I’ve found her.

After four years and two months.

I stare at the screen, my blood pumping relief and shock and fury and joy through my veins. The cocktail of emotions paralyzes me for several minutes.

Then I force myself to analyze what I’m seeing.

Her hair is different. Longer. Darker. Pin-straight and rigid where soft, friendly waves used to be. The curve of her jaw captured by the camera lens also shows the difference. She’s leaner. Meaner. Even from this obscure angle, I can tell any trace of softness has been wiped clean. Eroded by sin and tragedy.

To anyone else, the picture would seem ridiculously vague, the image nothing more than a blurred black and white pixilation of chin and shoulder.

It’s the reason my algorithm spat it out almost reluctantly, a last batch of possibilities in the dregs of to-be-discarded possibilities, and then dumped it in my supercomputer’s equivalent of a spam folder, the code scrolling impatiently as it waited my command to delete, delete, delete.

But I know it’s her. Despite the dark leather cap pulled low over her forehead. Despite the bulky jacket designed to hide her true shape. Her evasiveness speaks volumes.

It’s her. The Widow.

My hand shakes as I hit the zoom-in key. My gut churns, and I feel a little sick as my ever-helpful brain supplies me with all the ways she could’ve continued to elude me—if I’d turned away, for a second, to stare at one of the other three screens on my desk. If I’d trusted my supersmart computer and accepted the prompt to delete without reviewing the content. If I hadn’t tweaked the code yet again last night to capture just such an obscure image.

Hell, if I’d blinked at the wrong time. I torture myself with infinite possibilities as I stare at that mesmerizing combination of chin and shoulder.

A chin I’ve trailed my treacherous fingers over.

A shoulder I’ve rested my guilty, weary head on.

There’s so much more to her. And I treasured every single inch of her forbidden body, fucked her at every opportunity she granted me. Until she systematically erased herself from my life.

But why New York? And why now?

I know how good she is. Hell, she’s the best or she wouldn’t have eluded me for this long. The thought of another four years without her punches a cold fist through my gut.

The Widow.

I can’t see her eyes. But I don’t fool myself into thinking they’ll hold an ounce of softness. What we did changed us forever. And not for the better.

I lean back in my chair. Exhale slowly. Terrified of blinking in case she disappears from my screen. It doesn’t matter that I’ve copied and stored the longitude and latitude of her location in a dozen vaults on my server and memorized every single piece of data on the screen.

New York City. East 53rd Street. CCTV camera. A one-in-a-billion shot.

Without taking my eyes off her, I reach for my phone and press the voice-activation app. “Good evening, Mr. Knight.”

“Nala, how many times do I need to tell you to call me Killian?”

“You have yet to change my default settings, Mr. Knight.”

My lips twist but a smile doesn’t quite form. “I changed them last week. You reset it, didn’t you?”

“I assure you, I’m quite incapable of doing that.”

“Yeah, right. Fine. Place a call for me. Pilot. Home.”

“Dialing, pilot. Home,” the female AI obliges me.

Nelson, my LA-based pilot, picks up on the second ring. It’s 3:00 a.m. but he answers as if it’s normal working hours. Which it is, to be fair. Everything is normal for me in my line of work.

“Good morning, sir.”

“How soon can you get to the airport?” I snap.

“As soon as I put on my trousers and chuck a bucket of water over my son to wake him up,” he replies with a dark chuckle.

My fingers fly over the keyboard as I save her information in a few more electronic vaults. “Give William my apologies,” I say.

“No need. He’s been chomping at the bit to take the new girl for another spin.” The new girl being the Bombardier Global 8000 I added to my collection of private jets last month.

“In that case, I expect to see you at Van Nuys within the hour.” At this time of the morning, traffic from their Santa Monica apartment should be light enough.

“We’ll be there.” He clears his throat. “I expect the paperwork regarding out-of-curfew flights—”

“Will be taken care of. I’ll text you the details but we won’t be straying far from the usual parameters.”

“Very good, sir. Destination?”

My gaze tracks that chin. That shoulder. The hair. Four years’ worth of emotion threatens to rip free. My chest burns with it, but I contain it. “New York.”

“And do I need to file a return flight?” Nelson asks.

“Not yet. I anticipate being there for a while.” Until I find her. Until she’s back in my arms. She won’t come willingly, but that’s another problem for another day.

“Got it.”

I hang up, staring at the picture for another minute before I blink and turn to the next screen. It takes less than five minutes to hack the database I need and input the relevant information.

Russell, my driver, is waiting when I sprint downstairs. The advantage of owning homes around the world is the ability to pick up and go at a moment’s notice. All I need are the clothes on my back, my computer, and other clandestine electronics.

“All set to go, sir?”

I nod but don’t answer as I slide into the backseat. I’m already itching to power up my computer again to make sure her picture is still on my home screen. When it flares to life, I breathe easier.

There’s very little traffic at this time of night, but I stare at the screen for the short drive to the airport. The photo has got me whipped. I can’t look away from it. Just like I couldn’t look away from her the first time I saw her.

God, was that only five years ago when I almost didn’t make it to her fateful birthday party? When I dragged my darkness through the side gate of a house in the middle of Xanaxville and felt the earth shift beneath my feet?

I feel like I’ve known, and lost, her through several lifetimes. She wishes she’d never met me in even one of them, I know. But that matters very little now.

It happened. We happened. And this time…I don’t plan to lose her again. My fists clench as I debate the lengths I’m prepared to go to make it that way. She’ll fight me. That’s her nature. I might even lose this particular fight. But there’s a reason the phrase or die trying is more than mere words to me. To us.

“Another medical emergency, Mr. Knight?”

I look up from the screen. I have no recollection of leaving the car and entering the terminal building reserved for private flights.

“Unfortunately, yes,” I respond, my gaze already sliding away from the uniformed officials gathered around and back to the screen.

“Damn, you must have the worst luck in the world, huh?” The customs guy is standing next to the immigration guy. They’re both staring at me. Because what…they think I’m going to fuck up and confess that I hacked into their system to input the information that is allowing me to fly outside the aviation curfew?

“These things can’t be helped,” I reply insincerely.

He laughs, and we both shrug. He follows me across the reception area, and I slip him a couple hundred-dollar bills even though he’s getting paid triple time for a half hour’s work. We part ways, each feeling marginally satisfied but a little screwed over and a little dirty. The money means less than nothing to me, and although nothing would make me feel bad about faking an excuse to fly outside curfew hours tonight of all nights, I detest the lies I have to tell to achieve what I want.

Which is beyond laughable considering what my chosen profession is.

I hurry toward my plane, the grip of anticipation getting tighter with each step. Nelson, trim and tall and much younger-looking than his early sixties age implies, emerges from the plane first, followed by Will. The father and son piloting team have been in my employ for three years. Between them they have forty years of experience, which gives me one less thing to worry about in the grand fucked-up landscape of my life.

“We’re ready to hit the skies as soon as you are,” Nelson says as he signs the requisite preflight papers and hands the clipboard back to the official. “I’ve been informed your doctor will be on stand-by at Teterboro,” he adds, tongue firmly in cheek.

“That’s excellent news, Nelson. I’m assuming my doctor is also capable of doubling as my driver?” I ask as I follow him up the steps into the plane.

“He’s willing to be whatever you need him to be, sir. He has a helicopter license if you want him to be your chopper pilot. He’s very versatile that way.”

“Remind me to add a little extra to your Christmas bonus this year, Nelson.”

“Don’t worry sir, my reminder email will be right on time.”

I allow myself a little smile, but it’s soon eaten away by razor-sharp memories, acid guilt, and churning anticipation. I wave the flight attendant away as she arrives beside me with my usual preflight shot of Hine cognac.

She quietly retreats, and when I’m finally alone, I dare to glide my finger over the screen, across her cheek. One artificial touch and my insides go into free fall.

The shaking could be from the power of the engines thrusting me and my crew into the sky. Or it could be the cataclysmic chain reaction that has only ever come from her.

It’s a universally held belief that you can’t help who you fall in love with. There are a fuck-load of novels expounding that theory.

I call bullshit.

I could’ve walked away that day. Waited another three years to see the brother who hated my guts twice as much as I hated his. The half continent I had placed between us was no problem for me, especially since he chose to continue living in the house of horrors we grew up in, long after my parents’ death.

I should’ve walked away when the crackle and flash and roar of flames warned me the fires of hell were consuming what remained of my pathetic soul.

I could’ve stopped myself from soiling her goodness. From falling ass over feet in love. But I carried on walking. And with each step I took, I knew we were doomed. Because with each step, I glimpsed her potential, absorbed her genius and her beauty and her flaws.

She was everything I’d been waiting for without even knowing it.

And somewhere between the sparkling pool and the shitty Tupperware strewn on the floral-clothed table where she stood cutting her birthday cake, I decided to just…take.

The only problem was that Faith Carson, the woman I eventually turned into The Widow, the woman who fucking conquered the world, wasn’t mine to take.

She belonged, legally, according to the laws of Arkansas anyway, to another man.

Did I change course? Retreat?

Fuck, no.