He haunted her twenty-four-seven. Awake. Asleep. In the shower. On the computer. He followed her everywhere. Had for the last seven years. Her greatest love. Her biggest regret. And the reason she’d allowed Alexsandr Volkov to catch up to her in Munich to begin with.
Well, one of the reasons. She’d do anything to keep Jay safe. And anything to find her sister. Even if it meant taking on her identity. Yeah, Maya needed to be found and stopped. Then she needed to go to prison. For life.
Seven years. She’d spent seven years looking for her twin. The last two on this God-forsaken hunk of rock, pretending to be Maya while she scoured the darknet looking for signs of her. She’d come close—once or twice—most recently when she’d discovered one of her sister’s programs hacking into a numbered bank account.
An account that had already been targeted and emptied by Jay, the two-point-five billion in arms trafficking money moved to an untraceable location. He would’ve gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for Maya finding her way around his codes to discover the fortune had gone missing.
A fortune that had belonged to Jay’s former boss. Jonas Johnson. The man Maya hid behind. The man she worked for.
The man she killed for.
Leg muscles burning, Becca dug in and powered up the last of the incline, the cliff’s edge beckoning her forward. A final destination she’d often considered going straight over. If the fall didn’t kill her, the frigid water, swift currents, and ice floes below certainly would.
The sparse vegetation thinned even further as the ground leveled, and she sprinted for the finish line. She pulled up short at the last second, skidding to a stop and sending a loose block of ice and snow tumbling over the edge. She didn’t look down as she huffed and puffed, trying to catch her breath.
She couldn’t look down. Heights terrified her. Made her nauseous and dizzy. They always had. Something Jay had teased her about in that sexy voice of his, all the while holding her hand tight in his. A promise he’d keep her safe. No matter how high the climb or how far the fall.
He’d been the rock beneath her feet. Solid. Steady. Sure.
Until Maya had tossed a stick of dynamite between them, and the ground had given way.
The wind continued to push at her back, and despite her winter workout gear, she shivered. One more step, and the guilt and shame she carried would cease to be. Her gaze swept the horizon. Nothing but shades of gray, broken up by the tumbling curl of whitecaps as far as the eye could see.
Cold. Barren. Desolate.
Incapable of sustaining human life.
She could be looking in a mirror and see the same thing.
Her vision blurred. She sniffed, and despite locking down her emotions years ago, she swiped at the corner of her leaky eye. Her memories did this to her. So did thinking about Jay. About what she’d lost. About what Maya had done. To him. To her. To her parents.
If she let herself feel, she’d crack, and she couldn’t. Not yet. Not before she fixed her mistakes. With a sigh, she stepped away from the edge and turned her back on the only exit route she had.
A quick glance at her watch confirmed she had thirty-two minutes to get back to the compound, or she’d lose her privileges for a week. No gym. No outdoor activities. No life-sustaining microwave popcorn slathered in extra butter and coated with salt.
Good thing the way back sloped downhill, even if it meant running into the wind trying to turn her into a corpsicle. She fell into an easy jog. Her earlier sense of urgency burned off by the breakneck sprint to the closest edge of the island, she felt more herself. More Becca than Maya.
Her feet landed sure and light against the hard-packed snow, her resolve solidly back in place. She had a job to do. One job. Find Maya and bring her to justice. After that? She didn’t care what happened to herself. Didn’t care if she remained stuck on this dead piece of land forever.
Jay would be safe and free of the Barrows sisters. Nothing else mattered.
Yep, ever since she’d walked out of the hospital and left Boston at the age of twenty-one, cold, barren, and desolate pretty much summed up her life. Past. Present. And future.
Heads up, Bec. Time to put your game face on.
As she neared the end of the trail, she slowed her momentum until she stopped in front of Nikolai Volkov. Not like she had a choice in the matter. He blocked the path. Tall, broad, dark, no trace of a Russian accent. Her only friend on the island.
Correction—Maya’s only friend on the island.
“Why so glum, love?” More English than Russian due to his West London boarding school upbringing, Nik’s choice of words never failed to make her smile.
“I’m not glum, Nik. My face is frozen, and you’re standing between me, a hot shower, and my Orville Redenbacher’s.” She clasped her hands behind her back, stretching her arms to loosen her shoulders. Forget jumping off a cliff. Sitting in front of a computer for eighteen hours a day would kill her before she ever got the chance to fly free. “Why are you following me?”
He huffed a laugh, and a white cloud drifted between them. “I’m not following you, Maya. Alexsandr wants to meet. He sent me to find you.”
Her turn to huff, she added a derogatory snort to the mix. Thanks to the tracking device implanted next to the rounded edge of her left scapula, Alexsandr knew where she was—always. No finding necessary. All he had to do? Locate the red dot on his map.
Thankfully, it was the only chip she carried. After she’d carved out the last two, he’d had one of his henchmen place the third in a spot she couldn’t reach. Bastard. Then he’d threatened her with a neural implant if she didn’t behave.
