Polar Bared by Eve Langlais Page B

innocence.
    He couldn’t believe she’d mustered up the nerve to kiss him. A clumsy, chaste embrace but still, one freely given. One truly enjoyed. A kiss that burned right through all his protective defenses and made him long for something he couldn’t even define.
    It was best they split, she back to her camp with its wanna-be adventurers, him to his deadly existence hunted by both friend and foe.
    She’s better off without me.
    So why did it bother him so much? Why did he want to say fuck it and turn around to chase after her? Drag her back to his lair and take what she offered?
    He didn’t. He kept walking, back to the scene of the shooting, back to the body he’d left behind, looking for answers, but only coming up with more questions.
    He found the body where he left it. Frozen and still very dead. A deeper examination of the shooter didn’t provide any further clues as to his mission or if he was part of a larger group. The human bore no identification, just off-the-rack mishmashed cold weather gear and the rifle.
    In order to keep whomever the dead man might work for guessing, Gene carried the body to the sea edge and tossed it, watching dispassionately as it sank.
    Let those who hired him wonder what happened to the man. Let them worry. Let ’em try again.
    It still nagged at Gene that they’d sent a human. For some reason it just didn’t seem right. He knew it would take more than an amateur to take the Ghost down. So why waste the money? Or had his previous employer sent out an open bounty call? Would every idiot with a gun set out to hunt him? It would at least break the tedium of his day but seriously cut into his plotting-vengeance time. A vengeance he was less and less inclined to follow through with.
    Somewhere along the way, Gene had discovered his anger diminishing. It had started with his encounter with Reid and really snowballed with his confrontation with Boris. A part of him had begun to step back from the dark emotions within to perceive events from another view.
    For so long he’d blamed his former brother soldiers for not trying harder to find him when they escaped. For not rescuing him. When they said they didn’t know he lived, that they would have moved heaven and earth to save him if they’d known, he heard the truth in their words. Saw it in their faces.
    Can I honestly say I would have done any differently than them?
    He didn’t like the answer. But no longer blaming his old friends didn’t mean he was ready to beg for forgiveness and acceptance into their fucking Kumbaya—let’s all love each other—clan. Gene still preferred solitude to the inane chattering of people.
    Pima doesn’t chatter.
    Fuck him, how had his thoughts returned to her? Yes, Vicky might not irritate him with nonstop blabbing, but he did dislike her timid nature. The woman needed to stand up for herself. Predators preyed on the weak, thrived on inaction and demure acceptance. If she wouldn’t protect herself, then she should look into getting someone who would.
    Like me.
    No, not him. He had no use for a human girl afraid of her own shadow. Besides, with him gone, there was no one to make demands of her or frighten her into submission. By her account, her husband was dead, and hopefully she’d prove smart enough to stay away from that kind of abusive dick in the future. She was here alone, safe from harm if she stayed away from hunted polar bears—and coffee. The reminder that someone had tried to harm her returned to nag at him.
    Gene believed her when she said she’d not drugged her own beverage. But if not her, then who, and why? Why would someone want to harm a hair on her cute little head?
    Cute? Ack. Where did that thought come from? He almost gave himself a slap, but he didn’t want to lose his train of thought.
    What if he had it wrong? What if the sleeping agent wasn’t supposed to put her asleep when she went for a walk and let her slip into a cold, painless death? What if someone meant to