Unfortunately, there was no room for error in their new lives. Severing emotional ties would keep them alive. Time. It would not heal them, but with each passing day it hardened their emotions, leaving them feeling numb.
Jude marked off each day on their calendar until the one with the star finally arrived. It read: fin de journée—End of Day. A knock at the door had them bodychecking each other, desperate to see a different face after six long months.
“Greetings!” Knox smiled as he stepped inside.
Jessica never imagined feeling excited to see Knox. In all respects she hated him. However, by then she would have welcomed the devil himself into their cabin. She loved her brother, but six months alone with him, living in such primitive conditions, tested her already-questionable sanity.
“So I see you haven’t killed each other.”
Jessica and Jude shared knowing smirks. On several occasions they sparred one blow shy of knocking the other one unconscious.
“Did you do your homework?”
“Homework?” Jessica looked at Jude. “You mean there was more than just not killing each other?”
Knox groaned. “God! Can’t you two just do what you’re told for once? We insisted on grief counseling and you refused it. We suggested Jude have all visible tattoos removed, and he refused that. Now you know damn well we asked you to give yourselves a past and plan out your future—think of new professions or new skills you want to acquire—and you’ve not done that either? I’m tempted to put a bullet in each of your heads myself and call it a day!”
“We picked out names.” Jude grinned, eyes wide. He couldn’t feign an ounce of sincerity in his expression.
“Well, thank fuck for that.” Knox took a seat at the kitchen table and pulled a computer out of his bag. “I’m going to go over a shitload of information with you. Our main goal is to keep you safe so if you listen and follow the rules, there shouldn’t ever be a problem. Our second objective is to make sure the discovery and identification of G.A.I.L is never revealed or compromised.”
Jessica and Jude nodded.
“So let’s get started.”
Four hours later they completed their exit training and packed their minimal belongings for the transport to their final destination.
“Got everything?” Knox asked as he finished typing a few things into his computer.
They looked around the small cabin one last time.
“We’re ready,” Jude affirmed.
“Alright, one last thing so they can have your new IDs ready by the time we get there. What’s it going to be? What new names have you chosen?”
The Days looked at each other and grinned.
Chapter Two
Knight
For nine months they were inseparable in the womb. Thirty years, two murders, and fifteen hundred miles later, Jillian Knight rolled down the smoked Escalade window. The pungent stench of manure was no longer detectable inside the city’s limits. Her life was supposed to be a self-induced state of amnesia, only she remembered everything: the therapeutic monotony of her job, Samovar Tea Bar for plum pu-erh and scones with her mom every Saturday morning, and strolling for miles with Jones—the greatest of all Great Danes—along the scenic trails on the high bluffs of Fort Funston overlooking large sand dunes and the rolling waves of the bay.
“What did you tell the realtor?” Jackson Knight asked, drumming his thumb on his leg with the intensity of a smoker in need of nicotine.
Agent Knox McGraw glanced over his shoulder, beady eyes narrowed against the rays of the June sun cutting through the moonroof. “About?”
“Us,” Jackson replied as he pushed his black-framed glasses up his nose.
“Nothing.” Knox shrugged.
“He didn’t ask about the new owners?”
Jillian smirked while she dabbed her pinkie toenail with blood red polish.
“He did, but I told him it was none of his fucking business.” McGraw winked at Jillian as she capped her bottle of polish.
Somewhere over the previous few days and long hours in the SUV, Jillian bonded—a little—with her nemesis, Knox McGraw. They shared a love for driving her brother crazy.
Jackson caught their exchange. “I’m intelligent, not paranoid.”
Jillian laughed. “One word: Luke.” His name tasted equally bitter and sweet as it slid across her lips, the one person who loved her, all of her—the woman, the survivor, the monster. She imagined Luke taking Jones on those long walks. Her boys. That’s what she called them. And now she’d never call them anything ever again because the woman they loved died.
“He snuck up on me.” Jackson rolled down his window as the vehicle turned into the Peaceful Woods townhome development.
“He tapped your shoulder.” She chuckled. Her dear brother was a hair trigger. She’d adopted sarcasm to hide her nerves. Jackson used the Japanese Chokehold to hide his.
“When he sneaked up on me.” Jackson narrowed his eyes at her.
Jillian slipped her feet into her flip-flops, careful not to smudge her shiny wet toenails. “In the grocery store! You had him on his knees, an inch from his life, in under a second.”