Page 11 of Run for Her Life
“Z, everything okay there?” he asked.
“Yeah. We found Annabelle’s body.” Her voice came out small and shaky. She could sense Aiden watching her. She felt like she was being strip-searched at an airport by the TSA. “Anyway, what’s up?”
“That name you gave me? Viktor Axenov?”
“Yes…”
“I checked with Criminal Enterprises Branch. He’s linked to Red Trigger. A ghost organization. Like a criminal think tank. They sell intelligence, logistics, and strategies to criminals… How the hell do you know this guy?”
Zoe’s mind exploded into a million frantic thoughts. But one blasted through her mind—what had Rachel been involved in?
SEVEN
Jim peered into the scope of his bolt-action rifle. The animal was in sight—a deer, small and stocky with fur glistening from the misty rain that was inborn in the state of Washington. He prepared for the kill.
It was what he’d been taught since he was a child. The first time his father had sauntered with him into a store and bought a gun, he was only twelve. All he had to do was exert pressure with a forefinger to take a life, of an animal who breathed, cried, fed, protected its loved ones, and fought to be born into this world only for its life to be cut short.
His finger hovered. His breath grew ragged. The towering western hemlocks and cedars with gnarly roots and ancient bark roughened over time appeared to lean closer. The distant hum of a bubbling stream grew louder. The low light knifing through the thick canopy darkened.
He could do this. It was just one click. One muscle that had to twitch. But he was frozen, trying to straddle the mind and the heart.
A booming sound punched through the air. A strangled mewling sound. The deer dropped, its body disappearing in the underbrush with a thud.
Jim spun round. Behind him, Lisa stood with her rifle still pointing at the deer and smoke curling out of it. “I was going to take that shot!”
Lisa smirked. “You say that every time. Why do you force it if it isn’t your thing?” Her boots swished through the moss-draped ground and decaying leaves.
“It used to be,” he muttered under his breath. He swung the rifle over his shoulder, feeling the heavier weight of yet another weapon he couldn’t fire. He followed Lisa to the fallen animal. She quickly reported the kill using an app online as he stared around at the crowded woods. A familiar terrain with unpredictable dangers. He felt her gaze on him. “Jim, what is it? This hunting trip was your idea.”
“Yeah, I know.” He kicked at the rocks with his foot. “I just need to dip my toe in the water again. Get used to this feeling.” He grazed the cold rifle that felt like an alien strapped to him. Unlike Lisa, who carried everything on her like an extension, how seamlessly she blended into each role.
And then there was Jim. Never able to fully embrace anything.
“Can you help?” she asked him as she laid the animal on its back. Jim spread its hind legs open and propped them in place. She fished out a knife and too soon the blade was cutting across the sternum in an upward motion.
Blood oozed from its body as an earthy smell filled the air. Steam rose from its cavity. Warm organs meeting a cold morning. “No internal bleeding,” Lisa observed. “The shot was clean. This shouldn’t be that dirty… Are you okay?”
Jim winced. “Yeah.”
“You’re as white as a ghost.”
He gulped. “No… I’m fine.” He could do this. He was the man in this marriage. The husband. He had gone hunting with hisfather since he was a child. In fact,hehad taught Lisa how to hunt.
Then what had gone wrong?
A sudden movement. One of the deer’s legs kicked and its muscles twitched. Jim fell back on his hands, startled, his heart hammering against his ribcage. He should have anticipated that. It was only a reflex—the deer’s body shutting down.
Lisa was immediately all over him, making sure he was all right. He didn’t know what had shaken him more—his wife’s concern or his inadequacy.
The next morning Zoe brushed her teeth vigorously as she stared at her reflection in the mirror.
Another motel with a squeaky bed and the walls reeking of cigarettes. Another window with a view of a throng of trees too thick and leafy for sunlight to penetrate. But it was the same reflection that stared back at her. Her long dark hair, soft features, upturned nose, and eyes filled with chaos.
She could see the million thoughts in her eyes that were busy twisting her brain into all kinds of shapes. She kept brushing her teeth over and over, until foam trickled out of her mouth and dripped down her chin. Is that how everyone saw her? Not as a happy woman but a woman whose emotions were always bubbling and frothing and itching to explode.
No—only Aiden saw that. No wonder he stared at her with a curiosity that was less friendly and more clinical. And now she was stuck with him again.
She bent down over the sink to rinse her mouth, wiping away her concerns about working with him. She could deal with Dr. Aiden Wesley. She had dealt with men twice her size at herunderground fight club. When she stood upright, there was a girl standing behind her.
