She was right. He should have stayed dead—at least then his past wouldn’t have tracked him down and suddenly put her in danger again.
As soon as he found Damien Gustov, as soon as he ended it, York would walk away from her again, and this time without a trace. Because how else was he supposed to protect her from whatever demons decided to rise from the past to haunt him?
Knowing RJ, she wouldn’t give up until she found him. The woman was as stubborn as her annoying brother Tate, who was laser focused on finding this man Sloan whom he was sure had murdered the woman York and RJ had found in Seattle.
Sophia Randall, RJ’s boss.
Which meant it could have just as easily been RJ, and that thought kept York awake staring at the ceiling or pacing the balcony in Wyatt’s apartment. York had never been so happy to get on a plane to Vegas.
Good thing Coco, aka Coco, his go-to hacker, still knew how to contact the right people. She’d snagged him a new ID. Twenty-four hours in Seattle and by Wednesday he was officially, illegally Mack Jones.
He hadn’t a memory of Vegas, but the place seemed too shiny, too bright, and way too hot, even in October. Tate booked them into a two-bedroom suite with an adjoining room in a downtown hotel—Tate and RJ in the suite, York next door. Apparently, big brother wasn’t about to let RJ out of his sight either.
“This place has a shark tank,” RJ said now as she came down the stairs from her bedroom in the loft upstairs.
“You can stay behind and hit the pool,” Tate said, coming in off the balcony overlooking a banana-shaped pool curled around a large aquarium.
The place smelled slightly of cigarette smoke, and York didn’t want to imagine the parties that had gone down in this place. It made him long for the tiny bedroom at Jethro’s, despite the short amount of time he’d spent there.
Tate wore a suit, so York had purchased a pair of dress pants and a jacket. Although he was grateful for Jethro’s gift of Ace’s clothing, it still felt weird to wear the hand-me-downs, and he needed a suit to keep up with Tate’s suggestion that they should be prepared for anything when they walked into Imagine, Inc.
York knew that Tate was hoping he might walk in and find Sloan eating a turkey sandwich, just waiting, apparently, for Tate to show up and start demanding answers.
Probably not likely, but Tate seemed to believe that if they found Sloan, they’d find Slava, and since York didn’t know where else to start looking for the Russian thug, it sounded like as good a plan as any.
RJ wore a light blue sun dress that did amazing things for her eyes, a pair of flat sandals, her dark hair back in a loose bun, and for a second he wanted to be anywhere but here.
Anywhere else, and someone else, with her.
Mack Jones and Sydney Bristow, starting over. Do you think we’d be happy in a small town like this? Making lasagna for dinner?
Maybe.
Then her blue eyes met his and he had to look away.
“Let’s go,” Tate said.
They had no weapons, but in the middle of the day probably they wouldn’t find trouble, even if they did manage to run into Sloan.
Please. Still, as he held the door open for RJ, “Are you sure you don’t want to stay here?”
The look she gave him shut his mouth.
They took the elevator down—fifteen flights—and headed past the lobby, the smoky casino pit with its dinging slot machines, and out into the heat.
Oh, the heat. It poured over him, and sweat slithered down his back. He rued his long hair, even if he had shaved.
“It’s only two blocks away,” Tate said and quick-walked toward Fourth Street.
He pointed to a building next to the US Bank building, a six-story, all-glass office building across the street from a US government office and a four-story parking ramp.
Please, God, don’t let any of them get hurt.
And funny that the prayer—if that was what it was—even emerged because York had been too embarrassed to talk to God since…well, since he’d realized just how absurd it was that he’d even stepped foot at the altar.
God had to have been laughing at his audacity.
As York entered the cool air of the sleek marble lobby, Jethro’s words threaded through him. Your soul yearned to be clean, to be new. And God, in His mercy, knew it. So, He gave you a clean slate. A fresh start. The opportunity to be the man you wanted to be.
Maybe, someday, he could be again.
Until then, York had unfinished business.
Tate read the lobby information. “Imagine, Inc. is on the fourth floor.” He took the stairs up. York and RJ followed him.
They emerged into an elevator area and a short hallway. Imagine, Inc.’s name and logo—a swash with ocean colors—were affixed to a door at the end.
“Huh,” Tate said. “I thought for sure we’d find an empty building.” He walked down the hall and opened the door.
“And you’d be right,” York said, coming in behind him. Because although the logo hung on a wall behind a built-in reception desk, nothing else remained of a functioning office but some spilled shredded paper in one of the rooms.
Tate headed over to a window in one of the vacant offices and looked out onto the street below, maybe hoping he’d see Sloan slinking away in a moving van.
RJ crouched in front of the shredded paper in the second office, running her fingers through it, picking up some of the bigger pieces. Good luck with that, York almost said, but his darkness didn’t need to bleed out onto her, so he went into the third office, at the end of the hall.
Stared out at the parking garage.
“Maybe they knew we were onto them,” York said.
“You think?” said Tate as he walked out of his room. “Only, how?”
RJ held a couple fragments of paper. “These are financial reports, but they’re too small to piece together.”
Tate made a face, his mouth a grim line, and shook his head. “Let’s get back to the hotel and call Coco. See if she’s been able to ping Sloan’s number.”
Tate had his collar unbuttoned by the time he reached the street. RJ didn’t speak, her gaze far away, as if she might be thinking.
York kept his head down, not sure he shouldn’t just say goodbye to RJ and vanish.
Maybe lure Slava off their trail.
“York, are you okay?” The question came from RJ as she fell in beside him. Tate was ahead, nearly to the light.
“Yeah,” York said.
“No, you’re not. You’ve barely spoken to me since we left Shelly. I don’t know what I did.”
“You didn’t do anything.” He grabbed her elbow as they came up to the light, a weird reflex he didn’t know he possessed. She didn’t shrug away, but he dropped his grip.
She knew how to cross the street, for Pete’s sake.
In fact, maybe he was simply overreacting. After all, she was still here, wasn’t she? Clearly tougher than she looked, and if she knew everything about him before he’d lost his memory and still went looking for him, then certainly…
No. He’d seen his nightmares. And he didn’t know how much of them were true, but they made him want to run from himself, if he could. Despite the screaming in his heart, he couldn’t drag RJ back into the life he’d left.
In fact, he wanted to strangle the other York who’d thought it might be a good idea to follow her to America.