And it wasn’t as though Stone couldn’t put the guy down if necessary. He’d been given kill orders before. And while he’d done his job back then, followed every order to the letter, he’d never once felt the pleasure currently flowing through his veins at the thought of taking someone out.
He’d do his job. Find this guy and take him down.
For Sophie.
“Don’t worry, boss. The fucker is going down. Hard.”
***
5pm Saturday - Sapphire Falls, USA
Sophie stared. Blinked. Stared some more. She gave her head a little shake…tipped it to the side and squinted…
Nope, nothing changed. It was still there.
“Oh my god.” The words were whispered through parched lips.
She’d somehow found herself in a real-life, living, breathing postcard.
Sapphire Falls lived up to everything she’d ever expected to find in a sleepy little small town in the middle of Nowheresville, America.
She had no idea what the population was but it appeared as though every last one of the people who called Sapphire Falls home currently wandered around the town square.
She stood on the fringes of some sort of festival. The biggest giveaway was the Ferris wheel. Sophie frowned. Unless it was a year-round thing.
Surely that big wheel and all those booths weren’t permanent fixtures. Her frown deepened as she pondered the absurdity of that thought.
It was also possible she was hallucinating the whole thing. Tired and stressed, Sophie wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover she’d lost her mind.
After a couple hours sitting on the wrong side of the car, driving on the wrong side of the road, her brain had been switched upside down, inside out and back to front. Thirsty and hungry and cramped, she’d needed to stretch her legs, find some food, and at this late hour, she should probably ask directions to the nearest hotel.
The sun dipped low in the sky and unless she found accommodations soon, she’d be sleeping in her rental. Or driving through the night.
Neither option sounded safe or remotely appealing.
First thing on her agenda should definitely be locating a hotel. She glanced up and down the road. Although judging by the size of the main street—suitably namedMain Street—she wouldn’t find a hotel in Sapphire Falls.
She’d exited the highway and, as soon as she’d found a spot, parked the convertible she’d rented in between two utes—no, wait, this was America, they called them trucks here, didn’t they? Whatever. She was pretty sure her little car would fit in the back of either truck with room to spare, regardless of what they were called.
Sophie admired her sweet ride—unquestionably it had been the wrong vehicle to lease when she wanted to blend in. One more thing she’d messed up. It seemed she’d been making wrong decisions from the second she’d come home to find someone had been in her house. She sighed and muttered under her breath, “Dammit.”
“You lost, love?”
Sophie spun around. And her jaw dropped.
The man who’d spoken was as old as time and just as dirty.
He wore denim overalls with multiple streaks of grease, mud and…eeww…is thatcow poo?In spite of the million or so wrinkles marring his tanned skin, his face was friendly and the smile he flashed her was bright and genuine and set his watery-blue eyes sparkling.
She found herself smiling in return. The most sincere one she’d managed in over a week. “Um, no, I’m not lost. I’m in Sapphire Falls, right?”
“That you are, missy.” He tucked his dirty, gnarled hands into the front bib of his overalls. “You here for the festival?”
“Festival?”
Chuckling, he said, “You didn’t think the square always looked like that, did you?”
She glanced around. “Ah…well no, I guess not.”
