he motored down the highway, even as another part of his brain, hardwired for danger, made lists of what he’d need.
New wheels.
Guns.
New safe house with a wanted woman.
He threw the CD on the seat next to him and fingered the silver guitar pick he wore on a chain around his neck.
Goddammit, there was no escaping the past.
Chapter Two
Avery Welsh knew the end of the line when she saw it, but it had never been in her nature to surrender.
This time would be no different.
She’d been questioned by the police after the second murder. They hadn’t had enough to hold her, so she’d left the small upstate New York town that very afternoon without looking back and headed for someplace in Manhattan where she could disappear.
Having no ties to anyone or anything made that so incredibly easy, it actually made her chest ache to the point where she could’ve sworn she was having a heart attack.
Now, in this shitty one-room apartment on the third floor in a building in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen, the pain started again. Her bags were packed on the floor in front of her, but an unmarked car had staked out the front of her building all night. But maybe she was more suspicious than ever, because they didn’t act like feds or cops—either group would’ve just come in and kicked the door down. She was wanted—there was no reason for such surveillance. She didn’t know if that was better or worse and decided that, either way, it was bad news.
The only way out was down the condemned, rickety fire escape, but her fear of heights hadn’t let her work up the nerve to head that way. Yet.
Another deep breath. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck despite the freezing-cold apartment. The heat wasn’t working, but complaining wasn’t an option since she wasn’t an official tenant.
When she knew there were most-wanted posters of her in the local post office, discretion and a low profile were warranted.
Mom, I’m sorry, but I had to . . .
She felt a sudden gust of air and whirled around, gun pulled. The man who stood silently in the middle of her living room seemed unconcerned about the weapon.
He must’ve come up the fire escape, but she’d sworn she’d locked that window.
“You picked the wrong place to rob,” she told him as she took in the handsome face and military posture.
“Avery, I’m here to save you.”
He knew her name. Undercover? PI? She tried to pretend he hadn’t thrown her. “I gave up on the prince-and-white-horse fantasy when I was seven.”
His mouth twitched. “Good. But now it’s me or the guys coming up the stairs.”
Guys, not cops or feds. She hadn’t been wrong. Shit.
“Who are you?”
“I know your father,” he said. “No time to explain further. Come on.”
The man was unblinking. The honesty coming from him could be an act, but she prided herself on her bullshit meter. Right now, this guy seemed the safer of the two options.
Another bounty hunter? Repo? He looked capable of anything, but she couldn’t afford not to take risks. So when he slung both her bags over his shoulder, she followed her only way out. She’d been looking for information on her father—a man named Darius—for as long as she could remember, but it was like tracking a ghost.
When the past came knocking, she knew she had to answer the door.
“I’m scared
