Destiny Mine (Tormentor Mine #3)(49)

My stomach pitches precipitously. Given Peter’s note, there’s only one reason why I would suddenly cease to be of interest to both the Feds and Peter’s hires.

No. I slam the door on that terrifying thought.

Peter is not dead or captured.

He can’t be.

I close my eyes and force myself to take slow, deep breaths. One night doesn’t make a pattern, and there’s every chance that when I wake up in the morning to go to work—at this point, less than five hours from now—the Feds will be circling my block in their gray sedan.

I just have to believe it.





But the Feds aren’t there when I drive to work, and as hard as I try, I can’t figure out if I’m being watched by anyone at all.

I go through my day in a state of barely suppressed panic. Fortunately, all I have today are patient appointments, and since we’re double-booked, I don’t have much time to think. I just rush from patient to patient, performing examinations, writing birth control prescriptions, and discussing prenatal care—all the while reminding myself to keep breathing, to stay calm and ignore the fact that the Feds are gone.

That for the first time since my return, I’m on my own.

Just as I’m about to head home, Phil, our guitarist, calls to inform me about an upcoming performance, and I impulsively ask if he wants to round up the guys and go out for a drink. It’s a Tuesday night and I have both a full workday and a clinic shift tomorrow, but I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts.

To my relief, Phil agrees, and we meet at a bar in Uptown Chicago. Only Rory is able to join us—Simon is attending a local book signing—but after we each order a beer, we settle into the same comfortable dynamic as always, with Phil launching into his weekly tour persuasion speech.

“Don’t you ever want to just chuck it all?” he says, waving his beer around. “To get something more out of life? Something invigorating and exciting?”

“Dude, you sound like an infomercial,” Rory tells him, and we all laugh. I can hear the desperate edge in my laughter, but to my relief, I seem to be the only one. My bandmates are oblivious to my growing turmoil, bantering and carrying on as though the world isn’t ending.

As though it’s just another Tuesday night.

And for them, it is—the kind of normal, predictable Tuesday night that Phil wants to escape. The kind I haven’t had in a long time, because from the moment I met Peter, nothing about my life has been either normal or predictable.

I wonder what Phil would think if he learned about that—about how my husband’s killer forced me to “chuck it all” by keeping me captive in Japan. Would he find my reluctant romance with an assassin exciting? Invigorating in some twisted way?

This outing is meant to be a distraction from my anxiety-riddled thoughts, but I can’t stop thinking about Peter, and I find my eyes wandering from one person to another, looking for that one guy who doesn’t fit… for any clue that I’m still of interest to the Feds.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Rory asks, noticing my persistent rubbernecking.

I force myself to smile and stop looking around like an idiot. “No, sorry. Just thought I saw an old friend.”

Phil immediately perks up. “Ooh, an old friend. Of the male or female variety? Because I have to say, that Marsha friend of yours is muah!” He dramatically kisses the tips of his fingers, and we all laugh again.

Marsha, Andy, and Tonya came to one of our performances a couple of weeks ago, and we all went out afterward. Naturally, Marsha hit it off with my bandmates, as she always does with men.

One of these days, I’d love to meet a guy who doesn’t fall head over heels for her blond bombshell looks—or at least doesn’t try to get into her pants right away.

“Your Tonya is not too bad either,” Rory says when the laughter partially dies down. “Is she single?”

I grin. “Yep, pretty sure.” I don’t know the young nurse that well, but I’m almost certain she doesn’t have a boyfriend—or if she does, he’s fine with her partying with Marsha from dusk ’till dawn.

“Dude, you sure you don’t want the redhead?” Phil says with a straight face. “Just think of how pretty your kids would be. Carrot tops galore.”

“Oh, fuck off. You’re just jealous I still have this.” Rory fluffs up his dramatic mane, and I nearly choke on my beer as Phil instinctively touches his receding hairline before flipping Rory the bird.

“That’s enough, you guys,” I gasp out when I manage to stop laughing. “Andy is taken in any case, and—”

I freeze, the words dying in my throat as I notice the man coming up behind Phil.

I blink, unable to believe my eyes, but the apparition doesn’t go away.

Instead, his sculpted lips curve in a magnetic smile. “Hello, Sara,” he says in the deep, faintly accented voice that haunts my dreams. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”





41





Peter



Sara’s heart-shaped face leaches of all color. She doesn’t look like she’ll be able to speak any time soon, so I turn to the two men gaping at me.

“Peter Garin,” I say, using my new identity, and extend my hand. “And you two are?”