Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Julian
Present
“Fuck,” I grit out, finishing the last steps and starting to run down my list. This never should’ve happened.
I’m so fucking distracted. The second my knee hit the dusty gravel, my hands shook as I brushed a piece of light brown hair away from her face.
It's been months of looking without so much as a hint as to where Naomi went. I have people who are very good at finding things searching for me too, but it was like she never existed. And now, she’s right here, in a crime scene where she doesn’t belong.
I couldn’t forget the beautiful liar, never mind move on. I couldn’t shake off the way it felt talking with her, the way she looked at me, how she felt in my arms, on my lips, and tasted on my tongue.
The plan was to find Hideaway and get some answers.
Manipulating attraction to get what I needed had never been an issue for me.
Spending some time with a beautiful woman at a bar was straightforward enough, and I was intent on helping find out all I could about a place that was important to a friend.
So, when I went back again, I wasn’t expecting the tables to flip the way they did.
She smiled at me, like she’d been waiting for the day I’d show up again, and I fucking forgot what the hell I was supposed to be doing there.
And then I saw it, in plain sight on a fucking map.
Weeks later, I finally understood why she lied.
Hideaway is a place for witnesses and survivors of extremely violent crimes who still aren’t safe to live and heal.
It made sense that when I went back again to see her for a third time, I was greeted with a shotgun.
She wasn’t anywhere in that bar, and I stayed parked outside for a handful of days and asked a few people when they were leaving if they had seen Naomi.
“She picked up and moved, I think.” She wasn’t there anymore, and Boss and Viv weren't going to tell me a single fucking thing. It’s haunted me ever since.
But now, here she is, walking into the middle of a job.
We’re thousands of miles from where I first saw her, kissed her, and watched as she came all over my fingers.
I shake my head, tilting it back to look up at the angry, gray-purple sky.
“Fuck,” I breathe out. Thunder rumbles low in the distance, as if the weather’s saying, Indeed, Julian. Fuck.
I rip off my gloves and pocket them. It’s the quickest cleanup I’ve ever done.
Efficiency takes time, but I know I don’t have that luxury—not now.
I glance at her propped along the side of the building.
I hurt her, and I could’ve done worse, goddamnit.
She stayed out here while I finished the task I’d been interrupted doing.
I didn’t need any other traces of someone inside the bar, not if I was going to properly clean it all.
Brushing my fingertips along her cheek, my gaze travels the length of her.
She looks different. Her hair is lighter, a few strands escaping from where it was twisted up high.
Her clothes look like she’s either just come from a library or an archeology site in the 1920s.
And while it isn’t the vibe of the woman I met in Montana, it’s still her—different but the same.
Plush lips with an exaggerated bow, high cheekbones, and I’d bet everything I have that if she opened her eyes right now, I’d see the deepest emerald greens staring right back at me.
I do a double take when my eyes pass over her hand. She’s wearing the leather cuff . . . I can’t decide if I’m relieved to have found her or pissed off that there’s another lie wrapped around it.
“What the hell are you doing here, Naomi?”
The pulse in her neck moves with measured beats, but that’s the only movement. A hefty sedative will do that to someone. She won’t be stirring for a while. The thought churns my stomach.
Gathering her in my arms, I lift her up off the ground.
My stopwatch timer sounds off, making me groan.
They wanted this all cleaned by sunrise.
That timetable gave me less than five hours after I landed.
The body wasn’t cold, which meant they texted before he was dead—it isn’t typical for the jobs I’m used to handling.
This was planned and premeditated. A full set means a complete cleanup, from the body to its surrounding areas.
On my drive over, the last text I received read: The situation got messy.
The contact for this job has been in our files for more than five decades, but they haven’t called the burner in a long time—nearly three and a half years ago now.
If I hadn’t held on to my father’s books, I wouldn’t have recognized the name on the initial message. Crowne.
The click of a cocked and loaded shotgun has me stopping all movement. Fuck me.
“You better pray to whatever or whoever you believe in that she’s going to be okay,” a woman’s raspy and measured voice says from behind me.
Not authorities, but the clients were expecting my father to be here—not me.
“You called me here.” I turn my head, still trying to shield an unconscious Naomi from whatever happens next. “Get that gun off of me,” I demand.
The woman lowers her sawed-off shotgun slowly as I turn around with Naomi limp in my arms. Curly silver hair whips around the woman wildly in time with her billowing blue overcoat as the breeze kicks up around us.
Her glare traces my body and then my face before she says, “You’re his son.
” Lifting her chin, she shoves her shoulders back, trying her best to harden herself.
She falters slightly when I catch the glassy shine of tears in her eyes.
Clearing her throat, she adds, “He’s gone then? ”
I nod, unable to share much about what happened to my dad, even if I wanted to.
I don’t know this woman, but I also don’t know the exact circumstances surrounding my father’s death.
It’s been more than three years, and the details—where he was found and his cause of death—remain sealed in confidential files.
Even his autopsy was redacted when it was delivered by the FBI.
All of it had me asking more questions. I’m still not satisfied with the minimal answers I’ve been given.
My father and I have done plenty of jobs for government organizations, but everything should’ve been off book.
The expertise they required shouldn’t have been stored in any databases.
It’s what Dad required when he answered those requests.
If his death wasn’t connected to something we did, it wouldn’t have been the FBI delivering the news of his death. I hated not having answers.
She walks closer, reaching toward the woman I’m still holding.
I flinch and step back.
“That’s my granddaughter you’re holding,” she says pointedly, taking another step closer, making sure she’s still breathing. “Wyn,” she says under her breath. “What the hell were you doing here?”
I look down at Naomi again, confused by what this woman is saying about her.
“What did you say her name was?” The last time I saw her, she was angry and threatening me with a taser, but we were in a bar near a place meant to hide people who weren’t safe, and her name was Naomi there.
She wasn’t just there to look out for the people in Hideaway; she was hiding.
I swallow, hating how much that unsettles me, knowing that whatever drove her there couldn’t have been anything good.
The old woman looks back up at me with a furrowed brow. “I’m assuming she saw what you were doing?” she asks gruffly, ignoring my question.
My stomach sinks—she was never supposed to see this or know this part of me. I give her a nod to answer.
“Ugh.” Throwing her head back, she mumbles, “Goddesses. Can this get any more complicated?” She points up at the sky. “Never mind, don’t answer that.”
Who the fuck is this woman?
She takes a grounding breath and looks around us, nodding like she’s just made up her mind. “Alright, Mr. Colton, what’d you drug her with? And how long until she wakes?”
“Equivalent of a horse tranquilizer. So ballpark, eight to ten hours. I don’t typically think about someone’s downtime when I’m concerned they’ve walked into something they’re not supposed to.
Usually, I eliminate the issue . . .” I shove down the thought of what could’ve happened if I’d grabbed my gun and silencer instead of the syringe. A wave of self-loathing washes over me.
She looks toward the entry to the bar and asks, “If the job is all set, then you can follow me.”
It is now, but when I arrived, there was more than just a body and a pool of blood on the floor.
The smears along the side and top of the bar were signs the deceased had struggled.
After the body was removed and dealt with, I worked inward.
It’s the things that can’t be seen or flecks of DNA feet away from the deceased that’ll end up identifying the person, perpetrator, and possibly even the time of death. That’s where I like to start.
The closet next to the office had a bottle of Clorox and another of Fabuloso, so I used those around the entire place as if it were the usual nightly clean after the enzyme solvents—it needed to look like I was never here.
That was when I heard the car door. The concentrated area of blood was still being absorbed.
It's always the last place I focus my attention on. The body removal is the first. I packed my deodorizing fogger into my trunk and watched from the shadow of the building’s exterior as a woman walked inside.