Page 11 of These Rough Waters

“Watch where you are going,” I growl.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, blushing.

“Come on.”

She follows behind. Meek, that’s what I would call her, a meek little deer caught in a trap. I was rarely wrong about people; my adept reading skills didn’t allow mistakes. Mistakes cost lives. My life mostly.

She climbs through the open door I hold for her and settles into the cab of my truck, her small frame swallowed in the large vehicle and then I shut her door and head to the driver’s side, climbing in beside her.

Almost instantly her unique fragrance stuffs itself up my nose, she smelled like honey, and spring, like the rain on a hot day and it’s fucking infuriating.

Silence sits heavily between us as I pull us away from the lodge and head up main street. It was a short journey but fuck, it dragged with her small, nimble frame at my side.

“How’d you get the bruises?” I ask bluntly.

She sucks in a breath, “That’s really none of your business.”

“Someone do that to you?”

“It’s none of your concern,” She bites back.

I pull the truck to a stop in front of the store, “Fine. Get out.”

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” She suddenly snaps, yanking her door open, leaving me shocked and looking after her.

Six

My feet crunch over dead and dried leaves as I make my way through the very small cemetery at the edge of town, the trees surrounding the ancient area all bare and skeletal, clawing towards the grey sky where, as Ruthie had claimed, rain was imminent with the tumble of thunderous clouds sweeping in off the ocean.

Silence settles heavily around me as I draw to a stop at the two headstones, though they were only five years old, the elements were taking hold, moss and dirt clinging to the dark rock. Dropping the supplies, I first sweep away the debris littering the twin sites before I do the usual monthly scrub down of their headstones.

There was no groundkeeper here, just a lonely priest in the small church that lived in a tiny hut in the border of trees. I wasn’t a religious man, never had been but those long months after the loss of my wife and son I found myself within those aging stone walls, knelt and begging for an answer as to why my family had been punished for my deeds.

Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it?

It was my past, my life choices and the blood that stained my hands that had killed Grace and Leo. It was my selfishness and lack of control that had led us to be on that boat that day.

And this was the universe’s way of punishing.

But even when I begged and prayed for answers, I still didn’t believe in God. If there was a God, then he would have taken me. That’s what would have been right after all.

My death, to serve as payment for the many lives the very hands now tending to the graves of his family, had stolen.

Marks. Targets. Contracts. It didn’t matter much.

I was raised to be a killer. A hunter. I loaded my bank account with blood money and settled debts between people that were not mine to settle.

There were hundreds of deaths on my hands.

Brutal, bloody deaths and quiet, quick ones too. I’d killed men barely even legal to drink and men that if my contacts had waited just a year or two, nature would have taken its course and they wouldn’t have had to part with the huge sum of money I used to demand for my services.

But the human race, as a whole, are impatient. Time was an enemy, everything had to be donenow,rather than later, and it’s time that blinds us to the bigger picture.

If I had known time would be taken from me, time with my wife, who I had silently vowed to retire for, time with my son who was growing and becoming a beautiful little boy, then I wouldn’t have spent those last minutes on a damn boat, in a middle of a storm after I’d accepted thatone last contract.

The constant ache in my chest flares painfully, sickness rolling through my stomach enough to hunch me over in front of those gravestones, the names Grace Avery and Leo Avery still right there even after I have closed my eyes.

I’d met Grace after my brother and I decided to set up base here. It was isolated and mostly unheard of and perfect to escape to between missions. He used to come and go, but sincethat day,it’s been less frequent. He was still a big fish in the blood underground organizations and disagreed with my decision to retire after I married Grace and she fell pregnant with our son.

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