Page 15 of One Last Stand

Caspian stood by the front of the car, whining.

“I know you’re hungry. Everything is going to be fine.” And somehow he sort of felt it—the sense that things would be . . . maybe not fine, but . . . better than yesterday.

Today he didn’t plan on sitting at his counter in the dark, staring at his cold cocoa, trying just to breathe.

He headed toward the garage door, where Caspian was still whining, although only now did he notice that the dog stood staring away from the door, at the car.

“What? Did we leave something behind? I got your cookie, buddy.”

He set the food bag down on the step and reached for the doorknob.

Caspian growled.

He turned and spotted the dog in the wan light, his fangs pulled back, snarling?—

What?

Then spray—it hit the dog’s face. He yelped, and Shep dropped the shopping bags as a man emerged from the darkness.

The spray hit him too, full in the face. He shouted, hands over his face.

A push, a trip, and he went down. He barely got his hands in front of him before he hit the floor.

Definitely didn’t get his hand underneath the arm that viced his neck or the other that tightened behind it. He struggled, his eyes burning, his shouts cut short?—

And then he went from sorta bad to wretched as darkness closed around him to the sound of Caspian crying.

* * *

It simply looked too suspicious for her to show up for her flight carrying only a toothbrush. London rolled a black sweatshirt, a pair of socks, extra underwear, a few more toiletries, and some leggings into a ball, securing the extra passports and cash inside and putting it all into her go-bag. The sum total of her life, which she’d grabbed from her house the day she’d walked away from the life she loved.

The life she wanted.

She opened the British passport, the edges frayed, a few stamps inside, and stared at the picture. A much younger version of herself, although she still had two years on the passport before it expired. And a name she’d tucked away, hoping to never use it again.

Laney Steele.

Always better to hold on to a piece of truth, something that she could remember.

But Laney was dead, or was trying to be, so she shoved that into her backpack bundle and pulled out a different version, the one she’d used to travel to the United States a year ago, issued by the United States.

This passport readDelaney Brooks. Her given name. Maybe it was time to return to herself, the beginning.

She tucked that into her crossbody bag.

Outside her second-story bedroom—an Airbnb condo rental—the sun had just started to rise, gilding the sound with gold, a frost covering the bare red alder trees in the yard. She’d liked this place—reminded her a bit of the rental cottage that she’d shared with Boo. Although it didn’t have Boo’s company, didn’t have someone to talk to at the end of the day to make her feel less alone, more like a woman with a future.

She’d liked that woman.

Her phone buzzed on the bed and she picked it up. Ziggy, texting her.

Ziggy

Please tell me you’re leaving.

She sighed.

London