Chapter 1
Ihad finally ditched the guy who was following me.
Maybe he wasn’t actually following me. Maybe I was just being paranoid.
But I was pretty confident he was following me.
I sensed that I was being watched as soon as I stepped out of my home earlier this morning.
I glanced around, expecting to make eye contact with someone, but there was no one around.
No one on my street looked suspicious, either.
My neighbors were approaching, and they waved politely as they entered our apartment building behind me, but they weren’t the reason I felt watched.
As I did another scan of my street, tourists who were shouldering heavy, brightly colored beach totes, smiled at me as they passed.
I decided to walk a different route to my coffee shop, playing it safe.
I kept checking over my shoulder as I made my way through the narrow streets of Marina Vista, a touristy beach town in southern California. The place I had called home for most of my thirty years.
The marine layer was thick and humid this early in the morning, just as I liked it. I passed the public library, as well as my favorite pizzeria. I made a mental note to go there for lunch, since the painted letters on their glass windows announced a special on their veggie-lovers pizza.
All the while, the uneasy feeling that I was being watched never truly left.
Not when I opened my coffee shop for the day, not when I spent hours brewing drinks and wiping surfaces.
Not when my employees and I prepped for Jam Night, and not when I closed down the shop and decided to make my way to the harbor to pout.
The sun had set hours ago. The moon’s reflection danced along the salty waves. Following the habit I had maintained all day, I checked over my shoulder again before I turned a corner.
A few yards away, a man was walking on the same sidewalk, casually headed right toward me. He was tall and wearing a nondescript dark outfit with the hood of his sweatshirt up, concealing any noticeable features.
A spike of adrenaline made me speed up as I made my way through the quiet town. I made another turn, checking over my shoulder again. But he was gone.
He disappeared into the night.
Well then.
I shrugged my shoulders and smiled at the security guy when I approached the docks. He was drinking a beer and hanging out in security’s little room near the main gate to the harbor. The harbor was closed. No one was supposed to be out here this late at night.
But, like I had many times before, I slipped him a fifty, and he let me in.
That’s what happens when the city chooses to hire young twenty-somethings for minimum wage to work security.
After quietly walking the dock, I boarded my boat and entered the main cabin. I pulled out a bottle of scotch and got myself settled in a chair on the second level of my sizeable vessel.
I took a moment to admit to myself that I looked like the biggest asshole.
Sipping my scotch, sitting on a cushioned bench on my mini yacht, getting emotional over the fact that I was all alone. Not even the guy who —I was ninety-seven percent positive— was following me, even bothered to see through whatever he’d had in mind.
I was just…alone.
The harbor was protected from most of the ocean’s larger waves by the jetty, but a gentle sway still comforted me as I stared at the full moon’s reflection over the Pacific.
In the back of my mind, I wondered if this was how the ultra-wealthy felt. Surrounded by material things others yearned for, while feeling more alone in the world than ever.
The only reason I had this stupid three-level mini yacht—lovingly named the Knotty Boy—was because of my roommate, Audrey.
A long-lost aunt bestowed her hoarder house in the Bay Area on me a couple of years ago when she passed.
I wanted to light a match to the mess, but Audrey convinced me to clean up the estate and sell it.
Which, she was right to do. Because now I had a decent amount of savings and a boat.
A feat not a lot of thirty-year-old women could say in this economy.
I used the money to buy the building that I had been renting for my coffee shop, the Sun Bean. Thankfully, when I approached the property owner with a cash offer, he was ready to retire and get the property out of his hands.
He also liked the idea of selling it to a “spitfire woman” like me, whatever the hell that meant.
So here I was, financially stable. A business owner. Wallowing in self-pity on my own boat because I was, yet again, stood up by my best friend, Audrey. Because ever since she met some fuck stick named Liam two years ago, Audrey had been flaky as hell.
We shared a condo a five-minute walk from the Sun Bean.
Audrey and I were literal roommates, and yet, I hardly saw her anymore.
Oftentimes, I’d track her location to find her off the coast of Catalina Island.
Which was weird, because if you grew up in Southern California, you didn’t go to Catalina Island all that often.
It’s a special occasion place. A touristy spot you take friends who haven’t visited Southern California before.
Once you’ve gone to Catalina Island once or twice, you don’t usually go again.
Not until you’ve seen and done everything else in the state.
But Audrey was at Catalina Island at least once a month.
Because her good-buddy-who-she-claimed-wasn’t-her-boyfriend-but-was-definitely-her-boyfriend, Liam, lived there.
Which made me side-eye him even more.
Did she ever think to invite me to his (what I assumed) fancy-ass house on Catalina Island?
No.
Had she introduced me to this mystery man of hers after two whole years?
Also, no.
Part of me worried she had joined a cult. Catalina Island has some isolated areas on it. People could easily set up a cult compound there if they had the money.
The number of times Audrey would randomly come home, after several nights of being out with Liam, covered in scrapes and bruises, pissed me the hell off.
I wasn’t upset with Audrey.
No, I was pissed at whoever this Liam guy is. I couldn’t find information about him online anywhere.
Shady. As. Hell.
I have promised myself that if I ever met him, I’d punch him in the throat.
Audrey probably blew me off tonight to see Liam again. She was probably out at Catalina Island right now. As I took another sip of scotch and savored the smooth burn it provided in my core, I stared in the direction of the island.
Wondering what changed in Audrey.
Wondering how some guy could cause this much distance to appear between us. We had been best friends for fifteen years. We grew up in the foster care system together. Graduated together. Went to college together.
Yet, I wasn’t sure if we were still each other’s best friend after the last two years. Because she was gone more often than not.
Glaring in the direction of Catalina Island, I pulled out my cell to send off a text—not surprised I didn’t have one from her.
Me: If you need me, I’ll be drinking on my boat. Alone.
Then I rested my cell on my thigh. Waiting for three dots to show up. Waiting. After five whole minutes, I received nothing.
Nothing. But she’d read the message four minutes ago. So, in a moment of pure pettiness, I sent another text.
Me: I think I’m going to move out.
She never bothered to read that one. Thus, I continued my pity party on my mini yacht.
God, that sentence really made me feel like an ass.
I could sleep here until I found my own place, I thought. I also considered converting the attic of the Sun Bean into a small studio apartment. I wasn’t sure if either of those options were perfectly legal, but I couldn’t find it within me to care.
I didn’t want to move out, though.
If Audrey was a victim of domestic abuse, the logical explanation for the scrapes and bruises I’d seen on her, the best thing I could do is be there for her when she is hopefully ready to address it.
But what if she wasn’t? What if I was overreacting to the scrapes and bruises that I’d seen her with?
What if she felt like our friendship was a burden to her?
What if she was simply embracing a male-centered life?
I had no way of knowing what exactly was going on with her, because she wouldn’t fucking talk to me about anything.
A gust of wind hit me, making my dark hair brush away from my shoulders. I shivered, even though I was wearing a hoodie to protect me from the chill of the ocean.
A throat cleared behind me, and I yelped and jumped out of my seat to whirl on whoever it was.
I assumed it would be Audrey—for some stupid reason.
But it wasn’t.
It was a man.
No, wait, two men.
“What the—” I backed away from them at the same time my heart rate kicked up. One of them was definitely the man who followed me earlier tonight. But I couldn’t recognize which one specifically followed me, because they looked so similar.
The two men stood between me and the cabin. Behind me was the railing of my boat, and the muddy ocean water of the harbor.
I immediately tried recalling the dozens of self-defense courses I’d taken throughout my twenties. The movements that felt natural after hours and hours of training, designed to disarm and incapacitate a large man long enough for me to escape.
The one on the right stepped forward, raising his hands as if to show he wasn’t a threat.
He had dark, shoulder-length hair and a very light color to his eyes.
I wondered if it was the night sky and the moonlight that made them look so light, so bright. But I didn’t focus on his eye color for too long because the next detail I noticed was how tall he was.
How tall they both were.
I was five feet, eleven inches tall. I rarely looked up to a man. Most often, I was eye-level or looked down at them.
But I was eye level with their chests.
Were they truly close to seven feet tall, or did I have too much scotch?