Present day . . .

For the first fifteen minutes after we pull away from Amanda’s neighborhood, I replay that last day with her. And when I come back to the present, I can almost hear her thinking, feel the heaviness between us. Questions that need answers. Betrayal that needs understanding. A past that won’t be ignored.

It’s only after we clear the city limits, and Amanda notes the road signs, that she breaks the silence. “Sonoma?” she asks.

“Sonoma,” I confirm. “Which means we’ll be on a plane within the hour.”

“Your arm can’t wait that long. We have to find a hole-in-the-wall gas station with a rear bathroom and running water.”

Considering the current state of my arm, and the need to be back to one hundred percent now, not later, I don’t argue. In fact, I eye the mirrors, confirm we have no one in sight, and take the country road’s next exit, sure to lead to a hick town and a gas station. “This is a good choice,” she approves, while my cellphone buzzes in my pocket with a message.

I turn us down a road and follow the sign leading to some small town a mile up the road, pulling out my phone to glance at the message: Divert. Airport compromised.

Damn it, I think, handing my phone to Amanda to show her the message. Her reaction is that of the agent I’ve always known her to be: unaffected and logical. “What’s the backup plan?”

“Just outside of Vegas, where airstrips are like gas stations, and we’ll be hard to find.”

“And nine hours on the road,” she says, glancing at her watch. “It’s two now. We’ll be lucky if we make it by midnight by the time we get you stitched up.”

We enter the town and just as expected, we’re immediately greeted by an off-brand gas station. I pull into the driveway and around to the back, and predictably discover a rear, outdoor bathroom. I park in front of the door, leaving Amanda just enough room to exit. “Is that cat going to be okay in here?”

She glances over her shoulder. “She’s asleep and as you can tell, not a problem.”

“Yet,” I say, opening my door.

“Ever,” she calls out, meeting me at the bathroom door with her medical bag.

I open the bathroom door, inspect the tiny, dirty hole-in-the-wall, and motion her inside.

She crinkles her nose. “Oh the joy this is going to be,” she says, walking inside.

I follow, shutting us inside the tiny box of a bathroom with an old toilet and sink, and not much more.

Amanda drops her bag on the ground. “Get undressed,” she orders, squatting down to unzip it.

“Never have I been able to refuse your order to undress,” I say, shrugging out of my jacket, while Amanda rolls out a small piece of plastic on the floor and sets up a medical station, complete with scissors, needle and thread, and a few small bottles of some sort.

I toss the jacket over the top of a trashcan, the stickiness of blood clinging to my chest and arm, watching her work. “How old were you when you became a doctor again?” I ask, removing my shoulder holsters. “Twenty-two?”

“Twenty,” she says, threading a needle. “Your shirt is soaked but you don’t seem to be bleeding much anymore. Take off the shirt but keep the belt in place.”

“Twenty is young,” I say, pulling the shirt over my head, and not without pain, before tossing it on top of my jacket. “How high is your IQ?”

“High enough to stitch you up in this crappy bathroom,” she says, pointing. “Sit.”

I lower the toilet lid and get as comfortable as a man can get when he’s about to have a needle rammed through his skin. Amanda sets the needle down, pulls on gloves, and stands in front of me to inspect my wound. I resist the urge to settle my hands on her hips, firmly pressing them to my knees. “The good news,” she says, after a moment, her fingers pressing on the edges of the wound, “is that the bullet didn’t go straight through your arm. It went down the side of your arm and it didn’t hit muscle.”

“The bad news?”

“It left a deep, long gash. It’s going to need a lot of stitches and it’s not going to feel good now or later. But”—she squats down and stands again, a syringe with a needle in her hand—“I’m prepared. This will numb you up.”

She moves toward my arm and I catch her wrist. “You aren’t sticking that in me.”

“It’s to numb it up. I promise you. You want me to numb it.”

“You aren’t sticking me with that, Amanda.”

Her eyes darken and narrow. “Because you think I’m going to poison you.”

“You are the Poison Princess,” I say, suddenly back in time, remembering more than a few people I saw her poison. Remembering that I’m her enemy.

She shuts her eyes, the lines of her face tightening. “Fine.” She drops the syringe on the ground. “Suffer.”

She pulls away from me and squats back down, returning this time with a threaded needle. “Leave the belt on until I’m done.”

“You’re going to make this hurt, aren’t you?”

“It’s a needle and you aren’t numbed up. I don’t care what kind of tough guy you think you are, it’s going to hurt like a bitch.” She moves toward me. “I suggest you prepare yourself,” she warns. “On three. One. Two—” She sticks the needle in me, and pain radiates down my arm. I’ve only just recovered when she repeats the process and I grab her hips, holding onto her, my head lowering to her side.

“How many stitches?” I ask.

“Twenty at least,” she says.

“Fuck.”

“I can still—”

“Just finish.”

And she does. She jabs that damn needle in me over and over, until finally she releases the belt, but I don’t release her. I’m still fighting the pain radiating all the way down my spine. “I was always the Poison Princess to you, wasn’t I?”

I look up at her, and the firestorm of past and present that passes between us in that moment overrides the pain. I stand up, the fingers of my good hand tunneling into her hair, our lips close, breath mingling together. “You were my kind of poison.”

“Don’t kiss me,” she whispers a moment before I would do just that. “It changes nothing.”

My mouth closes down on hers and it’s not just me kissing her. We’re crazy-hot kissing, and her fingers are in my hair, that firestorm of moments before exploding between us. “Do you taste how much I hate you?” she demands. “Do you taste it?”

“I don’t taste hate,” I tell her. “I taste you and it’s been too damn long since I tasted you.”

“Then try again,” she hisses, our lips colliding, and the eruption between us repeats all over again. I press her against the wall, my hand sliding under her shirt, molding her closer, but suddenly she is pushing me back, tearing her mouth from mine. “Stop. Stop, Seth.” Her breathing rasps heavily. “I cannot be this confused again. I can’t do it.”

“Confused,” I repeat. “Again.”

“Yes. Confused again.”

“You want to kill me or you don’t,” I say. “It’s not that difficult of a decision.”

“Spoken like the true Assassin.” She shoves at my chest. “Clean your arm up in the sink.” She twists away from me and I press my hands to the wall, fighting the urge to grab her, pull her back, and demand every fucking answer I don’t have. But where fucking can be fast, those questions and answers will not.

I straighten and walk to the sink, turning on the water and scrubbing up, aware of Amanda packing up her bag. By the time I’m drying off, she’s standing next to me, and without saying a word, she shoves a bandage on my arm and then tapes it up. Almost as if she wants me to live and not die. And I almost want her to live and not die.

She backs away from me and reaches into her bag, pulling out a T-shirt. “I grabbed this for you back in my condo. An extra-large 49ers shirt.” She tosses it at me and I catch it, disliking the grind of possessiveness stirring inside me for a woman I hunted with the intent to kill.

And still I ask, “Who does it belong to?”

“Me and my vibrator,” she says, sliding her bag onto her shoulder. “It’s my sleep shirt.” She reaches into her bag again and sets a bottle of water on the sink, and two pill bottles. “Pain killer and antibiotic. If you were smart, and you really want to be fresh to get Franklin, you’d take both and let me drive for a few hours. But since you won’t be smart, I’ll be in the passenger seat of the SUV waiting on you.” And on that note, she exits the bathroom.

Grinding my teeth, I make fast work of pulling on that shirt and my weapons, and because I need a way to conceal them, my leather jacket. By the time I’m done, the adrenaline and high of wanting Amanda is gone, and the throbbing in my arm is not only back, it’s more like hammering. I glance at the bottles on the sink and Amanda’s words replay in my mind. I was always the Poison Princess to you, wasn’t I?

She was, but she was my Poison Princess. Right now, I don’t know what she is but right. I pick up the bottles, take one of each of the pills, and then exit the bathroom.

Stopping at the passenger door, I open it. “You drive an hour and I’ll take over.” I hand her the key.

She doesn’t say a word. She just takes the key and scoots over into the driver’s seat. I climb into the passenger seat and shut the door. And by the time Amanda has the engine started, Julie is already on her lap. “Is that safe?” I ask as she pulls us onto the road. “Riding with her like that?

“This from a man who’s watched me hang out of a moving car and fire a gun?” She laughs. “I think you’re afraid a little kitty will make you human.”

My mind goes back to the past. To a time when we were Mr. and Mrs. Jones no more than two weeks at that time. We’d just exited a restaurant after enduring dinner with Laura and Brad Davenport, deciding to walk to our apartment, when it had begun to rain lightly. Halfway to our destination, the drizzle became a downpour, but when Amanda ran for shelter, I held her in the rain and kissed her, rain dripping down our faces, into our mouths. And what stood out to me was her genuine and spontaneous laughter as we finished the run home, something I had not heard from her before that moment. Laughter that was just for me, because of me and who we were becoming together. It was also the moment that she, not a cat, made me human again. And for three long years, I’ve wondered what I might have seen differently if that storm, and that moment, had never happened.

I shut my eyes. “Wake me up in an hour.” But I don’t sleep. I listen to sound of the engine, shadows floating in and out of my mind until I suddenly realize the cat is on top of me.

I lift my head to find it curled on my lap and then look at Amanda. “Am I supposed to be able to sleep like this?”

“You’ve been asleep like that for three hours.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“No. I am not fucking kidding you and I didn’t even kill you while you slept. Imagine that. But I am about to pull into a Starbucks and get a caffeine boost before I run us into a ditch.”

I lift my seat, the throb in my arm dull and isolated now as I watch her turn us into a driveway. I consider moving the cat, but the damn thing is so comfortable, I just leave it there, and reach into my pocket to check my messages, to find I have none. “We’re still on track for a flight out of Vegas.” She pulls us into a parking spot outside the coffee shop, and I add, “I’ll drive when we get out of here.”

“Works for me,” she says, picking up Julie, kissing her and then setting her in the bed in the back seat. “And just to be clear. If you ever try to hold my cat hostage, you won’t like the results.” She exits the vehicle.

I’d laugh, but people like Amanda and myself don’t make statements like that lightly. I glance over my shoulder to watch Julie curl up in her bed. Amanda might not have ever loved me, but she loves that damn cat. And that tells me that she isn’t the cold-hearted bitch I’ve considered her for the past three years. What that means is yet to be determined.

After cracking the window a little for Julie, I exit the car, I lock up and meet Amanda at the entrance to Starbucks, holding the door for her. “I’ll meet you at the counter,” she says, heading toward the bathroom.

Deciding that’s not a bad idea, I follow her down the hallway toward the men’s room, and watch as she disappears into the ladies’ room, thinking about that moment three years ago when I’d done the same. And when I exit the men’s room and she’s not in the hallway or at the counter, I consider the idea that she might disappear again, checking the parking lot to ensure the SUV is there. And since I locked it up, and the cat is inside, I’m pretty damn sure Amanda is still here.

Thank you, little Julie.

I return to the counter, order our drinks and pastries, knowing, of course, what Amanda likes, and I’m just about to hunt her down when she appears in front of me. “Did you get that lemon bread I like?”

“Yes,” I say. “I got the lemon bread you like.”

“And a White Chocolate—”

“—Mocha, add hazelnut, with an extra shot,” I supply. “Yes. I got that, too.”

The barista calls out my name and we pick up our drinks. Amanda and I end up standing there at the end of the bar, staring at each other, that push and pull from the gas station bathroom back center stage. We want each other. We hate each other. But where is the love we once claimed for each other? As if she’s heard me ask the question, Amanda cuts her gaze and we walk to the door, exiting and returning to the SUV. I set my coffee down and reach for the ignition, pausing as Amanda says, “That was a familiar façade in there, right? Good practice to catch Franklin. I mean, we did that thing we did in there well three years ago, and we do it well now.”

“A façade of what, Amanda?”

“Us,” she says. “The ultimate lie.”

The ultimate lie.

There it is.

Three years of fuck me and fuck me all over again summarized in three little words that grind through me like that bullet did my arm.

I don’t reply. Not now. But once we’re on that plane, thirty-thousand feet in the air, the façade is over, and the ultimate lie ends, once and for all.

* * *

Amanda and I don’t speak for the next few hours. I drive. She sleeps. We stop once at a gas station. It’s midnight exactly when we arrive at the small airstrip just outside of Vegas where the private plane waits for us, the pilot alerted in advance that we were nearby and that I want to be in the air now, not later.

I park us in the hangar and kill the engine. “Is the plan to kill me when we get in the air?” she asks.

“No. It is not.”

“Unless the agency changes its mind and orders you to.”

“I’m contracted by the agency, but I don’t work for the agency.”

She rotates to look at me. “What? Since when?”

I remain facing forward, my eyes on the stairs leading to the door of the plane. “Three years ago.”

“Why, Seth?”

“The short answer,” I say, looking at her. “Because of you.” I don’t offer anything more. I exit the vehicle, retrieve her mobile lab and the cat’s bag, because why the hell wouldn’t I, and I meet Amanda at the stairs leading to the plane.

“Stay here until I clear the plane,” I say, and I don’t wait for an answer. I head up the stairs and am greeted by the captain as I enter the cabin, the jet identical to the one Amanda and I had traveled in the night we met three years ago.

“We’re good to go?” I ask.

“We can be airborne in fifteen.”

I give him a nod and he heads back to the cockpit, while I turn to find Amanda already standing at the top of the stairs, the cat and her medical bag in tow. Backing up, I give her space to enter, and she does exactly as I expect. She walks down the aisle and doesn’t stop until she’s at the back of the plane, where she buckles Julie’s carrier into a seat and then starts checking for bugs.

I aid her effort and halfway through the process, the engines roar. By the time we complete our search, we’re in a fast taxi and Amanda and I both quickly buckle in, sitting in the lounge area across from each other. Just as we had that first night together. Neither of us look away. We stare at each other through the rough ride down the runway, through the lift-off and shudders of the plane, a new explosion brewing between us, three years coming.

Finally, the engines gear down, softening, and I unbuckle at the same time she does, but we both keep our seats. “The lies stop here.”

“Says the Assassin who didn’t want me to know he was the Assassin.”

“That name has no impact on us.”

Anger roils from her and she leans forward. “I know, Seth.”

“What is it you think you know?”

She laughs without humor and shakes her head. “That call from my mother revealed everything you are.”

I arch a brow. “Everything I am?”

She reaches under her hoodie, and from the location of her hand, seemingly into her bra and pulls out a small silver recording device. “This ends your lies.” She sets it on her armrest and punches the “play” button.

Amanda, a woman’s calm voice says. Listen carefully. There’s a death order on our heads. Mine. Your father’s and yours. Someone in the agency is behind it. We’re going underground and you need to do the same. Ghost protocol. And sweetheart. Seth Cage, the man you’re on assignment with. They call him “the Assassin” in the agency.

The recording ends and I inhale on that damning last sentence that I didn’t expect.

Amanda’s eyes meet mine, accusation in her eyes. “That call you got the night I left, Seth. What were your orders?”

To be continued . . .