Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Cole fishes his phone out again and studies the heat map of my yard. Shapes move—glowing red figures retreating fast toward the rear fence. There’s no return fire. No wild exchange. Just a clean withdrawal under the assault of light and exposure.
Cole shoves his phone into his pocket as he pivots toward the back door. He’s going after them and I reach out panicked, grabbing his arm and holding on like the house is collapsing.
“Don’t,” I whisper, and the word cracks in the middle. “Please don’t.”
He freezes, eyes searching mine in the gloom. I know he wants to give chase. Perhaps capture one to find out who is behind this. But they have guns too, and I can’t stomach the thought of him dying.
And in that split second, I see what he lives with every time I chase a story into danger.
The fear. The possibility of loss. The knowledge that one wrong step could mean never coming back.
“If you go out there,” I say, my voice shaking openly now, “you could get killed.”
The words are selfish and honest and terrifying. They’re words he’s said to me in one form or another in our past.
He studies me for one long beat, torn between instinct and a need to protect me.
“Please don’t leave me,” I whisper, hoping that his duty to me outweighs his duty to go after those men.
Then, slowly, he steps back and I suck in a ragged, grateful breath.
The front door bursts open with a boom, wood splintering. Cole whips that way, gun raised, but he holds his fire.
“It’s just me,” Reid says, his body blackened into a silhouette from the bright light outside, but he has his gun raised and pointed right back at Cole.
Cole lowers his weapon, and Reid follows suit, both men realizing simultaneously they’re on the same team. “Inside is clear. Two took off through the backyard.”
“Want me to go after them?” Reid asks.
“Nah… they’re long gone.”
The Jameson vehicle’s lights continue to flood the yard and behind us, in my living room, a man lies motionless on the floor. On the back porch, another is sprawled where he fell.
Four men came to take me. Two men are dead.
Sirens wail faintly in the distance, and I know the situation has radically changed for me. There’s no going back now.
CHAPTER 13
Cole
By the time the first patrol units arrive, the house is already lit up like a stadium.
Reid’s SUV equipped with a floodlight on top still blankets the backyard with high-intensity beams, washing the fence line and hedges in stark white. Red and blue lights pulse against the front of the bungalow and Tessa’s neighbors to the left, right and across the street are awake and watching from their porches as dawn approaches.
Uniformed officers mill around while crime scene techs forage the front and back yards, looking for evidence that might have been dropped.
Two bodies.
One inside the living room on hardwood. One on the rear porch just beyond the splintered kitchen door. Both exactly where they fell.
Malik’s modified Hummer pulls up to the curb, his face grim as he steps out to survey the situation. He speaks to a cop guarding the edge of the yard cordoned off by yellow police tape, but he’s quickly let in. The lead detective already gave permission for the Jameson staff to come on-site, as long as they stay out of the way. This is nothing more than the product of a working relationship between the two organizations.
I’m leaning against one of the police cars in the driveway, a place I’d been ordered to stay until the detective could talk to me.
“Everyone good?” Malik asks me quietly as he approaches.
“We’re good,” I answer.
Physically, at least.
Tessa stands off to the side near the front walkway, wrapped in a blanket Josie must have grabbed from inside. Josie’s arm is around her shoulders, murmuring low and steady. Tessa’s face is pale but composed. She isn’t hysterical and she isn’t collapsing, which is good. Otherwise, I might be tempted to go over there and pull her into my arms.
More crime scene techs swarm the interior of the house where evidence markers are placed beside the bodies, beside the dropped weapons, beside the section of cut glass removed from the living room window.
The homicide detective who told me to wait here for him finally approaches me. Mid-forties, military haircut, intense stare.
“I’m Michael Frost,” he says to me, then turns to Malik and reaches out his hand. “Good to see you.”
“Glad you’re on this one,” Malik says, and I make a mental note for later to ask him why. I assume they have a prior relationship.
Frost turns to me. “You’ve been busy tonight.”
“Wasn’t on my schedule,” I reply evenly.
Frost nods, pulls out his phone. He flips open an app and hits a “record” button. “Walk me through it.”
So much for the old-style detectives who took notes on small spirals.