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flow of people exiting the gallery. She silenced the outburst but didn’t apologize. Walking inside with Charlotte following close, she cataloged all the faces she found. Unless her mystery match had lied about his appearance—six-six, dark hair, dark eyes, beard—he hadn’t yet arrived and was late. “I thought I was supposed to be the bad influence in this friendship, but here you are making me disturb the peace. If you get me escorted out of here I can’t promise that I’ll ever forgive you.”
    â€œIs this your not-so-subtle way of asking me to get lost?”
    Was he going to show up at all? Had he somehow gotten a look at her and changed his mind about this whole thing?
    She didn’t want her bride-to-be bestie to be hanging around doling out sympathy once it became undeniably clear that she’d been stood up.
    â€œCharlotte Blue, get lost.” Joey lowered onto a bench but continued to register each new face that crossed the threshold. As more people drifted inside, body heat rose and thickened the air. “I should text him, let him know I’m here...waiting.”
    â€œGood idea.” Charlotte hesitated as Joey opened her pocketbook. “Jo, that’s not your phone.”
    â€œBingo!” Joey whispered sarcastically. “This is a junk phone. Keeps things secure.”
    â€œAre you ever not in federal agent mode?”
    â€œIt’s who I am.” It’s all I am. All I know how to be.
    With a decisive jab, she sent a message.
    I’m in the gallery.
    The phone vibrated in her palm.
    I know you are. You still look good, Jo.
    Adrenaline surged as she mutely stood and clutched the walking stick. Her blind date was supposed to be a stranger, but somehow he knew her...knew to call her Jo .
    Knew how to slip into a room undetected and hide in plain sight.
    But the ability to vanish like a vapor when he didn’t want to be found was only one of Zafir Ahmadi’s exceptional talents.
    Across the gallery, he was physically close but their hearts were galaxies apart. Five years had passed since Zaf had curled her naked body against his, since his voice had penetrated every particle of her, since she’d caught the silky strands of his inky black hair between her lips and come at the command of his touch.
    His image started to blur, as though he was a figment of her most masochistic fantasy. But there was no hallucination to be blamed, just the stinging mist of tears.
    He was real and he was here, though he had no right to be.
    Beside her, Charlotte caught sight of him and was subdued to momentary silence. Zaf had that pupil-flaring, panty-wetting effect on women. “Hey, Joey, is that him? Your date?”
    The tears danced in Joey’s eyes and with a slow blink she set them free. “That’s the man who shot me.”

Chapter 3
    Z af Ahmadi was a hollow man. Selling his soul for the sake of a vendetta had been a necessary trade—one he didn’t resent and wouldn’t apologize for. The end—avenging his cousin Raphael’s murder—would justify the means.
    But Joey should’ve never been caught in the middle of his war. She was his to protect, and he blamed himself for hurting her. Firing his weapon in an Arizona parking garage hadn’t been a mistake, but striking her...loving her...had.
    Tried and convicted as an adult on criminal hacking charges when he was a teenager, trained in the US military at the end of his years-long sentence and unleashed in black ops as an emotionally vacant sharpshooter, he was destined for an isolated, tortured life—but Josephine de la Peña had drawn him toward a utopia he’d never known existed. She was light and color and hope, and he’d screwed up and fallen in love with her.
    Then his gun, his bullet, his error, had sent her to the ground on a blanket of her own blood, and he’d been slung back to the world he was meant for—a world void of