10. Alaya

10

ALAYA

I 'm no stranger to pain, to hard work.

But sometimes, you forget things.

Like grabbing a hot pan. You’ve known since you first burned your fingers as a kid not to, but it’ll happen again at least once in your life. And you’ll feel like a fuckin’ idiot.

You get distracted. Sloppy.

You get overconfident.

Then you go all in, diving right into a fight like you always have. Balls deep. It’s always worked before. No one sees it coming.

But you forget. You square up against a freight train, only to get tossed like a ragdoll into a wall.

The first guy wasn’t so bad. I got the drop on him, nearly knocked him out if he hadn’t tried to dodge. Fast fucker. Carries himself well.

But like I said.

I forgot just how fucking strong Gavin Rorshak is.

After getting the wind knocked out of me and more than a bruised rib, I blocked out the pain, sprang back into action. I’ve always bounced back.

Daddy taught me how to endure, how to block out the pain.

Even so, I fucked up again, underestimating him, hoping he’d let himself go. Or maybe it’s that I haven’t seen him in so long. That seeing him made me hesitate, made me panic.

He takes my blows like they’re nothing, even though I know I pack a wallop. That’s Gavin.

Always was one of the strongest people I’ve known. Mentally and physically.

Except for that knee.

He tore his MCL in Sudan, ten years back. Cheap shot, I know.

But when you’re fighting for your life…

The mean son of a bitch just takes a knee like he’s taking a break and hits me with a fucking battering ram punch to the sternum.

Lucky, I was flinching back when he did.

I’ve seen Gavin shatter a man’s ribcage, collapse both a guy’s lungs with a single hit.

As it stands, I nearly pass out, nearly puke my guts out right there in the foyer of my hideout. Block the pain. I’m not there. It’s just my body. Need to go, gotta get out before they pin me down.

So I whip out my minigun and spray a quick line of ‘get-me-the-fuck-outta-here.’

Getting away after that was a breeze. They couldn’t follow me through the forest in his Jeep.

A panicked retreat is less than ideal, but I underestimated my opponents, and I shouldn’t have engaged them at all. Stupid move, Alaya.

Now they know where I was hiding out. And asses to aces, Gavin knows who I am now, too.

So much for that sweet safehouse.

I was hoping to keep the place and retire there someday. If I don’t get offed on the job.

But even if we hadn’t had a run-in, Gavin knows my style. My technique is one of a kind. Which is why I never leave witnesses. I'm good at what I do.

Just like my granddaddy, taking out the old fool in that mansion so many years ago. It’s a trademark Foxglove kill, if you know what to look for. A family affair, this trade I’m in.

No doubt, he’s been wondering about me since I shot his little girlfriend.

Zipping out of the woods and back onto a main road, I gun my bike, cursing my bad luck.

They just had to pop in on me and find the damn panic room.

And worse than that, they took the safe. I was meaning to get around to it eventually.

Oh, well. Saves me the trouble of having to crack it myself. I’ll just let them do the heavy lifting before I steal it back.

But giving that Evan guy more intel was not on my to-do list. He’s a real player in town. That much I’ve gathered.

Pretty, too. Too clean for my taste.

But he was with Gavin when they picked up the girl.

The girl I was not hired to shoot. Damon Michaels’s daughter was just a spur of the moment, flash of rage sort of choice. I should have ended her, thought about it.

With their arrival, the shot probably didn’t kill her.

Her aunt, on the other hand, was the entire reason I’m in Sanctum Harbor. The specifics of the job are what have kept me here, an oddity that stayed my hand for the first time in my entire career.

I’m asking questions I usually don’t ask.

Because I was lied to.

And there is so much more to this than I initially thought.

Sanctum Harbor’s always been the kind of place you think you never want to go back to after you leave, until you’re there again. It sucks you in, gives you clues and hints and vibes.

Next thing you know, you’re hunting down your grandfather’s old stashes, digging up a past your daddy told you stories about.

Then there’s the whole finding out Gavin was alive thing.

And then the whole “I’m going to finish him off” business.

And finally, the “Shit, I can’t do it, at least not until I figure out what he has to do with everything going on in this crazy town and why my heart keeps fluttering every time I think about him.”

My head hums as I careen around another mountain road corner, that old flicker of images, the fugue state that hits me when I haven't been sleeping enough.

Like a waking dream, a flash of nostalgia so strong you’d swear you could hear it, taste it, smell it. But it’s just flashes, a sinking feeling in my gut, a rush of quick breaths and a sensation that I forgot something.

Then it fades.

Thank goodness it was a mild one. I’ve laid out my bike before having one of those sweet, stupid seizures on the road.

Pulling onto another back road, I cut across private property, heading for the overlook where I left my truck and trailer. I need to regroup.

Which means I’m heading to another marker on my map, a snippet of land that actually, technically, belongs to me. Or the woman I used to be a few name changes ago.

I haul ass down the mountainside, letting the thrill and the focus of navigating the rocky terrain distract me. It’s like autopilot, muscle memory.

It lets me check out and go into limbo for a minute.

My thoughts click into order, deleting the unnecessary and lining up the important shit. I can’t keep fucking around, hemming and hawing over what to do.

It’s time to make a move.

Loading up my gear, I head down off the ridge, off toward Severance, to the land we’ve owned near Sanctum for as far back in my family as I know of.

The old trailer my family kept for hunting trips appears around the final bend after a bumpy ride out past a derelict cattle gate.

Same as I left it years ago. Hope critters haven’t gotten in.

“Honey, I’m home,” I mutter, needing to hear a voice, any voice to settle my frayed nerves.

I wince as I say it, rubbing a hand over my bruised, possibly cracked ribs.

I shake my head, chastising myself as I let myself into the old trailer. “Dipshit. Like picking a fight with a tank.”

Inside, it’s musty and worn down, but still holding up well enough to stay in.

Dropping my things by the old kitchen table, I slump down, flipping off my boots and jacket. “Let’s see how bad it is…”

My skin is already purple right in the center of my chest, tender.

Prodding lightly, I flinch, taking a few deep breaths. “Wow. Nothing broken.”

I lean back, replaying the fight in my head.

I slam into the wall, dust puffing around me as I land.

Gav looked almost identical to when I saw him last, a little grayer, a little more worn. If anything, the rugged years have accented his features. He’s still just as fucking sexy, just as powerful.

I swear, if he had cracked a smile in the middle of that fight, I would have been done for. And just like that, I’m turned on like nobody’s fucking business. Those arms, tossing me like I weigh nothing…

“Dammit,” I moan, dragging a hand down into my crotch. “What am I going to do about you, Gavin?”

The pressure of my palm helps ease the ache between my legs.

I need a shower and a vibrator.

Killing him was kind of the point. Discovering that he still lived here and that he was alive had me all set. It’s black and white when you have a vendetta against someone.

I swore an oath to him, to Damon, and the rest of the old crew.

When one of us broke it, it was unforgivable. The only response was death. Painful, vicious.

Maybe I should let it go, just leave.

Thing is, I've never been good with quitting anything unless it's cold turkey or I do it to death. Absolutes have always worked best for me.

I go in, all or nothing. I train hard, or I don't train at all.

I kill for a living or I give it up for good and never touch a gun. It’s even worse when I fall in love. When I fell in love.

Game over.

But I can't think about that. I shouldn’t.

I have to block it out, because that's the past and it's a hard past, something that's done completely. Just like he was supposed to be dead, just like he thought I was supposed to be dead.

Funny how that works out.

Then again, when the same person who hired me to kill Damon’s competition hired me to kill his sister…

No such thing as coincidence.

Usually, I don't ask those kinds of questions about my jobs, but pieces have been falling into place ever since I've gotten back into town. It made me do a little more recon.

This city has secrets galore.

I remember Granddaddy’s eyes always lit up when he talked about Sanctum Harbor, like it was some mysterious place from a storybook. Boy, was he right.

Bikers. Drug lords. A visiting mobster, bent on infiltrating the town’s secret leadership.

Which is the strangest thing of all. These ‘Sinful’ legends might actually be true.

An honest to goodness mystery.

And it’s all tied into my kill contract on Rachelle Tyson. A woman who turned out to be tied to the Sinful, related to a man I killed. Which is exactly where I first encountered the Sinful outside of my grandfather’s stories. Damon was one of them.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. I thought it was some Elk Lodge bullshit. But then I go digging on the client who hired me back then, the links between three of my kills.

And what do I find on his computer?

The original orders to hire me, each one over the years passed on to him by some mysterious leader type, only went by Voracity. Sent by the Sinful.

All except for this last order.

His payment was the red flag. It wasn’t anonymous. It was abnormal. It was traceable to my client directly.

And to me.

I do not like sloppy mistakes like that.

So I decided to improvise. I let Rachelle live.

Because I really want to see what happens when Rachelle turns up alive. Assuming the trio of good-looking guys who rescued the girl and her auntie got her to a hospital in time.

Mostly, I just want to stir the pot, to poke the anthill.

But more than that, I also want to know why Gavin's name is at the top of my client’s personal hit list.

Cleaning myself up, I wrap my ribs, my ankle, my wrist.

“Last job, my ass,” I mumble, licking the blood off my split lip.

It’s time I got to the bottom of who’s been pulling the strings since I got here. And then I can decide what to do about Gavin.

I want to know why members of this organization keep hiring me to kill them all off. What are they trying to keep secret in Sanctum Harbor?

I think there’s one person who can help me with all of the above. Someone I am just dying to meet. I think we’ll have a lot in common, too.

It’s time I paid Gavin’s little girlfriend, Damon’s kid, Hellena Michaels, a visit.