Secret Weapon

2. Nine

2

NINE

Baldwin’s Shore was a town of two halves.

Half the people who lived there were running away from something, and the other half wanted to run but couldn’t.

I was no different.

Living a lie, always looking over my shoulder to see if he had caught up with me yet.

My former boss.

My mentor.

My nemesis.

He was a patient man. A planner. A devil in human form who ruled his cold world with a leaden fist. A psychopath who never forgave or forgot.

Of course, he didn’t get his own hands dirty, not anymore, although perhaps he’d make a special exception for me. After what I’d done. But he’d send his foot soldiers first. Then his son. His beloved daughter. From time to time, I wondered what had become of them. Whether Vik had grown to be as ruthless as his father, whether Nastya had been elevated to queen yet.

We’d been friends once, Nastya and I. Roommates for three years. But then our paths had diverged, and I’d ended up here. Burrowed into a life that wasn’t mine. The rest of my team dead while I lived on borrowed time.

Bored.

Bitter.

Disciplined.

Ready.

Waiting.

Tomorrow was Sunday, which meant a predawn run, followed by a drive north to the forest in Douglas County for some target practice before work. The hardest part of this new life was training alone. Once, I’d craved solitude, but now I found that the most broken part of me missed those impromptu discussions about weapons over lunch, missed the sparring, missed the rivalry that had pushed me to improve every single day.

My team had been my anchor.

And now instead of being free, I was adrift.

Every day, I wore a mask, a mask that had become a second skin, but there were times when it felt as if my body were rejecting the organ.

Like today.

Paulo, one of the two retail assistants I employed, had bounced into the store at a quarter to nine, and he hadn’t stopped talking since. Brooke was on duty too—all three of us worked Saturdays—and she’d shielded me from some of the cheerfulness, but I’d still developed a headache by ten a.m.

Then things got worse.

At ten thirty, the bell above the door jangled, and suddenly there were two of them. Two excitable men with outrageous hair getting excited over Swarovski cabochons and giant yarn. Personally, when it came to practicality, I preferred paracord. It had superior tensile strength, and it was far easier to knot.

I raised my gaze to the ceiling. Lord, grant me the serenity not to shoot anyone today. The blonde who’d followed Paulo’s twin inside made a beeline for the gift section on the other side of the store, as far away as she could get, and who could blame her? She probably had a headache too.

“Does this yarn come in any other shades of pink?” the twin asked, holding up a two-foot-wide ball in bubblegum.

I forced a smile. “Sure does, hun. It comes in flamingo and fuchsia, but those are both special order.”

“How long does it take to arrive?”

“They say two weeks, but it’s usually a little faster.”

He made a face. “Too bad. We’re meant to leave today, and there’s no way I can stretch it out any longer than tomorrow.”

“You’re staying at the Peninsula?”

“No, I was visiting a friend in Eugene, but I checked out the spa at the Peninsula this morning. The hot-stone aromatherapy massage is fandabidozi.”

Figured. The Peninsula was the town’s fancy new resort, and it catered to the type of person who could afford the outfit this guy was wearing. Designer jeans, designer shoes, designer sweater. I’d learned to size people up quickly in my former career, and this guy was a hummingbird. Colourful, harmless, and irritating when he fluttered around in the wrong place.

But he was a hummingbird with money, and money was a necessary evil. If he spent enough of it, I might finally be able to afford that new rifle I’d been coveting for so long. Those things didn’t come cheap, especially on the black market.

The craft store wouldn’t make me a millionaire, but it did turn a small profit, a reasonable achievement considering I’d started the place from scratch. Hell, four years ago, I hadn’t known my Delicas from my drop beads, but I was a quick study. I had to be. And when I’d arrived in Baldwin’s Shore with nothing—no plan, no cash, and no idea how I was going to heal my shredded soul—I’d needed weapons. A pair of good, thick knitting needles were handy in a fight, and after I’d taken the first available job—as a live-in nurse to Easton Baldwin Senior—they’d fit right in with my new life. It was entirely possible to kill a man with a knitting needle. Nastya had done it once. Plunged one of those suckers right through his eyeball. Anyhow, I’d learned to knit as a cover story, and I always had been good with my hands. Turned out that cross-stitch and beadwork and modelling with polymer clay weren’t all that different from, say, assembling an IED. You just needed an eye for detail, steady fingers, and the ability to understand which parts went where. Of course, there was no boom if things went wrong with handicrafts, but I rarely got things wrong anyway.

Measure twice and cut once, as my mentor had been fond of saying.

Most of the time, he’d been talking about sliding a knife between a man’s fourth and fifth ribs, but the same principle still applied to craftwork.

The bell jangled again, and I glanced at my watch to see if it was time for another painkiller. Sadly not.

The newcomer wasn’t one of our usual clientele. Blonde, athletic, and a couple of inches shorter than me, but she walked with a confidence that made her seem taller. She didn’t so much as glance at the shelves, just headed straight in our direction. I reached under the counter for my favourite knitting needles, a pair of size elevens that were a tiny bit sharper than normal. But the hummingbird was her target, not me.

“C’mon, champ. Time to go. We’ve got to get to Portland.”

“Wouldn’t you love to spend an extra day here instead?”

“No.”

“But Alex will be tired after his race. Don’t you think he deserves some R & R? We all know he wasn’t built for running.”

“Firstly, it’s only a half-marathon, and secondly, he’ll probably walk it. If he wants to sit in a Jacuzzi for an hour, he can do that at home. Do you seriously need more beads? Your craft room’s bursting at the seams.”

Who was the hummingbird to the blonde? Not a boyfriend—I’d put money on the fact that he was gay. A brother? An employee? She seemed to think she was in charge, notionally at least.

“I need beads and feathers for Easter.”

“Easter? But we’ve only just finished Christmas.”

“Proper planning and preparation prevents poor performance.”

True. So true.

The blonde rolled her eyes. “Just hurry up.”