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Back Deception Cove Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-One
  48. Forty-Two
  49. Forty-Three
  50. Forty-Four
  51. Forty-Five
  52. Forty-Six
  53. Forty-Seven
  54. Forty-Eight
  55. Forty-Nine
  56. Fifty
  57. Fifty-One
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Fifty-Seven
  64. Fifty-Eight
  65. Fifty-Nine
  66. Sixty
  67. Sixty-One
  68. Sixty-Two
  69. Sixty-Three
  70. Sixty-Four
  71. Sixty-Five
  72. Sixty-Six
  73. Sixty-Seven
  74. Sixty-Eight
  75. Acknowledgments
  76. Discover More
  77. About the Author
  78. Also by Owen Laukkanen

The widow and her friend were gone now, and Joy wondered if he would regret not acting more assertively. He doubted it. Jess Winslow and her companion were on board a boat, a boat Joy could still see, those lights rocking in the black distance as the vessel bucked the waves.

The boat was headed west. That was all Joy needed to know.

Forty-Two

Forty-Two

Jess would never have told Burke, but she was glad that he’d come. And it wasn’t just that he’d somehow brought Lucy back, or that she suspected she was going to need someone else to shoot back at Kirby Harwood when the time came. It was something else, too, something deeper than all of that.

And that scared her.

Something had changed between them, though Jess wasn’t ready to acknowledge what it was. There was a familiarity now, an unspoken intimacy, and whether it was the events of the day or simply the relief from watching Burke bring Lucy down the dock just then, Jess felt like they’d established something. No longer did she feel like she was fighting alone, like Burke was some guy who happened to share her enemies. If Burke had come this far, stuck around when he could have run, boarded this boat with her, he was all in, just as she was, and even if he’d been that way for a while, now was the first time she could actually feel it. She trusted him.

You trusted Afia. Afia trusted you.

She could feel real life disappearing again. The memories coming back, taking her into the valley again, hunkered in the OP under RPG fire, or out on some routine patrol—tired, hungry, unwashed, on edge—and this time she knew how it ended, all of it.

She was exhausted; that was part of it. She’d gone longer with less sleep in more trying circumstances, sure, plenty of times overseas. But apparently she’d gone soft since she’d come stateside; a couple of days of being hunted and she was pretty well spent. Now she was crashing. The adrenaline was gone, and there was nothing to do. The boat motored forward, into the swell, and she could do nothing but stand at the wheel and drink coffee and wait for the morning to come.

But it wasn’t just fatigue. It was déjà vu. It was that feeling of kinship, partnership, of liking somebody and putting your life in his power, and him putting his life in yours. It was the fear that she would mess this up again, like she’d messed up with Afia and with Ty, and almost with Lucy. That because of her, Burke would get hurt.

He’s a grown man. He chose to be here. If he gets hurt, it’s his own fault.