Blackwood Security vs. Baldwin's Shore
As Director of Special Projects for a global security firm, Emmy Black is well acquainted with trouble, but she didn’t expect to run into a proverbial nightmare in small-town Oregon. The place is just hills and trees, right? But a quest to help an injured woman soon leaves Emmy fighting for not only her own survival but the lives of many others too.
When Nine came to Baldwin’s Shore, the former member of a Russian hit squad had two goals: to hide and to heal. But someone else has the same idea, and the consequences threaten to upend Nine’s carefully crafted existence. With the appearance of old friends and enemies as well as a madman intent on provoking a war and—most disturbingly—an unfamiliar feeling that might be love, Nine is left with one burning question: can an assassin ever truly retire?
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Excerpt: Emmy
“I love the chunky yarn.” Bradley hugged a ball of it to his chest. “But how do you knit with it? Do you need giant needles?”
“We keep those, or you can knit using your arms,” the blonde behind the counter told him. Her name badge said Darla, her kaftan said crime against fashion. “I’m running a class at four o’clock tomorrow if you’re interested in learning?”
Bradley turned to me, pleading with his eyes.
“No can do, ace. We were meant to leave an hour ago.”
“Okay, okay. Give me five more minutes to pick out colours, and I’ll have to find a tutorial on the internet.” He beamed at Darla. “Do you know how to use Zoom?”
She gave him a horrified look, and her assistant snorted. Paulo, according to his own diamanté-embellished name badge, but I was starting to think of him as Bradley’s brother from another mother.
“Last time Darla used Zoom, she turned on the cat filter and then she couldn’t turn it off again. I’ve been slowly dragging her into the twenty-first century ever since I started working here, but if you have to plug it in, then it’s best that she delegates the task to me. Apart from the glue gun. She’s excellent with the glue gun.”
Darla picked up the glue gun, aimed it at the dude’s head, pulled an imaginary trigger, and giggled.
“He’s so right. Give me a scrapbook and a pair of scissors any day.”
“But we do have a selection of tutorials on our YouTube channel, filmed by moi. I’m sure we can find the time to make one for arm-knitting.”
Give me strength.
What was I doing in a craft store, you ask? Apart from trying to leave as fast as possible?
Good question.
Bradley, my darling assistant, had spent the past week in Eugene with Felipe, an old friend of his who’d recently opened a clothing boutique. And when the time came to leave, Bradley had decided to hitch a ride back to Virginia on my jet. Which ordinarily wouldn’t have been a problem because we could have driven straight to the airport and been somewhere over Iowa by now. But then Alex, my personal trainer, decided he wanted to fly back with us too, and since he’d lost a bet and been forced to sign up for a half-marathon in Portland, that meant hanging around in Oregon until he’d finished. And then Bradley had heard about the craft store from the masseuse earlier, and now my house was gonna be filled with giant yarn and feathers and glitter and fuck knew what else.
At least, Bradley claimed that he’d only heard about the craft store this morning. Now that I considered matters, he’d been awfully insistent that we all stay in Baldwin’s Shore for an extra night instead of checking in to one of the many five-star hotels in Portland, and I had a sneaking suspicion that if I asked Mack to check his internet search history, the Craft Cabin would be lurking on the list.
Come to think of it, the Portland half-marathon had been Bradley’s idea too. Originally, Alex had signed up to race in Florida last November, but that event had been called off due to a hurricane, and I might have forgotten about the whole dumb wager if Bradley hadn’t announced last week that he’d secured a last-minute entry for the Portland half.
Had he really made Alex run thirteen miles just to engineer himself an extra shopping trip?
Honestly, I wouldn’t have put it past him.
Dammit all to hell.
Excerpt: Nine
Baldwin’s Shore was a town of two halves.
Half the people who lived there were running away from something, and the other half wanted to run but couldn’t.
I was no different.
Living a lie, always looking over my shoulder to see if he had caught up with me yet.
My former boss.
My mentor.
My nemesis.
He was a patient man. A planner. A devil in human form who ruled his cold world with a leaden fist. A psychopath who never forgave or forgot.
Of course, he didn’t get his own hands dirty, not anymore, although perhaps he’d make a special exception for me. After what I’d done. But he’d send his foot soldiers first. Then his son. His beloved daughter. From time to time, I wondered what had become of them. Whether Vik had grown to be as ruthless as his father, whether Nastya had been elevated to queen yet.
We’d been friends once, Nastya and I. But then our paths had diverged, and I’d ended up here. Burrowed into a life that wasn’t mine. The rest of my team dead while I lived on borrowed time.
Bored.
Bitter.
Disciplined.
Ready.
Waiting.
Tomorrow was Sunday, which meant a predawn run, followed by a drive north to the forest in Douglas County for some target practice before work. The hardest part of this new life was training alone. Once, I’d craved solitude, but now I found that the most broken part of me missed those impromptu discussions about weapons over lunch, missed the sparring, missed the rivalry that had pushed me to improve every single day.
My team had been my anchor.
And now instead of being free, I was adrift.
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