Page 31 of Every Last Breath

Cole’s gaze swung to his brother. “What do you mean?”

“Here, see for yourself.” Ilya stood with the envelope extended, his back to the woods.

A flicker of light glinted in the trees over Ilya’s shoulder. Cole tensed, ignoring the envelope Ilya offered. He tipped his head at the unnatural glimmer that had winked in the trees, the wrongness of it, trying to identify the source.

There it was again. A dot of light danced, then held steady. Sunlight reflected off glass. Light hitting the scope of a sniper rifle.

Cole lunged for his brother as the wall shattered in a spray of shards. Another bullet whistled past his ear.

But the next hot slug struck him with a searing burn.

Chapter 10

Vienna, Virginia

7:13 a.m. EDT

Humidity saturated the dense, sticky air. Fire flared in Maddox’s lungs as she sprinted the last yards of her short, three-mile run back to her building. Her legs shook, thighs burning, right-side ribs aching in protest.

Herman, her neighbor’s Vizsla–terrier mix, galloped at her side, his tongue lolling from his mouth. Stopping at the front steps, she checked her smartwatch. Twenty-three minutes. Not shabby.

She mounted the stairs inside leading to the second floor and knocked on her neighbor’s door. Mrs. Saunders, an African American retired schoolteacher with rheumatoid arthritis, had adopted the dog from a shelter after her husband died. A beautiful copper-brown, he was an affectionate companion but needed lots of exercise.

The door opened, and Mrs. Saunders greeted her with a cheery smile.

“Herman was a great buddy as usual.” Maddox handed over the leash.

“Such a short run.”

She usually did a six-miler before or after work when she was home, fitting it in every day without fail. Her banged-up body moaned gratitude for today’s dialed-down intensity. “I felt like taking it easy. It’s pretty hot out.”

“Thanks so much. I appreciate it and so does Herman.”

Maddox scratched behind the dog’s floppy ears, and he licked the sweat from her legs. “My pleasure.”

“Honey, if you don’t mind my saying”—Mrs. Saunders painted on a grave look—“you should dump the SOB who beats you.”

This wasn’t the first time Maddox had been seen with unexplained bruises. The contusions on her cheek and upper thigh exposed by her running shorts were obvious. She’d tried the patented excuses in the past—I fell, it happened in self-defense class, my job is hazardous sometimes—garnering raised eyebrows and a smug nod, adding credence to the assumption she was being abused and hiding it.

The supposition was natural, and Maddox had long since stopped trying to change her neighbor’s mind.

“Thanks for your concern.” She unlocked her apartment door directly across the hall and waved goodbye, swallowing the words I gave as good as I got.

She locked her door, kicked off her sneakers in the bedroom, and started the shower.

Reece had texted a situational report at 3:00 a.m. Probably assumed she was sleeping and didn’t want to disturb her with a call. She’d dozed, in between icing her bruises, but the few z’s she had nabbed couldn’t be classified as sleep.

According to the SITREP, Cole had left a budget hotel after staying two hours and resumed more laps on I-495 while they maintained the three-mile buffer. His ring-around-the-Beltway must’ve driven Reece batshit crazy. Gideon, on the other hand, took such things in placid stride.

They would check in again at nine. If Cole hadn’t contacted her by then, plan B.

She stripped, dumping her sweaty clothes in a heap, got in under the water spray, and lathered up.

Cole would simmer down, process things with a filter of rationality, sooner or later—she was gambling on the long shot of sooner—and do as his conscience dictated. The right thing.

God, it needed to be sooner. As in before she was forced to take drastic measures, triggering him to go from an ugly DEFCON 3 to an apocalyptic DEFCON 1.

The more she tossed over how last night had played out, the more she despised the acrid taste in her mouth. She’d fucked up. The findings of the background check he’d run had primed him to swallow her cover story, lock, stock, and barrel. And she’d fumbled. Let sappy nostalgia and foolhardy hopes of a second chance drive her to a madcap decision.