Can an immortal-possessed assassin accustomed to dealing in death and deception lower her defenses enough to work with a disowned deckhand and an urban denizen? Will dropping her guard lead to heartbreak and betrayal?
Yaz wants to be human again. Or dead. She pretty much doesn’t care which. Or didn’t care, until she met Sloan. One thing she sure as hell doesn’t want is to care for that freakin’ deckhand and that weird-ass brat from the ghetto with the white stripe in his head. Torn between what she wants to do and what she needs to do, she’s faced with choices. And consequences . . .
Sloan’s more than a deckhand on a charter boat. He’s on a mission, too. But damn if that sexy, cold-hearted bitch that throws knives wasn’t effing it up all the time. What he can’t figure out is why he’s helping her and how to keep her from finding out his own deepest and darkest. He derails his mission, his plan, his life for Yaz . . .
G-Mail doesn’t need much. Or so G thinks. Until meeting an assassin with the gift and skills G wants—the gift of immortality and the skill to kill. Can G trust the assassin when it’s time to reveal an identity and a secret, or will the assassin join the pile of bones G-Mail leaves in the past?
What happens when three forces converge on the hot and humid Houston docks? What happens when they travel back in time to a parallel past?
Five days of reconnaissance. I’d learned the captain of the Sugar Baby was a crusty seaman named Ole Pete who engaged in sex trafficking. Oh, and the Sugar Baby had a deckhand who made my body remember things it hadn’t in hundreds of years. That aside, something about that deckhand made me wonder if our paths had ever crossed.
Neither the trafficking nor the deckhand’s sexiness was pertinent to my assignment.
Five days of kneeling, squatting, or sitting on a plastic milk crate in front of a window that had fallen victim to vandalism—dirty, cloudy glass providing the perfect observation point. A missing sliver placed perfectly for looking out, allowing me to keep an eye on the Sugar Baby without getting noticed.
Five days in an abandoned warehouse without air-conditioning, making sure I didn’t leave any evidence behind, just in case someone ever thought to look for any in here. Every day, I stowed my Ducati Streetfighter in a storage unit and trekked here before dawn, staying until after midnight. I was bone-weary, achy-muscled tired. But that had nothing on the mental part. This assignment couldn’t have been better designed to test my psychological boundaries.
Five hellish days of caging my eyes to keep from focusing on the murky ocean or the muddy, catfish-ridden docks. When my eyes strayed, the worst that happened was a lurch in my gut because my feet were on solid ground. If I were standing on a ship the most terrible of foodborne sicknesses wasn’t jack shit compared to my reaction when I saw the water.
That’s what made this particular assignment a bitch. The specific nature of Moric’s instructions. Take out the target while on the Sugar Baby—at sea.
Five days and now my surveillance was complete.
Tomorrow was the day of the hit.
The day after tomorrow it would all be over. I focused on that fact instead of the water.
The surveillance may have been complete, but it wasn’t satisfactory. I found an inconsistency.
I tore my eyes from the Sugar Baby to review the notes I’d penned in the margins of Moric’s files.
Goal: Take out target, then bodyguards, and Sugar Baby crew. Torch boat at sea.
Sugar Baby: Fifty-two foot charter. Four skiffs. Fishing in shallow Gulf waters.
Target: Frenchman. Scumbucket. Organized crime. Two bodyguards.
Captain: (Ole) Pete. Rumored sex trafficker.
Deckhand: Who was he? Not the original deckhand in the picture. Familiar. A hunter.
I’d highlighted the inconsistency. Not the original deckhand. I took a sip of bottled water. Room temperature. Room temperature in this case was damned near body temperature. Heat—one of the perks of my latest hometown, Houston.
When I’d received the dossier for this assignment, it had a picture of a different deckhand, a toothless grin from a balding guy. That sure as hell wasn’t the current deckhand, and any deviation worried me.
This new guy. He carried himself with the confidence of a fighter, shoulders squared, eyes assessing.
I blotted sweat from my forehead. The jacket I’d donned before leaving my apartment wasn’t serving me well in the late afternoon hours on steamy docks a few miles south of Houston. But it concealed my weapons. Efficiency over comfort.
I glanced out the window, narrowing my eyes so they’d focus on the Sugar Baby without taking in the water. The deckhand raised his head in my direction, pushing his hair back. Even from this distance I could tell his eyes were narrowed—doing more than just looking around. I backed up. Every now and then over the last few days, he’d scanned the buildings, though it seemed to me his gaze lingered a scant second longer than needed in my general vicinity. I wasn’t sure if I should chalk this up to my typical cautionary ways. Fully aware, never vulnerable, yet relaxed. There was no latent body language to indicate he was anything more than a deckhand—but still.
One day Ole Pete and Deckhand left the Sugar Baby unattended long enough to allow me one foray below deck. I’d ascertained Ole Pete’s room—filthy, filled with porn. And the guest quarters—two rooms, one posh and the other not so much. The deckhand’s room—neat, but not so neat it wasn’t easily identifiable as a man’s. Nothing personal in his room. No photos, no memorabilia, nothing with his name on it. Why no personal effects? Later that night, in the comfort of my apartment, I’d sketched the boat’s layout.
I leafed for the sketch, until—
A scream brought me to a new reality. It sounded like a kid. I jumped up, hiding place and assignment forgotten, and sprinted toward the sound, drawing a throwing knife from its sheath at the small of my back.
Around the corner, in a covered alley between two warehouses, a thug with a scruffy beard, jeans, and a denim jacket held a gun to a little girl’s head. I could still walk away without compromising the assignment. Yeah, like I’d leave the girl with this thug.
A few paces in front of him, a woman reached for the girl. “I’ll pay you for it. I promise, just let her go.” Her grimy, red-tipped fingers flexed in and out the way a toddler’s do when it waves bye.
The thug brandished the gun, holding the child by her scruffy Eeyore T-shirt a few years’ worth of sizes too small. “Yeah right. You’ll pay when you want your next fix.”
Tears streamed down the woman’s gaunt face. Had to be the girl’s mother, who else? She was a bad kind of skinny. Drug skinny. “Don’t, JJ. It’s not her you want to hurt, it’s me.” Snot bungee jumped out of her nose into her mouth then up again when she inhaled. Her teeth were a color of yellow and rot.
“Killing her would hurt you more.” His voice was like sandpaper, his silver-studded leather wrist wraps glinted with wicked foreboding.
The girl couldn’t have been more than twelve. Scraggly unwashed blond hair framed her dirty, tear-streaked face. He shoved the gun into her temple, pressing pale flesh in with its dull metal barrel. The girl’s squeaky cry drowned out the mother’s gasp.
The way he shook, this idiot was suffering from withdrawal—or something. The gun would probably go off without his even pulling the trigger.
I crossed my arms, my blade resting between my forearms and concealed by the sleeves of my jacket. I wanted to go. Forget the whole thing. This could mess up my assignment. Oh, who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to let him hurt the kid. “Let her go.”
JJ turned glazed and reddened eyes my way. “Wha—who the fuck are you? Fuck off, bitch.”
I returned his stare. “No, JJ. You fuck off, but first, let the kid go. Last warning.”
“No!” The mother moved. Right in my way.
It took me a second to process this turn of events. She was protecting him over her child?
I couldn’t even see his hands. Or the girl. The only thing I had a shot at now was JJ’s head. And with a blade, that limited my options. The eye socket was really my only target.
His eyes darted above, behind, beyond, all around. “Who the fuck do you think you are? I’ll kill you, and this little shit, and her skanky-ass mother, too. Don’t piss me off, you don’t—”
His finger twitched enough to make me nervous. I raised my hand level with my shoulder and released my knife with a flick. It sailed through the air, true to its fine craftsmanship.
Thunk! It pierced his left eye. He opened his mouth and dropped to his knees, hands at his sides.
Then he raised his gun hand. It wavered. How was he even alive still? He fought to keep it steady. I was screwed. If he got a shot off it would bring attention I didn’t need. I closed in fast, shoved the kid toward her mother, and pulled a long blade from my boot’s sheath.
“Take her. Go.” I hoped the mother would get her out so she wouldn’t have to see more.
She didn’t.
His hand drooped a bit.
“Go.”
Still she stood, hands draped over her daughter’s shoulders.
He steadied his hand.
I was out of time. Out of choices.
Two steps, and I slipped the knife into his chest, straight to his evil, black heart. I ended his miserable existence with a quick thrust then retracted the blade. All he let loose was a squeak, not much more than a rat’s hiss.
A writhing deep within my abdomen made me catch my breath. The SoulLust was coming to. Bad timing for the thing in me that consumes souls to awaken. This wasn’t the time I could indulge its appetite with a victim. I bent over, took a deep breath, and fought it for control. Pushing the SoulLust’s surge back, imposing my will over its desire to engage in this kill.
Still bent over, I turned my head sideways to the girl who was watching me. She didn’t seem stunned. Either she’d seen a lot of ugliness in her short life or she played the wrong video games.
“JJ,” the woman squeaked, wiping her face with her top. She made a move toward him.
I should’ve call Child Services. Or taken the kid with me. Yeah, that wouldn’t work. An ageless assassin with a death wish was the last thing this kid—or anybody else—needed.
The SoulLust jerked my gut again. I couldn’t keep the grunt in. “Get out” was all I could manage while the SoulLust and I struggled over my body. I straightened, fighting the urge to lean against something. The SoulLust’s surge ebbed back like a slow tide, relinquishing its hold on me.
The girl and her crack ho’ momma scurried away.
I noticed him.
He studied me back.
My palms moistened. I felt my heart rate slowing d-o-w-n.
A few paces away, wielding a metal pipe like a bat, a backpack slung over one shoulder, he gestured at JJ with the black pipe. “Guess you don’t need my help.”
The deckhand.
Far more dangerous-looking than from afar. His eyes were green, unlike a green I’d ever seen—sea foam. Measuring, processing.
Far sexier up close than he was serving as the deckhand of that piece of shit. And even more familiar, but I still couldn’t place him. I was good with remembering faces. Names, not really, but for sure faces stuck—and this face would definitely have stuck like melted marshmallows on s’mores.
And now he was certain to screw up my assignment—that’s what witnesses did. I sure as hell didn’t want the captain’s deckhand to be able to identify me.
In three seconds I could’ve orchestrate his death.
As if.
I knew damned well I wouldn’t kill him. I only kill douche bags and assignments. And ones that threaten my safety. If he’d seen—
“Clean throw.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. Shit, he saw.
“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
Weird question for him to ask.
His gaze traveled from my black steel-toed boots up to my black jacket, lingering in all the right places, bringing a rise to my body temperature which would be betrayed by my flushed cheeks.
His eyes cut to my core—vivid green lasers that could see my soul. “You’re not an average cop. You’re some sort of special forces, or an agent or something, right?”
“You know I can’t discuss that with you.”
“What will you do with the body?”
The body. Shit, that’s right—the body. JJ, blood coloring his dingy white T-shirt, one blade in his eye. Exit strategy time.
I leaned in and removed my knife, my eyes still on the deckhand.
He didn’t quease. I couldn’t help feeling he wasn’t unfamiliar with this sort of thing. Maybe I was being hypersensitive about him, his motives.
I wiped one blade then the other on JJ’s T-shirt, carefully, thoroughly. Once all the blood was gone, I tucked my weapons back into their respective sheaths, protecting my body from their sharpness and any diseases JJ carried. They pressed against the small of my back, hidden by my jacket.
“I’m not doing anything with the body. Neither are you. We’ll let the local authorities think what they want to. I wasn’t here. If you’re smart, you weren’t either.”
“I wasn’t since I didn’t do anything. Never had a chance to.” He forked his hand through acorn-brown hair too long to be corporate and too short to be hippie, but the perfect length for running fingers through.
I pointed to the pipe. “What are you doing here? With that?”
“Heard a scream. Sounded female. Thought I should check it out.” He tossed the pipe into the dumpster.
“White knight and all that.” I sneered. Nice guy. Probably meant he wasn’t involved in Ole Pete’s enterprises, not if he was going to save a kid. Or so I hoped.
“I’m Sloan.”
“Sloan.” I let the name roll off my tongue, enjoying the sensual feeling of the S while the O made my lips purse. “I’m Yaz.”
“What kind of name is that? Nickname?”
“We don’t need to be chatting it up here. As incompetent as the cops may seem sometimes, they do get lucky. And I don’t like paperwork. Let’s go.”
I should have shaken him loose. Gone my own way, but when he said “Coffee?” I said, “Yes.”
A few blocks away, we took seats at a Starbucks. I sat with the late afternoon sun at my back, almost like putting a spotlight on him. Hoping it made him strain to look directly at me, and unable to read any expressions. Maybe having met him would turn out for the best. He might be able to provide info on Ole Pete and my assignment. One thing I was certain about, whatever Sloan was, he wasn’t simply a deckhand.
He’d ordered a macchiato concoction, and I had my usual quad-venti-skinny latte. I’d fallen victim to the Starbucks baristas and been trained to their lingo. As if saying I wanted a large, non-fat latte with a couple of extra shots was blasphemy.
“You were telling me about your name, Yaz. Is that a nickname or what?”
“It’s a nickname.” Short for Yazmira, I could have said but opted not to. Complications would arise from his knowing too much about me, if he lived long enough.
He took the cap off his drink, tested the temperature against his mouth, licking the whipped cream from his upper lip. His tongue formed a perfect tip as it slid along his lip. Then he caught his lower lip between his teeth, and I fought the shiver that wanted to run from my ass to the top of my spine.
He studied me, a glint in his eye—as if he knew.
My nerve endings tingled. A twinge acknowledged him. It had been a hell of a long time since I’d been with a mortal. This time, I did shudder, unable to stop the rush that passed through my body.
“Cold?”
Damn him.
I looked away then at my cup, studying it as if there’d be a final exam covering cups, hoping to hide the desire flaring between my legs and behind my eyes.
“Where’d you learn those fighting skills?”
His question caught me off guard. “I’ve studied many styles, in many different places.”
He lowered his lids, eyes narrowed. “Which tells me nothing.”
I looked away. The grackles lined up on the telephone lines. Funky birds that looked like blackbirds. They were all over parts of Houston. Weird birds. Every time one flew in and landed, they would all realign themselves to keep a proportionate distance between each one on the line. Odd, how those birds did that, every time one flew in or out. Right now they perched by the thousands, their chirping competing with road noise. It felt like a scene from Hitchcock’s Birds.
I turned my attention back to Sloan. “You already know I’m not going to discuss myself.”
“What can we discuss?”
“Let’s talk about you. Tell me what a man named Sloan does for a living.”
“You already know what I do.” Eyes still narrowed.
“Humor me.”
“Okay. This man named Sloan works as a deckhand on a charter fishing boat doing the bidding of some old fart that doesn’t pay him nearly enough but shamelessly makes use of him twenty four hours a day, on or off the sea.”
“Why don’t you quit, then?”
“Times are tough for clientless financial advisors and newly transplanted journalists.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that slipped out. He was funny even when he lied. “Aren’t you a bit young to have two failed careers before resorting to being a deckhand?”
“I studied journalism, did a little bit of writing, and then tried financial advising. It’s not like you have to have a finance degree to try to convince people to give you their money. Except, I hate cold-calling, barely know anyone in Houston, blah, blah. I’d have had beaucoup clients if I’d stayed in New Orleans. Family, friends, all that.”
He pronounced it N’Awlins, though he didn’t have an accent.
“What happened to your accent? Or are you not a southern boy by birth?”
“Oh, I’m southern alright.” It came out suth’n, as if he allowed it to slip on purpose. He didn’t have the air of someone who failed at anything, much less a career—or even two.
“Where did you practice your journalism, southern boy?”
“I gave it a shot in the city, New York. Not my kind of place. I’m not good in a town that big. My southern charm isn’t appreciated.” The crinkles around his eyes told me this man smiled a lot.
Another lie—his charm not being appreciated—this man would be appreciated in a room full of lesbians.
The distant sound of sirens caught my attention.
Sloan cocked his head to the side. “JJ’s ride.”
“Probably. Why Houston when New Orleans would have been better?”
“Long story. What were you doing near the docks?” He leaned in. The sun’s rays set those eyes on fire, green ice with blue flecks—until the sun’s brightness caused him to pull back.
“Recon for a job.” And that was true. When your entire existence is a lie, being able to tell the truth can make you feel good.
“No details?”
“You know better.” I took a sip of the latte. At least the coffee had cooled down; my temperature sure as hell hadn’t. I felt a sheen of sweat building on my forehead. Damned jacket, damned heat. Damned man.
“You have an ulcer or something?”
“What? No. What do you mean?”
“The way you were doubled over after JJ. I didn’t think you were gonna hurl. You don’t seem a stranger to blood. What’s up with that?”
“Probably a twenty-four hour thing.” More like a forever thing. How do I even begin to explain SoulLust? Have had for a few hundred years. Using your body as a host. Forcing you to do its dark deeds while it keeps you alive. The symptoms of SoulLust were like a hyped-up pregnancy. Nausea. Controlled by something within me, but yet not me.
“Why have you been casing Pete’s boat for the last few days?”
He knew. Now what? And I was starting to like him. My eyes flew to the grackles while I tried to work out an answer.
He cleared his throat. “Okay, since you’re not gonna tell me anything else about you, why don’t we do it?”
I coughed, choking—spitting my drink, latte sputtering on the table top, and frowned at him. “That’s your come-on?”
“Why would I need a come-on? You’re going to deny the attraction?” He had a charming recklessness that masked supreme confidence.
“I won’t deny it. I mean . . .” Damn.
His lips moved, just the faintest twitch. He was fighting off a laugh. He quit fighting it and laughed.
“You’re not serious.” I squirmed in my seat, not sure I wasn’t disappointed.
“We should go talk somewhere more private. And since my place is a boat that wouldn’t afford luxury or privacy, I was thinking more like yours.”
Why did he want privacy? Though privacy wasn’t a bad idea. Just in case I had to kill him. It would give me a chance to pump him for info. There was something odd about this man. Educated, attractive, but serving as a go-fer on a charter boat.
“I don’t live in Houston.” I added to my lies, thinking of my place a few miles away.
“You probably already have a hotel room, don’t you?”
“Not checked in yet.” Why couldn’t I stop staring at those lips?
“Yeah, right. You’ve been here for days.” He wasn’t asking. He was calling me out.
“I change hotels daily.”
For a second, his brow popped up then settled back in place. “Come on.” He tossed his cup in a trash can.
