ONE
Gina, present day, Los Angeles
“Come on, Fleur. We have a long walk ahead of us.”
Gina strode away from the harbor and into the night alone, her only companion her beloved street dog, Fleur. The burning ship was far away and shrouded in fog, yet she swore she could feel its heat pushing at her back, telling hergo…you don’t have much time.
It wouldn’t take long for Elissa St Clair to spot her on the marina’s security cameras—the woman had been monitoring the marina on a twenty-four-seven feed for Watchdog Security ever since Walker Dean started guarding Kyla Lewis on her father’s yacht,Sea Prompt.
The same ship that was now nothing but burning splinters, all by Gina’s design.
The Coast Guard would be lucky to find much of anything, let alone Walker and Kyla’s bodies. The best they could hope for was a trace of DNA in a streak of blood.
Also by Gina’s design.
But the security camera footage of the couple boarding the sailboat and casting off after fleeing a chaotic scene at Senator Rodger Bennett’s mansion would all but confirm they were aboard when theSea Promptexploded. Soon, rumors would spread about Kyla’s investigations into a mysterious and deadly group of hackers calling themselves Loki. It would appear that they’d silenced her once and for all despite her Watchdog bodyguard and security dog, both killed in the line of duty. That would be a black mark on the security company in which Gina was a silent partner.
She couldn’t help but squeeze her eyes shut as she walked, trying to force back her regret. She and Lachlan had worked so hard to build it together. It meant everything to him.
Lachlan will never forgive me for destroying Watchdog’s reputation.
That was for the best, especially after the nights they’d shared. Nights together that should have never happened.
Maybe he won’t come after me.
Gina shook her head.
Of course he will.
And when he did, would it be to save her or destroy her?
She didn’t know which would be worse.
She had a bit of lead time. Lachlan had known part of her plan, but not all of it.
Just one more secret between us.
He was expecting her to return to Watchdog or one of the safehouses tonight. When she didn’t, would he think she had betrayed them all? Or that she was dead?
Please, let him think they killed me.
What would he tell the others?
Gina tugged on Fleur’s leash when the dog hesitated. They needed to move faster if they wanted to live. The world might soon think Loki was responsible for Walker and Kyla’s deaths, but other, deadlier forces were already after Gina for it.
She had just finished tipping them off herself when she called Walker’s handler, Atlantis, and challenged him to find her.
That’ll bring the entirety of The Repair Shop down on my head, won’t it? Anything to keep them away from Watchdog.
That’s what her ‘friends’ called themselves. The Repair Shop. And Gina was known among them as The Fixer. They’d once been part of the CIA, but that was years ago. Elissa and the others at Watchdog never quite knew the truth but speculated that Gina was with the CIA, or retired from it.
More secrets. More lies.
If Elissa spotted Gina and Fleur on camera, Gina’s brilliant friend would track them, determine where they were going, and everything would be over before it started. She pretended it didn’t hurt to know that her best friend was about to despise her—probably already did, if Lachlan was going along with Gina’s plan. But lying and taking the blame for Walker and Kyla’s deaths was far better than getting Elissa and the rest of Watchdog further involved in a fight they could never win.
Though, just once, justone timein her life, Gina wished she could live in the light of the truth, not buried under layers of secrets.
“All right, girl,” Gina told Fleur. You and I need to leave the country.”
