LITMIR.BIZ

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of kids most people would write off—even him, before he’d seen how they opened up to her.

      Aaron squeezed her fingers again. “It makes no difference if I’m in their sights, too—the play is still the same. We stick together.” He followed the line of cars that clogged the city’s streets. “My shoulder’s still healing. Eric didn’t know who else he could trust, and we’d already met.”

      “What are you healing from?”

      “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m perfectly capable of keeping you safe until we meet up with Eric and get the next move all figured out.” He hung a right, one eye on the traffic behind them, watching for a tail.

      “Are you sure you’re okay with being involved? I mean, drop me at the next corner if you want. I won’t be responsible for dragging someone else down with me.” She glanced away, out the window. “Not again.”

      Now, why did she have to go and say that? “I might not be a hero, but at least I’m not a jerk. I’m in this with you, and I have no intention of ditching just because things got hot. The threat is real now.”

      “I know.”

      “Mackenzie, you don’t have to worry. I’m going to stick with you until we know you’re safe. Either Eric will figure out what’s going on or we’ll get you a place to stay. Then you can go back to your life.”

      Back to the Downtown Performing Arts Center, a building filled with kids and laughter from the moment school got out until well after dark. Music had permeated the whole place today—everything from the most somber classical piece to the latest radio hit song. What was it about Mackenzie that she could take a broken-down building and a bunch of kids everyone had written off and infuse them with so much life?

      Aaron needed to know more about why Carosa was after her so he could wrap up this favor and get back to his life. But first he had to lose any possible pursuers, just in case there was someone behind them he hadn’t seen.

      “Why now?”

      Aaron didn’t know if she was talking to him, or if she had even heard what he said. He took a sharp right down an alley and hit the gas. They came out the far side onto another busy main street, and he flipped a quick U-turn to the sound of multiple beeping horns.

      It was as if she didn’t even notice.

      “Why couldn’t this have happened years ago, before I made a life for myself? He shouldn’t have been able to find me. This shouldn’t be happening.”

      Aaron’s chest got tight. “I get that this is a shock, Mackenzie, but it can’t be unprecedented. Can it?”

      She finally looked at him. “Being ready for what is a remote possibility is one thing. Thinking you’re actually going to have to leave the life you love because a group of soldiers is trying to abduct you is something entirely different. I’m done, I won’t ever be safe. He found me this time, he’ll find me again.”

      “So that’s it? You’re going to give yourself up to die?”

      She huffed. “What do you expect me to do? I’m going up against a man who’ll kill me without a second thought. What do I do in the face of that? Hit him with a guitar? Sing him to death?”

      Aaron made a turn onto a major street lined with stores and restaurants. “As entertaining as that would be, you don’t have to worry. It’s why I’m here.”

      “And I get to be the helpless female while the big strong man protects me? Sorry, that doesn’t work for me.”

      He pulled up behind a sky-blue Cadillac at a stoplight. The air conditioning took that moment to stop working, and hot Arizona air filled the cab instead. Great.

      He turned to her. “If you’re going to fight me all the way, maybe you should get out at the next corner. Or you could trust me and I can teach you how to survive.”

      “Like how to shoot a gun?” She shuddered. “I don’t think so.”

      “Then you seriously need my help. Eric wouldn’t have asked me to stick around if he thought you should just give up and die.”

      “It’s his job to make sure I’m safe.”

      The light was still red. Aaron studied her profile, folded in and wound tight again. “You don’t have to be scared.”

      “I’m not worried about dying, but I’m also too much of a realist. Survival is pretty much a pipe dream at this point. This guy will never, ever give up.”

      Something dark flashed in his eyes. “You’re not going to let me help you?”

      She reached for the door handle. Aaron was blocked in, cars behind and in front of him in his lane and the light hadn’t changed.

      “I’m not letting anyone else get killed because of me. I’m doing this alone.”

      * * *

      Mackenzie slammed the door. Aaron jumped out and called her name, but there were no footsteps that followed her. He wasn’t the kind of man who abandoned his truck on the street—even if it was a dump on the inside. It had been torture sitting there chatting as though she was going along with the whole thing while she waited for the right time to make her move.

      She couldn’t trust anyone; that was the bottom line. And there was no way she would put anyone else in danger. Nothing good could come from spending time in an intense situation with a good-looking man who didn’t seem like a bad guy, even if he was occasionally a jerk.

      Mackenzie needed to save her energy for staying alive instead of falling back into her old ways. Sparks, smiles, then a brief touch of the hand, a light kiss...it might as well be a whirlpool that sucked her under, or a riptide that took her back to the kind of person she had no intention of becoming again.

      Mackenzie started down the sidewalk. Traffic streamed past in both directions. It took her a second to get her bearings, but she headed for a bus stop, watching every vehicle that passed for the vans the mercenaries had been driving. When she finally slumped into a seat on a bus, Mackenzie would be able to close her eyes and let herself relax. Buses were anonymous. People left each other alone for the most part, and she would be able to just stare out the window and not think about what her life had become.

      Sometimes she rode the bus all day—through the city, out to the desert, tourist bus trips to the Grand Canyon—wondering what would happen if she never got off. The bus would stop eventually, done for the day. She could disembark and hop another bus...anywhere.

      If you leave, I can’t protect you.

      And yet she had left, which meant WITSEC was going to kick her out of the program for breaking the rules. She was off on her own now, no Eric, no Aaron. Fear churned her stomach, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since lunch. There was no way she’d be able to stomach anything now. Her life was over and she was as good as dead. Staying with Aaron only meant prolonging the inevitable.

      At least this way he would be safe.

      A young mom pushing a toddler in a stroller passed her. Mackenzie returned the woman’s smile. That could never be her. She’d done too much to ever be free of the chains of her past. She would be forever bound by the consequences of the girl she’d been.

      A new life meant leaving behind everything and everyone she had come to love. She should have kept emotion out of it, done her job and gone home at the end of the day to her empty house. Too bad everything about the center kids made her fall in love the minute she looked in their eyes. They might be rough at the corners and some even hard, but they were so full of life and promise.

      Something she didn’t have left.

      Not since she’d testified against the son of a drug lord in a trial that ended with him getting life without parole for double homicide and attempted murder. Then it had all ended four years later in a prison riot. She should have been free because Pedro Carosa was dead. Problem over, except it wasn’t. In the years

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