Present day . . .

The past might be playing in my mind, but Amanda and I still sit in the rental car, her green eyes locked with mine in what I know as familiar defiance. Defiance I first experienced that night on the plane. The night that she began earning my trust. The night I fell in love with her and handed her the ability to fuck me over. Even knowing all the things that I now know about her: her betrayal of the agency, her actions that lead to Danny’s death, her secrets and lies, there is no denying that I still love this woman, and that really fucking pisses me off.

I reach for her, my hand sliding under her hair just as it had that night, and I drag her toward the armrest and to me. “I wouldn’t have killed you three years ago,” I say. “But I will now and I can still snap your neck in the blink of an eye.”

“And I can still poison you before you have any hint it’s happening.”

“You’d be dead before I ever hit the ground,” I promise. “You betrayed me, Amanda. I will never give you the chance to do it again.” I release her, but even as I do, I know her, at least on some level, and I’m anticipating her next move. I reach for my gun, turn it on her, and as expected, already she’s holding one on me.

“I betrayed you?” she hisses. “Stop the games, Assassin. I told you. I know the truth. I know who, and what, you are.”

“I’m the same person that you not only fucked but fucked over and over and over,” I say, rejecting the idea that she left over a nickname that means nothing. “And you liked fucking me,” I add. “Too much, it seems. But you won’t fuck me again.”

“That one statement says it all. You are that same person. I just chose not to see it. Assassin. ”

“If a code name that I was given by someone other than myself makes you see me differently, you had something to hide.”

“If that code name means nothing, you would have told the woman you supposedly loved about it in three months.”

“You’re right. I would have but something told me you couldn’t handle it.”

“Couldn’t handle it? Which part? Your code name or your real intentions?”

“I guess I never really trusted you.”

“I trusted you,” she surprises me by confessing. “Completely. Totally. Foolishly. But it doesn’t matter now. You want to kill me. I want to kill you. We both have to put duty first.”

“Duty you ran from.”

“I never ran from my duty. I ran from the hit put on my head and on my parents.” She changes the subject. “Bottom line, Assassin: whatever the future holds, I’m here with you now, and I fully intend to catch Franklin and make him suffocate on his own breath. The way I watched those people in the subway in China suffocate on their own breath through his monstrous actions. He will do what he promises to do.”

I believe her. About Franklin. About her desire to make him pay for the past, and prevent a future attack. That’s the problem, though. She makes me fucking believe her when I now know that she isn’t what she seems. “You can’t do that by fighting me, and I’m one hundred percent certain we’re being watched. For all I know, they’re with you and you’re setting me up.”

“They’re not with me. No one is with me.” Her jaw tightens, stubbornness radiating off of her, but she lowers the gun. “Kill me or stop threatening me.”

“I don’t make threats. You know that.” I harness my gun. “It’s just not time yet.” I eye the mirrors for signs of trouble, and then glance at her again. “If I find out—”

“Yadda, yadda, you’ll kill me. Got it.” She changes the subject. “I need my traveling lab. We have to get to my condo.”

“You want your potions,” I say, remembering her suitcase of vials a little too well. “Negative. We’ll restock what you need in Texas.”

“We need that lab,” she insists. “It’s filled with the work I’ve done. Compounds already formulated. Time we might not be able to spare when we get to Texas. You’ve seen what that means. You know what I can do when armed with my own weapons.”

She’s right. I have. And that means her condo could be one big, deadly trap. But so is the attack Franklin intends for our water system, and he’s ten steps ahead of us. I place the car in reverse, but don’t back up. “We’ll go, but we go now. I’m not giving anyone time to miss you here at the school.” I back up the rental, and drive toward the exit. “When were you first aware that you were being watched?”

“Last night when I left the school. At no time before then.”

“That you know of.”

“No one followed me until last night,” she insists. “You know me.” She sucks in air at that statement, then lets it out, as if she regrets those words when even this might be a ploy to get me to let my guard down. That won’t happen.

“I was miserable and I let it affect my decisions,” she adds. “I made a stupid mistake by taking this job last week, but until then I was off the radar for three years for a reason. I’m good at what I do.”

I pull us onto a wider campus road. “The agency found you before I did.”

“Electronically, because I took this job,” she argues. “And I hope like hell it was the agency keeping an eye on me until you got here, because if you found me, if they found me, Franklin could have, too. Or someone else.”

“Someone else, meaning who?” I ask, flicking her a look, only to find her staring out of the side window at the mirror, which shifts my gaze back to my mirror immediately to ensure we aren’t being followed.

“Whoever else the agency might send for me,” she says, offering nothing more.

“That was a non-answer,” I say, “which we’ll define later. My bottom line, this time. Whoever is following us, the agency included, we’re getting rid of them. We’re going to make my visit seem like a date. We’ll appear to go to lunch at the pier where we can get lost in the crowd, pick up a new vehicle, and make our way to your place. We’ll be in and out before anyone knows.”

“In a perfect world,” she says. “I don’t remember ever living in a perfect world for even one day of my life. There are just façades of perfection.”

That statement references our history, and it indeed takes me back three years, to the moment she’s recalling for us both. She’d been naked at the time. I’d been naked. Lying side by side, legs entwined. Talking for hours, when a confession I’d never made to anyone, never felt for anyone, came to me.

I stroke the hair from her eyes. “I loved my parents,” I confess. “As much as a child can love a parent. I was five when my father was killed, a SEAL on a mission. Ten when my mother died in a car accident. But beyond that, Amanda, I have never loved. I honestly didn’t think I was capable of love. But you. I love you.”

Her lashes lower, and she breathes out, blinking me back into view to say, “I love you, too. And I’ve never loved anyone but you and my parents, either. And my father’s questionable at that.” She presses her lips to mine and I kiss her, a slow, sensual kiss that tastes of love, of something I’d never known until Amanda. And when our lips part, she says, “I think this is one of the only perfect moments I remember in my life. I think it’s the only time my world has felt perfect.”

I shove aside the memory without comment, hating the biting sensation in my gut that it’s managed to create. I’m focused on the mission and the road ahead and behind us. I cut left, and take several side streets, forcing anyone following us to show themselves, or lose us. No car appears, and after ten minutes of this strategy, I turn us onto one of the common, narrow side streets. And as also is common in this city, we are on one big upward hill, the only path to the main road, when a car suddenly cuts from another side street and blocks us. My reaction is instant. I eye the rearview mirror and place us in reverse, while Amanda pulls her gun, rolls down her window, and I don’t even have to ask her intent. She’ll have a silencer and she’ll go for the tires. I stay focused on backing us onto another side street that now has us rocketing down yet another hill.

“Tires out, car stopped,” Amanda says, settling back into her seat, unfazed by the speed we’re flying downward. “But there will be another. We need out of this car.” She pulls off her high heels and tosses them in the backseat. “If we get caught from the front and back, we’re going to end up trapped and dead.” She grabs the flat ballet shoes she has always carried with her from her purse, and looks behind us at the same time. “And there it is. We already have another car following us. Seth, any minute we’re going to end up sandwiched between two cars. I know the city. On foot is our escape.”

She’s right. The buildings sandwich us in tight, narrow roads. I cut us onto another side road, and keep backing up. “On foot, it is,” I say. “If you have a preferred location, speak now.”

“Two streets up,” she says, placing her ballet slippers on her feet. “Cut left and then left again. The Filbert Steps are within a fast run. They wind through the woods, and there are nooks and crannies in there. Places to hide. We’ll exit near the pier and my place.”

“Weapons are under your seat,” I tell her, before asking, “Alleyway on my left or right?” and with that question, I cut down the side street she’s suggested.

“Left now,” she says, twisting to watch our progress. “Turn here.”

I turn, still backing up, planning our next move. “You’re coming out on my side of the car,” I say, certain of several things. She can’t be exposed. She can’t be taken, and she damn sure isn’t dying at anyone’s hand but mine. I started as her judge and jury. I’m still her judge and jury.

“Got it,” she says, “and alleyway in five, four, three, and—now.”

I cut us as close to the opening as I can get us, and block the path we intend to travel, before killing the engine and pocketing the keys. “Let’s go,” I say, opening the door, while a white car screeches around the corner and comes straight at us. I’m standing in an instant, offering Amanda my hand, but she places my preferred weapon of a Ruger MK2, complete with silencer, in my hand, and I’m damn sure going to use it.

I aim at our pursuers’ moving vehicle, and by the time I’m done taking out one of the two front tires, Amanda’s out of the vehicle.

“Run!” I shout, as the car screeches to an uneven halt, bullets pelting in our direction from a shooter in the passenger seat. I react by firing my weapon, and so does Amanda, both of us moving toward the narrow alleyway, but as soon as we’re behind the cover of the wall, I shove her against it. “They’ll follow us down this narrow path and we’re dead.”

“Agreed. We fight.”

“Not we. Me. You’re too important. Cover me, but do not expose yourself.” I don’t wait for her confirmation. I pull a second, fully loaded Ruger MK2 from my holster, now holding one in each hand, rounding the wall, and I do so just in time to land a bullet in the head of a man about to round the corner. He drops and I charge at the man behind him, firing at a much taller, larger attacker, but with a small adjustment in aim, he ends up with my bullet between his eyes. Gunfire splatters from somewhere to my right, and I rotate. Holy fuck, Amanda doesn’t listen. She’s left the alleyway and is now out in the open, firing at a man taking cover behind our rental.

I grab her and shove her behind me, charging toward him and firing at rapid speed, a bullet slicing through my leather jacket in the process, and then my arm, pain searing the flesh there. Pissed off and in pain, I kill the bastard who delivered that shot, scan for another piece of shit, only to have Amanda flatten her back to mine, while her weapon discharges. I hear a body drop somewhere nearby, but I don’t dare turn until I’ve confirmed there’s no further threat within my visual field.

“Clear!” she calls out, telling me no other threat exists from her side.

“Clear,” I confirm on my end, and as we have many times, in unison, we rotate and start to run, heading down the alleyway, which is narrow and short, while my arm throbs, and blood pools, slick and warm, in my sleeve. In sixty seconds, we’ve hidden our weapons, I’ve curled my arm to avoid dripping blood, and we’ve found our way to a main road lined with the multi-colored row houses that are so popular in the city, people bustling here and there. Another thirty seconds and we’re at the side of one of the buildings, traveling down a hill that leads to our destination: the Filbert Steps, where foliage and trees frame multi-colored painted steps that go on for miles.

Trusting Amanda has one of those nooks and crannies she mentioned in mind to hide in sight, I keep an eye behind us, as well as left and right, and we hit those steps still running. “This way,” Amanda says, and she’s barely spoken the words before she’s over the banister and into the foliage below, reminding me how fit and agile she is.

I follow, somehow managing not to leave behind blood as I scale the banister and land on the ground, the high grass, leaves, and trees masking our location. Amanda doesn’t turn with my landing, but continues forward a few feet before cutting under the stairwell and disappearing into the brush. I’m a few steps behind her, shoving aside the foliage, clearing it to enter a wooden box of sorts directly beneath the steps, where I flatten on the wall next to her.

She pants out a breath before stepping in front of me, and immediately tugs my sleeve down my arm, inspecting my wound. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. Is the bullet still in your arm?”

“No bullet,” I say, having had plenty of experience with the alternative to judge from. “And I’m pretty sure the saying is sweating like a stuck pig.”

“It’s bleeding liked a stuck pig and it looks like blood to me,” she says, reaching for my belt and starting to pull it free.

I arch a brow. “Are you sure now is the time for this, sweetheart? We can say a proper hello later. In a hotel room.”

“A proper hello is me placing my knee in your balls,” she says, yanking the belt out of the loops. “But right now, you’re going to end up passing out, and I won’t get to enjoy the moment.” She wraps the belt around my arm and pulls it viciously tight.

I grit my teeth against the pain and bite out. “I thought you’d want me to bleed out.”

Her eyes meet mine, a pulse between us, history that wraps around us and thickens the air, before she says, “You die my way. And this isn’t my way.” She swallows hard and looks away. “Besides, I need a good assassin to kill Franklin’s followers.”

I pull my jacket back up and when she would move away, I capture her arm and hold her to me. “Not so fast.” Her hand settles on my chest, the air even thicker now, the pulse between us heavier, more intense than minutes before, but whatever this is between us can’t be dealt with if we’re dead. “How badly do you need that lab?” I ask, the danger of going to her apartment, now tenfold.

“Desperately,” she assures me.

History, our history, is indeed present in this moment and in her reply, and my eyes narrow. “The only time you’ve ever used that word, you were naked and wanted the orgasm I wouldn’t let you have.”

Her eyes glint. “Do you really think now is the time to bring that up? Or ever for that matter, considering you want to kill me?”

I cup her neck and pull her to me. “I don’t want to kill you,” I say, my breath mingling with hers, hunger burning inside me. Some would think it was crazy in this moment, and this place, but I clearly live for the high of danger or I wouldn’t be hard right now, living this life, or craving the woman I plan to kill.

“But duty calls, right?” she whispers, her fingers flexing on my chest, but not pushing me away.

And desire, I think, my mouth closing down on hers, my tongue licking into her mouth, a soft moan escaping her lips, and landing on my tongue. The taste of it, and her, still familiar, still Amanda, still so fucking addictive, I could yank her skirt up and take her right here and now. But I won’t. Not when she’s still the bitch that betrayed me. I tear my mouth from hers and drag her gaze to mine. “Are you still desperate? Don’t lie. I’ll know.”

Shadows flicker in her eyes before she says, “Unfortunately, yes. I am. And I despise the fact that I am.”

“Like you despise me? Correction. Like you hate me?”

“Yes. Like I hate you.”

“Well. Don’t hate too hard, sweetheart. You know that I always ultimately give you what you want, what you desperately want. And now is no exception.” I set her away from me. “Let’s go to your apartment and get your lab while we’re being looked for here, not there.”