There was so much blood. Flowing out of her abdomen, pooling on the gray asphalt. He watched as the denim of his jeans leeched up the blood. Mason desperately wished he could wring out the knee of his pants and put the blood back. Put the pieces of the puzzle that was his Olivia back together.

But it was impossible to do that. The knife had ripped at her flesh so much. So many times. Each cut intended not to kill, but to maim. To put Olivia, and Mason by proxy, through torture. Even putting his hand over her stomach – or what was left – was of absolutely no productive use. Mason swallowed hard against his gag reflex and took Olivia’s small hand in his own. His hand was soaked with her blood.

Around them, the world continued to move, at the worst uncaring, at the least unaware. The back alley, practically empty save for a homeless couple coming down hard off a meth-induced high. They were rocking and arguing with each other about whether or not it would rain that day, and if the rain would be acidic. Pieces of paper – newspaper, sales flyers – fluttered in the wind, fanfare for such a bloody scene.

Horns in the distance. Strangers were yelling. Someone on the front street had called emergency responders. The adrenaline rushing through his veins and his heart pounding inside his ribcage had Mason worrying that they hadn’t called soon enough.

The sound of the sirens barely registered as Olivia’s dark eyes began to dart about. He thought she’d squeezed his hand, but she was shaking so badly from shock, Mason couldn’t have been sure Olivia was responding to him or if she was simply spasming. He reached down, cradling the back of her head with his other hand.

“Olivia! Olivia, querida. Baby… come on. Talk to me. Say something!” Didn’t matter that his voice was straining around tears. Didn’t matter that he would have begged a God – any god, really – he didn’t believe in just to hear her voice.

She opened her mouth to speak, but gagged and coughed up blood. It dribbled down her chin like he’d seen Jack Daniels do years before when she’d first caught him staring at her. Now she was the one staring, but it was as though she were staring through him. Off to somewhere else, fading from this life. He’d seen it so many times before, but on faces with which he wasn’t familiar.

~

Olivia walked out the doors of the hotel and made her way down toward the beach. It had been far too long since she’d last been up north, and Victoria Island was her safe haven. A cocoon away from all the chaos that was her life in the Pacific Northwest. Chaos that revolved predominantly around Mason.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love Mason. Not that she didn’t want to be with him. Especially after they had spent ten years together. But their last fight had been a bruiser, and she needed some time to breathe. They had different lifestyles, she and Mason. If they were going to last, changes needed to be made. It was the type of relationship wherein love was not enough to keep them together.

One more job, Livvie, he would say. One more job. One more run, one more… something. There was always something. Mason had an end game in mind, but had never detailed it to Olivia. Which made her think, sometimes, that maybe he was planning on never getting out. Never retiring.

When you made your living as a killer, though, was there ever really a thing such as retirement?

Kicking off her sandals, Olivia left them behind with hardly a care for retrieving them later as she began picking her way around the rocks, toward the water. A slow release of breath escaped her lips and she closed her eyes when her toes sank into the sand. Still warm from a day of full sun. Moist, but not too much.

What Olivia wanted was a life. The constant madness of parties between jobs and not knowing if he was alive or dead had worked well for her adrenaline-junky twenty something self. Now, though, it didn’t line up with what she wanted or who she was. Some would have said her biological clock had started ticking, but Olivia wasn’t interested in children all that much. She just wanted peace. Quiet. Space to breathe. Time to travel the world for reasons other than hunting down the next mark, the next big job.

And Mason? Well. He was getting up there in age. Not that you could tell looking at him or being around him, but if he continued to keep up with the guys, it wouldn’t be long before he was the one in a hospital bed.

Much like she’d spent most of the last year.

~

Mason refused to let go of her hand. Refused to leave her side as they slid her body onto the board. There were no neck injuries. He reassured them of that over and over again. Just her middle. Just the knife wounds and the blood. All the damn blood.

Dirty mutt bitch. The words replayed on an audio track burned deeply into Mason’s brain. Shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Shouldn’t even be breathing.

He hadn’t been able to stop them. Mason had been in the tattoo studio, getting an update on the latest job. The most recent one he’d told Olivia would be the last. He’d meant it, at least he’d hoped he’d meant it, when he’d made the promise for the umpteenth time. This one would pay off the house. Would set them up for the rest of their lives. They could travel just like they wanted to.

He had, in all actuality, spoken with his boss. A replacement trainee was in place. It was just a matter of finalizing some things. Payment and such. Administrative matters – or so he thought.

The alert on his cell phone was nothing that concerned him at first. He’d sent Olivia shopping for awhile; there was a small, independent book store down the street, and he knew she loved that sort of thing. It would keep her occupied while he took care of business. Mason figured Olivia was simply done and wondering when he would be joining her. He’d promised her lunch at the gastropub in the more populated section of town.

Nothing had prepared him for the video message. There she was, in the back room of what looked like a butcher shop. Strung up. The trainee he’d been working with stood beside Olivia, carving knife in hand, uttering profanities and obscenities to a surprisingly limp Olivia. He wondered if she’d been drugged. Mason had thrown his phone across the room after the first cut. The first whimper that grew into a guttural groan as Olivia tried to swallow back a scream.

Olivia tried to speak again, bringing Mason back to the present, but it came out as a gurgle around the blood in her throat. The EMTs were demanding his attention, then. If he was going to stay by her side, then they needed him to give them information.

“Sir. Sir! We need her name and age at least.”

“Olivia. Olivia Hunt. She’s… god, she’s only thirty three.”

Another gurgling noise came from the board as they moved her onto the stretcher, running now to the back end of the ambulance to load up. Loading his woman into the ambulance. Everything he lived for. His life. Without her… he was lost.

“Sir, you need to let us get her in, then you can come in, too.” The EMT was struggling to keep her patience with him, physically removing Mason’s hand from Olivia’s.

The brief moment when he finally let go of her hand stretched out for an eternity. Mason sucked in a breath, trying to steady himself, trying to quiet the cries and groans building up in his throat. He was such an idiot. Such a goddamn idiot. Buying his way out, finalizing paperwork, had never had anything to do with money or documentation. It had everything to do with exacting a blood payment.

As the EMT nodded his cue, Mason barreled forward into the ambulance, clamoring about for a seat as he grasped Olivia’s hand in his once more. Once her gaze had landed on him, Olivia’s eyes seemed to widen, recognizing him. And then the machines to which they’d managed to connect her began screaming alarm tones.

“She’s crashing! Get the bag and have the paddles on standby.”

“Livvie, baby, please, stay with me. Stay awake!”

~

When he’d come home to the empty apartment, Mason hadn’t known what to do with himself. He hadn’t seen it coming, and for that, he blamed himself. Who else was there to blame, though? Olivia had told him plenty of times that she didn’t necessarily blame him because she continued to make the choice to be with him.

Mason had spent so much time swearing that he would be done soon. Wasted time asking her to wait. Waiting himself for the right moment to finally find a legitimate way of living. The truth remained like rocks in his mouth, though: he didn’t know any other way to live. Didn’t know what to do if he wasn’t running jobs with his crew for the company, doing covert ops with no government affiliation. Because it was all homeland based. It paid good – damn good – and he liked the lifestyle he could afford. Olivia had never held it against him because she, too, had enjoyed it.

In more recent years, though, she’d been voicing her concern. That they couldn’t keep it up. Wouldn’t be long before he wound up dead or in jail. If the crew was caught, they were left to fend for themselves in the legal system. Getting caught meant you’d failed at your job.

They both knew Mason’s death would be the lesser of the two evils. Being in jail would be an existence neither could bring themselves to even consider. Mason understood her concern. Knew she had every reason for pushing him to get out of it. He was just too damn scared to try anything else. Scared of the unknown.

Now, though, the apartment was empty. Not of possessions, but of the one thing he wanted most and didn’t know how to get back. What he had to do and where he had to go wasn’t entirely a mystery. Whether or not she would have wanted him to do it, though, was another matter entirely. He was unemployed now. With a fat bank account. No one with whom he’d really care to share it, either, now that she was gone.

He just wanted Olivia.

Mason stared at the bottle, peeling off the label with an almost nonexistent thumbnail. She would’ve had a fit, knowing he was biting his nails so badly. The bottle seemed to stare back at him. Cold comfort.

~

At the hospital, he was forced to leave her side as they rushed Olivia back to work on her in the operating room. The waiting room became his own personal version of hell. Mason couldn’t stand the constant eyes on him as other family members of other patients waited for news on their loved ones. But who would look away from a crazed man in baggy, blood-stained clothing who was pacing and muttering prayers to himself in a rapid fire mix of Spanish and English?

His mother would have been impressed at the number of prayers he’d managed to remember. Years of Catholic school tuition hadn’t been a complete waste. The rest of his education had, perhaps, been a bit wasted, but he’d picked up valuable skills in that school. Blending in where he didn’t belong, for example. Blending in wasn’t entirely necessary here, though. You were one of many who were desperately praying for their loved ones. If Mason had a microphone for his prayers, he would have used it just so his would be heard first.

In a world where justice existed, Mason would have been the one back there in the operating room. Mason should have been the one on the table. The one whose life was hanging in the balance. He’d demanded to be allowed to donate blood directly to Olivia, but she was an O negative. She couldn’t receive his AB positive blood.

There was nothing he could do except continue to pace and pray. He considered going for coffee, but didn’t want to miss the moment there was an update. And it came faster than he’d expected.

Double doors whooshed and softly squeaked open.

“Mr. Lohman? We have news.”

He couldn’t read the doctor’s face, couldn’t decipher any clues as to what the outcome of the surgical team’s efforts had been. Olivia had died twice: once in the ambulance, and then again on the way into the operating room. But the fact that they’d been able to bring her back had to have been a good sign, right?

Mason slowly approached the doctor. Balled his fists at his sides to restrain himself, or else Mason worried he’d wind up shaking the man in the bloody scrubs. He couldn’t help the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, the tight feeling in his chest.

~

The waves were small today, and Olivia was enjoying watching them as they languidly caressed the shoreline. As she strolled along the edge of the water, the wind tugged at her hair and the loose peasant shirt she wore. It was one of those perfect days for being at the beach, as long as you weren’t interested in swimming. Which she wasn’t. Olivia hadn’t worn a swimsuit in a long, long time. Her broomstick skirt whipped about her legs and she tucked some unruly strands of hair behind her ear, gazing out over the horizon.

He would be coming today. Whether or not Olivia had wanted him to – which she did – Mason would be joining her on Victoria Island. He wouldn’t have wanted to wait too long, but she also knew he would have wanted to give her some breathing space. It had been a good deal of time since she’d last seen him, and Olivia wondered if she would even recognize him.

It didn’t take long, either, for her to know when he’d found her. Olivia could sense Mason’s presence, even if she couldn’t see him. It was something that didn’t happen with anyone else. Just one of those things that spoke of their bond, or perhaps more about how long they had been together. Knowing where the other was, without having to actually see or communicate.

“I knew you’d be coming.”

She spun slowly around to look up the beach, full mouth turning up in a smile when she saw him in some khaki pants and a white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. How cliche.

Even so? How sexy.

“You knew, huh?”

Mason took a few steps toward her, keeping his gait slow and measured. To be honest, he was still terrified she was just a figment of his imagination. But as he drew closer, she held her arms out for him. Stride quickening, Mason wrapped his arms about Olivia’s middle, scooping her up and holding her close.

It had been months since anyone had touched her, and Olivia couldn’t help the squeak of satisfaction she felt at being held by Mason again. She pressed her face against his neck, breathing in his scent and relishing the feel of his warm brown skin.

“I missed you.”

Her lips against his neck as she murmured sent shivers down Mason’s spine. Ducking his head, he pressed a soft kiss to Olivia’s neck. She was real, all right. And damn, it felt good.

“I missed you, too.”

Mason kept one arm securely around Olivia’s middle, freeing the other so he could run his fingers through her hair, pressing his forehead to hers. The smile on his face was the first genuine smile in… too long.

“Can we stay here this time? I don’t have to leave?”

Mason nodded as he set her down on the sand, keeping his arms around Olivia’s middle. His Olivia.

“Yeah, babe. You’re staying. And so am I.”

Olivia leaned against Mason, letting his arms tighten about her, securing his hold. Supporting her. Protecting her. Mason had found her. Victoria Island was theirs.

 

 

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