Slamming the trunk closed, she moved down the side of the road toward the market. There were no sidewalks here, but considering almost everyone drove mopeds or bicycles it wasn’t really an issue. There was plenty of room for people and vehicles on the road, as well as the occasional pickup trundling along with a bed full of local men bound for some construction project.

She wouldn’t have bought a car except that she had needed to transport large amounts of clay for her sculptures from the post office in town to her house and she didn’t want Jasper clinging to her waist as she zipped around on a moped the way the locals with kids did. There weren’t any other Caucasian children on the island—the non-local population was composed of older people who had retired here, scientists studying the turtle population, and a few musty-looking men Harley suspected were growing weed in the forest.

Jasper, with his blond curls, would have attracted attention and been remembered—two things Harley had always been careful about, especially since moving to the island.

In Paris, it had been easier to blend in and hide in plain sight. But then she’d made the mistake of getting too settled in, of making friends and establishing patterns that could be observed and predicted. Ian Hawke’s men had caught up with her near the flower market, where she’d gone every Wednesday to get fresh flowers for the flat. Even as she’d fought them, struggling to free herself and get back to Jasper, she’d cursed herself for making herself an easy target.

With that in mind, she veered across the street, stopping into the café for a Thai iced coffee, something she hadn’t done in months.

She perched on a stool overlooking the street and watched the world go by. There was a steady stream of mopeds headed inland from the ocean, several bicycles, and a four-wheeler with two skinny, barefoot children sharing the perch behind their father, but no larger vehicles and nothing suspicious. She stayed to see which of the dogs won the battle for the squashed mango—the little one with only one ear, never underestimate the underdog—and then slid to the ground and back out onto the street.

At the market, she took the opposite of her usual route, hitting the fish market first and buying a snapper filet, then stopping by the vegetable stalls for eggplant and cilantro before ending at the spice monger, who also sold cans of coconut milk she would need for fish soup. Once her purchases were snug in her bags, she took the long route back to the main road, circling around the back of the temple as the sun set, keeping her senses on high alert.

But she arrived back at the car without seeing or sensing anything strange. She scanned the road one last time, finding it even quieter than when she’d arrived an hour ago, before sliding into the car and heading for home. The island was beautiful at dusk and the smell of salt water and night flowers opening in the cooler air soothed the stress of navigating the winding pass through the mountain and back down toward the coast.

She passed a few people headed into town, but by the time she reached the dirt road leading to the cottage, the road had been abandoned for miles. Once she shut off the car, there wasn’t a sound aside from the waves rubbing gently against the shore and birds chattering in the palm trees as she passed beneath them.

An hour later, Harley had spicy coconut fish soup simmering on the stove, a beer in hand, and was sitting on the patio, trying not to think about how weirdly quiet the house was without the sounds of Jasper playing in his room or Dom singing along with the record player they’d found in the storage shed.

At least there was still music.

Tonight, she had on an old Eagles album that reminded her of childhood summers with her Aunt Sybil. Back when she was a kid, she and Hannah would swim in the lake all day and spend their evenings around the fire pit with long sticks and a bag of marshmallows, stuffing their faces while Sybil’s music drifted out to them on the porch. They would go to bed with sticky fingers, staring up at the starry sky through the skylight, talking about all the adventures they would have when they were older.

Instead, she and her sister had been ripped apart, and now Hannah was in another corner of the world watching the stars wink on in a different sky, and Harley was alone.

She truly felt alone and was as relaxed as she could be given what the future held. As she tipped her beer back for the last swallow at the bottom, the red truck and the mystery fisherman were far from her nostalgic thoughts.

That’s when he made his move, grabbing her from behind and shoving a needle deep into her neck, proving he was a superior predator.

Harley cried out as her muscles spasmed and her vision flooded black, but there was no one around to hear. No one but the man who grabbed her around her waist, lifting her into the air and carrying her away, leaving the music playing and the soup to burn on the stove.

Chapter Four

Clay

Clay Hart had spent the last two years of his career with the CIA shadowing mercenaries in Afghanistan and keeping watch over the poppy fields the CIA insisted they weren’t harvesting in secret and selling to U.S. drug companies desperately in need of poppy latex. He had learned to blend in, to move about unobserved, and to become part of the shadows until the moment was right to reveal himself.

His superiors had hesitated to send a blue eyed, blond haired operative into the Middle East to “blend in” but Clay had quickly proved that their worries were groundless. He was never made. He never missed his mark. He never failed to get in, get out, get the job done, and do it all without being seen.

But Harley had seen him.

He’d felt her eyes on him as he’d bent over the bed of the truck, wondering what the fuck he was going to do if she decided to come over and say hello. He was a different man than the person she’d known, his heart empty and his soul dark from too much time spent staring into the void, but his face was the same.

She would have recognized him and then he would have had to explain himself. He would have had to come up with a lie that would convince her to drop her guard long enough for him to inject the sedative, and he wasn’t sure he would have been able to pull it off.

He was a master at making lies sound like the truth, but he had never lied to someone he hated the way he hated the woman hidden under the tarp in the bed of his truck.

Clay leaned over, eyeing the lump lying motionless beneath the thick gray plastic before turning back to the moonlit ocean stretching into the distance in all directions. The sedative should keep her knocked out for at least ten hours, more than long enough for the ferry to reach Ko Pha Ngan. From there, they would take his private boat to one of the smallest of the south Thai islands, an unnamed patch of land home to one of the CIA’s inoperative black sites.

Black sites—secret international prisons where the CIA locked away people they didn’t want to attract attention on U.S. soil—were fewer in number than they used to be, but they were still around. This one had closed a year ago but had been left intact, ready for reopening at a moment’s notice. The lights were still on, the water running, and the emergency bunker was stocked with enough canned goods to last a small prison population several months.

He and Harley should be more than comfortable.

Or at least he would be comfortable. Her comfort depended on how quickly she gave him what he wanted.