I thought about calling out for Burke, but the words wouldn’t come. I wasn’t ready to be seen like this—broken, desperate, thelast of my pride leaking out with every shudder. I didn’t want to need him, but the truth was that I did.
I closed my eyes and let the memory of his laugh, his stupid jokes, the way he’d looked at me like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve—let all of it settle around me like a blanket. Maybe I could sleep. Maybe I could just stay hidden until the world made sense again.
I heard the front door of the main house open, voices inside. I thought about getting up, going to him, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t, not yet.
Instead, I listened to the sound of life moving on without me, and for once, it didn’t feel like a punishment.
The sun cracked the sky, painting everything in pale gold. I sat there, wrapped in Burke’s memory, and tried to believe that tomorrow would be different.
Maybe it would.
I wasn’t dead yet.
And that, for tonight, was enough.
Chapter Five
~ Burke ~
There’s a myth that ex-military guys sleep like the dead. That was horseshit. I woke up four times a night, every night, for the last fifteen years—sometimes from a dream, sometimes from the sheer panic that something, somewhere, was going off the rails and I’d miss it.
Today, it wasn’t a noise that roused me, or the cold snap curling up the insides of my bones. It was a feeling, the kind that rides shotgun to dread. The kind you don’t get from caffeine or adrenaline, but from knowing, deep in your marrow, that something is wrong.
I lay there for a second, letting my senses adjust. My corner of the ranch house was always freezing, even with the patched-up insulation I’d installed last fall. The digital clock by my head read 5:02. The rest of the house would be asleep or close to it, except maybe for Rawley, who slept even less than I did.
I kicked off the covers, swung my feet to the floor, and grabbed the nearest shirt—a ratty college hoodie that Jojo had left folded on the banister. I’d never gone to college, but the thing was soft and still faintly smelled like lemon bars, so I wore it anyway.
The kitchen was pitch-black, but I could navigate it blindfolded. I brewed the strongest coffee known to man—cheaper and less addictive than prescription amphetamines, and twice as likely to give me the shakes. The hiss and gurgle of the percolator was the only noise in the world, for a moment.
I poured a mug and stepped outside, feeling the chill slap my face awake. Montana mornings in April were a joke: a smear of blue-black sky, air so cold it turned your nose to glass, and ground frost that could break a horse’s ankle if you weren’twatching. I leaned on the porch railing, listening to the world shift.
That’s when I smelled it.
Most people would’ve missed it—the way blood smells, sharp and metallic, but also a little sweet, like old nickels or the inside of a fresh-cut cactus. My nose caught it between gulps of coffee and the usual must of horse shit and pine sap. The wind carried it, faint but there, riding in from the west edge of the property.
I set my mug down, careful not to chip the ceramic. I didn’t bother with shoes; I just barked, “Heads up!” toward the house, loud enough to wake Rawley if he was faking sleep.
Then I sprinted.
The grass was slick, the kind of slippery that’ll put you on your ass if you’re not prepared. I ate up the ground in long, practiced strides, trying to gauge exactly where the scent trail was thickest. By the second fence, I had it—stronger, almost cloying, and a little tang of fear spiking through.
It led to the equipment shed, or more accurately, to the shadow at its base.
I slowed up, heart hammering, and saw a shape curled into itself. Small, even smaller than I remembered, like a bird that’d hit a window and never learned the trick of getting back up.
I knelt beside him—Danny, of course it was Danny. His clothes were half-ripped, one sleeve shredded and the other soaked through. His hair was matted to his forehead with blood that had already started to clot. One eye was swollen shut, the other just barely open, gold-green and dull in the early light. His mouth was split on one side, and when he exhaled, it sounded like the world’s saddest tire going flat.
For a second, I couldn’t move. Not because I didn’t know what to do—triage was automatic, my hands wanted to check for spinal, then for pulse, then for shock—but because the sight of him like that made something inside me short-circuit. It was asif every lesson about how to keep your cool in combat got wiped out by the stupid, useless urge to hold him together with nothing but my bare hands.
“Oh, baby,” I whispered, not even realizing I’d said it out loud. “What’d he do to you?”
Danny’s good eye rolled up to me, glassy, but aware. He tried to smile, which made the blood from his lip bead up and spill over. “I fell,” he said, voice thick and slurry. “Stupid. I’m… I fell.”
I almost laughed, but it came out more like a cough. “Into what? A semi-truck?”
He snorted, which made him wheeze and curl tighter. I saw his fingers, how they clutched at the hem of his ruined shirt, and there were bruises on his wrists shaped like someone’s grip.
I didn’t have to be a detective to know whose.
