Page 8 of Every Last Breath

“Maddox,” Gideon said, jump-starting her brain. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s him.” Her voice was a ghost of a whisper. “Nikolai…” His name tasted of bittersweet ash on her tongue and words failed her.

“Your fiancé?” Gideon peered at him.

Her best friend had seen the picture in her locker many, many times, heard the name—first name only—although he didn’t know the whole story. Recognition ignited in his blue eyes.

“Holy shit.” Gideon recoiled with an uncharacteristic crack in his composure. “I thought he was dead.”

The knot twisted. “So did I.”

* * *

Shady Oak, Virginia

3:47 p.m. EDT

Cole stirred to consciousness, his brain swimming in murky water. He opened his eyes.

A blur of golden light flickered like a meteor shower. Maddox’s face floated toward him through the buttery haze of dancing light.

Beautiful.

She knelt, looking up at him, and pressed a palm to his cheek. Solid and warm. So real.

Too real.

His vision came into sharp focus and his brain cleared in a mad rush of blood to his head. He flinched as if struck by a high-voltage cattle prod.

“Maddox.” His voice was raspy. It sounded as if his larynx had been raked over gravel, but it was a wonder he could breathe. The air in the room had turned dense as mud. “You’re real?”

“I could ask you the same.”

Pain slashed through her eyes, faster than lightning splitting the darkness, before it was replaced with a distant emptiness.

He went to reach for her, suddenly that naive twenty-four-year-old fool again, but couldn’t move his wrists and ankles.

Shit. He was bound to a chair. A steel chair that was bolted to the floor.

What the fu—

“I gave you an IV drip of a special cocktail to help combat whatever mickey the Russians used to drug you.” Maddox unscrewed the cap of a water bottle and tipped it to his lips. His Buddha necklace, clean and sparkling, was wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet. “But your tongue probably feels like sandpaper.”

He guzzled the water, eyeing his surroundings. Sunlight filtered through trees into a first-floor window, casting shadows in the left-side corner of the small room. The unfurnished bedroom faced south.

“Better?” She wiped his mouth with her thumb.

Standing, she eased back into the piquant sunlight. Maddox, in the flesh. He took her in with such vivid clarity, his eye sockets burned.

Time had twisted him into a monster while sculpting her into a masterpiece.

Her light-brown skin was smoother, the taper of her waist narrower. A tank top hugged fuller breasts. Those striking eyes, the color of the Bering Sea in winter, were clearer yet deeper.

She was more of everything that’d once brought him to heel. He’d been an eager-to-please puppy who’d have chased after her into highway traffic.

He caught himself staring, the sight of her ripping a tender scab from his heart. She’d nearly killed him once. If he wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t survive her a second time.

“What happened to the Russians?” Best to attack a rattlesnake before it shook its tail. He yanked at the flex-cuffs and sensed someone move behind him. “Why am I restrained?”