Heart Song Anthology by Carolyn Faulkner (summer reads txt) 📗

Cora kept her face relaxed, a polite smile slightly upturned on her lips, ignoring the urge to brush the sweat off her brow. I am a professional bullshitter, dammit. I can do this. “No, I stick to the north. Too hot that close to the equator.” And God do I miss it!

“That’s the only state in the United States I’ve been to. I did an exchange program but it was too swampy for me.”

“I’ve heard it’s quite the marsh,” Cora said.

“It is,” Gloria chuckled. There was a pause as Cora worked on removing the polish from the last nail. She just had to get through this encounter and she could tell Asher that she may have been made. She wasn’t sure what he would insist on doing, but she figured he would want to be safe and run again. He didn’t take risks when it came to The Company. He had seen what they were capable of just as she had. A shudder rose goosebumps along her spine and she felt the distinct urge to rub at the scars on her arms.

I am a professional, she reminded herself. I am not scared. I am not going to fall apart. I am a professional.

“So that guy who was selling cigarettes outside the school,” Gloria finally said, breaking the silence. “Why did you run after him?”

Because I’m a reckless idiot, she thought, mentally kicking herself for being so stupid. Of course The Company could be watching them, Cora and Asher had been running from them for months and yet she had basically shined a beacon on her true identity by chasing a dangerous criminal. It was still just so natural for her to take action. She still lacked the instinct to stand on the sidelines and do nothing. Something she had once been proud of, but that she now clearly needed.

“To protect the children of course,” Cora answered smoothly.

“Do you have children of your own?”

You know I don’t, you forced-sterilizing bitch. The Company Asher had once belonged to had given him an irreversible vasectomy to keep him from ever having a family that might coerce him away from his responsibilities as an assassin. If Gloria was an assassin, too, she knew Asher was sterile and was just taunting Cora to get a rise out of her. It almost worked.

“Not yet, but my husband and I are trying.” Cora gave Gloria her brightest smile, the one that made her eyes twinkle even when she wasn’t feeling it. Cora had never particularly seen herself as a mother, but knowing that choice had been stolen from her and Asher angered her. Though Asher spoke as if he had never considered kids, there was a definite sadness whenever he saw children with their parents. It could be because he’d never had a conventional family, but Cora suspected it was more than that. Cora suspected he did want a family of his own and while he had been the one forced to undergo surgery, he just seemed dejected while Cora was still furious. Maybe Asher had been furious once, but that rage had faded into sadness over time.

There was another silence as Cora ground her teeth to overcome the mounting rage. She hadn’t needed to prep Gloria’s skin for her manicure as she had been well groomed the day before, but part of her considered clipping her cuticles again and accidentally nicking a blood vessel or two.

“So, did you catch him?” Gloria wanted to know.

Cora looked up then, into those blue eyes twinkling with interest. Not interest in her, but interest in the gossip. She loosened the tension she’d held caught in her chest since Gloria had announced she’d wanted Cora to do her nails. Gloria was just a normal, bored housewife who wanted to know the drama around town. The first half of the conversation had just been small talk, and now she was getting to what truly interested her.

She felt foolish, and Cora was damn tired of feeling foolish.

He was dead dammit. Krone was dead and he was the one with an obsession with Asher. Maybe The Company they’d worked for didn’t care as much as Krone had made Asher believe. They hadn’t had anyone come after them, as far as they knew. There had been no real sign of trouble outside the trouble their imaginations had created.

She was sick and tired of being afraid and letting her fear play tricks on her. She was going to do what she should have done from the very beginning of this circus and take control of her new life. They may have come to Denmark to escape and to hide, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t an opportunity for a new life, and life was whatever you made it, right?

Cora released Gloria’s hands and sat back, loosening a deep sigh. “No, I didn’t catch him, but I will.”

Gloria tilted her head slightly, puzzled.

“I’m going to catch him because I can’t just sit back and pretend someone else is going to do it for me. I can’t just shrug it off and say that the police will take care of it because honestly, they won’t. I’ve been pretending to be someone who pretends everything is out of my power and it’s not.” Cora stood and turned to look at Flora who sat agape, staring at her. “Which means I need to leave this job and start looking into something more my pace.”

She didn’t stick around to discuss it with anyone, she just bent down and retrieved her bag before exiting the salon and immediately she felt a weight lift off her shoulders. It hadn’t just been Krone or the ever-looming threat of The Company. It wasn’t just missing her old life, it was this role she had been trying to play. Genevieve had to be so unlike Cora so that she wasn’t discovered, and in the process of pretending to be someone else, she had forgotten who she truly was.

She was Cora Santos, bounty hunter who