“Let’s just agree to disagree,” I snap.
“You weren’t even the lead investigator on the case, Rhett.”
“I’m aware of the extent of my involvement.”
“This is the game. This is the law. It’s just how things go sometimes. I’m not saying it’s good, but we can’t quit when it gets tough.”
“I’m not fucking quitting. Leave it.”
A pause. I’ve gone too far. I’ve spent too much time alone. It’s made me uncivilized.
“Anyway, let me know when you’re coming up,” I go on. “I’m looking forward to it. I mean that, man. Really.”
After the phone call, I drive through the winding roads, pine trees rising on both sides. Locking me in. Trapping me on this path, this mission.
Maybe Marshall is right. I should’ve tried to work from inside the police. But I can’t shake that case. If the name of the game was justice, Lucian Conti would have a bullet in his head.
The last curve that takes me home leads past a cabin that’s been vacant ever since I moved in. I slow down when I spot a car parked out front. New neighbors could mean unfamiliar problems, and I like my privacy.
A girl kneels at the edge of the road, picking flowers. She suddenly stops and pops upright as if she’s seen a ghost when she sees me looking.
Behind her, a young woman struggles to drag a couch from her driveway toward the cabin. There are piles of stuff outside the cabin. Furniture and boxes, and the detritus of life.
I bring the car to a stop. Study her. She’s wearing denim overalls over a thick shirt. Her body is curvy, no way to avoid that observation as her beauty strains against her clothes. Her auburn hair is tied up in a wild bun. She grits her teeth and leans back. Her hold slips on the couch, and she falls, kicking up dust.
What sort of man would I be if I didn’t help her?
Stepping from the car, I take a breath. There’s something about this woman… I need a moment to clear my head. Remind myself who I am.WhatI am. I’m not the kind of person any young, beautiful woman needs in her life.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to let her break her back moving into her new home.
CHAPTER 2
ELARA
Isit in the dirt, struggling to get my breathing under control. The moving guys just dumped all our stuff outside the cabin, said that was all we paid for, and I should’ve read the fine print. I wanted to argue, but I know how men can hold a grudge: how they can take something seemingly harmless and turn it into a vendetta that tears lives to pieces.
We’re here for a new start. Gunnison Peaks, two hours away from our old home, is enough distance between us andthe bad thingso that I can clear my head and start anew, so that Mira can get back some of her old light back.
I grit my teeth and steady my breathing. We’ve been staying with my aunt in California, but she’s got a house full of kids and mayhem, and without saying it, I know we were overstaying our welcome.
Plus, I missed Colorado, the smell of pines, the mountain views.Home. If I can ever rebuild it, or some shadow of what it was.
I’m on edge because I had to go back to the city, briefly, to complete the sale of my childhood home. Leaving the lawyer’soffice, a cold shiver ran down my spine, as if there were someone watching, waiting, biding their time to ruin this new life of ours, but the worst had already happened to us, at least it feels like that.
Mira walks over to me. I look up, and for a heart-aching second, I see the girl she was behind her dulled eyes, her nervous mouth. She raises her finger and points to the road.
I leap to my feet, heart pounding.
The man standing there is over six feet tall, wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his forearms sinewy with muscle. His hair swept back and up from his forehead, brown flecked with hints of silver. A light beard covering his strong jaw.
In a different life, maybe, I might think,Whoa, he’s hot.
I quickly step in front of Mira. “Hello, can I help you?”
He stops, narrowing his dark eyes. “I was thinking I could helpyou. Since we’re neighbors.” He gestures at my furniture, my boxes of photo albums, the remnants of our life.
“We’re neighbors?”
