“You should be more scared of jail. They’ll eat you up in there.” His comments both scared and infuriated her, so much so that she followed him out onto the rusted stoop and down the stairs and was threading her way down behind him.
She hadn’t realized how fast they’d been going until her feet hit the ground with a hard thump on the concrete. She found herself looking down the barrel of a mean old Sig. “I’m already following you.”
“Just making sure.” He motioned for her and caught her arm, hustled her to a waiting truck. She’d barely scrambled into the seat when the man was in his, cranking the old vehicle out of the alley.
She turned to see the unmarked car starting to make chase but she felt the truck speed up under her, as if there was something extra under the hood. Whatever it was, she was more than grateful. Maybe her mother really was looking out for her. “Who are you?”
He didn’t answer as he edged the car through traffic, winding along the side roads, and finally zoomed along the ramp toward the highway.
She turned to check trailing car’s progress.
“Don’t bother—I lost them,” he told her.
“You’re that sure of yourself?”
“I’m that good.”
That should’ve sounded cocky, but instead it came out like a simple truth from a handsome man who was no doubt a warrior.
Like your father . . .
At least that’s what her mother had always said about Darius. Avery wanted to believe that, felt like she had some of that warrior inside her.
Now revenge ran too hot in her blood and she was discombobulated. But she was free—for now. “Who are you and how do you know my father?”
“He’s my father too.” He glanced at her for a second before his eyes were back on the road. “My name’s Dare.”
She couldn’t speak for a long moment, the surprise stealing her breath as she stared at Dare’s—her brother’s—profile. His hair was dark, strong cheekbones . . . a full mouth. He had blue eyes, nowhere near as light or cold looking as she’d always thought hers were.
Her mom used to tell her with affection, They’re just like your daddy’s. “Are you sure?”
“You knew you had a half brother?” A question for a question—from that alone, she could see the resemblance between them.
“I knew. Mom always said I’d never meet you.”
“You weren’t supposed to, but you’re in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
As she stealthily wiped away a tear, Dare asked, “Why are you wanted?” and handed her the paper with her picture on it.
She studied it as the truck barreled down the road. “It says ‘wanted for murder’ right here.”
“I don’t believe everything I read.”
“It’s true.” She wondered if she should just surrender. Explain. But those men she’d searched out were the ones who’d hurt the one person who’d kept her safe all her life, and she’d hurt them.
She’d felt indestructible. Lethal. An angel of death no one saw coming.
Afterward, she’d felt angrier, not better. She had to make things right, had to balance out the bad deeds with some good ones.
“Why’d you do it?”
She glanced at Dare and wondered if he knew what it was like to live with a heavy burden of guilt. “I hunted down and killed the men who tortured, raped and killed my mother. Think a jury of my peers would understand that?”
“I have no goddamned idea what drives most people,” he muttered. “You’re going to have to fill in the story.”
“My mom did bail bonds.”
“She was a bounty hunter?”
“Yes—she owned the company and had men working for her. She wouldn’t go out alone—but she was the one who usually talked the fugitives into surrendering.” Both tough and tender, her mom could bring out the best in anyone. Avery had worked in the office for as long as she could remember, typing up files and helping to keep things running as she got old enough to get her own bounty license. Learning things both legal and illegal from the men and women her mother employed as she helped them try to turn their lives around. “One night, she got a call from a woman she’d helped in the past. It was late and she wanted me to go with her, but I’d been up all night doing paperwork—I’d fallen asleep on the couch and she’d left me a note.”
It had been four hours later when she’d woken. Avery had tried to call and got voice mail, so she’d driven to the address her mother had hastily written on a pad of paper by the phone. Luckily, it was on carbon copy paper used for messages.
The fast, smooth motion of this truck was nothing like the way her drive had been that night, her arms jerking the wheel, fear knotting her limbs.
“I found her in the alley. She’d tried to fight—that was obvious. But they just . . .” She put a hand up to her eyes like that could stop the tears. Didn’t want to show the kind of emotion she felt to a relative stranger, but revisiting the image was something she did daily. When she got control back, she continued. “They’d cut her. Raped her. Then they stabbed her and let her bleed out. And I had no idea why. Before the police got there, I took fingerprints and samples from under her nails and went to a friend who worked in a lab to run them later that day. I was thinking about meting out my own brand of justice—it was the only thing that got me through.”
“You were supposed to be with her,” Dare said simply.
Why that was so hard for her to admit to herself, never mind out loud, she didn’t know. She nodded, knew now there was no turning back from all this.
“That same woman called again—tried to lure me back to that spot later that night,” she said. “I didn’t tell the police anything about that. I already
