Page 17 of Gold Mine (The Diamond Trilogy 2)
She throws her arms around me. “Hello, Mr. Serious.”
That makes me grin. “Mr. Serious?”
“That’s your superpower. Being serious.”
“You’ve met Liam, and you think I’m the serious one.”
“Well, superpowers run in the family,” she says in a reasonable tone.
God, I love this woman. The words come to me in a swell of affection, and I have to turn away quickly to hide my shock. I don’t love her. I can’t love her. That means this terrifying obsession will never end. It means we’ll be forever locked in a grid of resentment.
“What were you three talking about?” she says, gesturing to my brothers.
“The plan for tonight,” I manage, my voice gruff.
“You got them to agree that it should just be the two of us?”
“I wasn’t exactly giving them a choice.”
“That was a lot of talking for such a simple conversation.”
“Logistics,” I say, which is a lie. We went over that already in the house. We’ll go over it again before tonight. The truth is we were talking about all the ways I would horrify her if she really knew me.
He knows our secrets by now, but we don’t know his.
“Logistics,” I say again. “That’s all. Now onto the more important questions. We’re walking into a dangerous situation tonight, Ms. Frank. Do you know how to shoot?”
“A gun?”
“No, a basketball. Of course a gun.”
She shivers, and I see the memory of last night in her eyes. “No.”
“The logistics are pretty easy. Point and shoot. The question is, can you kill a man?”
CHAPTER TEN
Holly
We make the climb up a winding staircase with crumbly stone steps and a wobbly metal railing. None of that scares me as much as what’s coming next. London goes upstairs for a nap. I have no idea how she can rest with what’s happening tonight. The other men disappear to make plans. Then it’s only me and Elijah behind the house, where a large lemon orchard suffuses the air with a sweet citrus.
Elijah pulls a gun from a harness built into his cargo pants, and I shiver as I realize he’d been armed the whole time we were on the beach. Without any fanfare or warning, he aims at a lemon high in a tree. Pop. I jump at the sound. Yellow rind and juice explode.
“We cleared out the orchard and the rental houses fifty yards out,” he explains, though I’m reading his lips more than hearing him because of the blast. “It’s safe.”
Safe feels like a relative term when he hands me the weapon. The gun feels larger than it looked in his hand and heavier than I expected. It’s a dark silvery color, warm from where he held it. “Shouldn’t there be a safety presentation first? Or a debriefing? Something before me actually shooting this?”
He points to a lemon hanging low. “Go for that one.”
“Is there something easier to start with?”
“I’ll help you.” He puts his arms around me, clasps his hand around my hand. We point at the lemon together. He shows me the sight, and where to aim, but I back away from him.
“Nuh-uh. I’m not ready.”
“Like I said, the mechanics are simple. Point and shoot. The hard part is the mindset.”
I’m holding the gun like it’s a snake coiled to bite me. “What’s the mindset?”
“That you need to be ready to kill. You pick up a gun because you can shoot a man.”
“Or what if my aim gets good enough where I can shoot a tree branch that falls on his head, and that way he doesn’t have to die, and I don’t have to kill him.”
In a smooth motion Elijah comes to stand in front of me. He holds the gun steady so that it’s pointing right at his chest. Even as I yank and pull, it stays right there. I’m afraid to pull any harder or the trigger might go off.
“Go ahead,” he says. “Prove that you can do it. Pull the trigger.”
“Are you insane? Stop it.”
His green eyes glitter in the sunlight. “You can do it, Holly.”
“No, I can’t. I don’t want to.” My voice is going supersonic. “You’re scaring me.”
“Now I bet you wished you’d gone for that lemon.”
“How can you laugh at a time like this?”
He grins. “The safety’s on.”
I’m shaking so hard even when I drop the gun and step back. I could throw up. All over this beautiful green grass. I could throw up all over this orchard. “I hate you.”
“You failed the test, by the way. Never pick up a gun unless you’re ready to kill.”
“I’m not going to kill just anybody. I’d kill someone attacking us.”
“Would you?”
I pause, because I’m not sure. Maybe I would freeze, the same way I did with Elijah. Maybe I would go supersonic instead of saving us. Then I remember those cold nights in the French prison. I’m stronger than I give myself credit for. I’m a survivor. “Yes. I can.”
