Page 11 of Rusty's Command

“You were inside a lava tube?”

“Not by choice.” A flash of irritation crossed her face. “This little menace took off after a mongoose and wouldn’t come back when I called.”

Sounds about right.

His entire neighborhood had been on the receiving end of some of Pickle’s adventures.

“Coming up to an intersection here,” he said. “Which way?”

“Take a left, then follow the coastline.” She leaned forward slightly, scanning the road ahead. “I run this route every morning.”

“The whole way? That’s got to be at least five miles.”

“Yeah, well, usually I don’t have to deal with murderers halfway through my workout.” Her attempt at humor fell flat when her voice caught. “After I got away, an old lady in a Prius gave me a ride to the station. She probably thought I was crazy, covered in dirt and babbling about being chased.”

His mind raced with questions, most of them about her. That barefoot surfer girl he remembered was gone, replaced by a woman who carried herself like a warrior. He forced away the memory of sun-bronzed skin and her tiny red bikini to focus on what mattered now. “Tell me about the men you saw.”

As she took a deep breath, she absently stroked Pickle’s ears. “There were two of them. The one watching the other man dig was huge, maybe six-four, shoulders like a fridge. Had thiselaborate back tattoo, Japanese, I think. With temple scenes and warriors with swords . . .”

Rusty’s gut turned to ice. Yakuza. This situation was no longer just about a woman and her dog stumbling across something they shouldn’t have seen. This was so much worse. His hand brushed over his tactical vest. Soda also had her K9 armor on. But Sienna didn’t have any protection. He would call his Brotherhood team for backup if they weren’t already committed to providing security for the governor’s visit.

“He used the shovel on that poor person,” Sienna said, her voice dropping.

“He’ll answer for that.” The words came out like gravel, heavy with a promise he was absolutely keeping. Tracking cartels through Colombian jungles had taught him exactly what people were capable of. No, not people—fucking monsters. But that darkness didn’t belong here, not on his sacred Hawaiian shores where he’d once believed that the worst thing in life was storm clouds.

He felt her studying him and fought the urge to turn his head. Had recognition finally clicked? The thought made his pulse jump, though he couldn’t say if from hope or dread.

“I heard them first. They were arguing over the digging.” Her lips twisted. “One called the other a ‘lazy prick’.”

Rusty gestured at the stark volcanic terrain around them. “This ancient lava is harder than concrete. They’d need industrial equipment to break through it.”

“I know, but they were digging in a patch of soil.”

Something cold settled in Rusty’s gut. These bastards must have scouted their location to know exactly where to dig.

“Take that left up there.” She gestured at the fork ahead.

In the truck bed, Soda prowled back and forth, muscles coiled tight beneath her coat. Meanwhile, the terrier had finally stopped shaking in Sienna’s arms.

“Did the other man have tattoos too?” he asked.

“Yes. He had a dragon across his back.” Her voice took on that same clinical precision. “And a skull on his chest that was half-destroyed like something had torn the jaw clean off.”

In his experience, witnesses were often hopeless. Trauma scrambled their memories into a mess of maybes and might-haves. But Sienna’s recall was razor-sharp, clinical. Something about her needled at him. The stiff posture, maybe, or how she wore fear like armor. Or her fingers that constantly smoothed Pickle’s fur. Christ, it was just like Hannah’s endless smoothing of cushions when bullshit had spewed from her mouth.

Gone was the wild-haired girl who’d lived for the next wave with a salt-crusted surfboard forever under her arm. This Sienna had touched darkness and suffered some horrors.

He knew only too well what misery did to a person. His heart clenched for her, and he hoped like hell he was wrong.

“That’s quite the eye for detail you have,” he said, fighting the surge of feelings he had no right to have. “What kind of work are you in?”

She gave a soft laugh. “I’m a computer nerd. Cybersecurity. Basically, I hunt for code that doesn’t belong. Like Where’s Wally with malware.”

Woah. He wasn’t expecting that. She didn’t fit his mold of the tech experts he’d worked with. Then again, nothing about her was ordinary or aligned with his memories of her from eighteen years ago.

His mind flashed to that night on the beach under the full moon, her salt-kissed skin, the way she’d?—

Fark. Get your shit together.

---