Knox felt anything but relaxed as he observed Leni’s tender care with her nephew. She was patient and warm, her kindness toward the child tugging at a place inside Knox he didn’t want to acknowledge.
“All set?” he asked gruffly, his deep voice sounding more annoyed than intended.
Leni nodded, then closed the back door and climbed into her seat up front. They made the drive back to the diner in silence. Her house stood behind it, a tidy old two-story, hip-roofed farmhouse with white wood siding. He parked in front of the detached one-car garage around back, then got out and followed her to the rear door of the house to make sure she and Riley got inside safely.
He should have stopped there.
He should have walked right back out the door as soon as Leni disappeared through the kitchen and went upstairs to put the boy to bed. Instead, he prowled the lower level of her home, checking all points of entry and frowning at the lack of sufficient security.
No deadbolts on either door. Aged hardware on what appeared to be ancient, original windows in each ground-floor room of the cozy, but easily breachable, old farmhouse.
The place had likely been standing for several generations much the same as it was now. Sturdy and lived in, a comfortable home filled with modest furnishings and rug-covered wood-plank floors that had probably felt the traffic of countless footsteps over the decades.
What Knox saw was an unprotected domicile that wouldn’t hold against the local dogcatcher, let alone a convicted felon with an ax to grind. He wandered farther inside, his eye drawn to the numerous collections of photographs that decorated each room in the house.
Leni evidently lived alone with her young nephew, but she had surrounded herself with mementos of a loving, happy family. Snapshots of smiling faces preserved in whimsical frames on the fireplace mantel and in small groupings on end tables and other surfaces. Crafts and artwork created by a child’s hands. Soft, homemade knit blankets draped neatly over the backs of the sofa and the antique rocking chair that sat in the corner of the living room.
Knox bit off a low curse. He felt like an intruder invading her private space, interrupting her life.
He’d seen her and the boy home safely. It was long past time for him to be gone.
He turned, intending to head back into the kitchen and into the night before Leni came back down. But at the same instant, floorboards creaked quietly on the stairs. For a moment, he considered using his Breed genetics to speed him out of there, but it wasn’t in his DNA to run away from danger.
Not even when it took the form of a beautiful, hazel-eyed brunette.
“You’re still here.” She descended off the last step and approached him in the living room. “I thought you might’ve left already.”
“I was just on my way.”
“Okay.” She gave him a faint nod, but the way she held her mouth made him think she had something more to say. “Where will you go?”
“Haven’t decided. Montreal, probably.”
“Do you have friends there? Someone you’ll stay with?”
“No.” He wasn’t sure if she was asking for a reason, or if this was merely her seemingly endless curiosity sparking back to life. “No friends there. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not really the social type.”
“I’ve noticed.” She glanced down, and the retreat of her normally forthright stare put a tick of concern in his veins.
Lenora Calhoun was nervous, uncertain. More than that; she was afraid. Since she was trying to make conversation, he didn’t think her fear extended to him right now, but there was no mistaking the current of anxiety rolling off her.
“Knox, if I wanted to reach you for some reason . . . is there some way I could find you?”
He felt a tendon begin to pulse in his cheek. “Why would you want to do that?”
“I mean, if I needed your help.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. The pulse in his cheek became a dull throb. “My help.”
At his toneless echo, those clear autumn-hued eyes lifted, meeting his glower. “I’ve been thinking about what you said in the truck. About what you are.”
He said nothing, holding her gaze and all but daring her to say the words.
“You told me you’re an assassin, Knox.”
“Was.I left the program behind me twenty years ago.”
“But you still have those . . . skills?”
