I’m overwhelmed with how she’s looking at me, how close her soft lips are to mine, how much I want to kiss them.
But I manage a thin-lipped smile and nod. “Let me help with the case.”
She sits upright and tilts her head. “I need to stand on my own two feet.”
“You are. I’m just saying, let me take some of the weight. Freya, you’re pregnant, for God’s sake.”
“It’s not a disease, Anton.”
“No, but you were supposed to be on desk duty.”
“Ouch.”
“There’s no shame in it.”
“I know, but…” She presses a hand to her belly. “I have to admit, today was more than I bargained for. I thought with five months gone on this case, there’d be distance. You know? Almost like a cold case.”
We’re both thinking it. The fact that a Mazda Miata went through steel guardrails that were loosened changes everything. That someone was lurking at the quarry with the exact wrench needed to tighten them, loosen them further, God knows…it’s enough to make you think this wasn’t an accident.
Was it foul play?
Something premeditated as loosened guardrails suggests it.
Is there a murderer in Echo Valley?
A murderer who knows Freya is on the trail now?
Every muscle in my body goes taut. She must feel it—my whole frame coiled and ready to break something.
I will annihilate them if they so much as breathe on one of her black, bouncy curls.
“You were right this case wasn’t what it seems. And there’s someone potentially out there trying to cover it up. Someone who knows you’re the officer in charge now. I need you to let me be there for you.” Heat builds under my skin. “Or if not for you, then for our baby. There’s no problem with calling in backup, Freya. That’s all I’m asking.”
It comes out rougher than I intend. I run my thumb along her jawline and—Christ—I want to kiss her, but I won’t.
She didn’t come to me for that.
But when her lips part, my pulse punches straight into my throat. She has no idea how easy it would be for me to burn the whole damn world down for her and the little life we made without meaning to.
She lets her head fall back down to my shoulder.
I glance down at her.
“Okay.” She concedes, glancing up from my chest. “You watching my six. Me chasing threads. It’ll be like old times.”
“Yeah,” I agree, knowing damn well it’s different. “Like old times.”
This isn’t a stakeout. This isn’t a long night killing time in a parked car for some man who wants to find his wife cheating to get out of an expensive divorce settlement. This is Freya. This is our child. This is my entire future that today might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Whoever loosened those guardrails at the quarry just put themselves on my radar.
And I don’t miss.
15
If you call,I will be there.
No one has ever spoken to me like that. Not with that certainty. Not with that kind of quiet, determined devotion.
