man in the impeccable three-piece suit into custody. Would’ve saved a lot more lives.
Including Natalie’s.
But she had made it away from Damien, thanks to some idiot bank robbers, gung-ho SWAT members and a freak biological hazard scare at the local hospital, which required the immediate cremation of all corpses that day.
In other words, chaos on multiple levels. But Natalie had taken the chance and run.
Whatever the reason it had all worked out, she wouldn’t question. She was just glad it had. Just glad she had gotten away from the hell she’d been trapped in. If she had to work under the table, doing low-paying junk jobs for the rest of her life, she would do it. At least she was alive.
Most people would probably think staying completely under the radar even after all this time would be overkill, not that she had ever told anyone about her situation. That after a funeral and burial—even if it had been an empty casket—her husband would accept that she was dead. Wouldn’t be searching for her.
But Natalie would put nothing past the methodical bastard that had systematically controlled her life and tortured her for years. Checking to make sure she wasn’t drawing a paycheck years after she’d been declared dead? She could totally see Damien doing something like that. Then casually strolling through the door of her place of employment the next day.
She should probably move to Nebraska or Missouri where the cost of living wasn’t so high or somewhere that wasn’t SoCal so she wouldn’t have to work so hard. Even the rent on her tiny apartment was ridiculous.
But California was the only place he’d ever said he hated. That he never wanted to step foot in again. Natalie had been praying that was true for six years and, so far, it had been. So she would stay here, even if she was tired. Even if fear was her constant companion. Even if half her salary was spent on sticky notes.
Agreeing to house-sit had been a mistake. The view was nice, as was the coffee machine she used to brew her cup in the mornings. And the linens were at least a three times higher thread count than she was used to. But the unfamiliarity of it all just added to her stress.
More windows to check. Longer bus rides to and from work.
The feeling like eyes were on her.
She’d fought that compulsion so often in the early days. The fear that she would get home and Damien would be there. Or that he was watching her from across the street. Ready to take her back into the hell he’d trapped her in for so long.
The feeling that she was being watched had to be just the unfamiliarity. The exhaustion. She needed sleep.
She wished she could convince herself that was the case.
It was so hard to know. In the early days, she’d so often given in to the panic. Let it dictate all her moves. She tried not to do that anymore, tried instead to make logical decisions based on actual circumstances rather than gut feelings.
Gut feelings couldn’t be trusted. Her gut had told her that marrying Damien was a wise move, that he would provide her a happily-ever-after.
So she didn’t trust her gut to tell her what to do now. Especially when she knew exhaustion was playing such a large factor in everything happening inside her head.
She hoped.
But she stood up and began checking the locks on all the windows and doors once more, despite the sticky notes. Trusting her gut or not, she knew sleep would not be coming. Not tonight. She couldn’t shake the feeling.
Someone was watching out in the dark.
* * *
REN MCCLEMENT STRETCHED his long legs out in front of him in an attempt to get comfortable inside the Dodge Stratus. He was forty-one years old and one of the highest ranked members of Omega Sector, arguably one of the most prestigious law enforcement groups in the world. Hell, he’d created Omega Sector.
He should not be on a damned stakeout.
Any one of his colleagues would tell him the same thing: that there was other important work he could be doing. Although Ren didn’t have an office at either the Critical Response Division HQ in Colorado or in Washington, DC, where the Covert Operations Division was located, at any given time he was a part of a dozen different operations, almost all of them clandestine. He’d advised two separate presidents on operational strategies in both foreign and domestic events.
And he’d been undercover for months at a time in some of the ugliest hellholes on earth—both geographically and situationally. He’d taken the ops nobody else wanted or could do. Stepped up to and over lines no one else was willing to cross in order to get the job done. Deep-cover operations where the line between who you were and the psychopath you pretended to be got pretty blurred.
He had to be able to live with that.
Ren McClement lived in darkness. Not only lived, embraced it. The dark was home for him. The dark was what allowed him to become whoever he needed to be in order to get the job done. To trick the worst of the worst into trusting him so he could make sure they could never harm anyone else again.
And if he sometimes forgot who he really was—the boy who grew up on a ranch in Montana with loving parents and a fierce need to be outdoors—he just considered that an occupational hazard.
If losing the real Ren meant that the world was a safer place, then so be it. He would sacrifice his past childhood so that future childhoods would endure.
But normally stakeouts weren’t part of his world-saving undertakings. Some grunt with much less experience and responsibility would be tasked to watch the very quiet beach house in Santa Barbara and could report back.
Not that there would be much to report.
This was night number five of watching Natalie Freihof inside this damn almost-mansion. Every night she came home late from the bar she’d been partying at, went inside and didn’t come out until the dawn hours.
He had to admit, she was smart. Conscious of keeping a low profile. She kept her head down as she came in and out, always wearing nondescript jeans and a T-shirt, and caught a bus to get wherever she was going so it was much more difficult to follow her.
She went into one office building just after dawn on Mondays through Thursdays, and an entirely different one Fridays through Sundays. Both offices were in the process of being thoroughly investigated by Omega. He imagined at least one of the businesses in them was being used as a shell company of some kind. A front so Natalie could provide resources for her husband. It was just a matter of time before Omega found out exactly what she was doing with which business.
Then some nights she would go to a bar a few miles away. Once more dressed in the jeans and shirt to go from place to place, which proved again how smart she was. If she needed to run, the clothing would allow her to blend in quickly and easily to almost any crowd. The comfortable athletic shoes would allow her to run.
He had no doubts she changed clothes once she was inside the bar for whatever it was she was doing. Meeting other clients or contacts? Or maybe just having a good time. She tended to stay until well after midnight on the nights she was there.
Evidently the dead Mrs. Freihof didn’t require much sleep. Or partying,
