Unintended Target (Unintended Series Book 1) (2 page)

When she graduated, she moved back to Atlanta with her journalism degree under her belt and started out as a copy editor for a local events magazine. Tate got his masters in computer engineering at the same time and snagged a highly competitive job as a software designer for an up-and-coming software development company. It didn’t take long for them to recognize Tate’s brilliance at anything with code, and the promotions seemed to come one after the other.

Things had been so good then. They were both happy, both making money, though she was only making a little and he, more and more as time went by. The photo in her hands had been taken back then, when the world was his for the taking. Before it all fell apart for him with that one twist of fate that had ruined everything—

Stop,
she told herself, shaking off the unpleasant memory. The whole episode had nearly killed Tate, and she didn’t like to dwell on it. It had left him practically suicidal until, finally, this Inverse job came along. When it did, she thought that everything would get better, that things would just go back to normal. But they didn’t. Instead Tate had just slowly disappeared from her life, consumed by making his career work . . .

She brushed his frozen smile with her fingers. Affection and pity and a need for the only person who had ever made her feel like she was a part of something special swelled, finally beating out the aggravation she had been indulging. As she set the frame back on the table, her phone rang.

Speak of the devil
, she thought, smiling as she reached for her cell.

“Hello?”

A deep, tentative voice that did not belong to her brother answered.

* * * * *

It never ceased to amaze him how death could be so close to a person without them sensing it at all. Four hours had passed and she hadn’t noticed a thing. It was dark now, and rain that was turning to sleet ticked steadily on the car, draping him in a curtain of sound as he watched her vague grey shadow float back and forth against the glow of her drawn Roman blinds. He was invisible here, hunkered down across the street behind the tinted windows of his dark Chevy Impala, swathed in the added darkness of the thick oaks lining the neighbor’s yard.

Invisible eyes watching. Waiting.

Watch. Wait.
Simple enough instructions. But more were coming. Out of habit he felt the Glock cradled in his jacket and fleetingly wondered
why
he was watching her, before quickly realizing he didn’t care. He wasn’t paid to wonder.

He was just a hired gun. A temporary fix until the big guns arrived. But, even so . . .

He scanned the yard. The dog was gone. She was completely alone.
It would be, oh, so easy.

But he was being paid to watch. Nothing more.

Her shadow danced incessantly from one end of the room to the other. Apparently the news had her pacing.

What would she do if she knew she was one phone call away from never making a shadow dance again?

TWO

One hundred and two miles an hour. 102.
It was how fast the trooper that called her that night estimated Tate had been driving. One hundred and two, flying down Miami’s I-95, when he plowed into a divider, nearly splitting the car in two. Chloe couldn’t rid herself of that image. It crept into every part of her life—her dreams, while she ate, in the shower. Now it tortured her here, as she stared into the gray, slushy streets of Atlanta from the window of Izzie’s twenty-first floor office. She hadn’t wanted to know the details of the crash that had killed Tate, hadn’t looked at any pictures of the wreckage. But the scene her imagination conjured haunted her just the same, rolling around in her head relentlessly since she got the call two weeks ago.

In these moments she tried to follow Izzie’s advice and think on the things that were good and whole about Tate. But things that started out good and whole in her life had always ended up bad and broken, and so it was with her remembering. When she drifted to the happiest time in their lives, when his programming career was at its height, it inevitably led her to what had come next.

It had started with an argument with the software company he was working for about the rights to a product design and ended in his being fired. For four months Tate laid around his apartment in his underwear, barking at lawyers and fixating on his million-dollar lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed before it even got started, but not before eating up most of his savings. Then the depression set in. One day she went to his place, and he was just gone. No note, no call, nothing. She panicked for a good month before finally accepting he just didn’t want to be found. It was the first time in her life she’d ever felt completely alone. Alone and as if half of her was missing.

Then one day nearly eight months later, he just showed up. For a week he camped out on her sofa, going on and on about how he’d been living in Silicon Valley picking up odd programming jobs, and how he was worth so much more than they were paying him. Just glad to have him back, she eagerly chalked his heartless disappearance up to stress and let herself just be happy that things were going to be normal again. But then he left again, just as suddenly as before, that time for a whole year. The next time she saw him he was curled up in a ball, asleep on her front step one chilly October night, completely wasted and shaking in his own sweat. She took him in, held his head over the toilet, forced him into rehab, and brought him back from the dead. But depression still loomed, and they had both been one frayed strand away from the end of their ropes when Inverse called and changed everything.

A friend of a friend who had once worked with Tate knew he was exceptional and put the head of the Miami investment firm onto him. They had flown Tate down for a couple of interviews and even brought Chloe down in the private jet for wining and dining one weekend. She’d been as impressed as Tate. The offer for the position as the firm’s technology security director was a godsend, and Tate swore it was the lottery ticket he had been waiting for. Even as she’d protested, he’d promised that within a couple of years he would have her so “set up” that she would be able to do her own photography full time or maybe just retire. Whatever she wanted.

But after he moved, he evaporated from her life again. He had only flown back to Atlanta once, and even then he spent the entire weekend on the phone and computer, unable to make the only dinner out they’d planned. That was the last time she’d seen him. She had tried flying to him, but he was always too busy to play host. The gulf between them hurt, and she had routinely waffled between missing him and being furious with him. But the eight-year-old in her had concluded that if her brother had finally found a place to use his amazing talents and achieve the success he’d always craved, she should be happy for him—even if he handled it badly. But now there was no one to be angry with, or to miss. Like everyone else, he was just gone.

Behind her, Izzie ended the heated discussion she had been carrying on by slapping the phone down and promptly lighting a cigarette. “That kid’s the laziest fact-checker I’ve ever seen. He’s going to get me sued if I’m not careful. Caught him quoting a movie star about some resort his agent says he’s never laid eyes on. Third unfounded attribution from this guy in . . .” She stopped, taking in the far-away quality of Chloe’s gaze. “Hey, hon’, you okay?”

Massaging her temples as if erasing the thoughts, Chloe turned from the window. “How many times do I have to tell you those things will kill you?” she nagged, nodding at the cigarette.

Izzie blew out a curl of smoke and shrugged. “It’s my one vice. Besides, you’ve got to go some . . . how.” She stumbled over the last bit, apparently regretting her words. She wrinkled her nose apologetically. “Sorry.”

Chloe dropped onto the black leather couch, drew her knees to her chest and waved off the comment. “It’s okay.” 

Izzie ran her manicured fingers along the smoothed hair gathered in a tight bun at the base of her neck. Narrow black glasses stylishly accented her heart-shaped face. Olive-skinned hands stretched from her shirt cuffs, one of which brought the slender cigarette to her mouth again. She exhaled thoughtfully. “So you really think you’re ready to come back to work?”

Chloe nodded. “It’s too hard being in this city when he’s gone. Too many memories. I actually drove by our old house. The one we lived in with . . . well, the one we lived in before our father left.” With obvious strain she slid her hands over her head, pulled her hair back in a knot and held it there. “I just need to not be here.”

Izzie leaned over her glass desk and crossed her arms. “Come stay with me. You don’t have to be alone. The kids would love it. A perpetual sleepover with Aunt Chloe.”             

Chloe smiled and shook her head. “I can’t. But thanks. Really. It just wouldn’t change anything.”

It wouldn’t stop the memories from coming.
Not the memories of Tate. Not of her dead mother. Not of her father who, after nearly twenty-five years of silence, would be more difficult to connect with than the other two. Tears pooled in Chloe’s well-worn eyes.
Every person who was supposed to give me something to belong to in this world has left me. And all this city does is remind me of that.
She swallowed hard and kept talking. “Besides, I have to get back to my life. The world doesn’t stop turning because of my personal tragedy.”

“You know,” Izzie started, toying distractedly with a pencil, “you could come with me tonight. Might be good for you to be around other people. You’d know some of them. They came to your house—”

“Look, your friends were great, really,” Chloe interrupted gently, “and I appreciate everything your church did—my fridge has never had this much food in it—but, honestly, if God wanted to help me out, it would’ve been great if he’d jumped in before now.” She stopped, hoping she hadn’t insulted her friend. “The best thing for me right now is to get to St. Gideon. It’s only for a couple of weeks,” Chloe continued. “If I’m wrong about needing to be away, there’s no harm done. Either way, the magazine gets its article.”

“I don’t care about the article, Chloe.”

She smiled wistfully at her friend. “I know. But I
really
need you to let me do this. It’s time. I want to go.”

Several moments passed as Izzie absentmindedly tapped ashes into a tray beside her phone while staring into Chloe’s gaze, appraising her. In the end she just nodded.

Ten minutes later, zipping down Peachtree Avenue, Chloe fumbled with the presets on her radio until hitting a Maroon Five tune mid-stream. She turned it up and eased back into her seat. The music eased her tension, and she began making mental preparations for the trip and work ahead of her. Halfway home she realized that for the first time in weeks she had gone almost five minutes without the car crash playing out in her head. And for that small span of time, it had been just the tiniest bit easier to breathe.

* * * * *

Five cars back a beige rental discreetly followed Chloe’s white Honda Civic. The dark-haired driver stared intently at the tail of her car, shuffling between lanes to keep up without being noticed. When his cell rang, he answered, never slowing down as he followed her onto the side street leading home.                           

THREE

Three thousand feet above the earth, Chloe peered out one side of the plane carrying her and two dozen others to the only airport on St. Gideon. From that height, the island resembled aerial photos of the slightly larger St. Lucia or Barbados that one might find plastered on a travel agency’s wall. Like many of the Caribbean islands, St. Gideon was nearly a continent unto itself, managing to squeeze almost every kind of terrain into its mere one hundred twenty square miles. Dark green, rain-forested mountains towered in its center, sloping into lighter green hills and then into the lowlands that stretched into sandy beaches dipping beneath the water’s surface. On one side a large rocky plateau dropped hard and steep, straight into the waiting sea.

Countless inlets made for a jagged natural coastline marked by fishing docks, marinas, and ports. Villages and tourist resorts dotted the entire landscape. The bustling hub of it all was Binghamton, the island capital on the south shore. Though a metropolis by island standards, it boasted a population of a mere twelve thousand.

The moment Chloe stepped out of the plane and onto the tarmac she knew two weeks on St. Gideon wouldn’t be enough. Sizzling sunlight engulfed her. A cool, salty breeze whipped her hair around her face, leaving her both warmed and invigorated after the lengthy flight. She easily navigated the airport’s single terminal and within twenty minutes was in the back of a white-and-black checkered cab driving down Binghamton’s main thoroughfare. The cab had none of the stale, sweaty smells commonly found in its large city counterparts, but instead smelled only of salt and sea and faintly of citrus, owing to the wisps of scented smoke rising from an incense stick balanced on the dash beside Tomas, the cab’s balding, dark-skinned driver. He grinned at her with a large smile that showcased his crooked teeth and, upon learning it was her first trip to the island, enthusiastically became her own private tour guide, pointing out shops, landmarks, restaurants, and must-sees as they bounced down the potholed two-lane road that coursed along the coast.

On her right, Binghamton’s modest skyline scrolled by, primarily consisting of one and two story buildings offering flashes of vibrant pink, yellow, and blue cleanly outlined in stark white trim. The tallest structures were the hotels, a few of them uninteresting copies of sister hotels in every other part of the world, but many designed with a tropical flair. Grand arches. Stucco. Palms lining cobblestone drives. Sea grass and thatch. Tiki-torches. One had attendants in red-and-green tropical print shirts with spotless white pants and spotless white leather shoes to match. Another piped jovial steel-drum
calypso
over its courtyard that drifted into the street and right into Chloe’s cab.

Pedestrians of all colors, shapes and sizes piddled toward their destinations. Some toted chunky shopping bags; others towed children who were laughing and darting around one another. Chloe thought she could make out the locals: those wearing loose, airy cotton clothing, and leather-strapped sandals, flip-flops, or no shoes at all. She put her money on the tourists being the ones sporting plaid shorts and caps, cameras and tennis shoes. Regardless, they all seemed to be smiling, all seemingly content going about their business, satisfied with where they found themselves in the world.
Why can’t that be me?
she wondered. It was more a hope than a lament, and Chloe realized that somehow she was strangely reassured by the sight, by the notion that somewhere, in some person, contentment existed.

Through the opposite windows she gazed on miles of outstretched ocean. Crystalline swells bashed rocky outcroppings and lapped up on brown sugar sand, foamy and wet, delighting the toes of beach-walkers and evoking happy shouts from youngsters filling their plastic pails. At the wide expanse of New Compton Bay, home to several marinas, sails flapped and horns sounded across the slips. Somewhere in the sky above her, gulls squawked.

She pushed her face through the open window to take in the rushing wind. She tasted brine.
Brine laced with freedom
, she thought. This place was everything Atlanta was not. No Tate. No ghosts of a mother beaten down by life or a father who didn’t care enough to try to love her. No well-intentioned friends. No pressure. No nothing. Just . . . new.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she blurted, leaning over the front seat. “Do you know a rental office we could run by?”

He did, and at Ocean Cap Realty, Anna Baptiste, a woman with flawless umber skin and hip-length braided hair helped her cancel her hotel reservation. In English seasoned with more than a little Island Creole, she described Chloe’s rental options. Her mellow words rolled off her tongue, in almost hypnotic fashion.

“Dis one is available for two weeks.”

“Do you have anything that’s available indefinitely?”

She tapped on the computer keyboard. “Well now,” she said, almost surprised, “seems tha’ we do.”

Half an hour later, Chloe left Ocean Cap Realty the proud month-to-month lessee of a seaside cottage just outside Binghamton. It was impulsive. Fiscally irresponsible. A career killer. An impractical departure from the life she owned. And it was perfect.

Not once as she congratulated herself on her perfectly courageous break from reality did she happen to notice the vehicle tailing her three cars back.