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)
My pulse pounds in my throat and I rise from the couch with restless energy. Every instinct screams to push a story through fast, because if I put it out there, it would bring me a measure of safety. But the rational part of me knows better. If RainVest really killed Erik to keep this from going any further, I’m pretty much dead if I’m discovered.
Which means I have to make sure the proof is good enough for criminal charges to be brought against whoever’s behind it all. I’m going to have to dig deeper, and I know for sure I can’t do this alone.
I grab my phone and scroll through contacts, past colleagues, police sources, lawyers. None of them can help me with this. None of them know fire like—
My thumb hesitates over a name. I refused to delete him from my contacts when we parted ways five years ago, because I couldn’t bear the thought of relegating him to oblivion.
Cole Mercer.
I should keep scrolling. The last time I saw him, we were both bleeding from wounds we couldn’t stop reopening. He was my first love. My only real love.
And my first loss.
Cole called it quits because he couldn’t handle watching me risk my life for stories like this. I let him call it quits because I couldn’t imagine giving this up.
And yet—when my world starts to burn, he’s the one person I think of.
My hand trembles as it hovers over his contact. I truly never let him go. Even as time passed, his memory didn’t fade. I dream about him more often than I’d like to admit.
I have no right to ask him for help, especially since this is the very aspect of my job he hated.
But I’m scared. I’ve done dangerous stories before, but I’ve never seen someone murdered in cold blood before my very eyes. I can’t let this go, and even if I could, I have the damning evidence in my hands.
I need his help.
My fingertip presses the button and the phone rings. Once. Twice.
My nerves sizzle with anxiety and I almost hang up.
Then a deep, steady voice answers. A voice that used to make me melt. “Mercer.”
For a heartbeat, I forget how to breathe. That voice is strength and safety and a thousand nights I tried to forget.
“Hey,” I manage, my throat raw. “It’s me.”
A pause. I can almost hear him blink. “Tessa?”
“I need your help.”
CHAPTER 3
Cole
The rainstorm that rolled through earlier has burned off, leaving the air rinsed clean and the pavement in Fremont damp. I ease my truck down a narrow side street tucked off the main drag, an area I’m so familiar with I could drive it with my eyes closed. The houses here are early-century bungalows and Craftsman-style with deep porches framed in wood railings and tapered square columns.
Tessa’s place sits midway down the block—a compact 1920s bungalow that used to be a moss-colored green but is now painted a muted blue-gray with white trim. I assume that’s just one of many changes I’ll see.
The yard is modest with low hedges trimmed tight and a narrow path of stone pavers leading from the sidewalk to the front door that I helped her lay one summer.
It’s the kind of house you buy when you’re determined to build something permanent, and there was a time in my life that I thought this would be my forever home too.
My chest tightens the closer I get to her driveway. It’s been five years without her voice and I thought I’d moved on. If my level of unease over seeing her again is any indication, I’m guessing not.
I shouldn’t have fucking come.
I know that.
But the moment she said she needed help, my body moved before my brain could argue. It was made even more urgent by the fact that Tessa never asks for help, so I know this is bad.
I pull up parallel to the curb and kill the engine, sitting there for a beat to consider how I want to play this. My hands are wrapped around the steering wheel like it’s the only thing keeping me anchored and my palms are sweating.
It’s goddamned ridiculous.
I’ve survived firefights and infernos and have lost brothers in two different uniforms. I have external and internal scars that I’ve overcome and yet the idea of seeing Tessa Ward again knots me tighter than any battlefield.
I get out of my truck anyway, pocketing my keys after locking the doors.
My heart slams hard against my ribs as I recall how scared she sounded on the phone and I trudge up the front steps, wondering what in the hell could have scared a woman that is as fearless as they come.
I don’t even make it to the top step when the front door opens.
And there she is.
My eyes roam over her, hungrily soaking up her beauty and warily, her pain. She looks wrecked.