Page 5 of One Last Stand

* * *

The longer she stayed, the more danger she brought to his doorstep.

Maybe.

Or perhaps she simply couldn’t say goodbye.

But really, how did someone say goodbye to the one person who’d saved her life not only physically but also by bringing to life something long dead inside her. . . .

Something very near to hope.

The ski hill glistened under the fading sunlight, and even at this unusually early start to the season, cars jammed the parking lot. Mostly locals this late in the year, despite being a weekend. London sat in her cold car in the parking lot, wishing she could join everyone on the slopes. The memory of skiing with Shep last year—the rush of heat as they’d flown down the slopes together—in truth, she’d loved him even then.

She just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

Shep returned, looking tired, and shoved his skis onto the roof of his Tahoe.

Of course, he looked amazing. Lean, strong, a hero even if he didn’t know it. He sat and pulled off his ski boots, putting on leather mukluks, then stripped off his jacket to only a thermal shirt that outlined his toned body, still wearing his suspendered ski pants and a stocking cap over his dark hair, the faintest hint of whiskers on his chin.

How cruel was it that the vivid and terribly wonderful memory of his arms around her, of him kissing her, swept through her and took hold?

She should have told him she loved him long, long ago.

As in a decade back, maybe, but for sure a month ago when he’d tried to step over the line of friendship.

Ghosts.Ghosts of past lives stole her future.

Trapping her in the regrets.

“Really, Laney, it’s time.” The voice in her earpiece, the one with a slightly Italian accent, sounded more compassionate than her true personality. Ziggy Mattucci had scared London to her bones the first time she’d met her, but that might have been because Zig had been holding a pugil stick, padded up and facing her in a ten-by-ten ring.

Ready to ring her bell.

So yeah, the softness of her trainer’s voice betrayed how long London had let this final goodbye linger.

“If no one has come after him by now, I think your secret is safe.”

“Which one? The one where I’m supposed to be dead? Or the one where the Russians have found me—how, I have no idea—and will stop at nothing to get their money back? Which one is the one I should be most afraid of, Ziggy? Because in my gut, I know—justknow—that they’ll figure out that I’m alive . . . and then everyone I love will be in danger.”

Love.She drew in her breath at the word.Okay, whatever. Maybe admitting it to Ziggy would be the only way to release this terrible clench in her heart.

Fine.She loved Shep Watson. Mistake number one.

Mistake number two was probably thinking that she could escape and start over.

Again.

“Do whatever you have to do to say goodbye, and I expect you on the next plane to Switzerland?—”

“I already told you, Zig. Those days are over. I’mnotcoming back.” She picked up her necklace, running her thumb along the etchings of the simple paddle pendant she wore around her neck.

“We’ll see.”

Silence.

“Fine.” Ziggy’s voice held a softer edge, turning into her mentor, maybe even a friend. “But youareleaving Anchorage. If they found you there once, they can find you again.”

“We don’t even know who hired?—”

---