Page 25 of Catch Me When I Fall

She tilted her head to the side, patiently waiting.

I sighed. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” I whispered, my throat thick.

If I cried in public one more time…

Pam smiled warmly. “And that’s okay too.”

Then, she put her hands together and stepped back from me, her eyes scanning my figure. “Well, the first thing we need is to get you measured and I can already tell that you have more of a triangle body type, which is amazing for dresses. How do you feel about those?”

“I like dresses,” I told her quietly.

“We’re also going to do a color analysis on you, that okay?”

“I’m up for anything as long as I walk out of here with new clothes,” I said.

She chuckled. “Glad to hear it,” she replied as she clapped her hands. “Okay, let’s get started.”

Four hours later, I walked out of Pam’s shop with more bags than I could handle, plus the biggest smile. After I got the bags into my car, I walked back down the street to Margie’s. There, I sat in a cozy corner booth overlooking the water and ordered a delicious lunch, finally having the freedom to actually enjoy food.

Then, my perfect Saturday went to shit when I found a note taped to my red front door I loved so much.

My hands trembled as the bags slid off my shoulders, falling to the porch with a plop. My body froze as the air in my lungs became trapped, my eyes scanning the note over and over.

Chapter 7

Grayson

The blaring sound of my cell phone ringing made me want to shoot something, and I came close to doing so the fourth time it rang.

“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled, rolling over and snatching it off the hotel nightstand. When my eyes landed on the caller’s name, I contemplated my career choices.

Jake Murphy Calling.

I put the device to my ear. “This better be good; it’s four in the damn morning,” I barked, sitting up on an elbow, my back aching from the workout I’d put myself through only hours before. I was a night owl, always had been, only going to sleep after midnight, sometimes later. I could survive on four to five hours of sleep. That was my normal, but anything less than that made me want to kill a son of a bitch.

“You think I don’t know that?” Jake clipped. “Got a hit on Hale.”

Suddenly, the amount of sleep I got tonight no longer mattered.

I’d been in Portland for over a week, doing everything in my power to find this woman.

She was smart, but I knew at some point, she would slip up.

There was a certain level of skill you had to have to be in my line of work. My team and I were the best for a reason. This was a big country, with millions of people, thousands of cities to hide in, but eventually, I would find her. I’d been doing this for years and, like clockwork, I managed to track down all targets assigned to me within a week.

Never once had my team failed.

If we had, we wouldn’t be able to charge so fucking much.

This week, for some reason, seemed longer than the last. I couldn’t pinpoint why, and it was reason number forty-seven thousand why I couldn’t wait to get this shit over with and put Carrie Hale behind me for good.

When I’d landed in Portland, Jake updated me on how much money Hale was in possession of.

A little over two million.

He was able to hack into her hidden bank account and, aside from the few thousand dollars she’d taken out right when she arrived in Portland, there were no other charges to her account. Like I said, she was fucking smart for using cash majority of the time.

“Talk to me,” I ordered, sitting up and flipping on the lamp.

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