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I gave his black woolly head a few pats, but I was too distracted by what I saw behind him to greet him properly.
The light was on in the woodshop.
Kellen was home.
Vlad trotted behind me as I ran across the pasture to the converted barn.
When I stopped outside the door, my heart pounded as I listened to make sure Kellen wasn’t using any power tools. I was always careful not to barge in on him when he was sawing or sanding. He startled easily, thanks to a lifetime spent in survival mode, and I would hate for him to lose a finger because of me.
I was partial to all of his appendages.
The only sounds I heard inside were some clanking and thudding, no heavy machinery, so I knocked on the door and pushed the creaky, old thing open.
I smiled as the sweet scent of sawdust filled my lungs, but the moment my eyes landed on Kellen, I released that breath, as well as my laptop, with a startled gasp.
“Darby!” he snapped, tucking the pistol he’d just pointed at me into the waistband of his jeans before rushing over to apologize. “Sorry. Shite. I didn’t hear ya knock.”
I bent over to pick up my computer, hoping to give myself a second to wipe the terror off my face, but Kellen’s strong, scarred hands beat me to it.
Standing, he brushed the sawdust off my device before returning the laptop and his attention to me. Callous fingers reached up to trace the side of my face as glacial-gray eyes took in the rest of me. It didn’t matter how many years I’d known Kellen or how much we’d been through together; his gaze never failed to send a chill up my spine. It was silent and still. Haunting and haunted.
But what truly froze me to the spot was his appearance. It was as if I’d stepped through that doorway and into a time that I never wanted to experience again.
As a child, Kellen had had the most beautiful crown of loose black curls. To me, it made him look like a handsome fairy prince. But Father Henry hated it. So much so that when Kellen came home with a French braid one day after playing hair salon with me in the woods, Father Henry had beaten him unconscious and shaved his head.
Kellen had kept his hair short after that to prove to everyone that it hadn’t bothered him. That he actually liked it that way. The look became part of his persona—the tough exterior he projected to the world. But when I had returned to Glenshire as an adult, our reunion had reminded him of who he used to be, before the world had made him hard. He hadn’t cut his hair since.
Until now.
I would never forget the way he’d looked the night that I came back. Bulging veins extended up his temples into his black buzz cut. Black beard stubble dusted his clenched jaw. And white skin covered his shaking knuckles as they tightened around my abusive fiancé’s neck. Kellen’s cold gray eyes had bored into mine while the life drained from John’s.
And I was looking into the face of that killer again.
Confused and terrified, I glanced around the converted barn, half-expecting to find myself in a kitchen with John’s lifeless body on the ground next to me. But it wasn’t a flashback, and it wasn’t a dream. Kellen—my Kellen—was gone, and in his place stood a man I hadn’t seen in two and a half years.
Black buzz cut.
Black beard stubble.
Black soul swirling behind ghastly gray eyes.
The Devil of Dublin was back.
Panic exploded through my nervous system, making my hands shake and my heart race as the deadliest man in Ireland reached over my shoulder and pushed the door shut behind me.
The click of the latch made my entire body jump.
I stood, clutching my computer, as Kellen stalked back over to his workbench, where a collection of guns lay scattered on the massive table.
“Kellen, what’s going on?”
“We have to leave. Now.” He didn’t look up as he placed the weapons into a plain black backpack. I knew he kept guns in the house. I just hadn’t known it was that many. “I’m sorry, angel. I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”
Kellen slammed a full magazine into a machine gun, making me jump.
“Sorry for what?” I asked, taking a few shaky steps in his direction. I squeezed my laptop harder to stop my hands from trembling as I mustered the courage to ask, “What’s going on?”
Picking up a shotgun, Kellen cursed and dug through the tool chest behind him until he found a box of ammunition.
