Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

on the authorization form for Titan to be euthanized, but the notation says the request was made by an FBI agent and the reason cited an attack. No police documentation, by the way. Last I checked, the Feds don’t involve themselves with dog bites, not that Animal Control would question anyone flashing a badge. And Clay’s flashed his badge a lot this week.”

“I don’t understand—why would he be so obvious?”

“You’ve uncovered something that has him spooked and desperate enough to be rash. Plus, I imagine he’s got some pull or he’s crafted a believable enough story to ensure no one would bother looking too hard into your death. The tornado helped him out there, but I’m guessing his original plan was to make it look like a suicide.”

My original annoyance, okay, downright anger, at Coop for not going through with the plan we’d agreed upon dissipated. Clearly he’d done a lot of research and knew better than I who and what I was up against.

My mind worked to understand the puzzle from the facts he’d given me, but there were still too many missing pieces. Having zero memory not only made it impossible, but also would look like a convenient excuse. “No one is going to believe I’m innocent, not with all the instability of my past and especially now. My memory loss will look like a lie.”

“Your amnesia might’ve worked to Clay’s advantage early on, but when he falsely ID’d your body, he went all in. The only proof you need now is being alive. But you die and he walks free. And if that wouldn’t be bad enough, I don’t think I could hold Nik off from going after him. Murdering a federal agent in cold blood—”

“I know.” I cut him off, not wanting to hear how entwined Nik was in my problems. “Even dead, I’m a burden.”

“So you stay alive. Got it, Thea?”

Staying alive meant staying on the run. Dying meant condemning Nik to living with the consequences of my retribution. There had to be another angle to this.

“You’re turning me over to a man who wants me dead. Please tell me there’s more to this plan.”

“I have a contact with the Feds. There’s enough proof he used FBI resources to fraudulently declare you deceased to open an investigation on all the rest.”

“Open an investigation? That’s all?”

“What did you expect? I can’t gun down a federal agent no matter how corrupt he might be. We don’t even have proof he intends to harm you, though it’s pretty obvious he does.”

I didn’t want to rile Coop up by questioning his plan, but clearly if it revolved around a contact at the Bureau, it was full of holes. After all, Clay couldn’t be trusted, so why would I trust anyone else there?

“Assuming all this works, what happens with me?”

“The best thing you can do is go have your head looked at by a doctor and see a specialist on memory loss. I can get you some references. If you’re not ready to go back home, I’m sure Nik will let you stay at his place for the next couple of weeks. When he gets back from the island, y’all can figure things out.”

“Couple of weeks?”

“Look, Thea, it isn’t personal. This isn’t a trip we’re going on, it is a job. My employer isn’t going to let someone’s girlfriend tag along. It’s not how these things work.”

Coop’s proposal sounded logical. And perhaps it was irrational for me to be so attached to Nik. But I couldn’t help the scrape of fear at being left behind while so many questions remained unanswered. I sure as hell didn’t feel safe simply because Clay would be under investigation. Whose investigation? Someone he might be working with? No. I didn’t like this plan at all.

I fought my instinct to text Nik and beg him to come get me. But we were already entering Boulder city limits. There wouldn’t be enough time. I’d have to figure something out on my own.

“Can we stop and get something to eat?”

“What?” Coop sputtered.

“I’m nervous. I think eating will help. Fast food will be fine.”

“No, we can’t stop to eat,” he scoffed. “I need enough time at the meeting site to ensure there aren’t any surprises. You can eat at the gas station.”

“Gas station food?”

“It’s no Buc-ee’s, but it’s one of those big convenience store places with lots of snacks. You’ll find something.”

I didn’t know what a Buc-ee’s was. The only gas station I had any real familiarity with was the one that landed on me in Kansas. But as I followed Coop into the Pump-N-Go, I realized he hadn’t been kidding. It was a veritable smorgasbord of snacks and I intended to hit them all. Hard. Anything to get my mind off the stress of trusting this plan of his.

Coop fished a burner phone out of his back pocket and checked in with his Bureau contact. He had three phones. The personal one he used to communicate with Nik he’d left in his truck. The business one he’d been using on the deck back in Estes was in his front pocket and connected to his earpiece. Every so often I’d catch his lips subtly moving as he spoke into it.

He kept a gun tucked in a holster in the front of his jeans, but with his cobalt-blue oxford untucked it didn’t show. Neither did the one at the small of his back along with a pair of handcuffs. I imagined he carried a knife like Nik’s in his pocket and maybe a second one inside his boot. An assault rifle was under a blanket in his truck and I’d bet he had other goodies in his glove box.

As he leisurely maneuvered throughout the convenience store, his body language was so languid no one even questioned how dangerous he was. If anything, they noticed the blue of his shirt setting off the sapphire in his eyes.

Finishing his call, Coop jammed the phone back into his pocket. Shoveling a thick