Calculated Vendetta by Jodie Bailey

Author:Jodie Bailey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Casey held her breath for a beat, the muggy scent of an early Carolina near dawn perfumed with dew and damp leaves. She let her eyes slip closed, exhaling slowly and reveling in the soft air on her arms. Fitting the notch of the arrow into the bowstring, she raised it as one with her great-grandfather’s bow. Engaging the muscles in her back, she drew the string until it touched the corner of her mouth and ignored the twinge in her shoulder. She sighted the target tacked to a hay bale across the clearing and slackened the hold in her fingers, letting the arrow fly, not releasing her stance until the arrow pierced the target slightly to the left of center.

Lowering the bow, she evaluated her aim, reset another arrow and shot again, this time landing closer to the bull’s-eye.

A smile tipped her mouth and, for the first time in days, she truly believed the world wasn’t fully evil. This was where she felt the most at peace. This was what her mind had been aching for since she’d first spotted Travis in the restaurant. The one thing she was good at. The one thing that never let her down. This quiet moment before the day started, with her bow and her God.

Of course, this peace couldn’t last long. She’d retrieved the old bow from the storage room and slipped out of the house early this morning, tiptoeing around the kitchen table where Travis slept with his head resting on one sprawled arm, dead to the world from exhaustion.

After he walked out last night, leaving his pain hanging in the air, she’d determined to wait for him but had succumbed to the kind of sleep she hadn’t had in days. Home did this to her. And learning even a shadow of his truth and opening herself to her own had left a peace inside her she hadn’t even known she was seeking.

Now, in a clearing in the trees at the back of the yard, she found the one place she knew she’d be able to grab a little bit of solitude, even if it was short-lived. Sooner or later, she’d have to return to a world flying apart.

It felt as if she had been in continuous contact with people for weeks, tugged in fifteen different directions. Not even left alone to sleep in her own apartment, dragged away from civilization on a whim... Sure, it had been only a few days, but the pressure bore down and left her wanting to burrow into a hole, not be forced into socialization.

She needed time alone to process the cascade of information and emotions that had poured over her the past few days. Needed everybody to stop hovering over her.

Well, all of it stopped tonight. Tonight, she returned to her own apartment, danger or not. She was tired of running.

And after work, she’d go to the hospital to see Deacon one more time. Casey had debated what to say, but since

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