Page 113 of Monstrous Urges

I shudder, hugging the towel around myself as I try to catch my breath and slow my racing heart.

What the fuck was that.

My eyes lift to his. “What do you know,” I whisper, shaking.

Kenzo’s chiseled jaw ripples as his teeth grind.

“I know you’re not Annika.”

I swallow, still shaking. “Because she died on this island, at the bridge?”

His head slowly shakes side to side.

“No,” he murmurs.

“How do you know that?”

Kenzo pushes his wet hair back from his face.

“Because I met Annika in Kyoto,” he rasps through clenched teeth. “Five years ago.”

My body stiffens. My brain tries to put together the pieces as I stare at him.

“I—I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either,” he murmurs. “But I do know that?—”

Suddenly, a light flickers in the darkness.

“Fuck,” Kenzo hisses, whipping around. “Get in the water. Now.”

My pulse spikes as he grabs the towel from me and stuffs it into his bag, along with something I didn’t see before that was in the bottom of the boat by his feet.

A gun.

Wordlessly, he zips up the bag, and we slip over the side quietly into the water. The sound of a low boat engine rumbles closer. A light sweeps over the rowboat from the other side of it as we both push ourselves low to the waterline, treading water. Men’s voices quietly talk to one another before they go silent and the light goes out.

The barely audible engine putters away. Kenzo peeks around the side of the rowboat we’re hidden behind. Then he turns to look at me, his face lined with concern.

“Get back to the house,” he hisses. “Now.”

Fear stabs through me. “Why the urgency?”

“Those men on the boat were speaking Russian.”

A creeping sensation skitters over my skin.

“You need to get the fuck back into that fortress of a house, Taylor,” Kenzo growls. “Drazen’s men all speak Serbian. Those weren’t Drazen’s men.”

Holy shit.

“Crush the phone and hide the pieces when you get back,” he says rapidly. “I’ll try to get in touch another way later when I can.” He slips the strap of the bag around his chest and turns to face me, the dim moonlight barely illuminating his sharp features. “What I was going to say before,” he murmurs, “is that Annika Brancovich didn’t die on Drazen Krylov’s island. And I know for damn sure that you’re not her.”

A ghostly chill ripples up my spine.

“Like I said, Taylor,” Kenzo says darkly. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s another you out there.”

I shiver as I step out of the surf back onto the rocky shore. My heart is racing—partly from the black nightmare that was the swim back from the boat. Partly from Kenzo’s ominous warning about the men patrolling the waters off Drazen’s island.