A bloodhound keeps tracking no matter how hopeless the trail, no matter how lost the quarry.
Even when the hunt is slowly killing him.
CHAPTER ONE
Vanna
The first thing I notice is the beeping.
Steady. Rhythmic.
The kind of sound that tells you you're still alive even when every cell in your body wishes you weren't.
I know where I am before I open my eyes.
The antiseptic smell that burns my nostrils.
The scratchy sheets that feel like sandpaper against my too-sensitive skin.
The way my arm throbs where the IV pierces my vein—a different kind of needle than the one I usually chase.
Ruby Memorial. Again.
How many times have I woken up like this? Five? Six?
I've lost count somewhere between the third overdose and the fourth, when the days started blurring together like watercolors left out in the rain.
When the faces of nurses stopped registering as individual people and became one collective expression of pity and exhaustion.
Another junkie. Another waste of resources. Another lost cause.
My eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds each, but I force them open anyway.
Fluorescent lights stab into my skull, and I wince, turning my head to the side to escape their assault.
That's when I seehim.
Garrett.
He's slumped in the chair beside my bed, his massive frame somehow folded into that tiny plastic seat that wasn't built for a man his size.
His leather cut is draped over the armrest, the Saint's Outlaws patch catching the harsh hospital light—a grinning skull with a halo that has always seemed more warning than blessing.
Dark stubble shadows his jaw, thicker than I've seen it in months, and the circles under his eyes are deep purple bruises that tell me he hasn't slept in days.
He's watching me.
Those eyes.
God, those eyes.
They used to look at me like I was the sun and the moon and every star in between.
Like I was something precious.
Something worth protecting.
Now they just look... tired.
