Page 121 of Hard Luck (Blackstone House)

“Bella? Or Jerry?” She looked a little surprised for a second, but she quickly covered it up. “And I know you don’t write obituaries for a living.”

“Either name works, and I kind of do create obituaries. It wasn’t a total lie.”

“Writing about death and killing people are two very different things.”

“To-may-to, to-mah-to.”

“Are you going to kill me too?” Cole asked.

“Have you lost your fucking mind? I just put myself in the line of fire to save you.”

He had to concede that was true. The woman was crazy. The edge of the blanket touched him, and he shuddered.

“But I’ve seen your face.”

“And the rest of me as well. This isn’t the movies, Cole. If it was, that shitbird would’ve vaulted over the railings without breaking both of his legs, and we’d have settled things with a fistfight.”

“So, what happens now?”

“Now, I head back inside to finish what I started, and you keep well out of the way.”

Yes, she was definitely insane. How had she seemed so normal back in Vegas? On the boat? He’d slept beside her night after night without having the faintest clue she was capable ofthis.

“For a moment, I thought you said you were going to go back inside.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“Do you want to die?”

“I’m not going to waste nearly a decade of training getting killed by a two-bit criminal.”

“A decade of training?”

He should have guessed.

“Yeah, I’m one of those dirty little secrets the United States doesn’t like to talk about. Please don’t repeat that. I don’t want to kill you, but if you try to tell our story on Oprah, I won’t have a choice.”

“Have you ever done that before? Killed a boyfriend?”

She grimaced. “It was a very different scenario.”

What the hell? “So you have?”

Bella led him to the shade of a stand of trees and slumped onto a rock, still wearing the blanket—up close, it smelled gross—with the gun in her lap. He noticed she didn’t take her eyes off the prison building.

“It wasn’t like that,” she said. “I had a different job back then, and the guy had a fair idea of what I did.” She sighed. “That was the problem.”

“Then how was it different?”

For the longest time, Bella didn’t answer the question. Cole considered making a run for it, but they were on an island. Even if he jumped into the sea, Bella was a better swimmer than him.

Finally, she spoke.

“We were both in intelligence at the time. Different areas. He was Middle East; I was Russia. Long story short, he stole information from me, sold it to enemies of the United States, and set me up to take the fall.”

“Are you serious?”

“Nearly all the time. Apparently, it’s one of my many, many faults.”

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