Page 50 of The Ashes of Summer

“I mean he never came back to work. Officially, he resigned.”

“And unofficially?”

Her eyes find mine again.

“Nobody believed that.”

I lean back in the chair, the coffee cooling forgotten in my hand as my mind tries to reject what it's hearing and keeps failing.

I don't want this.

I don't want questions hanging over Michael Miller. I don't want doubts creeping into a case that was supposed to be finished months ago. I don't want Annalise Raynor's name bleeding into Summer's, because the two of them should have nothing in common beyond the man sitting in that bed. But I can't shake it.

Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe I'm so fucking desperate for something—anything—that I'm trying to force pieces together that were never meant to fit.

Or maybe...

Maybe the case that sent Jackson Moore to prison wasn't as clean as everyone believed. The thought leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I hate it. Because if there's even the slightest chance that's true, then every answer I've been relying on since Summer disappeared suddenly feels a hell of a lot less certain.

My eyes drift back to the unconscious bastard lying in the bed.

The monitor answers with another steady beep.

He doesn't move.

Chapter 15

It’ll Hold

Summer

The second Jackson leaves the room, silence crashes down around me so heavily it almost hurts. The lock clicks behind him and then there's nothing. No footsteps lingering outside the door. No voices drifting through the walls. Just silence and the faint hum of air moving through the vents while I stand frozen in front of the mirror, staring at a girl I barely recognize.

I can't stop looking at her.

Dark hair falls over my shoulders in soft waves, still warm from the dryer, almost black beneath the muted light. It changes everything. My skin looks paler against it, my eyes somehow greener, the shadows beneath them deeper. I look older. Harder. Like someone has reached inside me and peeled away the last part of me that still looked familiar.

My stomach turns.

My hand lifts toward my reflection before stopping halfway, my fingers trembling in mid-air. I can't make myself touch it. It doesn't feel like my hair anymore. It feels like something that's been attached to me, forced onto me until I can't separate where I end and it begins.

Just like her.

The words keep circling, refusing to leave me alone.

There… Just like her.

Who?

Who was he talking about?

My pulse starts climbing again as I stare at my reflection, searching my own face for someone I'll never find. Was she a girlfriend? A wife? Someone he loved? Someone he killed? My thoughts chase each other so fast they barely make sense anymore until all I can see is the look on his face while he stood behind me with the hairdryer in his hand. It was something that looked almost like grief.

A breath catches painfully in my throat as another memory pushes its way forward. The way he'd watched the color develop. The way his expression kept shifting almost imperceptibly while he looked at me, like he wasn't seeing me at all but comparing me to somebody else, measuring me against a memory I'd never be able to compete with.

My skin crawls.

What happened to her?