When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) Read Free Page B

a gangster. Nikki was still the man who sent her dad into hiding. A man who ran his own wife into the arms of someone else. A man who never let Shaine live her own life for fear of the shadows, the ever present feeling of them coming for him.
    Them had been Lars all those years.
    Shaine knew if she ever had the chance, Nikki would die by her hand. Every time she shot at coconuts on the beach, she pictured Nikki, even though she’d never seen him. She fired round after round of practice shots at a blank face she didn’t know.
    But Shaine did know, if she ever got in the same room with the old man, the fucker was dead.

5
     
    Lars stood in the kitchen finishing his breakfast. He hadn’t gone back to bed after the phone call, after his brain had been filled with thoughts of Lenore again. A fully packed suitcase sat by the door when Shaine woke up and came out of her room.
    “I’ve got to take a little trip,” he said.
    “So I see,” Shaine said, eyeing the suitcase.
    “Only for a few days.”
    “Does this have to do with the phone call from last night?” No matter how deadly Lars could train her to be with a gun, her bluntness would always have more impact than her bullets.
    “Yes.” He left it at that.
    Shaine brushed away wisps of her tussled hair, evidence of a lousy night’s sleep. Lars put his bowl in the sink. He kept to his early morning ritual of yogurt with granola and thirty minutes of yoga on the beach. A life he never knew he wanted, and now one he felt reluctant to give up, even for a few days. To return to any semblance of his former life would feel like time travel. He hadn’t been back to New York in nineteen years. He knew the place from photos and vague memories. There was none of him there anymore. Seventeen years in the desert dried and withered it away. Now the island breezes kept any thoughts of the East Coast at bay.
    “I want to go with you,” Shaine said.
    “No. Not this time.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I have things to do.”
    “A job?”
    Lars turned away from her steady gaze. “It’s not important why I’m going.”
    “Look,” Shaine said, leaning against the counter. “Why am I going through all this training if I’m not going to use it? At least let me see you at work. I can help you, be your backup.”
    “Okay, first off, your training is for your self-defense, not to make you a replacement for me. It’s no life for you. Second, do you have any idea how cold it is in New England in February?”
    A sly way to change the subject, and also state a truth. Shaine had lived her whole life in the Southwest, had never seen snow, never suffered through freezing rain or sleet in the gutters. Even Lars knew his blood had thinned over the years. His first stop off the plane would be to buy a winter coat. He’d packed the only long sleeve T-shirt he owned and a pair of faded old sweatshirts. Beyond those, he was unprepared for winter.
    “I want to see where my mom and dad lived. I want to try to have some kind of connection to them.” She didn’t mention anything about wanting Nikki dead. “Besides,” she continued, “you’re just going to leave me here? We’ve got people breaking in, who knows what will happen?”
    Lars thought for a moment. He admitted to himself he’d thought it might be irresponsible to leave her alone. He’d sworn his life to protect her, but last night’s intruder proved even in their jungle outpost on the least traveled island in Hawaii, she wasn’t completely safe. And he knew deep down, if he didn’t want her to come, he’d have left before she woke up.
    “Okay. But no bitching when it gets cold.”
     
    They got off the plane at JFK to a grey sky, temperatures hovering above freezing, a steady wind from the East.
    They’d changed planes in San Francisco and again in Denver. The last second tickets were expensive and inconvenient, but they had arrived—Lars to a home he’d thought was gone forever and Shaine to a home that could have