The Espionage Effect(4)

When she transgresses, will she be forgiven?

Will she be loved?

A warm hand covered mine, drawing my attention back. I turned and stared at Anna. Her image blurred through tears I hadn’t felt coming.

“Dev, it’s okay, you know. To talk about it.” Typically boisterous Anna had transformed into a calm pillar of strength.

On a slow exhale, I gave her a slight headshake, leaned closer, and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “No, I’m good.” Another comfortable lie. My gaze floated back to the happy girls. “Do I envy them? No question. My heart hurts to see their innocence and know there’s evil out there watching them, waiting for the right opportunity to snatch them from their bright lives to color them dark.”

She nudged me and gave me a pointed look. “Anytime. I’m here anytime you need me. I know I’ve said it before, but use me. Sounding board, counselor, friend…avenger. Whatever you need, never hesitate to come to me.”

I gave her a weak smile. “Thanks. I do like the ‘avenger’ part.”

Every fiber of my being screamed for vengeance for what had been taken from my sister, from me. Too many memories had been buried.

Enough time had gone by for me to move on.

Yet not enough had been done to help me heal.



Through the afternoon, from the cool shade under an enormous beach umbrella, lazy hours had drifted by along with an occasional tiny cotton cloud overhead. We lounged on a blue, canvas queen-sized cushion mere steps from the ocean. Cool mist from breaking waves fanned our faces every so often, forcing me to clean my sunglasses with annoying regularity.

Anna nodded her chin down toward the shoreline, her lips still wrapped around a straw that descended into a green coconut “drinking goblet” that she cradled with both hands. “How many margaritas?”

We’d been playing her invented game between reading and sunbathing. How many margaritas would it take to “do” whatever random guy had the misfortune to walk into our purview. So far, all we’d spotted were pasty men who’d clearly landed on the beach to escape sedentary indoor lives filled with excess calories.

My gaze followed her chin-gesture to land on the male she’d indicated. “Uhhh...ditch the margaritas. Ditch mixed cocktails entirely. I’d need a whole bottle of straight tequila.” With equal parts revulsion and fascination, I stared at the middle-aged man sporting a carpeted chest and greasy comb-over. Nature had given him hair in disproportionate amounts in all the wrong places.

“I dunnooo…” She tapped a nail on her straw, sizing up the quarry as he walked by. “Looks like he’s packing.”

In a slow-motion unavoidable train wreck, my gaze lowered from his furry reddish chest-carpeting to land on an obscenely brief man-kini. “No way that’s real,” I scoffed. “It’s the dimensions of a Red Bull can.”

A silent beat passed. Then another. I pressed my lips together. Then we both burst out laughing.

She shoved my shoulder hard, knocking my upper body over from its pillow-propped position. “Why the hell have we never done this before?”

“Done what? Objectify unappealing men with a crude system of coitus-by-drunkenness?”

She scrunched her face. “Don’t say ‘coitus’ in front of me. It offends my filthy mind.”

“Fine. ‘Fuck.’ Happy?”

Her ruby-glossed lips stretched into a wide smile. “Immensely. And no. This is the most fun we’ve had together in two years at college. You’ve been holding out on me.”

If she only knew.

I settled back under our umbrella’s shade against my perfectly arranged white and blue pillows, pulled my sunglasses atop my head, and turned my Kindle back on with the swipe of an index finger. “Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? Be satisfied I’ve decided to go wild for once.”

A shot glass appeared in my view with clear liquid in it. “Not wild enough if you keep ignoring the beauty around you in favor of an electronic escape. We should institute an unplugged rule.”

When I made no move to accept the shot glass, she shoved it between the lighted page of the tense scene I’d returned to and my face. “Shots before smut.”

“Alcohol dehydra—”

“No.” She leaned closer, dragged her sunglasses down her nose with a curved finger, and narrowed her darkened green eyes at me. “No more commentary about dehydration. In fact, no scientific analysis at all. Drink.”

After bookmarking the page of the “smut” I’d been enthralled by, I put aside the Kindle, pressed the rim of the shot glass to my lips, then tossed back the shot of Anna’s favorite tequila, Patrón Silver. I sucked in a sharp breath as the liquid scorched over the surface of my tongue before blazing a path down my throat.

After I leveled my gaze back down, I stared straight ahead. Then blinked.

A beautiful man walked in from the ocean at the shoreline. Water droplets glistened on his caramel-colored skin like diamonds. Subtle shadows defined the muscles along his arms, broad shoulders, rippling abs…which led toward low-slung board shorts that clung to powerful thighs.

I recognized his face. The man I’d bumped into in the breezeway earlier. Only now the incredible body previously hidden by blue silk and linen had been revealed. Complete with scuba gear resting near his feet and sheathed knife strapped to his calf, he appeared to be a fantasy hero who’d emerged from the sea.