“...I can’t use you until your hair is blonde.”

That guy. A wave of nausea rolled through me and I grasped the bathroom counter, leaning forward.

I chose to go to him. I picked him. They asked my name and I told them Brooke.

That was the first name I used. She was the first one.

“You’re gonna die with a needle in your arm...”

The lady who did my hair, because I argued, telling them they needed someone professional to turn hair from black to platinum said to me, “Go to the bus station, buy a ticket, and disappear. They’ll forget about you… Go far.”

She tried to save me, but she hadn’t known.

Hell. I hadn’t known, and now here I was, seeing a stranger in the mirror who was wearing a brand new fucking sweatshirt. In Texas. Go figure.

No more memories. There was no point.

No going back. Only forward, and thinking about that, I might want to get a second sweatshirt, especially if we’d be using it to hide a gun because that meant I’d be wearing this thing everywhere and every day, and holy moly, it’d get stinky.

I was so tired.

I’d trudged to the bathroom, so keeping with the theme, I trudged down the stairs and through the kitch—I stopped as I passed the living room. Jake was sprawled out in the middle of the room, arms and legs akimbo. He was snoring. I felt it vibrating through the floorboards.

Movement caught my attention from the kitchen.

Raize was pouring coffee into a thermos… When did he get a thermos? He turned and grabbed a second thermos. My eyes went wide as he handed one to me, and I sniffed it, smelling the cream he’d added. He took his coffee black, so I knew he’d done it just for me.

“When did you get these?”

He gave me a look but didn’t say a word as he stepped outside.

I couldn’t discern whether that had been a good look or a bad look. It’d just been a look. It had me flabbergasted—and there I went again. Flabbergasted? I did not talk like that, or think like that.

So odd. What a morning already.

Raize got in the truck, and I slid in on the passenger side.

“Those two stayed up until a few hours ago,” he informed me.

I glanced over, sipping my coffee. I would expect him to sound pissed. “You’re not mad about that?”

He pulled out and turned onto the road. “I wouldn’t have allowed it if it didn’t work. Jake figured out that we’re setting everything up, and his job is to either follow Cavers or distract Cavers. I’m guessing he got tired of following him yesterday.”

Jake was a genius.

“Are you hungry?”

I shook my head. “I’m good. Maybe after shooting?”

Asking to wait to eat food until after an errand, that’s what normal people did. I was hoping Raize would let me pretend we were normal this morning. Again.

He nodded. “That’s fine.”

He was going along with it. I was speechless.

He drove us to a legit shooting range.

Noticing my look, he shrugged. “I didn’t have time to scout any land. Do you have your fake?”

I did.

We went inside, and an older guy with very keen eyes had Raize fill out some sort of form. Both of us showed ID, and then we were allowed through a door and into a shooting room. There were a few other guys there, one other woman. She glanced over, saw Raize, and her gaze lingered. She looked him up and down. The guys did the same, but likely for a different reason.

I needed to be honest with myself here, because it had become obvious that I was stupid in denying it.

Raize was hot. More than that, he was gorgeous, and the whole dead-and-cold vibe he gave off somehow accentuated his attractiveness. He was tall, six two and lean. But he was muscled. I’d seen his eight-pack, unfortunately. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But it seemed the men in this room saw what I saw, too—there was more to Raize. Not about the eight-pack. He had the quiet power of a killer, and these guys looked at him as if somewhat and reluctantly impressed.

The woman definitely wanted to fuck him. I was waiting for her to lick her lips.

“Stop looking at them.” Raize was busy setting up our guns.

I snapped my eyes to the front, forgetting how Raize could see everything. He had eyes on the sides of his head and in the back.

“You should have a blind spot, like a freaking car,” I hissed before I stopped myself.

He motioned for me to stand next to him. His next words were soft, and not what I’d been expecting. “You need a comfortable stance. There’ll be kickback after you shoot.”

“Huh?”

“Stance.”

“Stance?”

He didn’t shoot with a stance. He just shot. Sometimes running, sometimes not even looking.

“You need a stance.” He patted the inside of my leg, and I jumped, feeling that touch shoot all the way to my chest. “You’re new to this. Stop fucking around this morning.”

I scowled. “I’m not fucking around.”

It’d been a long time since I’d fucked around.

I’d had a boyfriend when I was a junior in high school, the year my sister was taken. He’d been my escape until I decided to actually escape and start down the path that had brought me here.

“I used to have sex regularly.”

Raize went still. “What are you talking about?”

Oh boy. He didn’t like hearing that from me. That was his motherfucker voice. I hadn’t heard that tone since the motel room when he killed Bronski’s man.

Bronski. I couldn’t suppress my shudder.

I moved, putting my feet in some form of stance so I’d be comfortable for the kickback, but Raize was right. I was fucking around. “I have a list, you know,” I heard myself say.

He’d been reaching for my gun, but stilled once more. “A list?”

I took the gun from him and raised my arms.

“Wait.”

“Huh?”

He slid the gun’s magazine to me. “Load it. Press down, then slide it underneath.”

I did as he said. He pulled out some noise-canceling equipment and eye protective gear and shot me a frown. “You have a sex list?”

“What?”

He handed me the gear. “You said you used to have sex regularly, and then you said you had a list.”

“Oh!” Oh, gosh. That was kinda funny. I bit my lip, not understanding why I was in this mood this morning. “No. Sorry. I meant I have a list. Everyone who’s hurt me or someone I cared about, or done someone wrong—their name goes on it.”

Raize showed me the right way to hold the gun after I put the clip in it. He moved my finger to rest against the frame, moving my right thumb to lock over my left hand. “What’s the point of the list?” he asked.

“They’re people I’m going to destroy if I get the chance.”

His body froze as his eyes shifted to mine. “Where do you have this list?”

“It’s in my head.”

He stepped back, putting my shoulders in the right position. Then he stood behind me, and I could feel his breath against my face. “Am I on the list?”

“No. If you were, I wouldn’t be telling you about it.”

“Who’s on the list?”

My attention went back to the gun. “Am I good to shoot?”