"Good Thai."
"I know a place."
The ghost of a smile. Then she was gone, her footsteps fading down the hallway, leaving me alone in an apartment that suddenly felt too quiet.
I stood at the window for a long time after she left.
The city sprawled beneath me. All light and shadow. Sirens in the distance and the constant hum of ten million lives happening at once.
Somewhere out there, an arsonist was planning their next fire. Somewhere out there, corrupt officials were signing off on death traps. Somewhere out there, the machine kept grinding, indifferent to the bodies it consumed.
And here, in this apartment, I was thinking about Sloane Harper.
About the way she'd looked sitting on my couch with files spread around her. The pen was tucked behind her ear. The surprised laugh that slipped out before she could catch it.
I thought about what it would be like to have this every night. Dinner at the coffee table. Case files between us. Working together, building something together. Falling asleep on the couch while she kept chasing leads, waking up to find her curled against my shoulder with her laptop still open.
The fantasy was vivid enough to hurt.
She'd left once. Disappeared into silence for years while I waited by a phone that never rang. Wrote letters that were never answered.
Loved someone who'd decided she didn't want to be loved anymore.
I survived that. Barely.
Built myself back brick by brick, wall by wall, until I was something functional again. Something that could work and laugh and even date occasionally, even if none of it ever filled the hollow space she'd carved out when she left.
Now she was back. And all those walls felt dangerously thin.
Guard your heart, Stone. She's not yours anymore.
I turned away from the window. Washed the Thai containers. Put away the files. Went through the motions of closing down for the night.
But when I lay down in the dark, I could still smell her. Still hear her laugh.
Still feel the weight of her presence.
My apartment had never felt this quiet.
Or this full of possibility.
CHAPTER 7
Sloane
I couldn't stop thinkingabout his coffee table.
The glass top, specifically. And what I'd seen underneath it.
The rest of the apartment had been exactly what I expected—spare, organized, everything in its place. Garrett had always been like that. Controlled. Deliberate. The kind of person who made his bed with military corners and alphabetized his bookshelf without thinking about it.
But underneath that glass, tucked on the lower shelf like something he wanted close but not visible?—
Newspapers.
I'd noticed them when I lifted a stack of his files to make room for my own. Just a glimpse of newsprint, edges worn soft from handling.
Garrett had been absorbed in the crime scene photos I'd brought, that crease between his brows deepening as he traced the arson pattern. He hadn't seen me look.
