About the Author

Nichole Severn writes explosive romantic suspense with strong heroines, heroes who dare challenge them and a hell of a lot of guns. She resides with her very supportive and patient husband, as well as her demon spawn, in Utah. When she’s not writing, she’s constantly injuring herself running, rock climbing, practicing yoga and snowboarding. She loves hearing from readers through her website, www.nicholesevern.com, and on Facebook at nicholesevern.

Booklist

Books by Nichole Severn

Mills & Boon

Cold Hollow Investigations

Frozen Secrets

Red Rock Murders

Manhunt in the Narrows

Disappearance at Angel’s Landing

Murder at Lava Point

A Drowning in Emerald Pool

Danger in the Backcountry

Vanished at Kolob Canyon

New Mexico Guard Dogs

K-9 Security

K-9 Detection

K-9 Shield

K-9 Guardians

K-9 Confidential

K-9 Justice

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

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Frozen Secrets

Nichole Severn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN-13: 9780008949907

Frozen Secrets

Copyright © 2026 by Natascha Jaffa

Published in Great Britain 2026
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

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Chapter One

This was not supposed to be her life.

Winnie Hutton hauled another box of case files off the floor and onto the dolly she’d borrowed from the next-door neighbor. Clouds of dust charged at her face, years of neglect and who knew what else driving up her nose and down her throat. Coughing didn’t help. It felt as though some virus had already taken root inside her. Swiping the rest of the dust from her face, she sagged back onto the empty space she’d just cleared on the floor.

Dying sucked.

Studying the bedroom her father had turned into an office, she imagined her dad sitting right there behind the old metal, rusted desk she had no intention of moving on her own. Arthur Hutton—Black Hollow’s very own chief of police—had spent the past few years in this room. Old newspaper clippings tacked to the walls, markers, highlighters and pens strewn across the surface of the desk, red string connecting empty investigation leads he never shared with her like a serial killer gone mad. Commendations and photos with the mayor had been framed over the course of her dad’s thirty-year career, and yet, at the very end, the people of this hellhole town had turned against him.

All because of Lila Mercer.

Okay. It wasn’t a dead woman’s fault, but her twenty-year-old murder case had driven her dad into an early grave. He’d spent hour after hour, day after day, year after year trying to solve it. Sacrificing everything to find a killer that had left nothing behind, including the relationships that he’d once considered vital to his life. That, Winnie had no doubt, was why she was sitting here in a neglected, dusty office going through her father’s belongings so she could clear it all out and sell the damn place.

Well, that, and the divorce, but she didn’t want to think about that. Dan certainly hadn’t thought about her at all since serving her the papers and running off with his work wife. Pain arched through Winnie’s jaw as she gritted her teeth at the thought. Nope. She wasn’t going there. She had a job to do, and she was the only one to do it.

After throwing back the tangle of fire-red hair that’d slipped over her shoulder, Winnie swiped her face with the back of her hand. It would take days to clean out all these file boxes and get the home ready to list on the market. And then what? Where was she supposed to go? Dan had sold the house in Seattle and sent her the half of the profits she was owed, and while it’d been a good chunk of money, it wouldn’t last forever, and her remote job as an online psychology writer certainly wouldn’t buy much in the city. Her ex had been the main income earner in their marriage, but she couldn’t count on the alimony the judge had ordered him to pay. He was just that kind of spiteful.

Winnie took in the mishmash of florals and old carpet stained from too many cups of coffee and hard liquor, and the wallpaper she remembered her mom had rolled onto the yellow walls. She could stay here. Her childhood home had been paid off, but… It hurt. Sitting here without her dad in his leather chair, rocking back and forth as he tried to find a connection he might’ve missed, scribbling notes on those legal pads stacked to one side of the desk. Dozens of them. There’d been nights when she’d snuck out of bed just to watch him work, hiding behind the ugly upholstered rocking chair her mom used to rock her in to get Winnie to sleep. Days when Arthur Hutton had been her hero and not the ghost he’d become.

She grabbed for the paper box she’d set down and righted it on the dolly. “One of…fifty.” A frustrated growl escaped her as she surveyed the work ahead. She was sweaty and tired and hungry and sad, and her white button-down shirt and jeans looked as though they’d survived some kind of massacre.

No neighbors had come by to offer their condolences. No casseroles or lasagnas had ended up on the porch in the past few days, since The Hollow Daily had printed her dad’s obituary. Only her aunt and one of her cousins had shown at the funeral to give their respects, and both had sprinted from Black Hollow as soon as the service ended with promises to check in. They weren’t ever going to call. She knew that. Not even her dad’s former partner—she really didn’t want to think about him—or the men and women her father had supervised at the station on the east side of town had made an effort, but had she expected anything less?

Everyone in Black Hollow—a sleepy, cold town made up of 6,000 people she’d spent years avoiding in Northeast Washington State—blamed her dad for failing to capture that teen girl’s killer. Leaving Winnie to pick up the pieces alone.

It wasn’t that the people of her hometown didn’t care. The entire community had managed to come through for a boy down the street who’d been diagnosed with incurable cancer, raising funds and throwing him a carnival like the town had never seen at Black Hollow Park before he’d succumb to his disease. She’d found about it in one of the rare days she’d checked the city’s social media accounts. The people she’d grown up around probably cared more than most. They involved themselves in each other’s lives, raised their kids together and tended to side-eye outsiders who dared to breach the fog that always seemed to surround the town.

As a kid she’d thought Black Hollow to be an isolated magical place straight out of one of the fairy tales her mom used to read, with thick pine forests in every direction, the old logging road the town had been built around and the river hosting a swarm of summer memories. But the truth was development had come to a complete stop in the ’90s. Wi-Fi and cell signals failed all the time, the town had stopped growing, provided little opportunity for her graduating class of twenty and had become haunted with disappearances, unemployment and petty crime. Lila Mercer’s unsolved case being one of them.

While most of her classmates had gotten married, bought houses a couple streets over and started popping out kids while taking over for their parents’ mom-and-pop-type businesses, Winnie had run as far as her part-time job at the Hollow Bean Café could take her. Which wasn’t very far at all. But Seattle had provided opportunities and excitement and people who didn’t call her Winnie the Pooh. Emphasis on the Pooh.

But her mom wasn’t here anymore, had passed away from pneumonia a decade ago, and her dad… Her dad was gone, too. And now, she was stuck in the same town. Broke, homeless and heartbroken. In more ways than one. She could practically hear the taunts in her former classmates’ voices if she ventured outside this house. Winnie, you haven’t changed at all with that red hair. It’s cute you get to work from home. We always thought you would end up right back here. Where’s that lawyer husband of yours? Acid burned up her throat at the thought of their digs before she’d gotten into her car and driven the two-hundred-plus miles from Seattle.

But it wasn’t her bullies who’d practically turned her into an agoraphobic over the past few days.

It was the possibility of seeing the one man who’d driven her from Black Hollow in the first place.

Winnie hauled the next box onto the dolly, spilling the top manila files all over the brown carpet. Tipping her head back, she growled at the popcorn ceiling. “Ugh. Give me a break.”

No. There was no reason she’d have to see Adrial Tucker’s stupid handsome face, with that stupid thick scruff she’d teased him about countless times but secretly loved. No reason for her to set sight on those incredibly dark eyes she could still picture perfectly, or the broad shoulders she swore her hands remembered. Or the way the divot in his eyebrows deepened whenever she caught him staring at her. She hadn’t seen her dad’s former partner since she’d left Black Hollow. Not since that one night they were supposed to be celebrating their engagement with all their friends and family. Last she’d heard he’d gotten married to a girl who’d been a grade behind her—Winnie couldn’t remember her name—and started his own private investigation agency here in town, but that was fine. She’d moved on, too. Obviously. She’d gone to Seattle to start college, graduated with her bachelor’s degree in psychology with every intention of going onto her master’s, met Dan Reynolds and the rest was history. And it had nothing to do with the fact her ex-fiancé had sent her father a wedding invitation, or that her dad had called to tell her all about it a mere year after her ex had ghosted her.

Winnie collected the three files that’d spread across the floor like they’d planned an escape. She was breaking her own rule. Thinking about a man who no longer existed. Besides, all of that was years ago. She’d lived an entire life since last seeing Adrial Tucker, and she’d probably live another decade without seeing him in person. Now, if only she could stop his damn face from floating through her brain every time she was close to falling asleep.

A burst of heat flared up her neck and into her face as she read the handwritten label of the top manila folder in front of her. Lila Mercer, complete with the year of her disappearance. Of course. This entire office was filled with the memory of a woman who’d never stepped foot in this house, who’d claimed her father’s last years so completely, and she was now the one responsible for getting over a decade of research, notes and dead ends back to the Black Hollow police station. Fisting the files between both hands, she slammed them against the floor over and over. “Why. Won’t. You. Just. Stay. Dead!”

A bright yellow sticky note escaped the folders, and Winnie sat back on her heels, blowing a tendril of hair out of her face. It wasn’t Lila Mercer’s fault her dad had ended up being a crappy parent in the end. She’d disappeared when Winnie had been sixteen years old, found bludgeoned to death with cinder blocks partially chained around her feet in Hollow Lake. The water level had dropped due to an abnormally hot summer that year, and a fisherman had snagged his lure in her clothing, pulling Lila Mercer right to the surface, breaking her free of the rusted chains holding her down. Winnie remembered she’d spent most of her time jumping off one of the docks in that lake. Right up until the news had broken. No more swimming after that.

She grabbed for the sticky note, then opened the top folder in the stack to get on with a job nobody wanted. And froze. Her breath rushed out of her as she scanned over the first page, recognizing her dad’s familiar handwriting. Tears burned in her eyes. He’d dedicated not only his entire career, but also his life to a woman he’d never known, and now, he was gone. No answers. No closure. No justice. Boxes and boxes of case notes, evidence lists and witness statements with nothing to show for it in the end. Was this all she had left of him? Would anyone remember him as the man who’d fought to protect Black Hollow? Or would they just see his failure?

Winnie flipped through the top few pages of the file. Family interviews, crime scene notes, timelines of Lila Mercer’s final days. Her dad had made annotations along the way. The information was out of order and scribbled over, but all this paperwork wasn’t completely different than what she did for work. Reading through peer-reviewed journal articles, isolating the most important pieces of information and breaking them down for easier public consumption. She could probably do the same here. Make it easier for whomever took over the case. Or… She shifted, glancing around the office as though she expected her father to walk through the door and catch her going through his things any minute.

Or she could solve the case.

Restore her father’s reputation with the town that’d turned on him.

Give him the credit he deserved.

And maybe figure out what she was supposed to do with the rest of her life.

He’d been a good man and a good father…up to a certain point. She could do this for him. She wanted to do this for him. Turning over the sticky note to press it back where her father had kept it, Winnie caught herself laughing at three simple words and what they might have meant.

Cold Hollow Investigations.

Her father hadn’t been working the case alone after all.

Chapter Two

Adrial Tucker had seen bloodstains before. But this…

He couldn’t force himself to study the crime scene photos spread across his desk for very long. After closing the file folder, he scrubbed at his face with both hands. No leads. No answers. No closure. He was stuck with nothing more than a handful of cold clues, disinterested investigators and years of questions.

It was the same routine. Open the file, make himself sick scanning the crime scene photos, shove it to the back of his drawer, throw himself into the other cases stacked in front of him, drive home, eat a crappy microwave dinner before restlessly tossing and turning in bed all night. Then he’d do it all over again. No end in sight. And it wouldn’t change. Not until he found something—anything—he could work with.

It hadn’t happened in more than five years. He wasn’t sure what he was still waiting for. The details of the case weren’t suddenly going to make sense. The black tar pit sticking in his chest wasn’t going to let him breathe.

He’d been a detective for more than a decade, but this particular case didn’t want to be solved. At some point, he had to come to terms with that. Not today, though.

His office door cracked open with a two-rap knock. The scent of coffee preceded the intimidating stature of the man crossing the threshold, both hands full with to-go cups. Baxter Kelly—Cold Hollow Investigations’s forensic analyst—set one of those cups on the edge of the desk and took a seat, one ankle over his knee. “You hear about Hutton?”

Yeah. He had. Arthur Hutton—Black Hollow’s esteemed chief of police for the past thirty years—had passed away earlier this week. Natural causes. For once, no one in Black Hollow was up in arms over a death in the community, but it wasn’t the loss of his former partner tightening around his rib cage. It was what came with that loss. Well, who came with it. His chair protested as Adrial leaned forward, elbows on the desk. After tossing one of his pens to one side, he pulled another file in front of him. A missing husband presumed dead by BHPD from four years ago provided distraction as that tightness in his gut wound tighter and tighter at the thought of tumbling red hair, intelligent hazel eyes and fifty-six freckles across her pale cheeks. “Anyone show at the funeral?”

“A few.” Baxter took a sip of his coffee, his mouth pinning in a straight line as he swallowed, the picture of ease. But a full beard failed to hide the lines etched by the cases they worked and the personal pain his friend tried to hide. “Including Winnie.”

Adrial read the same line in the incident report three times as he tried to exorcise the easy-to-access mental images of his ex. Winnie Hutton. Hell, he hadn’t let himself think about her in a long time—years—but one mention and his entire body seemed to light up at the idea of seeing her. Except he had no need. He wouldn’t be passing on his condolences, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to make things any more awkward between them than he already had. “Not surprised. Winnie and her dad were on good terms as far as I know.”

“So she doesn’t know what Hutton’s been up to these past few years?” Baxter’s low whistle filled the office, which was stocked with modern wood bookcases painted to match the navy blue walls, geometrical art Adrial hadn’t picked out, dim lighting and a dozen different case-file boxes strewn across what he assumed was an expensive rug. Camel-colored leather protested under the forensic investigator’s shift.

The dark blue was supposed to be calming, the comfortable seating and modern light fixtures soothing for clients, but all Adrial felt in this office was suffocation. The wall-to-wall window to his right helped, giving him the perfect view of the east woods with glimpses of Hollow Lake when the sun hit it just right. Problem was, the sun rarely penetrated the fog that seemed to surround Black Hollow, even on good days when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, instances of which seemed to lessen every year. Local legend chalked up the roll of the fog to all the victims who’d gone missing since the town’s establishment two hundred years ago. Thick, silver and unnaturally quiet. For every cold case, the wall of crystallized air seemed to spread, as though trying to keep the residents of Black Hollow from venturing outside of its bounds. Or keep the threat out. Cold cases that people like him and the rest of Cold Hollow Investigations fought to solve. To provide closure to the families while potentially never finding it for themselves.

“No. She doesn’t know.” And Adrial would keep it that way. As much as his imagination had no trouble conjuring situations and conversations that might occur should he run into Winnie while she was in town, he wouldn’t say a word about her father. About the kind of man she’d grown up thinking was her own personal hero and protector of their hometown. Last he’d heard, she’d gotten married to some lawyer she’d met in college and started a whole new life. One he hadn’t been able to provide for her. She didn’t need him interrupting that. He tilted the cold-case file on an angle, but nothing was getting through the sudden punch of memory from the last time he’d seen her. With tears in those soft eyes. “You need something, or did you just come in here to derail my day?”

Baxter shoved himself to his feet, towering over the desk at six-three and a chest that blocked Adrial’s view of the door. With tattoos climbing one arm, his preferred uniform of T-shirt and jeans and the sides of his head shaved close to his skull, the man gave off wilderness-survival—or end-of-days apocalypse—vibes rather than scientist ones, but there were about a dozen families who would owed Adrial’s best friend their lives for closing their loved ones’ cases. He pushed pretty much everyone away, but deep down, Baxter loved harder than anyone Adrial knew, and it’d bit him in the ass in the worst way possible. “You got a client.”

“I don’t take clients.” Adrial dragged the file back in front of his face, but his focus was shot. All this talk of Chief Hutton, funerals and the one woman he sure as hell wasn’t inclined to see had provided the distraction he’d needed, but these cases weren’t going to solve themselves. “Send them Michal’s way. I can hear her pacing back and forth in her office.”

“This one’s not leaving until she talks to the man in charge.” There was no arguing with Baxter’s tone. Of course, the forensic investigator would’ve already run interference, but if there was a problem with the agency, Adrial needed to be the one to step up.

Cold Hollow Investigations picked up where law enforcement officials left off, pulling together pieces of a case most likely forgotten, lost or plain abandoned for those who were still waiting for answers. Every investigator on his team—a former detective like him, a forensic anthropologist, a district attorney, a former police chief from a neighboring town and their very own forensic investigator—believed in their cause, and Black Hollow had provided the perfect location to dive straight in.

Staying in his hometown hadn’t been the plan. He’d worked years to rise through the BHPD ranks to get promoted to detective, but there were bigger cities, bigger cases, more opportunities, and he’d gotten what he’d wanted for a while. Then his parents had passed away, and his wife… She’d ultimately left, too. Black Hollow had called him home in the end, and by closing more than a dozen cold cases left unsolved right here within the town’s limits in the past two years, his team had already proven their dedication to serving the community.

But some cases haunted investigators for life.

Adrial couldn’t help but think about Hutton’s obsession with the Lila Mercer case, the investigation that’d driven him to part ways with the Black Hollow Police Department and thrown the old man into a tailspin the last few years of his career. It was bad enough Hutton had destroyed his life and every relationship he had. Adrial couldn’t let the chief of police drag him—or his daughter—down, too. But if Winnie was back in Black Hollow for the funeral, somehow the bastard had kept her from learning the truth about that case. He leaned back in his chair. He wasn’t going to get any work done. “Fine. Send her in.”

Baxter retreated from the office with his coffee in hand but left the door open. “You can go right in. Oh, and if he gets grumpy, just give him this. He loves these things. Pops them anytime he thinks no one is looking.”

Holy hell. Adrial dropped his head into his hands then shoved to stand, rounding his desk to intercept his friend from revealing any other embarrassing details. He grabbed for the doorknob and wrenched the lightweight wood back. “Stop handing people candy to get me in a better mood.”

He froze at the lift of hazel eyes to his, and Adrial lost hold of the present. Just for a moment.

“Is that even possible?” That voice, though soft and feminine, rocked through him as efficiently as a 9.5 earthquake. Coiling red hair, a full pink mouth, lean everywhere but hips he could still feel his fingers sinking into and a thick dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Every single one of them accounted for. She studied the bright blue package of gummy clusters, turning it over in one hand. “I have to imagine the committee that hands out jerkwad awards would demand him to return his if that’s the case.”

Baxter’s laugh rumbled through the short hallway that branched off into the investigators’ offices, as real as he allowed it to get. His forensic investigator’s gaze brightened as he locked onto Adrial. “Oh, I like her. Please tell me we can keep her.”

Adrial set one hand on the doorframe, the wood protesting under his grip. “Flirting with her will only end up with you injured.” He shifted his attention back to the woman who’d consumed too many of his thoughts this morning. And here she was. Looking exactly as he remembered in jeans and a buttoned blouse that only highlighted her natural beauty. Like he’d conjured her out of thin air. Or someone was playing a very sick joke on him. “Trust me.”

The slight lifting of her chin, showing him she wouldn’t back down to the taunts, tugged on something deep in his gut. She’d been raised around overprotective police officers her entire life, always finding ways to slip into places where she wasn’t supposed to be. Interrogation rooms, holding cells, even the evidence room at one point. Yeah. She liked to give the impression few things scared her—least of all him—but Adrial knew the truth. She wouldn’t have come here unless absolutely necessary.

Without taking his attention off his ex, he motioned to Baxter. “Get me those results on the missing husband as soon as you can.”

“You got it, boss.” The forensic investigator made quick work of disappearing, though Adrial expected they’d be playing twenty questions by lunch.

“Take a seat.” He didn’t wait for her to follow as he headed for his desk.

Closing the door behind them—sealing herself inside with him—Winnie Hutton stood her ground mere feet from his position. “Adrial.”

He leaned back against the edge of his desk, arms crossed to keep his heart from beating straight out of his damn rib cage. She was here. And there was only one reason she’d willingly seek him out. “Hello, Red.”

Chapter Three

She’d made a huge mistake.

Winnie had fantasized about this moment a thousand times. What she’d say, what she’d wear, right down to the details of her posture. She’d have her nails done and more than four hours of sleep under her belt and the last few pounds of binging divorce weight gone. Adrial would be on his knees, apologizing for never showing up for their rehearsal dinner and subsequent vows. He’d apologize for embarrassing her in front of the entire town, leaving the BHPD high and dry, and tell her he’d regretted his decision to disappear every day since.

Yeah. None of that was happening.

This was so much worse.

Her throat swallowed against the dryness cracking through her. Winnie clutched the package of candy the other investigator had handed her, wanting to pop it open and shove her mouth full of sugar. She’d have to wait to eat her feelings until she was safely out of sight of the ridiculously handsome specimen waiting for her to do something. Say something.

Unfortunately, her brain wasn’t quite there yet. Adrial Tucker had always been handsome, but the man standing in front of her fell into a whole other category. The years had been more than kind, that thick beard and dark hair intensifying the piercing blue of his eyes. The color of just barely frozen ice. He’d let his hair grow a little longer than she remembered, the ends curling to the point all she could think about was running her hands through it to see if they’d straighten. It looked good on him. He seemed almost carefree, though that wasn’t a word she’d ever have used to describe him. Thick eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose as he considered her, and it really wasn’t fair the expression didn’t expose any laugh or eye lines. He’d put on several pounds of muscle, the top two buttons of his shirt free to reveal hints of coarse dark hair and strength that had her mouth watering.

Okay. Obviously, it’d been too long since she’d touched a partner. She was bordering on sex-starved to consider any kind of intimacy with the man who’d run her out of Black Hollow.

“I bill by the hour, Ms. Hutton.” Adrial straightened to his full height, all six-four of him that’d once made her feel protected, safe. Now, he was just trying to get the upper hand. He rounded behind his desk and took a seat, adding a barrier between them. “What you do with that time is up to you, but I doubt you came here to ogle me.”

Ms. Hutton. Not Winnie. Not Red, as he’d called her a few seconds ago, the nickname that triggered a physical reaction every time it left his mouth. He was going for emotional distance. Fine. She could play that game. In fact, she’d become a master at that game in the months leading up to the divorce. She’d beat him over the head with emotional distance if it got her out of here that much faster. “You own Cold Hollow Investigations.”

Well, now she just looked ridiculous. Clearly, he did. Though why her father had left a note in the Lila Mercer file with Adrial’s agency name on it, she had no clue. There hadn’t been any other additional notes in the files she’d skimmed, and Adrial had only been involved in the first couple of weeks of the investigation. The two of them hadn’t spoken in years as far as she knew. Her father had nothing good to say about his former partner, who’d betrayed the badge and broken her heart, but if she was going to solve this case, she’d follow any lead available. For her dad.

Adrial shifted some things around on his desk. “What can I do for you?”

“The Lila Mercer case.” Winnie caught the subtle stillness flooding through him, though he didn’t let it pin him down for more than a few seconds. She nearly cut her palms on the edge of the file folder tucked against her chest. Of all the ways she’d imagined hers first conversation with Adrial in over a decade of separation, it hadn’t been because her father had passed away or from a case that had destroyed her family. “My dad worked to solve it for years. Apparently, he thought you might have something to add, considering he wrote your agency name on a sticky note in one of his files.”

That traitorous drop of hope flared—too bright. It couldn’t be this easy, she knew that. If all it would take to solve a twenty-year-old cold case was putting herself in this position with her ex, Winnie was sure her dad would’ve done it. But there had to be a reason Arthur Hutton made that note.

“Not sure why he’d think that. I haven’t talked to your dad in years.” Adrial leaned back in his chair, the muscles in his forearms flexing and releasing under a deep tan that told her he’d never be satisfied being bound to his oversize desk. “Anything else?”

He wasn’t serious. Was he? Winnie couldn’t stop the humorless laugh bursting free from her chest. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say after years of silence?”

“You asked me if I had anything to contribute to the Lila Mercer case. I don’t. Black Hollow PD has taken the lead in the investigation for twenty years with clear instructions Cold Hollow Investigations is not to get involved.” That unreadable gaze locked on her, and her blood seemed to course faster through her veins. Being this man’s center of attention had been dangerous from the beginning, and yet, somehow, she’d forgotten the cellular effect he’d always had on her. Elbows back on his desk, Adrial interlaced his fingers like the executive he was supposed to be. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your father. He did a lot of good work for this town and for me.”

“And yet you abandoned him when he needed you most.” When she’d needed him the most. Sure, Dan leaving her for another woman had been hard, but she’d already developed an immunity to loss like that. Because she’d already lost Adrial. They’d been together for years by the time he’d disappeared to the city. In a small town like Black Hollow, it was impossible not to know every single one of your classmates and their families in and out of school. They’d lived down the street from each other her entire life. He’d always been the popular one, the one everyone wanted to be friends with due to his mom serving as mayor. They’d had the big house, the nice yard, the pool in the back and the treehouse in the front. Every holiday was overkill in decorations on top of the entire town showing up for birthdays. Adrial had had it all, while she’d watched from outside the circle that always seemed to be around him. Everyone had wanted a piece of him, and he’d eaten it up.

Until that day he’d pulled her out of a middle school locker.

Things changed after that. He’d peeled away from the boisterous popular crowd and started sitting with her at lunch. Much to the resentment of the middle school girls who’d used her as their very own punching bag. He’d waited for her after school to walk home together—him to his perfect yard and pool, and her to an empty house—and entertained her with his favorite quotes from movies she’d never seen. In a matter of weeks, he’d become someone else entirely, and she’d fallen for it. Head over heels. And kept falling for him all throughout middle school each time he intercepted her bullies, through high school when he’d let her wear his favorite leather jacket during his football games, and long after graduation, when they’d tested their physical attraction for one another in the back of his car.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Muscles ticked in his jaw. He was holding back. Keeping more secrets from her. And, hell, she was so…tired. Of the lies. Of not being included. Of being left behind.

“Enlighten me.” She deserved answers. Deserved to know if something had happened, if he’d been hurt, if he’d gotten himself into trouble. If he’d gotten tired of her and couldn’t go through with the wedding. All she’d done was catastrophize for ten years. Yes, she’d met Dan. She’d convinced herself to move on, to fall in love with someone else. She’d created an entirely new future for herself because the last one had ended before it’d even gotten started, but standing in front of Adrial now, she wasn’t going to roll over and let him pretend he knew what was best for her.

Except he wasn’t answering. Didn’t even seem to be breathing. Seconds ticked into a full minute, and for a reason she couldn’t explain, those old wounds turned fresh. Cutting. Bleeding. Hurting. “I thought something had happened to you when you didn’t show up for the rehearsal dinner. A car accident, a mugging. People in Black Hollow go missing all the time, and I begged my dad for days to put out a BOLO to find you when you wouldn’t answer my calls or texts, but he wouldn’t. Because you’d already turned in your resignation to the department.”

Adrial’s mouth parted as if he intended to deny it, but he couldn’t. Rolling his fingers into fists, he cut his attention to one of the towering case-file boxes on the other side of the office.

“I had to find out from the chief of police that my fiancé had left town for another job he never told me about, and that he had no intention of marrying me.” She wouldn’t cry. Not for him. Not ever again, but she couldn’t stopper the pressure building in her chest for much longer. “What kind of person does that?”

Winnie wasn’t expecting an answer. She hadn’t gotten one in ten years. Why would Adrial start now? But she wasn’t going to keep hoping for one, either, even at the hallucinated hint of shame crossing his features. It wasn’t real. Men like him didn’t allow themselves to regret. She just wished they did.

She tossed the case file with her father’s sticky note directing her to Cold Hollow Investigations on the front onto Adrial’s desk with the bag of gummy clusters. So much for them putting him in a better mood. “I’d like to see everything you have on the Lila Mercer case.”

Adrial’s narrowed gaze shot from the note to her in record time. “Last I checked, you interpret scientific journal articles for a living. You’re not law enforcement. Even if I had information on the case, you don’t have clearance.”

He knew what she did for a living? What’d he do, read her LinkedIn page? No. The job she had now was fairly new since the divorce, and she hadn’t updated her profile or her social media. She couldn’t even remember when she’d updated any of her platforms. So how had he known? Winnie forced herself back into the conversation with a shake of her head.

“My dad sacrificed the last twenty years of his career and what was left of his family working that case, and the only reward he got was an entire town turning against him in the end. All for some missing girl he didn’t even know.” She sucked in a deep breath, fighting back the surge of disappointment and loneliness, and the utter audacity of her neighbors and the department. They should’ve done better for a man who’d been committed to protecting and serving their community. Arthur Hutton had deserved better. “Please. If you cared about him at all—if you cared about me—help me finish what he started. Help me restore my father’s reputation.”

Adrial shoved to his feet, picking up the case file, sticky note and all, and handed it back. “Stay away from that case, Red. You don’t want to get involved. Trust me.”

Trust him? She almost laughed, but she held her chin high. Just like Adrial had taught her. Winnie headed for the door. Empty-handed. He didn’t want to help? Fine. She’d do it herself. “Have the day you deserve, Mr. Tucker.”

Chapter Four

He was going to regret this.

Adrial pounded his fist against the door that’d only managed to get uglier over the past decade. Because who in their right mind painted their house kelly green to accent redbrick? Arthur Hutton. That was who. Hell, Adrial had been the one to help him do it, too. The green had been the cheapest exterior paint the former chief of police could find, much to the embarrassment of his daughter at the time. Which only made this so much worse.

The door swung inward, centering the gut-wrenchingly beautiful redhead in his sights. Winnie had changed since barging into his office this morning, and was now wrapped in skintight Lycra workout clothes streaked with dust. Not to mention cobwebs in her hair. She quirked one side of her mouth to dislodge that traitorous strand that always seemed to fall into her face. “Can I help you?”

“Everything I have on the Lila Mercer investigation.” He offered the too-thin stack of paperwork he’d found shoved to the bottom of one of his desk drawers. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t shredded the file when he’d had the chance, knowing how unlikely the case would ever come to a resolution.

Winnie took it with a little too much enthusiasm. As though the limited information he’d put together outside the official investigation would be the key in getting her what she wanted. But solving this case wouldn’t restore her dad’s reputation. Not in the way she believed. She flipped through the handwritten notes and copies he’d made before resigning from his position as one of Black Hollow’s detectives. “What made you change your mind?”

Adrial shut down the growl in his chest. He knew her. Knew how far she would go to get what she wanted. Hell, there’d been times he’d admired the hell out of that stubbornness, but this wasn’t like that time she’d nagged Arthur for a special-edition birthday Barbie every day for an entire summer until the man gave in. The Lila Mercer case would only end in heartache, or with Winnie hurt. Neither of which he was willing to stand by and watch. Not again. “You want to solve this case, or do you want to interrogate me?”

After sidestepping clear of the threshold, Winnie opened the splintered front door wider in invitation. A wall of staleness drove up his nose and into his lungs, though it seemed she’d opened every window imaginable to clear out the house. The stained cerulean-blue carpet—dark in some areas and too light in others—told the sordid story of the time his former partner had gifted Winnie a dog to keep her occupied after losing her mother at sixteen. It hadn’t helped. In many instances, throwing money at Winnie instead of the affection she’d craved from her remaining parent had only made things worse between them.

This damn case hadn’t helped one bit.

“Sorry about the mess.” Winnie closed the protesting door behind them and pushed into his peripheral vision. The living room—easily the largest room in the old rambler—looked the same as it had ten years ago. The floral couch against the longest wall still held the imprints of someone who’d taken to sleeping on it instead of shuffling down the hall toward the bedrooms. It was easy to imagine Arthur locking himself in this house, living off processed foods with the case spread in front of him. The rest of the furniture, including the oversize round dining table that had been cut off at the legs to make a coffee table, had somehow survived under layers of dust and water rings.

Framed photos that hadn’t been touched since Mrs. Hutton had been alive decorated the walls behind a two-deck leather-lined rolling bar that had been pushed into the corner where the Christmas tree used to go, stocked with VHS Disney movies, old laser disks in their original packaging, bronze elephants and Winnie’s mother’s old bible. He had a feeling the giant flocked Christmas tree hadn’t gone up since Winnie had insisted that year she and him were supposed to get married the following January, and he’d learned she used to eat the salt dough ornaments off the tree as a kid. Hell, he’d bet Arthur never bothered celebrating any holiday with what was left of his family, always putting his work first.

“I’ve been working on it since I got into town, but he wasn’t great about staying on top of the cleaning.” Winnie swiped her hand across the coffee table and wiped the residue down her thigh, creating new streaks over lean muscle straining under black fabric. She’d always taken good care of herself, apart from her addiction to a very specific chocolate bar she liked to unwrap in front of the TV more than few times a week, but these past few years had done wonders for her. Her skin had cleared up, her hair had grown in thicker, muscles flexed where they hadn’t before and her teeth were much whiter. Marriage had obviously done wonders for her, and he was happy to see it. Really. “Would you like something to drink?”

“I’m good.” Adrial tried to breathe through the staleness, but there was no escaping it. “You’ve been through your dad’s case file?”

“Not all of it. No.” She glanced toward the bare wall on the other side of the barely held together entertainment center stuffed with more dust, more photos and more blue-and-white patterned china, and Adrail caught the outline of paper-size rectangles on the wall. Given the pinpricks in the textured drywall, something had been pinned there long enough for the sun to change the color of the cream-based paint. “There are a few boxes I haven’t opened. I’m honestly not sure where anything is, or if what I found is the full investigation. If he had a system, he was probably the only one who knew what it was.”

He hadn’t heard her right. “Boxes.”

“Yeah. Boxes.” Winnie crossed into the kitchen at the back of the house, bright yellow linoleum threatening to trip her along the way. She hauled a paper box without any clear label from the struggling kitchen table and set it on the coffee table between them, then removed the lid. “Most of them are in the office, but I pulled this one from under his bed. There’s a lot here, but I have a hard time believing there are this many boxes dedicated to one case.”

“Your dad was known to be a bit obsessive.”

“You think?” Her mouth tugged up at one corner, almost convincing him there was a smile somewhere underneath her dark lip stain, but it was gone just as quickly as it’d appeared. A figment of his imagination.

Adrial flipped through the first few items stacked in this one box. “I mean he had a tendency to write a set of notes and then rewrite them again and again until something came of them, or he found something useful. And he kept every draft. Entire notebooks filled with the same information stacked in his desk. I’m betting a lot of these are duplicates.”

“His desk.” A groan slipped free of her control. “I didn’t even think to clean out his office at the station.”

Adrial siphoned off the first few sheets of notes. Scribbled and scratched through in that familiar handwriting. He’d instantly recognized Arthur’s slashing g’s and a’s—as though the man had needed to punish the paper for its existence—on the sticky note with Cold Hollow Investigations’s name on the file Winnie brought in. Why his former partner had left it to begin with—directing whomever would be going through his files to CHI—Adrial didn’t know. He and Arthur hadn’t spoken in close to a decade despite working some of the same cases in the same small town. “One of the other officers has most likely already gone through it. They’ll want to make sure nothing leaves the station that isn’t supposed to.”

“You mean like case files?” She motioned to the entirety of the house.

He couldn’t stop the answering laugh that took him by surprise, and set aside the first few pages of this box. “Yeah. Like case files. Evidence. Crime scene photos. Witness statements. Office supplies.”

“They want to make sure I don’t take his office supplies?” Winnie’s hand brushed his as she moved to catch a paperweight that had toppled from the top of the stack, and a surge of heat flared into Adrial’s veins. “What are they going to do? Arrest me for taking his stapler?”

A chain reaction streamlined into his chest and spiked his heart rate higher. Adrial sucked in a sharp breath to counter the visceral change in his body. There’d been times he wondered if he was still capable of feeling anything past the numbness he’d let take control, resigned to spending the rest of his life detached, disassociated and disconnected from the kind of physical touch he hadn’t let himself have these past few years. That simple brush felt like an explosion rather than an innocuous shock, and Adrial couldn’t get himself back in control. He cleared his throat, reality coming back in slow increments. “BHPD is severely underfunded. Those office supplies are like gold.”

“Good to know.” Her hair fell over one shoulder as they worked through the box side by side, each careful to keep their distance. Seconds stretched into minutes, into what must’ve been an hour, before they came up for air and had reorganized a small portion of the box. Some documents had come from the Lila Mercer investigation. Others were clearly the ravings of a man who couldn’t let things go. Dates neither of them recognized, interview questions jotted down but possibly unanswered. Arthur Hutton had not been well in his final days. That much was clear, and Adrial’s stomach twisted at the thought of Winnie dealing with her dad alone. But she seemed to manage well enough. She had her husband—some lawyer from Seattle—to help her through. “I got your wedding invitation.”

That…was not what he expected. The media reports he held became indiscernible as his heart thundered at the base of his throat.

She didn’t look up, didn’t break her focus on the impossible task in front of them. “My dad sent it to me.”

What the hell? Pain shot through Adrial’s jaw as he locked his back teeth. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

Winnie shuffled through the next stack in the box. Expense sheets submitted by detectives working the case. Had Arthur saved every sheet of paper connected to the investigation? “He’d been trying to convince me to move home and join the department at the time. I think he thought if I came back to Black Hollow to stop the wedding, I would stay. Sometimes I think he was just lonely.”

“He did it to himself.” Adrial hadn’t meant the harshness that lined his words, but there was nothing for her to deny. Her father had given up on raising her the moment his wife had passed away. Adrial had done his best to pick up the pieces and hold her together, but she’d only been sixteen. She’d needed her parent, and Arthur hadn’t been that for a long time. “You would’ve found out about the wedding sooner or later, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to be invited considering how we—how I—left things.”

“You’re not wrong.” Another one of those humorless laughs struggled into existence. “What better way of telling a woman you wanted to be married, you just didn’t want to marry her, then sending her a wedding invitation?”

Damn it. Adrial tossed the papers he’d been going through back into the box, leveraging his weight on the edge. “Winnie, that wasn’t—”

“No. I’m sorry.” She waved her hand as though to erase the past couple of minutes. “That’s not why I brought it up. I just… I wanted to tell you I’m happy for you. Getting married, starting your agency.” She offered a slim smile. “It’s everything you wanted. You deserve it. Really.”

Adrial didn’t have a response to that. Everything? It had been. For a couple of years. He forced himself to review the carbon-copy evidence list dedicated to the Lila Mercer case. Confusion branded him for only a moment. “This list is wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Winnie pressed into him, her shoulder tucking against his chest, but he wouldn’t give into that heat again. Couldn’t.

“This is one of the first evidence catalogs from the scene, but these items aren’t what made it into the official investigation file.” He flipped over the thin paper, searching for another list. And came up empty. “Evidence is missing from the investigation file.”

Chapter Five

Evidence had gone missing?

Had her father known? Was that why twenty years had gone by without any leads or answers? Winnie had gone through a fair amount of the boxes connected to the Lila Mercer investigation, but she felt compelled to review the evidence list Adrial had recovered. There were the big-ticket items, of course. The bright blue tarp the twenty-year-old had been wrapped in, the chains used to secure the body to the cinder blocks. Neither had produced much in the way of a lead, as far as she knew, but the expert on the case had passed away. There was no one for them to consult. “Where is the evidence now? Can we compare this list to the official file and see the difference?”

“Evidence collected during homicide investigations is kept in a secure location. Sometimes the station, other times a storage facility.” Adrial set aside the list on the very same coffee table he’d sat at the night he’d asked her father for permission to marry her. “Either way, neither of us is getting close to it. We’re not law enforcement, and we don’t have clearance.”

That wasn’t good enough. There had to be something—anything—in these boxes that would help. And, look, they’d already found a gaping hole in the case. Evidence had gone missing, but none of the papers or media coverage reported it, and the notes her dad had made all seemed to contradict each other.

“You used to work for BHPD, and you work cold cases for a living.” That all-too-familiar weightlessness that accompanied not having something to do, something to focus on, was creeping through her like sludge. This couldn’t be it. She hadn’t gone through all these boxes and memorized investigation details to only come this far. “Don’t you have a contact in the department who can help?”

“Listen, I agreed to bring you the information I have concerning this particular case. Not play detective. And, honestly, I’d be happy never to get involved in this case again.” His knuckles looked as though they’d burst through the skin as he clutched the box. “Your dad spent the last twenty years trying to get a lead and ended up nowhere. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life chasing dead ends. Believe me. No good can come of it. Just…grieve for your dad and move on, Red. Clean out the house, put it up for sale and go back to Seattle, where you belong.”

Where she belonged? The words struck harder than he would ever know. That was the problem, wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure where she belonged anymore. Seattle had been everything she’d dreamed about as a kid, when she’d fantasized about escaping this messed-up town, but not even the lawyer husband, professionally decorated town house and nights out with college friends had seemed to fit right. She’d come home out of duty—to take care of her dad’s belongings and arrange the funeral—but there wasn’t an acre of Black Hollow that’d welcomed her with open arms. Least of all the man who’d ripped her heart in half and made her run in the first place. And she got it. She did. She hadn’t been the right fit for him, either. She hadn’t been the right fit for her ex-husband. She hadn’t been the right fit for her dad or for her classmates, who made sure she knew about every single flaw every single day of her miserable childhood. No one seemed to know what to do with her, and the only person who’d ever accepted her—unconditionally and with a smile—had been taken from her as a teen.

She’d hoped time and circumstances would have gifted her some kind of reset.

Turned out, she still didn’t fit. Not in Seattle, and not in Black Hollow.

But solving this case could change that. She’d gone through enough of her father’s files and listened to him talk about his cases over the years to know that motive was everything. If she managed to learn who in Lila Mercer’s life had reason to want her dead, Winnie might be able to create a new suspect pool the police hadn’t considered all those years ago.

The medical examiner’s report. It had to be somewhere in this house. Her father’s entire case rested on it, and he would’ve made sure to keep a copy. Bits and pieces from news coverage all those years ago—the few times her dad hadn’t turned off the TV and sent her out of the living room—trickled in from the box of memories she didn’t open too often. Just a few details. The memory of the eighty-year-old, hacking-up-a-lung newscaster she bet had passed away by now had explained that physical evidence on the body had been preserved due to the below freezing temperatures in Hollow Lake. To the point it was hard for investigators to tell how long Lila Mercer had been chained below the surface. There was something else, though. Something that felt important.

Winnie collected the delicate papers from the table and stacked them back into the box. A gnawing pain pulsed through her right eye. Damn it. Not now. Not in front of him. If she didn’t catch it in time, she wouldn’t be able to see in the next thirty minutes, but her survival instincts weren’t strong enough to fight her temper. “Why come here if you weren’t planning on helping me, Adrial? Was it out of pity? Your way of apologizing for the way we left things?”

“I don’t pity you.” Adrial moved to grab the box, but she dragged it out of his reach. “I just don’t want you getting involved in something where you end up hurt.”

He almost made it convincing, didn’t he? His concern for her.

“In case you weren’t aware, I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for a while now.” She hauled the box into her chest and turned. Pain drilled into her temple. She wanted to press her thumb into the thin skin there to relieve the pressure, but experience and history told her nothing short of caffeine and a dark room would help. Now. Her grip slipped from the box’s handles a mere foot before she got to the edge of the table.

But it never hit the floor.

“I got it.” Adrial’s voice was right there. Too close. How hadn’t she noticed? The round metal feet of the pleather dining table chair screamed as he pulled it across the linoleum. “Here. Sit down. Where are your rescue meds?”

“In my purse by the front door.” He’d remembered her migraines? Winnie didn’t give herself more than a couple of seconds to let that sink in. Of course, he remembered. She’d ruined their prom night because she hadn’t brought her migraine medication with her, and they’d had to leave the dance early. And forgo the plan she had to give him her virginity. Kind of hard to forget.

Before she had a chance to specify where she kept them in her purse, Adrial was crouched in front of her with her meds in one hand and a glass of water in the other. “Here.”

“Thank you.” She took both and downed the pills. It’d take a few minutes for them to kick in, but her brain was clear enough to recognize the truth of the matter. Who the hell would agree to help her with this case? Who would want to? It’d destroyed her dad’s career in the end. It’d turned an entire town against him to the point that not a single neighbor or friend had deemed him worthy of showing up at his funeral. It made sense Adrial didn’t want to get involved. He’d built a life for himself here. A family. An agency. A home. Nobody in their right mind would put those at risk, and she had no right to ask him to. “You don’t have to stay. I can take it from here.”

“I’ll wait until I’m sure the meds are working.” Straightening, he grabbed for the chair next to hers, pulled it in front of her and took a seat. His knee knocked into hers, jarring her entire nervous system with something to focus on. “Wouldn’t want you to walk into the wall again.”

“That was one time, and it hasn’t happened in a while.” It happened a month ago. She’d gotten used to the migraines since she was a teen, but they varied in intensity and timing. Sometimes she could catch them before she lost her vision. Most of the time, they steamrolled her into burying herself under the blankets and blocking out any hint of light for upward of three hours. “I meant the case. You don’t owe me anything, and I’m sorry if I made you feel like you did. I don’t… I don’t want to ruin what you’ve built for yourself here, and I’m sure looking into the Mercer investigation again has brought up a lot of unpleasant memories. I shouldn’t have asked for your help, but I appreciate you bringing your files all the same.”

He regarded her with the most unreadable expression. Utterly devoid of any indication of what was going on in that head of his. He hadn’t always been like that, had he? Not with her. There’d been moments when she could read him better than anyone else in her life. But a lot had happened since then.

“You’re not going to stop, are you?” he asked.

“I can’t.” She hadn’t realized how much truth sat in those two little words until right now. This wasn’t just about giving her father’s life purpose, restoring his reputation or honoring his memory. It might’ve started that way, but there was more, and it had everything to do with her needing to do something no one else in this town had been able to accomplish. To prove she was worth something to someone, even if that someone had been dead for twenty years and wouldn’t appreciate her effort.

The tendons down the side of his neck flexed. Adrial tapped four fingers against the table in a descending rhythm, his full attention on the movement. “We’ll need to go through these boxes and create a working investigation file. We won’t get anywhere trying to piece things together with it all spread out like this. And I’ll reach out to a friend in BHPD. See if I can get access to their notes and reports. If there are any family members or local witnesses still around, we’ll want to talk to them again.”

Her rib cage filled with a burning weightlessness, and the pain dwindled to a mere nudge at the side of her head. “You’re going to help me? Why?”

“Because I know what it feels like to go without answers.” He drummed his fingers one more time before shoving to stand. “I’ll call you when I have the case file and official evidence list. Until then, see if you can organize some of this chaos into something we can use. Put those research skills of yours to use. You might find something police overlooked.”

She didn’t know what going without answers meant for him, but she wasn’t going to turn down his experience as a former detective. Additionally, there were things in these boxes that surely only Adrial would be able to understand, having worked with her father for those years on the job. Winnie rose, trailing him to the front door. She could do this. For her dad. For herself. And maybe a little bit for Adrial. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me until we have a lead. Cold cases don’t play out like new homicide investigations. Witnesses and family move away, relationships with the victim change, resources run dry and the case files might be impossible to read. Not to mention perpetrators get cocky the longer they go without being caught, believing they’ve gotten away with murder.” Adrial grabbed for the bronze door handle, showcasing bulky muscle and years of dedication. And his bare left ring finger. “And they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it that way.”

Chapter Six

Lila Mercer was still haunting him.

“This everything?” Adrial flipped through Black Hollow PD’s investigation file as his forensic investigator took a seat in his favorite chair across the desk.

“Everything I could find in the ten minutes I was allowed free rein of the records room.” Baxter interlaced his fingers behind his skull, leaning the chair back on two feet as he had a thousand times since they’d opened Cold Hollow Investigations together two years ago. Neither of them had expected the agency to grow as it had. With their pasts, they’d been content to work cases no one else would touch to fulfill some sick need of getting closure by proxy, but their work had attracted other investigators and officials with that same need. Now, they were a team of six with a constant caseload coming not only from Black Hollow, but also clients from all over the state. “My contact in BHPD is risking their job for this, so I hope it’s worth it.”

Yet to be determined. Adrial had this entire case file memorized. While he hadn’t come into the investigation until four years after Lila Mercer had been killed, nothing had changed in terms of evidence or leads. “Does your contact happen to be the officer you’ve been dating?”

“We may have gone out a couple times.” Baxter’s Cheshire cat smile made the lines at the corners of his eyes crease. The smile was fake, a weapon the forensic anthropologist used to disarm, charm and bed unsuspecting partners. Of which there seemed to be an endless supply. Hell, Adrial wasn’t sure the man actually remembered how to smile, but they all had their vices in this line of work. “And bought a cat together.”

“Aren’t you allergic to cats?” Better than the time-share Baxter had purchased with one of his flings last year, but at some point his best friend was going to have to stop investing in the bachelor persona and face the fact that the woman he loved wasn’t coming back. Ever.

Baxter shrugged, setting the chair back on all four feet. “What can I say? My love language is gift giving, and she’s always wanted a cat. Paid off for me in the end. Except for the stuffy nose and feeling like I might suffocate every time I step into her apartment.”

Adrial flipped over the first few pages of the file Baxter had conned out of BHPD. This file—unlike the ones stashed in case-file boxes at Winnie’s house—had been organized and laid out with the first days of the investigation at the front and the years of notes and theories in chronological order. “What did you promise this contact in return for this favor?”

“Nothing you’ll have to pay up on. Though I might need to use a couple of my vacation days soon. She wants to see the arches in Utah.” Rubbing the back of his neck, the forensic investigator shifted to the edge of his seat. Those icy eyes centered on Adrial. “So the famous Winnie Hutton is back in town. How’s that going?”

The muscles down Adrial’s spine locked in place, one by one. He didn’t want to talk about Winnie. Didn’t want to think about her. Though, of course, that was all he’d been doing since he’d left her house yesterday afternoon. How she’d responded to the barest of touches. How her smile had lit up something unexpected inside of him and triggered a craving he’d convinced himself he’d never feed again. “You get the other thing I asked for?”

“Bottom of the stack.” Baxter motioned to the files with his chin. “Background check, university transcripts, marriage license, finances, employer records, phone records, mortgage docs, divorce decree. Michal went the whole nine yards on your girl.”

“Divorce?” Adrial couldn’t stop himself from flipping to the signed paperwork and skimming through it. His body suddenly felt heavier. Winnie had gotten divorced. Just three months ago. Hell, he hadn’t expected that. He thought she’d found someone worthy to provide her with the life she’d always wanted. Someone who would put her needs above his and get her as far from this town as possible, like she’d dreamed of since her mom had died. Who’d support her in becoming a psychotherapist and do whatever it took to make her happy. Like she deserved.

Adrial’s breath rushed from his chest. In defeat. Why hadn’t she said anything? He shut down that thought. Why would she have said anything? They hadn’t spoken in over a decade, and after the way he’d broken their engagement, he hadn’t given her any reason to trust him with that kind of personal information. From what he could see, her husband—now ex-husband—had been the one to file for divorce. Citing irreconcilable differences. They’d sold their house in Seattle and split the profits, as well as the credit-card debt under the husband’s name. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hell, the man had saddled her with his poor life choices, forcing Winnie to come back to Black Hollow to pay the price.

Just as Arthur had done in shouldering Winnie down with the Lila Mercer case. Because Adrial had no doubt in his mind his former partner had left that sticky note with Cold Hollow’s name for her, knowing she would feel obligated to go settle his affairs and see her father’s life work through.

Adrial spread everything out across his desk, then scrubbed a hand down his face. Their resident detective Michal had done a hell of a job pulling Winnie’s life together, but any good investigator knew whatever paperwork that told the story of a life would only be a snapshot. “She’s not my girl.”

A muscle tugged behind his rib cage. He’d already burned that bridge, and the truth was, he wasn’t interested in building another one. His heart couldn’t take it.

“Try telling your face that.” Baxter set his elbows against his knees, edging closer to the desk. “From what I can tell, Winnie Hutton is exactly who she’s claiming to be.”

Adrial reviewed the rest of the documents that spelled out what Winnie had been up to for the past ten years. None of it explained her sudden interest in investigating the Lila Mercer case. Maybe she’d been telling the truth after all. Just wanting to close out her father’s life like the good daughter she’d always been. “No red flags?”

“None. If she’s here for anything more than selling off her father’s assets, Michal didn’t find it.” Baxter hiked one ankle over his knee. “Tell me about this old case she’s having you look into.”

“You read the file?” Adrial went straight for the evidence list. He’d managed to take a photo of the catalog he and Winnie had found stashed in that first box before her migraine had attacked. Old habits had kicked in instantly when he’d caught her squeezing her eyes tight, and surprisingly, she’d let him take care of her for those few minutes. And it’d… It’d felt good. To have a purpose. Someone to care for after all this time. That’d always been the plan. Make detective, settle down with the woman he loved, start a family. He’d had everything he’d wanted. Until he didn’t. But the need was still there. Slowly eating him alive from the inside, and now Winnie was back in town, and he… He didn’t know what to do with that.

“Most of it.” The forensic investigator tipped his head back and forth a few times. “I got…distracted.”

Pulling up the photo on his phone, Adrial set both lists side by side. The tarp the body had been wrapped in. The chains that’d failed to keep the remains under water. The victim’s clothing. They all lined up. But there were inconsistencies in BHPD’s file. There was only one person who would’ve had that kind of authority. The investigating detective. Arthur Hutton. But why? Why spend almost an entire career as the town’s chief of police—almost half of the man’s life—working a case with faulty information? Or leave out information altogether. “Let me guess. By the cat.”

“Something like that.” There was that smile again, the one Baxter used to convince everyone around him he didn’t have a care in the world. One of these days that smile wouldn’t be enough. “Twenty-year-old nurse found beaten up and chained down in the middle of Hollow Lake some twenty years ago. Took a ME coming in from Seattle to identify her. Her teeth had been pulled and the tips of her fingers cut off.”

Adrial nodded, setting himself back in the chair. He reached out and shifted one of the crime scene photos parallel with the edge of his desk. An image that had burned itself into his brain that first day he’d been partnered with Arthur. “Lila Mercer was a local who lived alone, never married, never had any kids. According to neighbors and coworkers, she’d kept to herself. Didn’t have any family, from what we could find. Her parents had died in that big car accident, and she was an only child. Her boss said she always arrived on time for her shift, never complained about her duties and got along with everyone she came into contact with.”

Baxter seemed to consider that. “No confrontations with patients or the people she worked with?”

“None. She went as far to cover for other nurses when they needed it, worked upward of sixty hours a week sometimes.” Adrial tapped four fingers on the surface of his desk, a habit he couldn’t seem to kick when coming at a case like this. Dead end after dead end. “She didn’t have time for confrontations or relationships.”

Baxter shifted, that telltale divot between his eyebrows. “So she was a loner. But obviously someone wanted her dead, and the way she was beaten makes me think it was personal. Most of the damage I’ve seen in the medical examiner’s report was focused on her face and head. Whoever killed her could’ve put their effort there to derail identification, but it feels more like anger. Like someone snapped.”

It was possible and had been one of Adrial’s more promising theories, but without evidence of a relationship or DNA left behind by the attacker, they had nothing new to go off of.

“At first, Arthur thought it might’ve been an act of random violence. Maybe she ran into someone on her way home from work or tried to stop some kind of altercation.” He forced himself to look at the victim’s face. “But a thorough search of the route she took from the clinic home never provided evidence of a struggle, and there were no reports of fights or hit-and-runs that night.”

Baxter set his face in one palm. “You look at the ex?”

“High school boyfriend moved back east for school, leaving her here. Phone records didn’t give any indication she’d started seeing someone else. Neither her fingertips nor her teeth were recovered, either, and the ME couldn’t get a good sample from her wounds to determine if the killer left behind DNA.” Adrial tapped the old records he’d reviewed a thousand times over the years, always pulling him back into the case despite his determination to let it go. “But we found something interesting in her financials. There was a charge on her credit card for two hundred dollars, well above her usual spending, at a doctor’s office a few towns over two months before Lila was murdered.”

A light blazed behind Baxter’s eyes. “That is interesting. I’m assuming BHPD talked to the doctor?”

“That was where the investigation stalled.” And the trail had run dry. Adrial tossed one of the crime scene photos back onto the pile, succumbing to the disappointment that talking this through had failed to reveal anything new. He was right back where he didn’t want to be—faced with an unsolvable case and the woman he’d tried to protect from discovering the truth. “The clinic burned down a couple weeks before Lila Mercer was killed. The doctor she saw—and their records—burned with it.”

Baxter’s low whistle filled the office. “So what’s the plan then?”

He leaned forward in his office chair. “The same place we always do when working a cold case. We start with exhuming the body.”

Chapter Seven

Okay. So officially reopening the case was harder than she thought it might be. Turned out, they needed new evidence in the case or a real-life police officer to petition the judge. Which meant she couldn’t put off compiling the file any longer.

It’d taken hours.

No matter how many times she’d showered, it felt as though a thin film of dust and smudged ink had burrowed beneath her skin in an effort to compile her father’s case files. Thirteen boxes of handwritten notes, photographs of the crime scene—some taken long after the body had been removed—multiple copies of the same initial incident report, recordings of interviews and transcripts, victimology reports, witness testimony and more. Some pieces were still missing—pieces like the original evidence that had been logged on that single sheet of paper she and Adrial had recovered—but she’d done her best to reconstruct the investigation file in chronological order according to the dates stamped on each section. Now, it was a matter of filling in the blanks. And checking the evidence list against the official BHPD file. If they had an idea of what had gone missing over the years, they might have a clearer picture of who’d wanted Lila Mercer dead. Which, based on the profile her father had put together, wasn’t a very long list.

From what she’d collected in reviewing the file from front to back a thousand times in the past two days, the victim centered her entire life around the clinic where she worked. Winnie didn’t know if it was a matter of finances or purpose that drove Lila Mercer to live for her job, but it was pretty obvious she didn’t have a whole lot of fulfilling relationships.

Something Winnie didn’t want to look too closely at right now, as she made the half-mile walk from her dad’s house to the offices of Cold Hollow Investigations.

According to the notes she’d found, the victim’s dad had divorced her mother early in their marriage and disappeared, then her mom followed around the time Lila was a young woman, running after a married man no one wanted to identify. No siblings or extended family from what detectives could find. No one to take in Lila Mercer when she’d needed them the most. There’d been mention of a boyfriend in high school, but he’d moved away years before Lila’s body had been found.

The sad truth was, Winnie and Lila Mercer had a lot in common, made more apparent by a near match in their hair color and the few freckles Winnie had noted dotted across Lila’s nose from her old yearbook photo. That was as far as the physical resemblance went, but she could relate to losing her mother at a critical age, being a lonely only child who might’ve been desperate to have something—someone—to hold on to and a father that didn’t want anything to do with her.

That hadn’t always been the case. Her earliest memories of Arthur Hutton still brought a smile to her face. When he’d surprised her with a very DIY mermaid birthday cake for her fifth birthday and accidentally gotten the trick candles that couldn’t be blown out. Or when he’d taught her how to shoot her first BB gun, later replacing it with her first nine millimeter, and the reverence of pride in his expression when she hit the target that first time at ten. There were nights she’d burst into her parents’ room because of a strange sound or a nightmare, and her dad had tucked her between them, promising she was safe. But those memories thinned out after her mom passed. And then suddenly, she was living with a ghost. A father who was physically there but emotionally untouchable. It’d only gotten worse after she’d left Black Hollow, her Happy Birthday and Happy Father’s Day texts going unanswered for days before her dad responded…when he even bothered.

Thinking back, she wasn’t sure Arthur had ever really wanted to be a dad, at least not without the love of his life by his side, but that wasn’t any excuse for pretending she didn’t exist at all. And now that he was gone…She didn’t know what to feel. Grief? That sounded like the logical answer, but she couldn’t seem to summon the effort to mourn. Not even standing beside his coffin as it was lowered into the ground beside her mother’s resting place. Sadness? She’d tried to force the tears more than once since stepping back into that house and come up with nothing but red eyes irritated from dust. Then again, what had she really lost? The occasional text demanding she return to Black Hollow, where her father wanted her? The unanswered phone calls and attempts to reconnect while going through the divorce? Hours of wondering if he was still alive and taking care of himself? If she was being honest with herself, she’d lost her dad a long time ago.

Winnie maneuvered the familiar sidewalk in front of storefront windows belonging to the shops along Main Street. She’d spent hours after school eating herself into a sugar coma at Frosted and Fun, Black Hollow’s only cupcake bakery. Puppies stared hopefully at her through the sidewalk-to-roof pane of glass at Meow and Fetch, waiting for adoption or bored window shoppers who needed to waste time. Tiny Threads and Happy Petals—the kids’ clothing store and florist, both owned by the same family—hadn’t changed a bit in the ten years she’d been gone, but it looked as though Glitter and Glue, the one-stop shop for all her crafting needs growing up, had finally folded. She pulled up short, staring through the smudged glass into the empty space. Too bad. Maybe if she added some glitter to the file, Adrial might show something other than contempt.

She could see his face now. He’d never be able to get rid of it all.

Trees rustled at intervals from the breeze coming down through Hollow Canyon east of town, the constant airflow drawing warmth from her body and whipping her hair into her face. Hugging the case file she’d painstakingly built, she navigated over a break in the sidewalk where tree roots attempted to take back their land and pulled up short at the intersection to cross the street.

“Winnie Hutton?” The high-pitched, feminine voice triggered a ringing in Winnie’s ears. “Is that really you? It is! I told you, honey. I can still spot her from a mile away with that hair.”

Oh, hell. Manners demanded she show some kind of acknowledgement when all Winnie wanted to do was run in front of traffic. Seemed like the lesser of two evils, but the light had yet to change. Facing off with the bottle blonde buried under what looked like three layers of cracked and dried foundation and lipstick, and the devastatingly handsome man at her side, she summoned a weak smile. “Darby. Henry. How are you?”

The woman’s teeth brightened glaringly white as her smile overextended past the capabilities of her face. Most likely due to the massive amount of Botox she’d gotten over the years. “Fantastic as always, but my day just got a whole lot better running into you.”

She bet it did. Winnie tightened her grip along the edge of the case file, digging the cardstock into her soft skin of her fingers. It was impossible to shut down the tingling sensation at the back of her neck that warned her every time she became the focus of both Darby’s and Henry’s attention, even after all these years. “I’m so glad.”

She couldn’t put more distaste into those three words if she tried, but the couple standing there in their high-end outfits had never registered human emotion before. She shouldn’t expect them to understand it now.

“Are you back in town to take care of your dad’s estate?” Henry Forbes, yes, of the founding Black Hollow family, dragged his wife into his side by her hip, towering over her at well over six feet. Not quite as tall as Adrial, but nearly every man had more than a few inches on Winnie. He hadn’t changed much, still freshly shaven with sharp features and a deceivingly handsome face. And a button-down that matched Darby’s pale pink dress and heels. His perfectly straight smile presented one front while the soul beneath had been long since been corrupted. “If you’re interested in selling the house, we could really get a good profit for you. Of course, you’d have to make some improvements before we list. Buyers aren’t really into that stench of failure your dad carried around since becoming chief of police.”

And there it was. The first strike.

Winnie’s spine snapped tight.

Darby’s perfectly manicured hand slipped across her husband’s chest and beneath his deep purple tie with a playfulness Winnie recognized all too well. “Henry, please. Winnie just lost her father. She’s obviously going through such a hard time right now. Can’t you tell? She has cobwebs in her hair and streaks of dust on her jeans. Unemployment is a serious problem. Here. Let me help.”

Darby drove her hand into her handbag, pulled out a fifty-dollar bill and offered it. “Lunch and dinner is on me. I’m sure you could find somewhere that would let you in dressed like…that. Maybe McDonald’s. You don’t even have to get out of the car.”

Ah. The old you’re-poor-and-ugly insult. Winnie shut down the urge to scratch her nails across her own brain. They weren’t in high school anymore. Did people really still act like this years later? She’d spent years terrified of these people, dreading the day she’d have to come back, but she wasn’t that girl anymore. She’d grown up, built a life, gone through hell standing up for herself through the divorce and found the courage to come back to Black Hollow. Her high school bullies wouldn’t get the better of her this time. “Tell me, Henry. Still driving drunk? You flipped your dad’s car the last time, right?”

Henry’s false smile drained from his too-perfect face. “How did you—”

“Oh, I learned about all kinds of things from the police department growing up. That was a benefit of being raised in the station. You hear things no one else does.” Winnie took a step forward, refusing to back down, as she would have years ago. And if felt good. “You know, I’m surprised you’re able to hold a real estate license with your history, Darby. Or did your daddy pay for that drug charge to disappear?”

Lines broke through that Botox-built face as Darby narrowed her gaze. “You little—”

“There you are.” Callused, warm skin slipped across her low back, dipping beneath the waistband of her jeans before securing tight at her hip. Adrial’s body heat sank through her blouse and straight past her rib cage, and fought back the chill from the fog that surrounded the town. Solid and strong and reliable. His gaze had never been softer as he looked down at her, easing his mouth closer before pressing his lips to hers. The kiss was quick and efficient and lacked any kind of passion, but her entire body didn’t get the message. It wanted more. “I know we agreed to meet at the office, but I wanted to walk with you.”

Her mouth wasn’t working. Neither was her brain. Winnie cut her gaze to Darby and Henry, both standing there as though they’d just witnessed a crime. What was happening? Was she dead? She cleared her throat, forcing herself to say something…anything. “No problem.”

“Adrial Tucker in the flesh, wow. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you prowling around town.” The entire atmosphere changed in an instant as Henry’s game face was shoved back into place. He released his wife, extending his hand toward Adrial. “How the hell are you? I’ve been meaning to reach out to see if you’re interested in—”

“I’m not.” Adrial shored up his grip on her hip, directing her back to the corner. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Winnie and I have better things to do than waste our time on people who don’t deserve it.”

For the love of all that was holy. She’d never forget the drop in Darby’s and Henry’s expressions at being discarded, as she had so many times. She checked to ensure they were out of hearing distance as the Hollows stared after them. She could get across the street alone, but Winnie found herself not wanting him to remove his touch, either. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” He hadn’t looked at her since that kiss, but his hand was still firmly gripped against her hip. As though he couldn’t stand the thought of letting go just yet.

And she liked it. So much. “Pretend you actually like me.”

Adrial cut his attention to her then, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Who says I’m pretending, Red?”

Chapter Eight

He shouldn’t have touched her.

Because now he didn’t want to stop.

And that kiss… It’d been nothing but a performance to put Darby and Henry Forbes in their places, but Adrial could still taste the slight hint of Winnie’s peppermint ChapStick that’d rubbed off on his lips. His mouth tingled and cooled, a constant reminder that’d he somehow caught himself on the wrong side of the line he’d drawn between them. Hell, seeing her at the mercy of those two had cracked his entire plan to keep things professional. There’d been far too many times he hadn’t gotten between Winnie and Darby over the years. He just hadn’t expected he still needed to play referee.

She kept pace with him easily enough despite the difference in their heights, as though muscle memory had kicked in from back when they’d been inseparable. Walking these same sidewalks to dinner, hitting up the library at the end of their workdays, ducking into the bakery to grab cupcakes for one of their birthdays. “You didn’t have to interfere back there. I can take care of myself.”

“I wasn’t worried about you.” Adrial finally had the sense to drop his hand from her lower back, but her body heat had seeped into his fingers too deeply to dislodge the sensation fully. “You looked feral enough I was convinced you were two seconds away from pulling their hearts from their chests with your bare hands.”

“They’d deserve it.” A close-lipped smile crept across her face. She was picturing it, probably every minor detail from the feel of a half-beating heart in each hand and the stupid expressions etched into her victims’ faces. In Winnie’s world, the more gore, the merrier. It’d always been a problem, especially on movie nights, when she’d failed to pick anything other than horror flicks and he’d just wanted to escape with mindless action. She smoothed her hand down her frizzed braid, looking perfectly chaotic and beautiful and wild. “I spent most of the night putting the file together before I fell asleep face down on the kitchen table. I didn’t get a chance to change before our meeting.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you. You look great.” And she did. Her style had changed over the years, evolving into button-down blouses in colors that brought out the intense hazel of her eyes and jeans that met every curve of her lower half. In the past decade, she’d gone from her grunge era of old band T-shirts stolen from his closet, to a woman who looked as though she was ready to take on the world. Even standing against her childhood bullies a few minutes ago, she’d held her chin high in a way she never had before. Adrial locked down the blitz of heat that flared at the thought. Every cell in his body demanded he turn back around and pull Henry Forbes’s tie tighter until the bastard got on his knees and apologized for coming near Winnie, but Adrial didn’t play those kinds of games anymore. “What’d they want?”

Her laugh filtered through him in a crushing wave of detached ice. Not like her at all. Fake but practiced.

“The usual. I’m ugly. I’m poor. My dad is the town villain.” Winnie seemed to gauge their location by taking in the row of houses branching off the center of town. Houses that competed with each other by putting up the tackiest Halloween and Christmas decorations, installing the ugliest mailboxes and hosting the worst cocktail parties. His childhood home looked the same as it always did as they passed. Abandoned, overgrown and sad, and he had no intention of stepping over the threshold again. “This isn’t the way to your office.”

She was right. He’d silently directed her toward the one last place he should consider bringing her, but it’d almost been automatic. A need he couldn’t explain. The walk wasn’t far from the agency office, one he made every day when he managed to drag himself home instead of crashing on his office couch. “You might not remember this about Black Hollow, but people around here are extremely nosy. Figured you’d want somewhere more private to talk about the case.”

She crossed both arms around the file pressed against her chest. “Your office isn’t private enough?”

With Baxter hanging around and wanting every detail about Winnie to hold over his head for eternity? “No.”

“I take it you haven’t been to your parents’ house since you moved back.” She scanned the black wrought-iron fence that failed to corral the rose bushes his mother had loved and spent years cultivating. Dead blooms and buds had turned brown and died off and never been pruned in the years since her passing. His father wanted nothing to do with them, had hired a landscaper to take over the yard duties once Adrial moved away to Chicago. Mayor Shane Tucker wouldn’t have been caught dead doing something so beneath him as yard work. That was for the working people. “You haven’t sold it?”

“Not yet.” As much as he hated every memory of growing up in that house, with its staff and nannies and tutors, he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. So the house sat here, decaying year by year, void of life and a future. A perfect reflection of the hollowness living in his chest. “Henry Forbes has been trying to convince me to let him sell it since I came back, but I’m not willing to give him the satisfaction or any of my other business. Unfortunately, the only other Realtor in Black Hollow is his wife.”

“Say no more.” She swept her fingers across the tops of the wrought iron—just as she done every time she’d come to his house—and moved on. Passing the hollow shell holding all those expectations and pressures Adrial had grown up with as the mayor’s son. “I guess I have no idea where you live then. I’d always assumed you’d taken over the Tucker estate.”

Hell, he hated that word. Estate. Then again, that was exactly what it was while he’d been growing up. The place the most powerful people in Black Hollow lied, manipulated and schemed to get into. Parties, political functions, birthdays. His mother had spent months on the guest lists and thousands of dollars on the decor, food and alcohol—catered, of course—while Adrial had been expected to stay in his room night after night listening to the sounds of life happening one floor below. Tucker Mansion might’ve been the biggest house in town, but the walls closed in on him every night. And it’d only gotten worse as friends he’d made in school, or at the park on the rare occasions he convinced his nanny to take him, learned his last name and who his parents were.

But not Winnie. She’d never cared about the Olympic-size pool in the backyard or the theater room in the basement. She’d never even asked to hang out at his house until he’d invited her. For the first time in his life, he hadn’t had to worry about someone else’s agenda or what they wanted from him. She’d never had one, and he’d fallen in love with her long before he’d asked her to marry him because of it.

“We’re almost there.” Tucking his hands into his pockets to keep himself from reaching out to her again, Adrial nodded down the tree-lined street. Cracked curbs, a few straggling Halloween decorations and dead leaves created a sense of otherworldliness as they moved farther away from Main Street. The houses here got smaller the closer to town center, the yards a little more worn from years of kids jumping through sprinklers or playing tag. There’d been thousands of times when he’d fantasized about being a regular kid able to do regular things rather than spend his summers and weekends skiing with adults, whose conversations rarely pointed his way, or sitting with his Mandarin tutor hour after hour until he got his pronunciation right. This section of town had given him a glimpse of what life could look like if parents engaged with their kids and friendships were built off playing “truth or dare” and after-school trouble. “Just a couple more streets.”

“We’re going to your house?” Winnie’s eyes couldn’t have gotten any wider at the idea of him bringing her home. Then she pulled up short. “Wait. Is this a setup? Is your wife going to be waiting for me with a kitchen knife because we used to be engaged?”

His brain struggled between two extremes: laughing at the ridiculous notion he’d lure her to his home to kill her and the darkness clawing through his chest that refused to be forgotten. He sucked in a sharp breath, prepared for the emptiness to follow as it usually did when thinking of Katie. “I see you’re still watching too many horror movies.” Her expression didn’t crack under his attempt at humor. He used to make her bust out laughing with jokes like that, but that was before his life had gone to hell. He was losing his touch. “If you must know, my wife’s not home.”

“Adrial, I’m not interested in being your dirty little secret.” Color that had nothing to do with the steady cold sinking into his joints shot into her face. She threw out one hand. “Not that we’re anything more than coworkers while we look into Lila Mercer’s case, but I’d rather we meet somewhere public if having me in your home is going to make your family uncomfortable.”

Adrial took a single step forward. Logic was losing its hold on him, drawing him closer to her. “You say that like you know what it’s like to be on that side.”

“I do.” She notched her chin higher, just as she had in facing off with Darby and Henry Forbes, and Adrial didn’t like that one bit. Didn’t like that she might consider him a threat. “And it’s not a position I would put any woman through. Even if it meant losing your help with this investigation.”

He looked down at her, grabbed her left hand and smoothed his thumb over her ring finger. Where her wedding ring should’ve been. “Where is your husband, Red? Why didn’t he come to help you deal with your father’s funeral and house?”

“You shouldn’t call me that.” She ripped her hand from his but didn’t seem to know what to do with it after that. “We’re not together anymore. You’re married, and it’s inappropriate to pretend otherwise.”

“You think I’m the kind of man who would try to seduce you while still married to my wife?” Hell, maybe this wasn’t going to work between them. Ten years wasn’t long enough to heal the wounds he’d caused. He needed her to trust him if they were going to work this case together, but so far he hadn’t given her any reason to. That was clear now.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t know you, Adrial. Not really.” She took a step back from him, countering the proximity he’d created between them. “I thought I did. I thought I knew everything about you, but then you disappeared to Chicago without even saying goodbye or breaking up with me to my face.”

“I’m sorry, Winnie. I didn’t want to hurt you. I just… I couldn’t stay. Not with the way things were going, but it had nothing to do with you.” He couldn’t stop himself from regaining the distance she’d put between them. To just get a hint of her favorite vanilla shampoo and feel the brush of her hair against his arm. “But I’m not married anymore. My wife… She’s in Chicago with her family. Where she belongs.”

“You’re divorced.” Her throat worked on a deep swallow. She lost a bit of the fight he couldn’t seem to help but instigate in her. He liked it, the stubbornness and the fire. Not this meek little thing who felt the need to protect herself from the world. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

It was all too easy to let her assumption slide, but he didn’t have it in him to get into the details of his marriage. They had more important things to focus on. The Lila Mercer case, for one.

“Nothing to be sorry for.” Adrial motioned toward the house, which was set back off the street by a large yard with a giant willow and a floor-to-ceiling window at the front. The house he’d made his home since moving back. The house he’d bought. For her. “We’re here.”

Chapter Nine

It was their house.

Winnie’s entire body refused to obey her brain’s commands as she took in two stories of perfectly maintained white brick. The front door—painted black to stand out against the facade—had been lined with clear glass and promised warmth from the low lighting coming from inside. A picture-perfect window, complete with a wood planter box centered beneath, was off to one side. The medium-size trees standing sentinel on both sides of the door drew visitors’ attention to three small steps at the base of the storybook-style home. Small, paned windows and pointed rooflines with white gutters matching the brick added to the fairy tale, and she couldn’t seem to help but take that step forward onto the paved path leading to the front door.

It was perfect. It always had been.

Ever since that day she’d hidden behind one of those very trees lining the right side of the fenced property in a desperate attempt to outrun Darby and Henry and their followers in seventh grade. From that moment on she’d been in love with it. In love with the idea that it would someday be theirs. It’d provided her safety when she’d needed it the most, and Winnie had vowed from that day on she would somehow be able to afford it to keep that feeling for her future family.

She’d only been inside once during an open house. Nothing but wishful thinking, but she’d fallen in love with it all the same. She’d spent hours wandering through the layout, fantasizing about her and Adrial moving in, cooking dinners together in the sleek kitchen, lying out on the covered back porch and roasting marshmallows in the in-ground firepit in the backyard. Later, they would’ve added a pool for the kids and chased jelly-covered faces around the yard trying to get them dry before they bounded through the house smearing water and food everywhere. At night, after putting the kids down for bed, they’d lie together on the couch reading, or watching whatever new series was trending with the fireplace lit and the lights turned down low. Maybe they’d christen every surface in the house and try for that third baby.

But none of that had happened.

Her mouth dried as she sucked in a deep breath. It was never going to be hers, was it? The pool, the fireplace, the quartz countertops and hardwood floors. The kids and the husband who didn’t feel the need to cheat, lie and manipulate his way through their marriage. It’d all been right there in front of her one minute. Within reach. Then, poof. Gone the next. She tried to breathe through the nausea churning in her stomach, her exhales crystallizing in front of her mouth. “You bought it.”

“It was supposed to be a wedding gift.” Adrial slipped his hands into his jeans pockets, facing off with the house he’d told her over and over would be hers one day. That he’d do whatever it took to make that dream come true. Work two jobs, use his trust when his parents passed, even though he’d never wanted to touch that money, eat ramen every night. Those promises had meant everything. “We’d planned on leaving for our honeymoon straight after the reception, but I was going to surprise you at the rehearsal dinner.”

Winnie couldn’t look at it anymore. Every fiber of her being felt too hot, too pressurized. She practically lunged down the sidewalk, trying to put as much distance between her and that house as possible. Adrial had brought her to his house. His house. The same house that was always meant to be theirs. With a wife who wasn’t her. She didn’t register where she was going, but it didn’t matter. She needed to be anywhere but here, even if it meant running into Darby and Henry a second time.

“Winnie, wait.” His boots thunked against the pavement, and he kept pace easily with those long legs. Strong hands slid between her rib cage and arm, and swung her to face him. Right into his chest. “Just wait.”

“Why would you do that?” She wasn’t going to cry. Not because of him. She’d already wasted months of tears on him. He didn’t deserve any more. Winnie swiped at her face. “Why would you bring me here?”

Exhaustion played across his face, his eyes closing as though he couldn’t summon the energy to keep them open anymore. When he looked at her again, he’d somehow maintained that perfect composure she’d come to expect. “I told you. We needed somewhere private to work—”

“Bull.” She slammed her hand into his sternum. “We could’ve gone anywhere. We could’ve reserved a study room at the library. You brought me here to humiliate me. Just like you humiliated me when you left for that job in Chicago.”

“Winnie, take a breath.” Staring down at her, Adrial skimmed his thumb along her jawline, and every nerve ending she owned lit up at the contact. Just like they had with that kiss. For a man who wasn’t soft in any sense of the word, he’d always handled her as though she was made of glass. “You’re turning blue.”

The edges of her vision had darkened without her realizing, and it took everything she had to remind herself to breathe. Seemed her survival instincts had never fully developed growing up. Every time she got angry, she stopped breathing, which led to more migraines and more anger. It was a vicious cycle she couldn’t seem to escape from when it came to him, the first time occurring right after her father told her Adrial wasn’t coming to the rehearsal dinner. Not just the dinner, but that he wasn’t going to marry her. That he’d left town. She knew better than to let him get this close, but Winnie couldn’t seem to pull away, either. “Why?”

He seemed to understand she wasn’t asking why she should breathe, or why he’d brought her to the one place she’d avoided since coming back into town, as he slid his hand free of her face and elbow. “There were things occurring in the department that could’ve backfired on you if I didn’t leave.”

“So what? You’re saying you left to protect me?” Her shoulders hurt as she tried to remember how to stand naturally. “You could’ve called me. Sent a message. Left a voice mail. You didn’t have to just leave without a word. We could’ve worked it out. We could’ve gone together.”

He was already shaking his head, and the first glimpse of real emotion speared across his face. Regret. “I couldn’t tell you anything. The people involved… They would’ve hurt you if they’d found out you got caught up in it, Red.”

A shiver chased down her spine. She didn’t… She didn’t know what to say to that. Every cruel thought she’d convinced herself was true—about him getting cold feet or that he’d never been in love with her—raced to the front of her mind. But they didn’t fit right with this new information. Thickness gathered on the back of her tongue. “You didn’t want to leave?”

He closed the inches between them, then dragged his hands down her arms, imbuing warmth through her blouse and straight into her skin. “I would’ve done anything but put you at risk to stay, Red. Anything. The job in Chicago was supposed to be temporary after I finished collecting evidence on the issue here. I planned on coming back to Black Hollow, to you, but things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to.”

No. They hadn’t. He’d stayed in Chicago. He’d met someone. He’d gotten married and moved on without her while she’d tried to do the same with a man who’d never intended to keep his vows. Winnie let her gaze drop from his, wandering to the bright white brick of the house set apart from the dense trees surrounding the property of his house. Her heart jumped at the sight, but part of her recognized it wasn’t just the house that had her insides coiling tighter. It was Adrial. “And now?”

“I’m still trying to protect you.” His thumb rubbed small circles into her left arm, keeping her in the moment and settling her heart rate. He was the only one who’d ever had that effect on her since her mother had passed, and she’d missed it. Missed him. “I need you to believe that.”

She nodded, though she wasn’t exactly sure what she was agreeing to, if she believed him. If there’d been issues inside BHPD, wouldn’t her dad have told her? What could he possibly have needed to protect her from? She wasn’t law enforcement. Or had Adrial been the target, and therefore, the people he cared about had automatically been wrapped up as collateral damage? Wetting her lips against the cold, she held the file tighter to her chest. She could be patient, but she’d get answers. One way or another. “I can take care of myself.”

“For once, maybe you shouldn’t have to.” Adrial offered her his hand. A choice, in an entire lifetime of not being able to choose for herself. No one had ever considered how much she needed that control. Except Adrial.

She slid her hand into his, soft skin against his rough calluses that told her he still liked to work with her hands. The fireplace inside had been woodburning the last time she’d checked, and she could easily picture him spending time on the weekends chopping wood and stacking it against the side of the house for the winter. But she had to stop doing that. Picturing a life here. Because it wasn’t hers. Wouldn’t ever be hers.

After leading her up the paved path, Adrial thumbed in the code to the front door, and a dead bolt clicked. He shoved the door open, dragging her in after him. Instant heat prickled at her exposed face and neck, and she withdrew her hand from his as she scanned the entryway. Sand-colored tiles stretched across the foyer, leading to a forest-green paneled mudroom complete with bench to her right.

It was everything she’d remembered and more, aged with perfection and showing signs of life and love. Pale wood framed a pocket door leading into the living room ahead, with a vase stuffed with fake greenery adding to the minimalistic decor. Everything in sight was exactly as she would’ve kept it. Clean and simple and natural. The living room stretched out to her left, and as she crossed into the main space, she couldn’t help but be drawn to the bookcases framing the stone-worked fireplace that served as the focal point of the room. To the photos and books and knickknacks Adrial hadn’t allowed to seep into his office at Cold Hollow Investigations.

One photo drew her closer, almost buried behind layers of somber faces from Adrial’s childhood. She couldn’t ever remember a time when his parents smiled or doted on their only son, but she knew Adrial had loved them, and they’d loved him in their own way. The same way she knew her dad had loved her despite his ability to pretend she didn’t exist.

“That’s Katie.” Adrial dragged the framed photo forward, then tilted the glass to give her a better view of the woman smiling over her shoulder adorned in a lovely, lace wedding veil. He set the photo back on the shelf. “My wife.”

Wife. Not ex-wife. Tension racketed up Winnie’s neck the longer she studied the blonde free of freckles, frizzed hair and a perfect soft smile that promised to love unconditionally. She understood his mistake. She still caught herself thinking of Dan as her husband, though he hadn’t been long before the divorce had been finalized. “She’s very beautiful.”

“She was.” Adrial’s attention remained on the photo, but the slight glaze to his eyes told her he was somewhere else.

Winnie didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“She died.” Adrial locked his gaze on her. “Katie was my very first cold case.”

Chapter Ten

Winnie flinched before cutting her attention back to the photo, and his stomach flipped at her discomfort. Just one of the many times he was responsible for the dozens of small invisible cuts she’d sustained over the years since meeting him.

He needed her to understand. Not Baxter, not the rest of his team. He needed the woman in front of him to understand that he wasn’t the man she’d loved all those years ago. That part of him didn’t exist anymore. Likely never would again. He didn’t feel things like he used to. Didn’t care as much as he should. While he’d had every good intention of taking on the cases most law enforcement had given up on, it’d been for entirely selfish reasons that Cold Hollow Investigations had been born.

“I’m sorry.” Those simple two words left her mouth as nothing more than a breathless whisper. Her slim shoulders took on a life of their own as she inhaled to what he thought might be a count of four. Winnie licked those perfectly pink lips, and his mind instantly went to that kiss that shouldn’t have happened. How soft her mouth had been beneath his, even as the rest of her had locked up from surprise. It’d taken less than a second for him to taste her peppermint toothpaste and feel the warm-blooded rush she’d triggered in his veins. And, hell, he hadn’t felt anything like that in a long time. “How long ago?”

“Two years.” Adrial cleared his throat. He’d started this for a reason, but his skin felt as though it was too tight and infested with thousands of unseen spiders tiptoeing beneath the surface. His throat spasmed around nothing but a burn of air, and all he could do was focus on that single photo. Katie in her veil, looking over her shoulder with that smile that lit up every time he walked through the door. He couldn’t picture it as often as he used to be able to. “She was found a few blocks from our town house. The medical examiner said the blow to her head killed her instantly, though he couldn’t determine what she’d been hit with. The detectives investigating the case concluded it was a mugging gone wrong. Her wallet and phone weren’t with her, but the tech guys were never able to pinpoint a signal. There were a couple hits on her credit card at nearby bodegas, but no surveillance footage to identify who was using the card. After that, everything came to a standstill.”

“That’s why you came back to Black Hollow?” Winnie’s voice threatened to coax him out of the comfort of facts. If he could stick to the facts, he didn’t have to feel anything, but there was a crack that’d fissured the second she’d walked into his office and seemed to keep spreading every time they were in a room together. But she’d always held the power to unravel his defenses from a cellular level.

“The case stalled out. There was no reason for me to stay. I could’ve gone anywhere, but I had this house and my parents’ place, and the number of cold cases in Black Hollow was on the rise. Felt like it was time to start over.” He’d loved his wife—wanted nothing more than to find the people responsible for taking her from him—but even he had recognized the path he’d started down. There was a reason law enforcement officers weren’t permitted to work personal cases, but Adrial hadn’t cared. Until it was too late. He scrubbed a hand down his face.

“Katie and I were only married five years. It sounds like a lifetime, but it didn’t feel like it.” That knot he couldn’t swallow doubled its effort to suffocate him from the inside out. “We were expecting our first kid when she was killed.”

“Adrial, I’m so sorry.” Color drained from Winnie’s face. Her nearly soundless inhale echoed through him, louder than his own pulse. She slipped her hand along his forearm, and his entire nervous system revved down a gear. “Did the police ever find the person responsible? Did you?”

“No.” No amount of time staring at the case file he kept in his desk, going over the evidence, the ME’s report or the location she’d been found at had revealed a suspect. Not even when he’d expanded his theory to include that she’d been targeted by one of the perpetrators he’d arrested. In the end, Chicago PD had been forced to move on to higher-priority cases, and Katie’s had been left in a box stored in the back of an evidence warehouse, where she’d been forgotten.

“I think I understand now. When you said she’s with her family in Chicago, you meant she was buried out there. With them.” Sunlight cut through the living room window to their left, highlighting the silvery sheen in Winnie’s eyes, and he couldn’t help but want to swipe away her sadness. She didn’t have any reason to feel that for him, but she’d always led with her soft heart. She’d always tried to see the best in people—even the ones who’d never deserved her forgiveness—and offer them the benefit of the doubt. Including him.

“With her parents. Her brother is still alive. He visits her and takes care of the grave, brings her flowers every week. I talk to him every couple of months or so, but the time between calls keeps getting longer.”

“There weren’t any other investigators assigned to working the case?” She seemed to catch herself, answering her own question. “There were, but there were no leads and probably no resources to devote to a random mugging. How long before they stopped investigating what happened?”

Hell, she was smart. More than she liked to let on, and he’d never understood why she’d gone out of her way to hide away pieces of herself. He finally worked through that knot in his throat, like letting all of this out had somehow cleared up room for him to breathe a bit easier. “Six months.”

“I’m sorry. I know I said that before, but I am, Adrial. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with not only losing your wife, but feeling you needed to be the one to work her case. No one should have to deal with that alone.” Winnie swiped at her eyes as though she could erase the glimpse of emotion clouding her gaze and folded her arms across her chest. While she’d always let that big heart of hers lead her choices, she’d never been comfortable showing vulnerability. A by-product of Henry and Darby’s idea of friendship growing up. And a way to convince her father she was someone worthy of his attention. Knowing Winnie, she’d stuffed her feelings down for years or cut herself from them altogether. Problem was, no matter how much a person ignored them, they never went away. He served as the prime example that there was always a breaking point. “So Katie’s case made you want to work cold cases. I guess it’s a good thing Black Hollow has so many to offer.”

Right. The case. He didn’t miss her change in subject and knew this was one of those times Winnie recognized what he needed before he did. Adrial stepped into the center of the living room he’d once fantasized being filled with redheaded menaces screaming and streaking through in an attempt to escape his laughing wife running after them. His breath lodged in his throat as Winnie looked up at him with evidence of a fledgling smile. More brittle than real, but gut-wrenching all the same. He didn’t deserve her smiles. He didn’t deserve to have her sympathy or her scent in his lungs. And yet, here she was, willing to put everything she had at risk of helping a victim she didn’t even know. Because that was the kind of woman she was. “A contact in Black Hollow PD was kind enough to share the official case file.”

“Then we should be able to compare the evidence lists from my father’s notes with what was cataloged.” She scanned the living room, seemingly taking in the clean lines, dark wood and pale stone emphasized by the black bookcases framing the fireplace. Her throat bobbed with a swallow. “The house is exactly as I imagined it would be. It’s beautiful. Did Katie get to see it before she died?”

“No.” He suddenly felt too big for the space, out of place. “No one else has lived here since I bought it but me. I planned on renting it out while I was in Chicago, but I never got around to it.”

“That’s too bad. A house like this deserves a family who loves it.” She hugged the case file into her chest, an insufficient barrier to block out the unsteady tremble in her lower lip. That slip in her expression was gone before he could question whether it’d been a product of his imagination. “Shall we?”

Her boots echoed off the hardwood floor as she headed back into the hallway, toward the back of the house and into the kitchen. Like she belonged. Which was a ridiculous idea, but one Adrial couldn’t dislodge right away. Not when it was layered by that kiss when he’d found her talking to Henry and Darby Forbes on Main Street earlier. He’d merely meant to walk up to her. Instead, his instincts had urged him to pull her close, to press his mouth against hers. As though they’d done it a thousand times over and not a single day had passed since the last time he’d touched her. It’d felt natural and a little disconcerting to publicly claim her right in the middle of town, to make it clear to Darby and Henry that Winnie was off-limits, but it’d also felt…right. Like he’d been holding his breath all these years and that one point of contact had cleared the pressure from his chest.

He hadn’t ever felt that with Katie. Like he would die without touching her. They’d had a good marriage. They’d laughed at their own inside jokes and made memories between the sheets and in the back of his cruiser. They’d fought over the things married couples always did—finances, sex, the future. They’d made up and worked hard to meet each other’s needs, but all of it had required a constant effort on both of their parts. And this… Being around Winnie was easy. Not effortless, but close. A relief from all the weight he’d been carrying. And that… That was dangerous.

She took a seat at the dining table, opened the folder she’d brought and pulled a single sheet of paper from what she’d reconstructed from Arthur’s files. “I’ve been through every box and piece of paper in that house. This is the only evidence list I was able to recover. It’s in my dad’s handwriting, but I don’t know why it wouldn’t have been submitted to be included in BHPD’s file.”

Adrial had some idea. He grabbed the official case file Baxter had all-too-willingly leveraged access to, then took a seat opposite from her. Enough distance from Winnie that he could slip back into that empty shell he’d become. He’d already rearranged the file with the official evidence list taking center stage and turned hers toward him on the table. “I never saw this list until yesterday, when you pulled it out of Arthur’s file box.”

And there were obvious discrepancies. Items listed in the original that never made it into the BHPD file. Why? Where had they gone? “The tarp Lila Mercer was found wrapped in and the chains anchoring her to the bottom of the lake are on both lists. The clothing she was found in, too. A pair of scrubs, her bra, socks, shoes, even a hair tie.” Adrial caught the first difference, his eyebrows drawing together. Her bra had been logged, but— “Her underwear is missing from the official list. So is the strand of hair the detectives found caught in one of the chains that was sent to the lab. Neither of those were mentioned when I was working the case.”

“Seems like a pretty significant hole in the investigation if the officers working it don’t even have access to everything recovered from the body. The hair I understand. If the killer accidentally left it behind, it could identify him, but the evidence in a case like this is under lock and key. How would the killer even be able to get to it?” That was a great question. Understanding jerked her gaze to his. “What if my dad was wrong about Lila Mercer seeing someone? What if her underwear held traces of proof?”

“It’s possible. Arthur most likely made your evidence list at the scene while the techs were collecting evidence. It’s possible some of it was lost on the way to the station or this could all be some kind of administrative error.” Though Adrial doubted either theory. Not with what he knew about Arthur Hutton. The two items that might be able to identify Lila Mercer’s killer had vanished under police supervision? Too much of a coincidence. “We might not have access to that evidence, but there is something we can do.”

A shiver shook through her as his intentions became clear. Winnie’s mouth parted. “We need to visit the scene.”

Chapter Eleven

She leaned into the cold as she shouldered her way out of the SUV.

It was the only way to get rid of the hurt digging into her chest. Adrial had bought her dream home. Then left it empty. She couldn’t think about why that bothered her so much. Whether it was from the fact he’d lost the woman and child who might’ve someday slept in those bedrooms and played board games on the coffee table in the living room, or that Winnie was supposed to be the one to plant roses in the front yard and learn how to make sourdough in the kitchen. It didn’t matter, did it? She and Adrial… They weren’t that anymore. They weren’t anything more than two people who’d been thrown together in some cosmic joke. And she wasn’t laughing.

Their vehicle had crunched along the uneven single lane dirt road coated with a thick sheet of compressed ice and mud until her insides felt as jittery as her tremoring outsides. Or maybe that was being so close to Adrial after years of staying clear of his proximity. Now her boots sank into the few inches of powdery white snow that’d fallen in the past few days. Shuddering winds cut across the solid frozen expanse of Hollow Lake from the ring of trees isolating the lake from the rest of town.

Curling her hands into the folds of her coat, Winnie stepped free of the SUV and shut the door behind her. The wind chose that moment to kick up, throwing a thin layer of snow into her face. Tiny pinpricks stung her cheeks and face. She wasn’t sure what Adrial expected them to find out here. Any evidence that might’ve been misplaced surely would’ve been found or destroyed from years of humid summers and biting winters.

But she couldn’t ignore that deep root of yearning and familiarity that charged through her at setting foot on these lands. While Seattle had been where she’d always imagined herself ending up, Hollow Lake had once been an obsession. A sanctuary she’d carved out for herself where she could hide from the sadness that’d taken over her house, the pressure to make up for her mother’s absence and all the undeserved hatred slowly killing her at school. Swimming the length of the lake had provided a sense of strength she didn’t feel anywhere else, while the water beneath the surface had wiped the anxious thoughts and fears of being trapped in this town from her mind.

Until violence had tainted it.

While her coat blocked the bitter slice of wind, a cold dread she feared might never ease built in her hands and up her neck. She could do this. She could solve this case. For her dad and for Lila Mercer. For those who were still waiting for answers about their missing or forgotten loved ones. She could do this for Adrial. All it took was one spark, one win, and she could fix whatever it was that made her so…disposable. Familiar pressure slid along her shoulders and over her chest. The kind that hadn’t even lightened with her father’s death, and she burrowed deeper into the collar of her coat. “The news coverage and papers never said exactly where the body was found.”

“The scene was on the north side of the lake.” Adrial shoved both hands into a pair of worn leather gloves as he stared out over the stretch where she couldn’t distinguish where the lake’s shore ended and the frozen layers of water started. “There isn’t enough room to navigate with a vehicle. We’ll have to walk from here.”

Her arms automatically tucked into her sides as she followed his much wider and longer footsteps. It was impossible to see the rocks and greenery tramped down underneath pristine inches of snow, and her ankles had their own idea of which way to face. Cold seeped through the toes of her boots and past her wool socks. Years of suffering through Black Hollow winters should’ve prepared her for the chill skirting up her spine, but she’d become too complacent in her modern house, complete with a gas fireplace that erupted at the flick of a button and access to hot coffee on every corner. Tucking the lower half of her face beneath her coat’s collar, she ignored the burn at the tip of her nose and how easily her eyes watered. “What is it we’re hoping to find?”

She angled her head down but kept her gaze solely on the man in front of her. On the way the muscles in his legs flexed and released with each step, how he expertly navigated the uneven terrain as though he’d been born in these woods. Winnie fought to keep herself upright every few feet while Adrial seemed to glide, kicking up puffs of snow as he went. Then again, he’d always been a little too good to be true. Too good for her, anyway.

“Not sure yet, but rebuilding a scene has been known to inspire new theories, force investigators to look at evidence in a new light and reveal something that might’ve been missed in the original investigation.” Confidence bled into his voice. Only to remind her that he’d done this before. His life over the past two years had centered on solving cold cases. Starting with the one closest to him. “There’s a high chance we came out here for nothing considering it’s been twenty years, but we need to cover all our bases. The discrepancies in the evidence lists is a good start, but—”

“It’s not enough. I get it.” Her brain had yet to fully process all of the information she’d learned in the past twenty-four hours. Adrial had theorized her father had written that original evidence list while the crime scene technicians processed the evidence in real time, but where had the victim’s underwear and the hair they’d collected from the chains gone? And why hadn’t there been anything in her father’s files detailing the missing items? Arthur Hutton made notes about everything, including the coffee orders for the detectives assigned to work the case with him. Had she missed a box? It was possible. Her childhood home contained an attic where her parents had stored Christmas decorations and a bunch of gnomes her mother collected in the backyard before her death. As well as an entire species of nightmare-inducing spiders she never wanted to set eyes on again. After hours of psyching herself up, she’d breached the entrance, only to scurry right back around as one of those hairy beasts crawled from a broken gnome’s eye socket.

Winnie failed to shut down the shiver that followed at the memory. Her father might’ve stored more case boxes in the attic, but it would be a cold day in hell before she went back up there without a flamethrower leading the way. But none of the files she’d gone through to rebuild the case file mentioned the missing evidence. Arthur Hutton had been a good cop. Well respected and admired by his entire department—at least until the past few years. There was no way he would’ve forgotten a detail like that, which meant… She didn’t know what that meant.

Adrial pointed ahead. “The scene is just up here.”

She latched on to Adrial’s voice guiding her through a section of thick trees as easily as a mosquito was drawn to her freckled skin in the summer. Which was too easy. The coat he wore shifted over broad, mountain-like shoulders as he curved free of the trees and back along the frozen shore. His hair curled along the wool collar of his coat as he checked back over his shoulder for her. Her fingertips tingled with the urge to sweep it free like the times she used to run her nails over his scalp to relax him at the end of a hard day. Had Katie done that for him during their marriage? Had she been able to get him to go to sleep with the cases he worked wouldn’t stop haunting him? She hoped so.

Her rib cage tightened at the thought Adrial had gone so long without someone being there for him. He had his team. She’d met a couple of them when she’d been at the Cold Hollow Investigations offices, but having friends wasn’t the same as having a partner to rely on. Someone who knew what you needed before you did, who could be there without judgment or hesitation. She’d learned that the hard way after the divorce. Turned out, all of her and Dan’s friends had really just been Dan’s friends. Looking back, it made sense. She’d met them all through him, and he’d kept them in the divorce. The people she’d met up with for lunches and invited over for barbecues on the weekend, who’d taken her and Dan out on the bay in their boats and doubled with on movie nights… None of them had been hers. Not really.

There’d only been one person in her life she’d called hers. Someone she’d chosen for herself despite her father’s protests and the looks she got from her classmates. Someone who’d never once asked her to be anything other than the weird comic-book-obsessed nerd with frizzy red hair and too many freckles to count. But, in the end, Adrial had ended up being someone else’s. He’d become a husband and nearly a father and still kept his wife’s photo displayed in a house that didn’t feel lived in.

And, hell, wishing that had been her life—her house, her baby, her photo on the bookcase—hurt more than she wanted to admit.

“You good?” Slowing, Adrial narrowed his attention on her as though he’d sensed the anguish churning her stomach.

“I’m good.” Her voice wavered, exposing the lie. Winnie unclenched her fingers in her coat pockets as she maneuvered around a boulder wedged between Hollow Lake’s shore and the line of trees they walked through. Feeling rushed through her hands and washed her free of emotion. As much as she wished things were different, that wasn’t ever going to be hers and Adrial’s life. She wasn’t going to live in her dream house or pose for wedding photos. She wasn’t going to have his babies or be the one he turned to in the middle of the night. And that… It was okay. She didn’t need those things. She’d had her shot at marriage and owning a house and going on couple’s vacations and date nights, and it hadn’t been as great as advertised. She and Adrial could work this case together. They might even be able to be friends when this was over. She didn’t have a plan, and for the first time in her life, maybe she didn’t need one.

“We’re here.” Adrial kicked at a chunk of ice and a slither of water lapped at the shore where it’d dislodged. Cracks had formed in a web pattern in response, the punch of sound echoing across the surface of the lake. It wouldn’t take much to break through. He pointed out across the lake. “Lila Mercer’s body was discovered about ten feet straight out from this boulder.”

Years of swimming this lake from end to end revealed the gap in that logic. “Are you sure?”

His eyebrows met over the bridge of his strong nose. “Yes. I wasn’t working the case at the time she was found, but there are hundreds of crime scene photos and scene sketches pinpointing this location. Why?”

“Ten feet out from the shore isn’t very deep on this end of the lake.” She shrugged, her hands still protected within the confines of her coat. “I figured the killer would’ve dropped Lila Mercer closer to the center rather than risk exposing the body to changing water levels.”

“You’re right. There are far deeper areas where he could’ve dumped her body and gotten away with it.” Adrial studied the ice, shifting his weight between his feet. “He could’ve wanted her found despite the chains meant to hold her down.”

“Or he didn’t have a boat.”

“Boats are more noticeable. They’re loud and require a lot of moving parts to get them into the water, even at night. Not many people would come out here once the sun went down, but a boat would be an anomaly. Something someone might report the night he got rid of the body.”

“So he dragged her out here under his own strength.” Adrial looked at her then, really looked at her as though he’d never seen her before. Almost…admiring. “That’s something we never considered. Makes sense.”

She tried to ignore the flare of pride in her chest and bent her knees in a feigned curtsy. “I aim to please.”

His smile stopped her heart. Warmth seeped through her jaw as Adrial’s fingers framed her jaw, and a heaviness sank into her low belly. She couldn’t help but dip her gaze to his mouth as his lips parted, couldn’t stop herself from wondering if the kisses they’d shared was as life-altering as she remembered. Before she had a chance to think what a bad idea it was being this close to the man who’d left her in Black Hollow without answers, his mouth was on hers.

Adrial angled deeper, sought permission for more. And she gave it to him. Every second of loneliness over the years. Every angry thought and hurt. Every instance she replayed their relationship, conversations and missed cues. She gave it all to him in punishment for leaving her here alone, fisting her fingers in his coat, and for once, she could breathe.

His entire body locked up. He added more than a foot of space between them, and her heart threatened to punch through her chest. He was going to stop this. Pretend it hadn’t happened. “Winnie—”

His knees buckled. Adrial hit the ground.

Her shout echoed off the surrounding mountains as she clung to his shoulders. Stinging pain lanced between her fingers as she came into contact with something solid lodged in his back. “What’s…?”

A knife. He’d been stabbed.

Adrial weakly shoved her toward the edge of the lake, where the ice had thinned. “Run.”

He collapsed to the ground.

Chapter Twelve

“Adrial!”

A low-pitched ringing filled his ears. His vision wavered. What the hell had happened? Movement shifted in front of him, but he couldn’t make sense of his surroundings. Hell, his head hurt. He must’ve gotten hit… No. That wasn’t right. He’d fallen. Collapsed.

Needles stabbed through his right shoulder and sucked the oxygen from his lungs. Adrial tried to roll onto his front to relieve the pressure, but she was there. Holding him in place.

“Don’t move. You’ll make it worse. I’m calling for help.” That sweet voice ticked up a notch, reminding him of wildness, red hair, gutting smiles and a stubbornness that could tear holes through logic in an instant. “Come on. Please.” A growl of frustration replaced the ringing in his ears. “Come on!”

“Winnie.” Suddenly, understanding clicked into place, like his head had splintered into a thousand different directions and only her name had been able to make him whole again.

His shoulder barked as he pressed his hands into the frozen ground. It was then he realized he hadn’t fully collapsed. His upper body hung over Winnie’s legs. Like she’d caught him.

No. No, no, no. She wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d told her to run after… He’d been stabbed. The wound pulsed as though in acknowledgement, and he finally had enough clarity to register a second source of heat sliding down his back. Blood. “Go. You need to go.”

“There’s no service.” Winnie tucked something into her coat pocket, ignoring his pleas. Warmth spread over his jaw and into his bones as she forced him to look at her. Turning his face toward hers, she let her hair slip free of her shoulders. So bright against the overcast sky that never seemed to break, a beacon that held him in the moment. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. I just need to get you to the SUV before…”

Something stole her attention over his shoulder. Crystallized puffs formed in front of her mouth on a strong exhale. Winnie tried to shift out from under him, but he outranked her in size by nearly double. “I can hear them coming.” She licked her lips as she dug her fingers into his coat, centering those hazel eyes on him. “Can you walk?”

Who was coming? Who was out here with them? He hadn’t told anyone he and Winnie would be visiting the crime scene. Not even his team. Fish had died off years ago when water levels dropped well below normal levels, so there wouldn’t be any fisherman taking advantage of the chill day. He hadn’t given anyone reason to want to throw a knife into his back, either. At least, he couldn’t recall any unhappy clients at the moment, but that could be due to his vision wavering for an entirely different reason as his clothing grew wetter with every inhale. He was losing blood. Fast.

Focus. He had to focus. He had to keep his eyes open.

Whoever was out here… They’d followed him and Winnie for a reason. They wanted to hurt him. Hurt Winnie. Stop them from working the case. Which meant taking him out hadn’t been an accident. They wanted to get to her, and with the thickness of these trees, they could be anywhere. Adrial dragged the SUV’s keys from his coat pocket with a shaky hand and shoved them into her lap. He could hold them off. Give her the chance to run. “Take my keys. Get to my office. Tell Baxter what happened. He’ll know…what to do.”

Damn, breathing hurt. He didn’t think the blade had nicked his lungs, but it was getting harder to take a full breath.

“Stop trying to get me to leave. I’m not letting you bleed out. No matter how much you deserve it.” She shoved the keys into her pocket and hefted him off her thighs with a strength he hadn’t known she’d possessed. Getting him to his feet, Winnie took the majority of his weight against her hip, her hand tight into his side. His head swam, and they both tilted to one side, but she somehow kept him upright and took a step forward. “We’re going to get out of here, but I need your help. You can start with not trying to act like a such a hero and sacrificing yourself. You’ve been stabbed, and I can defend myself.”

He knew that—knew Arthur had taught her self-defense and how to handle a gun—but his instincts screamed this was a threat she couldn’t fight on her own.

The ice cracked under their combined weight.

A jarring sensation shuddered through Adrial’s body a split second before the crack widened.

“Move!” Winnie dragged him against her as the ice broke beneath their boots, onto the shore. The lake’s depth wouldn’t have submerged them here, but temperatures practically guaranteed hypothermia and frostbite if they weren’t careful. Any exposure—wet socks and boots and clothing included—could end in a fatality out here. This lake had claimed more than one life over the years, and Adrial couldn’t let her be next.

He hit the ground knees first, dragging her down with him. Snow puffed around them as they got their bearings. He could do this. He had to do this. He wouldn’t be the reason Winnie’s life was at risk. He’d already hurt her enough, throwing off her entire life plan and leaving her to deal with the fallout while he moved on with his life. Summoning any last ounces of strength, Adrial shoved her ahead. “Get to the trees. They’re thick enough to hide you while I distract—”

Her attention cut to the trees. To the figure in black standing directly in the path he and Winnie had carved through the snow. The only way back to the SUV.

“You know, at this point, I just want to end your misery.” The son of a bitch twisted the tip of a second blade into the index finger of their black glove. The mask failed to hide the feminine quality in the attacker’s voice, but managed to dull any identifying features. He couldn’t tell her age or give any kind of description based on the layers protecting her from the cold rush of wind cutting down the mountain and across the ice. “But watching her—” that blade was pointed directly at Winnie and triggered a predatory response inside him “—try to carry you and fail has been wildly entertaining.”

Adrial struggled to his feet, holding on to his injured arm. The blade dug deeper into his shoulder. He couldn’t stop the body-wide flinch as pain tendrilled through his nervous system. Cold burned down his throat on his next inhale as Winnie positioned herself between him and the threat. Damn woman. She was going to get herself killed trying to prove a point. “I take it this belongs to you?”

The mask shifted, as though layering a wide smile. Lean curves came into focus as their attacker blocked a clear path back to the SUV. Toward them. “I was aiming for your spine.”

“What—what do you want?” Winnie’s breathing had sped up. Holding one hand out toward the approaching suspect, she backed into his chest. “Why are you trying to kill us?”

Adrial circled his good hand around her waist, holding her to him as though he could calm her racing pulse.

“Did you really think looking into the Lila Mercer case wasn’t going to cost you? It already cost your father, Winnie. I would think you’d want to avoid his fate. Lila is dead, and she’s going to stay that way.” Their attacker took another step. Then another. Crowding them onto the ice. “If that means I have to kill you both—” thin shoulders rose on a shrug, and the knife dropped to the suspect’s waistline in a loose grip “—it won’t cost me my beauty sleep.”

Adrial straightened. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The mask shifted again, the attacker’s head cocking to one side. “It means Arthur Hutton didn’t listen when I warned him to back off, and I’ve lost my patience.”

Disbelief cracked Winnie’s expression, and Adrial could only tighten his hold on her to keep her from lunging directly toward that knife. “You—you killed him? You killed my dad?”

“Not much for me to kill, was there?” Another step closer. Now just mere feet between them. The ice wouldn’t hold both his and Winnie’s weight. They would either have to fight their way out, or risk the lake. Neither option guaranteed their escape, and he wouldn’t do anything to put Winnie in a position of choosing him over her own life. Ever. “Your dad had already lost everyone he cared about. No friends to speak of. Neighbors who couldn’t stand him. An entire town tired of listening to the ramblings of an old paranoid has-been, but yes. I’ll take credit for his final breaths. It was the least he deserved for what he’s done to my family.”

What Arthur had done? Adrial squeezed Winnie against him, his mind made up. His heel caught the edge of the ice. The once solid surface cracked, and it was only the start. One wrong move, and he’d lose Winnie all over again. He hadn’t been able to protect Katie and their baby. He wouldn’t fail Winnie. All he had to do was get her out of here. And he had the perfect weapon to do it. Lowering his mouth to Winnie’s ear, he ignored the sensation of rightness slithering through him. Of familiarity of having her scent in his nose and her body pressed against his. “You’re going to have three seconds to get clear. Go for the SUV. Don’t stop. No matter what you hear. Three.”

She jerked in his grasp. Her hair tickled the underside of his chin, every muscle in her back strung too tight. “What are you—”

“Two.” He angled his mouth over the shell of her ear, closing his eyes as she shivered in his hold. He’d missed this feeling. Of her in his arms. How she fit against him so perfectly. Like she was the missing half he’d been searching for since leaving Black Hollow all those years ago. Or maybe that he’d finally found the pieces he’d left behind. That feeling didn’t cheapen the love he’d felt for Katie or their future, but it was never more apparent than right now. With her. What he’d been missing on a cellular level.

The perpetrator shifted forward, like a leopard waiting in the grass to pounce on its prey. Adrial kept his eyes on that blade as he shifted his weight to his back foot.

Winnie’s fingernails dug into his gloves, making an impression past the leather. But she’d always left an impression on him. From the moment he’d followed her sobs to that locker in middle school, to the second he’d put eyes on her again in his office a few days ago, she’d taken up residence in his soul.

“One.” Adrial didn’t give her a chance to fight him, and threw Winnie behind him. A hard thud registered as she hit the ice, but he was already moving, putting himself between her and a killer. Sucking in a sharp breath, he grabbed for the blade in his shoulder and pulled it free. A gush of blood flowed freely, soaking his shirt as he charged.

He didn’t make it more than two steps.

As the second blade lodged in his thigh.

Adrial dropped, his grip on the weapon too loose. The blade hit the snow as he sank onto his hands and knees.

“I feel like I should be thanking you.” The killer crouched in front of him, retrieving the knife he’d lost. Swiping the metal against his jeans, she cleaned his blood from the surface before standing. “You’ve just made this a lot more fun.”

Craning his gaze over his shoulder, he followed Winnie’s escape across the ice. She wouldn’t be fast enough, and he… He wouldn’t be there to protect her. Adrial held on to consciousness as long as he could. But was consumed by the darkness.

Chapter Thirteen

Her lungs burned.

Her body ached from the impact against the ice.

And Adrial had done the one thing she’d asked him not to.

He’d thrown her out of the way. Taken on the threat alone to give her a fighting chance. He’d sacrificed himself, and she made the promise to herself—and him—right then that it wouldn’t be in vain. Sobs collected at the back of her throat.

She’d known. All these years she’d known the Lila Mercer case would kill her dad, but she’d never thought it would be like this. That someone would kill him for getting too close. Had he discovered a new lead? Had he identified the killer or recovered the missing evidence? Nothing in his notes had said as much, but there could be more boxes. More leads she hadn’t come across. He was gone. He’d left her here, and now, she was fighting a battle he’d started.

Her boot slid out from under her, and Winnie threw her hands out to balance herself. She wouldn’t give her tears life. She couldn’t deal with emotion right now, and once again, she became an empty shell, capable of shutting down in the blink of an eye. Just as she’d done when Henry and Darby took things too far all those years in school. When she couldn’t get her father to just look at her after her mother had died. When she’d gotten to Adrial’s empty apartment and realized he hadn’t ever planned on coming back for her.

She had to get to the SUV. Every retired cop she knew stored weapons in the least likely places, including their vehicles. Adrial would have something she could use. Because she wasn’t leaving him here. No matter how many times he begged her to save herself, she couldn’t inflict the hurt she’d survived on anyone else.

Her boots failed to grip the ice, and it took far more effort to keep her balance as fatigue set in. She was almost there. Just another hundred feet or so. It was a miracle the ice had held this long, but she’d avoided the patches where water had worn through as much as possible. The pops and echoes chased every step. One wrong shift of her weight, and it could all come crashing in around her, and she’d be sucked below the depths. But she wouldn’t stop. Adrial wouldn’t survive if she stopped.

He’d torn that blade from his shoulder, putting himself at risk for bleeding out. To protect her. To save her. Why? Every second resonated in her strained pulse and ticked off in her head. Too loud. Too much. Her fingers felt as though they’d caught fire, the burn tunneling straight into the bone. Residents of Black Hollow learned early on how to deal with below-freezing temperatures this far north, but she felt as though the wind charging down the mountains and across the ice was flaying the exposed skin from her body. Pinpricks chased across her face and stole feeling from her mouth and nose. She and Adrial had been out here too long. They wouldn’t last much longer.

The toe of her boot caught on a chunk of ice.

Winnie pitched forward, both hands shooting out to lessen the impact of her fall.

The surrounding trees blurred a split second before she hit the ice and slid. Strands of hair ripped free and stung across her scalp. Chest spasming, she couldn’t catch her breath. She flipped onto her back, desperate for air.

To find herself staring up at a pair of green-gray eyes through a ski mask.

“You should’ve seen yourself just now. It was like watching a car crash.” The attacker—the one who’d claimed to have killed her father—cocked her head to one side. Her voice hinted at female, but the way she moved, how she straddled Winnie across her hips, said predator. That blade was in her hand. Identical to the one she’d found in Adrial after he’d collapsed, but this one was clean. Had he escaped? Had this woman… No. She couldn’t think about that right now. “But I guess your clumsiness makes my job easier.”

Winnie’s lower lip trembled, a result of the low temperature and the fear spiking through her blood. “Where is he? Where’s—”

“As admirable as your partner was, it didn’t do him any favors. Won’t do you any, either.” A icicle-thin laugh was lost to the gust of wind cutting across the lake. The killer rocked onto her knees, and the ice cracked beneath their combined weight. Freezing water worked through Winnie’s coat. Was she crazy? She was going to break the ice. It would take them both without mercy. “Too bad. I wanted to play with him a bit more, but I couldn’t risk you getting away. So I hurt him. Well, I hurt him more than the first time.”

Her stomach rolled. No. Adrial was alive. He’d survive this. They both would. Because that was the kind of man he was. He didn’t let the hard things win. Hadn’t he proven that by building an investigation agency in the face of losing the love of his life? He’d fight through this, too. The tip of the blade found its way along Winnie’s jaw. She couldn’t stop the shiver the sensation triggered. More water flooded her clothing, weighing her down, stealing her breaths from temperature shock alone. It slithered into her hair and crawled into the collar of her coat. “What—what do you want?”

“Want? What I want doesn’t matter. It’s what Arthur Hutton and Detective Tucker and even you deserve that matters.” The laugh was gone. A deeper, richer tone now possessed the killer’s voice. In an instant, she’d pinned Winnie’s hands above her head, then set the knife against her throat. The prick of pain was nothing compared to the desperation of knowing Adrial needed her. That she could do nothing while he suffered. She and her attacker weren’t much different in size, but exhaustion was already digging its claws into Winnie. That had been the point, she realized. To wear her out. To let the elements tear her down. And it was working. She could feel her body temperature dropping, her thoughts becoming jumbled, the shivering starting to lessen. Leaning forward, the woman pressed hard enough to exaggerate the crack splitting under Winnie’s shoulder. Another formed at her hip and darted out of her peripheral vision.

“I don’t… I don’t understand.” Winnie shook her head, a shard of ice cutting into the back of her scalp. She didn’t care. It kept her focused. Feeling. Aware enough to realize the killer had strapped a second—or third?—knife into a holster secured around her ankle. All she had to do was remember what her father had taught her. “I don’t know you. I’m not an investigator.”

“But you knew, didn’t you? You knew that evidence went missing during Lila Mercer’s investigation.” Warmth seeped from the tip of the blade. The killer had cut her, was pressing into her as tension coiled between them. “You knew what he’d done, yet you kept it quiet. For years. You’re just as guilty as he was in the end, and I’m going to make sure you and everyone else involved in the case suffer just like Lila did.”

“He?” The water was climbing, or she was sinking. It lapped around her ears and crested with every inhale. She was going to die out here. Lost to Hollow Lake just as Lila Mercer had been. Her heart thudded uncontrollably behind her rib cage. She couldn’t get a full breath. That same pulse seemed to ricochet through her head and spread. She couldn’t afford a migraine right now. She had to fight. She had to get to Adrial.

Winnie didn’t give herself three seconds, like Adrial had. She bucked her hips as hard as she could. The blade cut across her neck in a stinging path that lit up her insides, but the laceration wasn’t deep. She’d kept her head. She threw her weight into the roll, and the killer vaulted to one side, her knee slamming down onto the ice.

A burst of cracks exploded beneath them.

Flipping onto her stomach, Winnie tried to disperse her weight across the ice, but those tendrils of weakness only spread wider beneath her. The ice was giving out. Pops exploded in her ears as she clawed free from her attacker’s grip, echoing across the surface and growing louder. “You have to stop. You’re going to—”

The ice gave way.

Shocking cold took her under.

Her entire body seized up and the drastic change in temperature paralyzed her for a series of heartbeats. Winnie blinked against the watery darkness. She tried to crane her gaze up to find the hole she’d dropped through, but her hair had come unraveled from her braid. It blinded all sense of direction and proximity to air. Her lungs contracted around the few precious gulps of oxygen she’d managed before going under, but it wasn’t enough. She kicked against gravity, her hair tangling around her hands, but her boots and coat had filled with water. They were dragging her deeper.

Panic rose as quickly as the bubbles escaping her clothing. Her fingers brushed nothing but empty water as she caught sight of the break in the ice above. A shadow blocked out the weak streaks of sunlight penetrating through the person-size hole.

Her high-pitched whimper didn’t make it to the surface as she lost the few inches she’d gained. Winnie kicked again, but it was no use. Her body was giving out. Freezing. Slowing. The pressure in her chest didn’t hurt so bad now. She couldn’t feel her fingers or the wound across her throat. That was good, right? Surrounded by darkness, her brain went quiet, luring her into a deeper sense of peace she hadn’t felt…since before leaving Black Hollow. When she’d finally found a better half who’d promised to help her shoulder all the hurt and protect her from ever having to feel it again. Images flashed across her mind. She could picture his face so easily. All that dark hair, the eyes that only softened when he looked at her, his attempts to hide his smile when she made a terrible joke. What was his name? It felt important. He felt important. Why couldn’t she remember?

Stretching one hand out, Winnie brushed something sharp. The bite of pain jolted her senses and restarted something in her brain. She was drowning. Being sucked toward the bottom of the lake. No. She didn’t want that. Water sloshed inside her boots as she jerked. Her clothing was too heavy. Pain radiated through her right side as she tugged at her coat sleeve.

She hadn’t come back to Black Hollow just to end up like Lila Mercer. This was her chance to take back her life. To start over and figure out where she fit next. Winnie dragged her arm free of one coat sleeve then tossed her coat into the inky blackness that seemed to be growing thicker. She grabbed for her left boot and pried her foot free. Then the right. Instantly lighter, she released a small amount of dwindling air from her lungs and clawed in the direction of the bubbles. Her blouse and jeans were too tight, threatening to squeeze those last precious reserves of air from her chest, but she was so close. The hole she’d fallen through was right there.

Seconds felt like hours as she forced her limbs to swim over and over. Until she broke the surface. Fresh oxygen lanced down her throat as she dragged herself free of the water. The ice protested, but she’d lost the ability to move, to think, to do anything but breathe as she stared up at the overcast sky. Adrial. She had to get to Adrial. A heaviness she couldn’t fight against pinned her to the ice. Winnie struggled to keep her eyes open, her brain locking on the shift of movement in her peripheral vision.

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?” A dark outline centered itself above her, but Winnie couldn’t make out any details as her vision failed. Or was it something more serious? “That’s okay. We’ll get there.”

Chapter Fourteen

He was dying.

There was no trying to convince himself otherwise. He’d lost too much blood. Adrial leveraged his weight onto his hands at his hips, angling himself in somewhat of an upright position against the nearest tree. It was hard when his entire body wanted to shut down, but he couldn’t stop. Not yet. Not until he’d found Winnie. She’d vanished across the ice, but he couldn’t see any sign of her now. Had she gotten away? Had she made it to the SUV? Had the killer—

No. Catastrophizing wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good out here. The longer he sat here trying to pull himself together, the more danger he and Winnie would be in. Blood pumped through the stab wound at his upper thigh and down his back, little pulses with every beat of his slowing heart. The blade had acted as a stopper of sorts, keeping him from bleeding out while at the same time tearing him up from the inside. Apparently, the killer hadn’t hit anything significant, but he couldn’t remove the knife until he had a way to stop the flow of blood.

His belt could work temporarily, but without a full serving of blood, his body would drop into hypothermia faster in these temperatures. Wind ripped at his coat and hair. Loose powder caused a sensation of a whiteout, cutting through his layers and settling on exposed skin. He couldn’t see the SUV from his position within the trees, but there was only one way he was getting out of here alive. And that was if Winnie hadn’t made it. Which meant… Which meant the killer might’ve caught up with her.

Hell. He’d have to risk it. To ensure she got out of this alive. Whatever this was. Arthur Hutton had been murdered, and while Adrial had lost respect for his former partner years ago, his heart hurt at the loss. For what they could’ve been had Arthur made better choices. For Winnie and the anguish that’d played across her face in learning her father had been violently taken from her. The papers had said the former chief of police had died from natural causes, but obviously something had been missed. And Adrial owed it to Winnie to find out what.

“First things first. Don’t die.” The pep talk did nothing to replace the blood he’d lost or give him a miraculous burst of energy and heat. Stiff fingers worked at his belt—every second harder than the one that came before it—until Adrial managed to release the latch. Unthreading the leather, he ground his teeth against the rush of pain shooting through his thigh. He couldn’t stop the groan that escaped, but it wouldn’t be the last one if his plan worked. Securing the belt above the wound, he tightened the strap until the edges dug through his jeans. The blade jostled to one side, and he slammed his head back into the tree to distract his brain from focusing on the tender muscle coming apart. The tourniquet wouldn’t last, but it’d buy him the time he needed. “And you get a trophy.”

Or gummy clusters. He could really use some at the moment.

His good leg took the brunt of his weight as he hiked himself up the length of the tree. Cold worked through the hole in his coat and shirt, crusting the edges of his shoulder wound. Fibers tugged at him with every slide of muscle beneath the flannel, but standing straighter didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Blood seeped from both wounds in fresh waves as he got to his feet. Dark webs of black penetrated his vision. He tried to breathe through it, and the filaments vanished. For now. No telling how far he’d make it or if he’d make it at all, but it was worth the risk.

Winnie was worth it. All she’d wanted was to do something right by her old man—an effort the son of a bitch hadn’t deserved from her in the least—and instead she’d found herself faced with the worst Black Hollow had to offer. Again. No matter how many times he’d fought her battles, they just kept on coming. But she was still standing. Determined more than ever to prove nothing could knock her down, and he couldn’t help but admire her for that. She’d picked herself back up so many times, it was hard to imagine anything that could take her down for the count.

Until now.

The killer had murdered Arthur Hutton for looking into the Lila Mercer case. There wasn’t anything stopping the woman who’d stabbed him from doing the same to Winnie.

Except him.

He hadn’t been able to protect Katie and their unborn child from the random violence that had surrounded them in Chicago, and he’d punished himself for it every single day since. But he could do this for Winnie. Because part of him recognized she wouldn’t be in this position if he’d remained in Black Hollow. If he’d kept his promise and stayed to help her build the life they’d both so desperately wanted with each other. He’d done this to them. The awkwardness and the distance. Trying to say the right thing while battling the urge to slip back into old patterns.

And that kiss… Hell, he’d never forgotten the feel of her mouth against his. How her lower lip—a little fuller than the top—fit perfectly between his teeth. There hadn’t been anyone since Katie’s death, and he’d convinced himself he didn’t deserve that kind of connection again. That he’d had his chance and he’d blown it. For failing his wife. Failing their family. But these past few days with Winnie… The numbness had cracked. Little by little. Because of her laugh, the way she watched him when she didn’t think he noticed, because the way he lit up from a single brush of her hand against his.

And moments like those were worth fighting for.

She was worth fighting for.

If he didn’t bleed out first.

Clamping his hand around the blade sticking out of his thigh, he took that first step. Then the next. His leg dragged behind him, snow working into his boots. The pain hadn’t stopped, but he’d adapted to the constant agony within a few steps. One foot in front of the other as he retraced his and Winnie’s footsteps stamped into the snow. His arm hung at his side, the muscles giving out completely. Trees scratched at his face and neck, cutting small lacerations into his skin, but the cold took care of the prickling quickly.

Rounding onto the east side of the lake, Adrial tried to pick up the pace. He was getting close now. Breathing hurt. He couldn’t get enough air. His chest felt as though a pallet of bricks had taken up residence on his sternum, and the damn spiderwebs of black were back at the edges of his vision. The back of his throat burned, but he pushed through the last of the trees.

And pulled up short.

Winnie hadn’t made it to the SUV.

Every sense he owned exploded in a need to pick up some sign of her. To tell him where she’d gone. He scanned the surface of the lake, searching for cracks, for evidence she’d gone through the ice. Would he be able to tell from here? She knew this area better than he did. There was no way she’d gotten lost, and the gutting sensation that followed nearly brought him back to his knees. “Winnie!”

No answer.

A whistle of wind cut through the trees and shifted the branches that’d worked to stop him in his tracks. His left eye went dark, and Adrial grabbed for the nearest pine. Stinging pain rippled through his nerve endings. The SUV. He had a first-aid kit inside.

He shoved free of the tree with a few more scratches than when he’d started this investigation, his shoes carving bloody streaks through the snow instead of the perfect indentations of his boot treads. Tightening his grip on the blade, he twisted the handle. Roaring pain exploded through him and cleared the fog of weightlessness and lethargy. It wasn’t the best way to keep his body from burning through the wisps of adrenaline left in his veins, but it did a damn good job of keeping him conscious.

Adrial grabbed for his coat pocket. The key. Damn it. He’d handed it over to Winnie to give her a fighting chance of getting as far from this place as possible, leaving him with only one option. He threw his elbow into the passenger side window. Pain charged down his forearm and into his bicep with nothing to show for it. The window didn’t break on impact. He tried again. And again. Stumbling back and out of breath, he searched the ground for a rock or something solid that would splinter the glass.

Then he laughed and grabbed for the door handle. The door swung open without resistance. “Didn’t lock the vehicle, dumbass.”

A flood of relief nearly took him out as he collapsed into the passenger side seat. It still smelled like her. Hints of vanilla and something wilder he couldn’t put his finger on from her shampoo that undid all the tightness in his chest, giving him the chance to take a full breath. His head hit the neck rest, and he lost track of time for a few seconds as he jerked back into the moment. How long had he been out? It was hard to tell with the clouds doing their damn hardest to block out the sun three hundred days of the years, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. He had what looked like a hunting knife stuck in his thigh and an open wound in his shoulder, so there was no way in hell he’d be able to reach on his own. Bending, Adrial dragged the first-aid kit from beneath the seat and popped it open on the driver’s seat. Blood streaked from his hand onto the sterilized gauze pads, curved needle package and sewing thread as he worked.

All he could do as he wrapped his hand around the blade handle was promise to return the favor to its owner. Three breaths. That was all he’d give himself and hope he remained conscious enough to close the wound before he bled out all over the front seat. He sucked in the first. Then the second. He held his breath on the third. Adrial tricked his brain into withdrawing the knife as fast as possible.

Lightning exploded behind his eyes, dragging him back to that thin line of consciousness. He couldn’t pass out. He wouldn’t survive it. Punching his good hand into the dashboard, he gave in to the scream, then grabbed for the bottle of rubbing alcohol from the kit and dumped half the contents over the wound. The burn sucked the remaining air from his lungs, but that was good. He still had feeling. “Son of a bitch.”

He tossed the bottle back into the kit once enough of the blood had washed onto the floor of the vehicle. Grabbing for the needle and thread he’d prepped, Adrial got to work. His clamped jaw triggered a headache at his temples as he sutured each side of the wound closed with enough give to stretch.

The bleeding slowed enough for him to secure the gauze and tape over the stitches, but he couldn’t stitch his shoulder himself. A section of gauze would have to do for now.

Winnie was out there. Alone. Scared. Maybe injured. And he was going to do what he should have done ten years ago when he learned the truth about her father. He was going to fight for her.

Chapter Fifteen

Keep calm and embalm.

His and hearse.

Prettiest woman in the morgue.

How had she never thought mortuary humor to be funny until now? Probably because she hadn’t been as close to death as she was right now.

Winnie laughed to herself, not really processing where she’d ended up. Her brain hadn’t caught up yet. She’d been awake. Then not. Now, she was here, and no matter how many times she tried, she just couldn’t remember why. Why this sense of urgency had taken root and refused to let her go to sleep. Oh, and she wanted to sleep. A nap would feel so good right now.

Wait. No. That fire in her chest was back. There was something she’d forgotten to do. Had she left the iron on? She couldn’t imagine that being the case. She hadn’t ironed anything. Ever. She worked from home in sweats. So that couldn’t be it. It was right there on the tip of her tongue. She just couldn’t force her brain to reach it. Something to do with… Dan? Her stomach clenched. That didn’t feel right. And this place almost felt familiar. Her head wasn’t working right. She couldn’t feel her extremities.

Something was wrong.

Winnie blinked up at the exposed rafters of the tallest, emptiest building she’d ever seen. No. That wasn’t the right way to describe it. It wasn’t a building. More like an oversize shed with no…doors. Yes. She was good with the words. A thirty-foot-high doorless shed that smelled like fish and rotting guts and opened onto nothing but ice and snow. Her snicker seemed to echo off the thin walls punctuated with narrow windows every few feet. “Guts. Guts. Guts.”

That was a funny word. But she wasn’t laughing anymore. Her throat hurt when she said it, though. Like she’d been screaming for hours or eaten too many Sour Patch Kids. Which was entirely possible while she cleaned out her dad’s house.

A click resounded so loudly in her head, she jerked her upper body off the…dock? Weird addition to a shed, but who was she to judge? Everything she owned had been piled into the back of her sedan before she came back.

Back home. She’d been cleaning out her dad’s house. She’d gone through his case files. Her chest threatened to cave in at the thought of his death, of all the stolen time she should’ve had. Why? Why did it hurt so much? And why couldn’t she move her arms? She had to get it together. Collapsing onto her back, Winnie tried recalling exactly how she’d ended up on a dock, soaking wet from head to toe. She chased that line of thought, catching the sound of something low and soothing somewhere out of reach. She was back in Black Hollow because her dad was dead. She wanted to solve the case that’d finally killed him. No. Not killed him. Someone had killed him. Had tried to kill her. And…

“Adrial.” Her head swam as all the missing pieces slotted into place. She’d left him on the ice. Stabbed and bleeding. She’d left him, but the ice had given out. Panic seized her from head to toe in a burst of heat that wouldn’t do any good against her soaked clothing.

Winnie craned her head up and over her shoulder to find the source of the humming. She’d recognized the melody as one her mother used to sing whenever Winnie had gotten sick, but it didn’t make her feel better now.

Because her mother wasn’t the one humming.

A shiver chased down her spine and then kept going, spreading fast through her legs and arms. The cold seemed to seep through every inch of her sticky wet clothing. Not even her hair had been spared, felt like it was frozen straight through and breaking. Frayed rope scratched at her wrists as she twisted to get a better look at the black-clad figure at the end of the indoor dock.

Red hair—much shorter than Winnie’s—lifted on a rogue tendril of wind coming through one of the broken windows to the right. Winnie recognized this place now. The dilapidated boathouse served as storage for one of the cabins that’d been built south of Hollow Lake but hadn’t been used in years. Constructed of cheap shingles and vertical siding, the structure protested the constant onslaught of extreme weather. Every kid in her fifth-grade class had been convinced it was haunted, and took turns daring and double-dog daring each other to step inside. She’d been the only one to find it kind of peaceful. Somewhere Henry and Darby and their fan club didn’t dare intrude. Adrial had found her here after her mom’s death. Had sat with her on this very dock that split the two bays, their toes dangling in the water, without saying a single word.

He’d seen her. Even back then. She wasn’t just the chief of police’s daughter, and he hadn’t been the mayor’s son. That day—and every time they’d found themselves coming back throughout those formative summers—they’d simply enjoyed the seclusion with tension-filled looks and smiles and the occasional scream when the lake plants got long enough to brush against the bottoms of their bare feet.

Now, it looked like her death might actually make this place haunted. Because there was no way in hell she wouldn’t haunt the person who’d stabbed Adrial until their dying breath.

The humming came to a close, and every cell in Winnie’s body went on alert. Footsteps vibrated through the aged wood that somehow still supported her weight until they, too, pulled to a stop. “Hello, there.”

A shudder coursed through her. Winnie tugged on the rope securing her hands at her lower back and the section wrapped tightly around her feet. “Why am I not dead?”

“Letting you drown—as entertaining as that was—is too easy.” Joints popped as the killer crouched near Winnie’s shoulder, hands at ease over her knees. The mask still hid a good amount of her features, but this close—and not actively fighting for her life—Winnie could make out a few freckles through the eye holes. Long lashes, too. No makeup…and soft blond eyebrows. “Fitting, but too easy. I have something much more interesting planned for you, and if it works, you’ll be the next great cold case in Black Hollow. Almost as popular as Lila Mercer. No one will find your body or the person responsible. No one will care enough to look for you, either. Everyone in this backward town will forget you even existed.”

Acid charged up her throat. Millions of thoughts streaked through her mind, but there was only one that took her next breath. “You killed my dad.”

“I did.” Something about the rise in the killer’s voice told Winnie a smile had stretched beneath the mask. Gloves hid any telling scars, features or tattoos, but the way she talked about Black Hollow said a lot. This woman—whoever she was—felt just as unseen and cast out as Winnie had.

Like she knew the town all too well, too.

Winnie’s mouth dried at the thought the two of them might have anything in common, but she could use that to her advantage. Maybe when her brain came back online. “Because he was still investigating the Lila Mercer case?”

“Is that what you think the chief of police has been doing all these years? Trying to find Lila’s killer?” An icy laugh hit Winnie’s ear and caused dread to pool at the base of her spine. The killer swiped at her masked face with one gloved hand. “Oh, thank you. I needed a good laugh. Wow. The things people will believe about those they love. It’s really amazing what a little gaslighting and manipulation can accomplish.”

She didn’t understand.

“You’re… You’re wrong. He never lied to me. I have the case files. I have all his boxes of notes and interviews.” When had she stopped shivering? Winnie couldn’t recall, but it’d been a while. That wasn’t a good sign. The longer she lay prone like this, unable to move, the higher chance she’d succumb to hypothermia or frostbite. Neither of which she could afford if she wanted to get to Adrial. Before it was too late. And she wanted that. She wanted to know that he was okay. That he would make it through this and that she hadn’t lost him all over again. She wanted that kiss they’d shared at the lake’s edge to be the first of a new phase of their lives and to mean something more than simple right-time, right-place circumstances. She wanted to ease the pain that clung to his every movement and chase away the shadows in his eyes. She wanted the chance she’d never gotten when he’d left Black Hollow. “My dad has spent his entire career trying to solve that case.”

“How do you think two vital pieces of evidence went missing during the investigation, Winnie? Arthur Hutton was the lead detective on that case, then the chief of police. There were only three officers who had full access to the evidence room during that time, and neither of them had a connection to Lila Mercer.” The killer cocked her head in that predatory way Winnie couldn’t get over. “Who do you think made that evidence disappear? Who do you think wanted to cover his tracks and convince everyone in this place that he was the upstanding chief of police they believed him to be?”

Winnie wanted to shake her head, but her hair had frozen to the dock planks. All she managed was a jerk of her head that tore some of her hair free. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. My dad was a decorated officer. Everything he did, he did for this town.”

Hadn’t he? Her entire childhood had been built on that belief once her mother had passed. Arthur Hutton was a pillar of the community. That was his entire life. So much so, he didn’t have the room to be the parent she’d needed, but he’d done his best. He worked overtime and nights and weekends and birthdays and Christmases to ensure the community’s safety by patrolling the streets and serving justice to the people who hurt others. Her father had been a hero.

“I think I’m the only one here who knows what she’s talking about.” The killer reached out and pushed back a rogue strand of Winnie’s hair from her face. “You see, Daddy Dearest didn’t want anyone running forensics on Lila’s underwear or that hair the techs recovered from the chains. Because then he’d have to explain why his DNA was all over a woman who’d been beaten and then chained down in a lake.”

No. It wasn’t true. That evidence… It’d just been misplaced. Except, why hadn’t her father made note of it? Why were there two difference evidence lists? One written in his handwriting, and one in the official case file? Why hadn’t anyone working the case questioned the disappearance of case-altering information? Blood drained from her face and neck as denial screamed up her throat. She twisted her ankles, just out of her attacker’s peripheral vision, and another splintering shock hit. The ropes came loose. “You’re lying.”

The killer wasn’t smiling anymore. “Am I?”

Two words—nothing more than a whisper—rocked through her. The scream that tore from Winnie’s chest rattled dust from the rafters as she charged to her feet and tackled the killer off the dock.

Straight over the edge.

Chapter Sixteen

A scream spiked his heart rate.

Adrial couldn’t tell the direction from which it’d come, and he pulled up short of skirting around the south end of the lake. Wind bit into the skin along his face and neck and drove into both wounds, freezing him from the inside out. His layers had soaked through with sweat. No matter how much he knew about avoiding hypothermia, he hadn’t been able to detach himself from the need to find Winnie over prioritizing his physical health.

She’d screamed. In pain. In fear. In rage.

And he wasn’t there to help.

He hadn’t seen evidence of the killer or Winnie in the minutes since he’d left the safety of his SUV with his handgun tucked into his back waistband, but the wind and snow cutting across the frozen lake liked to erase traces of human or animal life. Hollow Lake had already taken so much. He couldn’t let it take Winnie, too.

Adrial bit through a groan as he hauled his injured leg after him. The damn thing had lost a good amount of function, though he’d been able to contain the flow of blood. Hell, Winnie could be anywhere out here. In any condition. He just hoped he got there in time. A combination of that impenetrable mist and powdered snow whitewashed everything mere feet in front of him, only revealing one of the docks when he was practically standing on the damn thing. His boots skidded to one side, the howl of the mountain winds drowning out anything else. But he swore he could still hear her screaming. “Winnie!”

The outline of a faded structure took shape through the snow the longer he stared across the lake from the end of the dock. The boathouse? He’d forgotten all about it, let himself forget the hours he and Winnie had spent holed up inside while the rest of the world forgot to look for them. Instinct had him retracing his steps down the dock and carving a strained path toward the building. From the look of the siding and broken windows, it didn’t look as though it should have been condemned, but it technically fell under private property. He and Winnie hadn’t cared about the risk of being caught or buried beneath the failing structure when they’d needed a place to detach from the expectations and pressures they lived with as kids, but he assumed the town of Black Hollow hadn’t been able to legally touch it. No matter how much of a risk it posed to lake visitors.

He noted the roof tilting to one side the closer he came around the last bend in the shore. The boathouse would sure make a damn good shelter as the weather picked up. There was no way they’d survive out here much longer. Adrial had lost too much blood, and Winnie would’ve gotten to the SUV if she’d been able. “I’m coming, Red. I’ll find you.”

Palming the pistol he’d taken from the SUV, he let the cold metal burn his hand. To keep him in the moment. Otherwise his mind would take him back to that dark, numb place he fell into after Katie’s death. And he couldn’t afford to lose himself right now. Not as long as Winnie was in danger. He pumped both legs as hard as he could, the snow deepening by the minute. He could feel his body giving out, but he wouldn’t stop. Winnie needed him, and he needed to be the man she deserved right now. The one who got her out of here alive, who chose her when so many others had failed. Her father, her ex-husband. Even him. And while the thought of grouping himself in with the very men who’d been responsible for protecting and loving her grated him down to the bone, Adrial couldn’t deny the truth.

No one had chosen her.

Not because of any shortcomings on her part, but because every man in her life hadn’t been strong enough to support her. Including him. He’d convinced himself leaving Black Hollow had been for the best—to protect her—but all he’d done was step into a long line of people who hadn’t been there when she’d needed them. And because of that, he’d caught the loss of her confidence, her tenacity and her faith in the intrinsic merit of human nature in the mere days since she’d come home. The woman had turned herself into a one-person army, relying on herself and no one else to get her through the tough times, but that battle wasn’t sustainable. It was already wearing her down. Winnie had suffered through so much loss, but she was somehow still standing. Still fighting. She might’ve rushed into investigating this case as some kind of a nod to her father’s career and his legacy, but she wouldn’t give up. She’d fight until the end. He had to believe that.

“Winnie!” Adrial almost lost his footing as deep snow gave way to aged wood slivered with ice. The boathouse had been built over a privately owned dock that cut straight down the center of the structure with enough room to store two boats at a time, but it stood in obvious disuse. The peeling double doors at the back of the crumbling building hung off their hinges, but he still had to pry his way inside. The entire structure groaned under the impact as one door hit the wall behind it. Glass rattled in its frame as he stepped inside.

It took a few seconds for his brain to sort between the blinding reflection of the snow and the darkness within. Gripping the pistol, Adrial frantically cut down the center dock as he tried to pick up any sign of Winnie.

Until he found her.

Face down on the ice. Unconscious. His heart threatened to stop mid-beat. He couldn’t get to her without adding his weight to the already cracked ice. Any step on his part could take her under, and from the pale blue color beneath her skin, she was already in desperate need of help. “Winnie.”

No response.

“Winnie.” He had to risk it. Had to get to her. It was the only way they were getting out of here together. Searching the splintered walls for something—anything—to drag her closer to his position standing over her on the dock, Adrial cut to the rowboat for a paddle. He tucked his sidearm into his waistband and tipped the edge of the strung boat toward him.

The boat slammed into his chest.

He hit the floor, the impact jarring his head back. White lightning streaked behind his eyelids as the pain in his shoulder reminded him he’d already been stabbed—twice—today and was on the verge of succumbing to exposure.

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” The killer rounded one end of the rowboat, twisting a solid wooden paddle like a baton. “And not in a good way. I was kind of hoping you were already dead, but I’m now realizing this will be much more exciting.”

Adrial turned onto his uninjured side. It took more energy for him to get to his feet than it should have, but considering his condition, he’d reward himself with an entire bag of gummy clusters when he got Winnie out of this. “And I’m now realizing, you really like to hear yourself talk.”

The woman beneath the mask stilled in that unnatural way that told him he’d said the wrong thing. What did he care? She’d stabbed him and taken Winnie. He didn’t give a damn about whether he’d hurt her feelings.

“Tell you what.” He tucked his good hand behind him, wrapped his fingers around the grip of his gun, pulled it free and took aim. Every second the killer kept him from Winnie was another second he might lose her all over again. And he couldn’t live with that kind of loss again. He’d barely survived losing his wife. If it hadn’t been for Baxter pulling him out of that dark place and giving him a new purpose with the agency, Adrial would be buried six feet under with Katie and their baby. Losing Winnie now would destroy him for good. “I’ll let you walk out of here without getting shot if you turn yourself in now.”

“Oh, but you’re not a police officer anymore, are you, Detective?” She took a step forward, halting her impressive twirl with the boat paddle. Even in inexperienced hands, that thing could do damage, and Adrial had no doubt “You don’t have the authority to demand anything of me, and you can’t just shoot me. At least, not without cause.”

Detective. She’d called him that before. He slipped his index finger over the trigger. “It’s because I don’t like you, which is good enough for me.”

Her laugh grated on his insides. “I’m starting to like you. Too bad you and your partner have to die.”

The killer swung the paddle straight for his head.

Adrial brought up his forearm, forcing him to drop the gun. The wood cracked in two as fire erupted straight into the bones of his arm. Splinters shot in every direction as she stalked forward, driving him back. After tossing both pieces of the broken paddle, his attacker swung at him with a strong right hook.

Pain exploded across his face. Another round of lightning danced behind his eyes. He staggered two steps, torn between fighting back or striking someone much smaller than him, but the killer was on the verge of making the choice for him. He blocked her left fist, bending out of the way as he fought to add some distance between them, but she just kept coming.

A boot landed in the center of his chest, and Adrial hit the ground a second time. Scrambling to his feet, he retreated up as another kick aimed for his groin. He threw his good leg out and caught her mid-strike a split second before a honed blade swung up toward his face. He dodged the first attempt, barely managing to block the second. But he was running out of room. If she got him on the ropes, there was no telling how far he would go to ensure and Winnie got out of this alive.

Her second kick to his chest thrust him straight into the ledge of one of the windows. Air crushed from his chest at the impact. The killer had him cornered as she stabbed the blade toward his chest. Adrial was fast enough to lock both hands onto her wrist, but she had the upper hand and the body strength to see it through. His arms shook as the tip of the blade worked closer to his sternum. The wound in his shoulder screamed under the pressure.

“This is the part where you die.” The blade easily pierced through his shirt, nicking skin. A bead of blood welled. Too close.

“Who are you?” His strength was giving out, and Winnie… She still hadn’t moved. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing or where she’d been injured, but something was wrong. And his entire being needed her to be okay. To make this right. Adrial forced himself to focus on the woman in front of him.

The muscles in his arms threatened to give out at any second, but she wasn’t much better off. No matter her training, he still had a good amount of mass on her. He could use that to his advantage. It was a risk, but there wasn’t anything he wasn’t willing to give for Winnie. Tightening his grip around the killer’s wrist with one hand, he released the other. And ripped the mask from his attacker’s head.

Blond hair frizzed out around an incredibly familiar freckled face. For a moment, he didn’t understand, and he didn’t give himself time to. Throwing his weight to one side, he pulled the killer closer with everything he had left.

And tossed her straight through the window.

Glass shattered around him, slicing through his coat and jeans just before the impact of her body registered. He’d bought himself enough time. How much? He didn’t know, but it would have to be enough. “Winnie!”

Adrial charged down the center of the dock, then crouched, stretching out one hand and fisting it at the collar of her coat. He ignored the fractures spidering through the ice and dragged her toward him as fast as possible. The ice broke under the shift in weight, but he managed to pull her free of the gaping hole that was growing larger by the second, and into his arms. “I’ve got you.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ve got you.”

Chapter Seventeen

Winnie blinked against the too-bright lights and a water-stained tile ceiling overhead. It took a few too many seconds to realize she wasn’t dead. That was concerning but also a relief. Scratchy bedsheets and low voices registered in the minutes she tried to gauge her whereabouts.

Crunching added to the weird-as-hell soundtrack. “It’s creepy that you’re just staring at the ceiling like that.”

Realizing she wouldn’t suddenly go into a coma by taking her eyes off the Pac-Man-shaped brown stain overhead, she let herself take in the man sitting to one side of her bed popping what looked like caramel popcorn every few seconds from a Cracker Jack box. She knew him from Adrial’s office. Baxter something. He…worked forensics? Kind of hard to believe the man with tattoos inked up his arms and the grungy motorcycle-gang-member aura had chosen such a hard science, but he somehow managed to pull it off. “You’re not the person I expected to be sitting at my death bed.”

“But would you say I’m the handsomest?” Baxter threw another few kernels of the sweet-and-salty combo into his mouth. He tipped the opening of the box toward her. “Popcorn?”

“No. Thank you.” She hadn’t died. The killer hadn’t succeeded in…whatever she’d set out to do, but there was a big gaping hole in her memory of how she’d gotten here. Winnie struggled to sit up, sinking deeper into the pillows arranged at her back. An IV line tugged at the thin skin in the crook of her elbow. She followed it up to a clear bag dripping fluids—and probably some kind of pain reliever—into the line.

“Where am I? Where is Adrial, and how the hell did I get here?” Shoving herself upright, she sucked in a strained breath.

Baxter was suddenly out of his seat, the box of Cracker Jacks on the floor and his hands on her biceps to steady her. “Take it easy, killer. You’ve been through a lot. I know all that seems important right now, but you’re still recovering from hypothermia and a good hit to the head.”

Is that why she couldn’t seem to see straight? She didn’t remember that part. There was the lake and the stabbing and the blood and the drowning. Then…the boathouse. The killer had taken her to the boathouse. Was going to kill her for… Pain streaked through her head. Too fast to be a migraine but just as debilitating for those few short heartbeats. “Adrial.”

“He’s getting stitched up. The woman who attacked you got him pretty good. He’ll recover, but for now, you’re both out of commission.” Baxter’s hands were warm and callused in much the same way Adrial’s were, but they didn’t feel right on her skin. He settled her back against the pillows, and the pain trying to shred her brain into a thousand pieces eased. After taking his seat, he grabbed the box from the floor and tossed the few pieces of popcorn that’d escaped into the trash can positioned beside the bed. “Until the ER clears him to move around, you’re stuck with me. Or until he gets tired of being told what to do and barges in here like his stubborn-ass self. My money’s on the latter.”

So was hers. And if Baxter was putting bets on his boss, that meant Adrial was alive. That he was safe. Relief unlike anything she’d felt before replaced the panic crushing her chest. Tears burned in her eyes as some muted daytime talk show with six female hosts played out on the TV mounted from the ceiling across the room. She couldn’t read the captions, but Baxter had obviously kept himself busy waiting for her to wake up. “He’s okay?”

Understanding softened the harsh lines around the forensic investigator’s mouth and eyes, and right then she could imagine him as the type that hated to deliver bad news. Supportive in that unwavering way, the kind of man who wanted to be there for the people he cared about. People like Adrial and probably the rest of the Cold Hollow Investigations teams. “He’s okay, Winnie. He managed to get himself stitched up in the field and stop the bleeding before he lost too much. If he hadn’t, I doubt either of you would be here.”

Adrial had saved her? How? Why? She’d left him there on the ice to face the killer alone, and he’d come for her. She didn’t know why the idea of him risking his life for her made her so uncomfortable, but rubbing her chest where an ache started didn’t help.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Baxter didn’t even bother looking at her this time, seemingly engrossed in whatever topic the ladies on TV had moved onto in the captions.

She doubted that, but she was willing to use Baxter as a distraction rather than sit in these feelings she didn’t want to acknowledge and get stuck inside her head. It wasn’t a great place to be right now. Someone had murdered her dad. And not just that. The killer had insinuated Arthur Hutton—the chief of police and the greatest detective she knew—had been directly involved in the death of twenty-year-old Lila Mercer. That her father had compromised key pieces of evidence in the investigation. No. She didn’t want to think about that. He was her dad. Not some kind of criminal mastermind. “That you can’t possibly eat that much popcorn in one sitting and keep your six-pack?”

Baxter chomped down on another handful of peanuts and caramel. “My eating habits shouldn’t concern you unless you’re interested in going back to my house and getting an up-close-and-personal look at said six-pack, but I’m a fan of staying alive. I don’t cross that line. Ever.”

Understanding steadily sank in as Baxter watched his program, and Winnie’s face heated. He couldn’t mean… No. She shook her head, retriggering the pain at her temples. “Adrial and I aren’t…together.”

She’d come back to Black Hollow to set her father’s affairs in order. She’d taken on following this investigation to the end to honor his career and had somehow convinced Adrial to come along for the ride. They were partners. Not a couple. And even if she was ready to start seeing someone so quickly after the divorce—which she wasn’t—the last person she’d turn to was the man who’d broken her heart in the first place. “He still loves his wife.”

And why were they talking about this, anyway? Adrial hadn’t shown any kind of interest… Her stomach sucked up higher into her rib cage. The kiss. Not the performance that’d played out in front of Henry and Darby on Main Street, but the one that’d come after. When it’d just been the two of them on the edge of Hollow Lake. He’d…kissed her. Like, really kissed her, and holy hell, she could still feel it down to her toes. Changed her from the inside out as he’d devoured her. As though he’d relied on the very air in her lungs to keep living. That hadn’t been a performance.

Baxter’s scoff jerked through his upper body. “Of course, he still loves her. Katie played a huge role in his life. They built a home together in Chicago, planned to have a family. She’s always going to be part of him and so is what happened to her. You don’t just pretend those things haven’t made you who you are, but losing someone—especially to violence—doesn’t make it impossible to find peace with someone else. And you… You give him peace.”

She did? Winnie couldn’t imagine what in the world could make Adrial’s best friend think she’d brought a moment’s peace into their lives since coming back to town, but she didn’t have the capacity to ruminate on it right now. She looked at Baxter, really looked at him, for the first time since she’d woken up. He was obviously attractive in an I-want-to-piss-off-my-parents kind of way with that bad-boy smirk and the mystery in his eyes. But there was also a heaviness to the set of his shoulders. Like he hadn’t slept well in years. “You make it sound as though you have experience with that.”

Intense blue eyes slid to her as Baxter settled deeper into the uncomfortable-looking pleather chair. “What I was saying before you so rudely commented on my cheat day snack was that I know you’re feeling guilty about what happened. You shouldn’t. Whoever stabbed Adrial and tried to kill you, it’s on them. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done to prevent what happened. You followed the evidence. You found a new lead for the first time in twenty years. Not bad for a hard day’s work in my book.”

Forensic investigator and mind reader. Winnie chose to ignore the insinuation that Adrial felt more for her than annoyance and obligation and potentially a bit of guilt for how they’d left things ten years ago.

But the door to her hospital room opened, and there he was.

Bruised, battered and a little unsteady on his own two feet, Adrial locked burning attention on her. Something released inside her chest.

A nurse tried to angle around Adrial’s position in the doorway. “Sir, you shouldn’t be up and moving yet. Your stitches are fresh—”

“I’m fine.” Two words had never sounded so world-bending in her life. The entire room seem to shift around him instead of Adrial moving through the room. The added limp was noticeable, but he had enough strength not to need crutches. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Muscles rippled in his free forearm as he approached the bed. The other arm was secured in a sling, and every cell in her body honed on his approach.

Her exhale shuddered up her throat, her insides coiled so tightly she feared she might burst into a thousand butterflies if she wasn’t careful.

“What’d I tell you? Stubborn-ass.” Baxter sucked on the straw of a gas station soda cup she hadn’t noticed until right then, his attention still fully engaged with the women of the talk show. He hit a button the remote and hauled his muscular form out of the chair, taking his popcorn and soda with him. “That’s my cue. Good luck, Winnie. I hope you don’t die. Really.”

That pulled her attention off Adrial. “O-kay. Thanks for sitting with me.” She meant it. Her insurance and emergency contact information was still tied to Dan. The hospital would’ve let him know she’d been admitted in the name of financial responsibility, but no one had come. Baxter had. Maybe as a favor to the man who looked as though he hadn’t taken a breath in the past minute, but she appreciated the gesture, anyway. The kindness. Besides, did she really want the people from her old life here, her ex included? They’d shown her exactly how important she was to them during the divorce, and yet she still seemed to expect them to choose her? To be here for her?

“Anytime, killer.” The forensic investigator nodded at Adrial, pausing for a split second. An entire nonverbal conversation seemed to pass between them before Adrial returned the nod, and Baxter took his leave.

“How are you feeling?” Adrial’s voice sounded as though it’d been dragged over gravel. Too rough and sharp, but the perfect combination to get through the emotions taking up too much space in her chest.

Winnie blinked, at a loss. “You’re asking about me?”

“You’re the one in the hospital bed.” Her partner maneuvered around the bed. The trip would’ve been made so much easier with at least one crutch, but the man made being stabbed look like an inconvenience with the way he held himself.

He wasn’t serious, right? She watched as he took his seat, lowering himself down with far more grace than she’d ever owned in her life. “You’re the one who was nearly gutted like a farm animal.”

“Touché.” His laugh slipped between all those sharp internal pieces of glass she wanted to avoid looking too closely at, rounding the edges off, making them easier to take up space. But the smile that’d come with it drained from his face. “Winnie, there’s something I need to tell you. About what happened. The killer… I saw her face. She looks just like you.”

Chapter Eighteen

He couldn’t get the image out of his mind.

The similarities he’d noted in those few chaotic seconds before he’d shoved their attacker through the window. The same bottom lip—a little fuller than the top—the spread of freckles, though not as many as Winnie, the shape of her face. Maybe a little longer through the cheekbones, but familiar. Their hair color was different, the killer’s more blond than red, and Winnie’s frame was a little fuller through the hips, but he couldn’t deny the resemblance. Which didn’t make a damn bit of sense. Winnie was an only child. Her extended family had been close to her parents once upon a time, but as far as he knew, there’d been little contact over the years. And Winnie knew her cousins. She would’ve recognized the killer if they were related.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Winnie tried to sit up in the bed, but it was obvious her strength hadn’t returned. The attack had taken far more of a toll on her than he’d realized when he’d found her in that boathouse, and her body was still at risk of dropping back into hypothermic levels if she couldn’t keep her body temperature regulated.

“Her eyes are a different color. Her hair, too, but there are a lot of similarities between the two of you.” And that understanding would have its own impact on Winnie. On the fact that someone she may know had admitted to killing her father, had tried to kill them out there on that lake.

“That’s not… That’s not possible.” Winnie shook her head, and from the pinch between her eyebrows, he could read the signs of the start of one of her migraines.

“I know it’s hard to hear, but we may be looking at someone you know.” Adrial shifted forward, the stitches in both his shoulder and his thigh pulling tight. He eased off. It was a good reminder that he wasn’t at one hundred percent, but he needed to be that for Winnie. He needed to. “Can you think of anyone in your family that would have a connection to the Lila Mercer case or any reason someone might want your dad dead?”

“No. Nothing like that. My dad’s family is all back east. I haven’t talked to them in years, and my mom’s parents passed away a couple years ago. There’s no one left.” Her throat bobbed on a strong swallow as those hazel eyes seemed to get stuck on the blankets draped over her legs. An edge of detachment slid into place, but Adrial couldn’t let her do it. Not now.

He’d already suffered through his own violent loss when Katie died. He couldn’t take watching Winnie pull away from him. Not again. Not after everything they’d been through together. Not after he’d just gotten her back. It was selfish—but practical. He couldn’t let her disappear when she was the only person aside from him who knew anything about their attacker.

Sliding onto the side of the bed, Adrial slipped his hand into one of hers, and she looked up at him. Her eyes widened as she realized he’d moved without her noticing, but her pupils were clear. “What is it? What happened after you ran for the SUV?”

He started small circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. There were few times and even fewer people she let anyone see her like this. Vulnerable, coming apart at the seams, and she needed someone who would do whatever it took to hold her together. He hadn’t realized it until the panic had set in when he couldn’t wake her on the lake that he wanted to be that person. He wanted to be her person again. Not because he felt like he owed her his help on the investigation, or to make up for how he’d ended their engagement, or because no one else would be there when she needed it. He wanted her. Just Winnie. Her smile, her dry sense of humor, that wicked glint in her eyes right before she said something biting.

Silver tears rimmed her lower eyelashes, and Winnie swiped at her face, watching him trace those circles over and over. “She… She said my dad was the one who took the missing evidence during the Lila Mercer investigation.”

The circles came to a stop. His throat dried, his heart suddenly thudding too hard behind his ears. Adrial tried breathing through the dread pooling in his gut, but all he could focus on was his hand in Winnie’s. How she grounded him, reminded him to stay present. “Did she say why?”

Her watery gaze lifted to his. “She said it was because he didn’t want anyone asking questions as to why his DNA would be found on the body.”

“She claimed Arthur is responsible for Lila Mercer’s death?” The hospital room threatened to rip straight out from under him, and Adrial only held on to Winnie’s hand tighter.

“Not in so many words, but what else could she have meant?” Based on the rise in her voice, she wanted him to give her reasons, excuses, theories—anything that she could swallow more easily than the fact her chief-of-police father may have been involved in Black Hollow’s most famous cold case as more than an investigator. “The hair found stuck in the chains used to weigh the body down and Lila Mercer’s underwear could both hold DNA evidence, and they’re missing.”

The glaze in her eyes told him he was losing her all over again, and Adrial couldn’t stomach that. Lowering his face to hers, he skimmed his hand up her arm and around the nape of her neck. “Hey, look at me.” He angled her head to the point it would be impossible not to see him. “There you are.”

He brushed his thumb along her jawline, that hollowness in his chest practically purring at the contact. The kiss they’d shared at the lake had done a number on him—reminded him that he could still feel—but this? This was better. This was the kind of connection so few people got to experience. They’d had it before, and he’d blown up his entire life by leaving Black Hollow. He’d tried finding it with a few women before Katie, but even though he’d loved his wife, something had never clicked like it had with the woman in front of him. This feeling… It was a rightness he couldn’t seem to find anywhere else, and hell, that scared him. That she might not feel the same way.

All these years he’d worked to provide closure to others while assuming finding Katie’s killer would grant him his own. But maybe it was this. Maybe he’d been uselessly searching for something he couldn’t even name for the past ten years only to come right back here. To her. “We will figure this out. Together. You understand me? I’m not going anywhere. You’re not in this alone. We’re partners, and we’re going to get to the truth. No matter what.”

Because she needed that. She needed to know what kind of man Arthur Hutton was, but he didn’t have the heart to come right out and tell her. Winnie needed to see the evidence for herself. That was how her brain worked, why she’d been so drawn to study psychology and make a career out of writing research-based articles to help others understand complicated topics.

“Do you think he did it?” Her mouth parted on a plea, and he wanted nothing more than to fix this for her, to take away that doubt crowding her mind. “You were his partner for two years. Do you think my father was capable of what she said?”

Adrial shook his head. “There was nothing to suggest the case had been compromised while I was assigned, least of all from Arthur, but he was the lead investigator. Everything I worked on had to be run through him, especially when it came to the evidence.”

And if Arthur was responsible for that evidence going missing… It would break Winnie’s heart.

“You’re saying it’s possible?” She swiped at her face again, wincing as she cut across her temple. The killer—whoever she was—had done a number on her while they’d been out there on the ice, and the bruises were already darkening to an ugly purple and blue.

He’d make her attacker pay for every single one by the time this was over. Because while he’d managed to get Winnie out of that boathouse, the killer had slipped away without him noticing, leaving nothing more than a stumbled drag of boots in the snow into the woods. Officers had taken his statement downstairs in the emergency room, but nothing had turned up from the search around Hollow Lake yet.

“I’m saying we don’t have proof of what the killer told you.” Adrial threaded his fingers through her hair. It’d been frozen through when he’d found her, was now tangled in thick damp strands. “She knew you were Arthur Hutton’s daughter. She may have just been trying to mess with your head before driving the stake home. If she has a connection to Lila Mercer, it’s possible she’s taking out twenty years of anger on whoever is left investigating the case.”

Winnie nodded, her eyes no longer glossy or distant. “I didn’t want to leave you. I’m sorry. I should’ve—”

“I told you to run, and I meant it, Red.” Setting his forehead against hers, he practically melted against her at the skin-to-skin contact. Breathing her in. Reminding himself she was here. She was real. “You did the right thing. I lost you once. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to lose you a second time.”

Her laugh rumbled through her chest. She pulled away from him, swiping at her face again then tugging at invisible wrinkles in the blankets. “You mean you don’t want to feel responsible if something were to happen to me.”

Confusion chased the warmth from his chest. Then a cold burst of clarity. “I meant what I said, Winnie. You. I don’t want to lose you.”

“We don’t even know each other anymore.” Pressing her hands to her temples, she squeezed her eyes closed. “I understand why you agreed to help me with this case, but you don’t have to pretend there’s anything more between us.”

He added the few inches of space between them she obviously would’ve achieved herself had she not been relegated to a hospital bed, but didn’t leave his position at the edge of the mattress. “I’d like to think that’s not true considering we got together in middle school and stayed together until our twenties. Considering we chose each other every single day, even when our parents and friends tried to convince us otherwise. Hell, Winnie, we were engaged. We planned on spending the rest of our lives together. You don’t do that with someone you don’t know inside and out.”

“People change.” Her gaze was on his again. There weren’t tears in her eyes anymore. Instead, she was bordering on seeming apathetic. Like she’d written a prepared statement and just had to get through the tough parts. Or maybe she was just so depleted, she couldn’t summon anything close to an emotion anymore. He couldn’t blame her either way. “We’re not those naive teenagers who thought they knew what love was anymore. We changed because you decided you didn’t want that future with me.”

“I understand you’re dealing with everything from the past week, Red. Your dad’s death, coming back here and being in that house and what went down at the lake. I get that. It’s a lot for one person to shoulder, and I’m going to be here to help you through it.” Adrial slid off the bed, every muscle in his injured leg screaming in protest. Whatever pain meds they’d given him a few hours ago were wearing off. “But I’m not going to let you pretend we never happened or that it didn’t mean anything to me because I left.”

He headed for the door, the toe of his boot catching on the linoleum, then turned back with his hand on the pull handle. Winnie wasn’t looking at him, didn’t even seem to breathe. He hated leaving her alone in her head like this, but he wouldn’t force himself on her, either. “And I’m not going to let you pretend that we couldn’t happen again.”

Chapter Nineteen

I’m not going to let you pretend that we couldn’t happen again.

Winnie couldn’t get the voice out of her head as she crossed the threshold of her childhood home. The damn rubber seal round the door groaned loud enough to make her heart stop as the heavy wood closed behind her.

Winnie dropped her purse, recovered by the Cold Hollow Investigations team, onto the floral couch. She’d been discharged from the hospital after two consecutive days of monitoring. Seemed the hypothermia had abated, and the head would hadn’t even resulted in a concussion, but she’d been warned to return if confusion or headaches set in. No matter how many years had gone by, the walls still smelled of light cigarette smoke in this room. Her dad had quit the day her mom had announced they were having a baby, but thirty-six years later, she still caught whiffs. Weirdly enough, she’d missed that smell. It reminded her of him. And that pierced deep enough that she stormed into his office. More now than before, when she’d believed he’d lived his full life and died peacefully in his sleep. Not that his life—and the years they might’ve spent reconciling—had been stolen from him.

The death certificate was around here somewhere. Winnie shifted papers across his desk—even more notes from the Lila Mercer case, more scribbled theories and copies of pointless documents that only seemed to distract from the original investigation. If what the killer had said was true—that her father took an active role in compromising the case—then it was possible he’d send whatever investigators might take over the case in spirals just trying to get through a vast amount of crap. Excellent strategy.

She clutched a handful of papers and slammed them down onto the desk. The bite of pain felt good. Something familiar to hold on to when everything else felt like too much to deal with right now. She was good with pain. It made her feel like she was in control. In the moment. Nothing else mattered when she hyperfocused on the pain, but it was only temporary. Soon, all those feelings she’d been shoving to the back of her mind would come rushing back. There was no stopping it, but she could put it off for a while and do this.

“It was right here.” Threading her hands through her hair, she tried to ignore the tangles and the smell of the lake, but she caught hints of body odor and other things she didn’t want to acknowledge. Ugh. She really needed a shower, but she needed that stupid piece of paper if she wanted to find out the truth. The medical examiner would’ve needed to state a cause of death on the final autopsy report.

The doorbell peeled from the mounted box right outside the office. Winnie retraced her steps, trying to contain the rat’s nest that’d become her hair, and wrenched the door open.

To Adrial standing on the other side.

“What are you doing here?” She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, not ready to face him yet. “You’re supposed to stay for observation in case your stitches get infected.”

“I had them prescribe me antibiotics.” He withdrew a small orange container from his jacket pocket and shook the bottle. “All set. Can I come in?”

I’m not going to let you pretend that we couldn’t happen again.

She’d convinced her brain to stop playing his words on repeat while she’d searched for the death certificate, but now, they were back in full force. Her hand shook as she stepped aside to let him pass. “I’m not going to apologize for the mess this time. I think you know what you’re getting yourself into at this point.”

“More than you know.” Adrial scanned the living room just as he had the last time he’d set foot in this house. “You left before I had a chance to apologize.”

Swallowing the biting remark in an effort to strike first in their oncoming conversation, Winnie closed the door then bypassed him on her way to the kitchen. Maybe she’d put the death certificate in the junk pile on the counter. It couldn’t be anywhere else. She’d just gotten it in the mail before the mess with the Lila Mercer case started. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. We’d both been through something traumatic, you more than anyone, and we said things we probably wouldn’t have otherwise.”

He followed her to the arch leading into the kitchen, moving in that silent way of his that let her know he was taking in every inch of her. From the mess of knots in her hair to her mud-and snow-caked boots. Two BHPD officers she hadn’t recognized had taken her statement and offered their condolences in the minutes leading up to her discharge, but they hadn’t needed her clothing for evidence.

“Oh.” She moved onto the junk drawer, piling years of single screwdrivers, broken pencils, food menus and loose thumbtacks. It was all going in the garbage by the time she was done. “Well, thanks for clearing that up.”

I’m not going to let you pretend that we couldn’t happen again.

Pressure built under her skin the longer she felt his gaze on her. And she’d cornered herself in the kitchen with only one escape route. Through him. Damn it.

Winnie forced herself to take a deep breath. It wasn’t like that kiss at the lake hadn’t altered her brain chemistry. It had. It’d been good and enjoyable, and had made her feel things she certainly hadn’t felt from her husband in a good long while, because he was busy making his work wife feel those things instead of paying attention to her at home. Okay. Maybe she really liked how that kiss had felt. Maybe it really wasn’t just about the kiss but the man who’d kissed her.

“Winnie.” Holy hell. He’d walked up right behind her without warning, and she wanted to jump out of her skin for an entirely different reason than she was thinking about when Baxter had touched her.

She slammed a hand against her chest. “Don’t do that.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry with that quirk to his mouth. “Are you okay?”

“What?” She dropped her hand from her chest. Why did that question sound so…foreign? When was the last time anyone had bothered to ask? “Why are you asking me that?”

Adrial inhaled deeply enough that his shoulder rose, as though he was trying to get her to subconsciously follow his breathing patterns. Holy crap, that was exactly what he was trying to do, wasn’t it? Setting his free hand—the one not currently strapped into a sling—on her arm, he squeezed. The breathing thing was something he used to do when her migraines hit. What he’d done the other day, even. “Because you look like you’ve downed a case of energy drinks the way you’re darting from one counter to the other when I know you must be exhausted.”

Well, at least he didn’t mention needing a shower. Winnie found herself wanting to breathe with him, immediately noting how fast her heart was pounding. “I’m looking for my father’s death certificate. I got it in the mail the day I came back, and I was sure I left it on his desk, but now, I can’t find it.”

His brow furrowed, and she fisted her hand to keep herself from smoothing them out. “You’re looking into his death.”

Not a question, and the fact he’d put that together so quickly told her he did know her better than most, as he’d claimed in the hospital. That he could read her because he’d paid attention for so many years, because he’d cared enough to learn how her brain worked and tried to stay out of her way when her stubbornness kicked in. And that… Nobody else had done that. Not her father, not Dan, not her friends.

She’d been too much when she talked for hours about why she’d wanted to be a therapist in Seattle or the hundreds of stories about her dad catching criminals. She’d been too much when she’d asked her husband to stop working so many nights and then “overreacting” when she’d found out about the affair. She’d been too much asking her friends to lunches and movie dates after the divorce and trying to cling to any semblance of human connection she had left.

But Adrial had never seen her as too much. He’d been patient at her abrupt changes in subject, because if she didn’t sprout the next thought drilling through her head, she’d forget about it later. And he’d guided her back to the original topic when she was ready. He’d kept her fed with favorite snacks and Diet Coke when she was trying to focus on something for school or planning the wedding, and sometimes even took tasks off her plate altogether so she didn’t feel overwhelmed. He’d defended her against snobbish bullies like Henry and Darby and ignored the comments from his parents begging him to find someone more marriage-worthy that would raise his status in the community. He’d chosen her, time and time again. Even now, putting his own life at risk for the chance for her to get away. It hadn’t worked, but he’d done it. He’d put her first, and she’d accused him of pretending she was worth more to him out of some misguided sense of guilt.

Winnie swallowed past the knot of emotion swelling in her throat. “Why would she lie about killing him?”

His hand slipped an inch, resting in the crook of her arm like he’d done it a thousand times before. “I don’t think she did, Red, but it will be easy enough to have the medical examiner’s office take a second look. There’s a dozen reasons why they might’ve gotten the cause of death wrong.”

Winnie nodded. In her head, she’d known that, but hearing it from him now broke one of those invisible glass shards she didn’t want to confront. She shrugged as a new laceration cut through her. “If she wasn’t lying about that, maybe she wasn’t lying about anything else, either.” She didn’t want to think about it, but not thinking about it didn’t make it untrue. “Maybe my dad stole that evidence because he… Because he had something to do with Lila Mercer’s death.”

Adrial’s mouth softened. His thumb traced a heated path on the soft skin of her forearm. Constant. Dependable. Predictable. Just like him. “So what do you want to do, Red?”

“I want to prove she killed my dad.” She wouldn’t be facing this alone. She had him. “And then we’re going to search this house for that missing evidence.”

Chapter Twenty

Her heart was breaking.

He could see it happening right in front of him.

How she seemed to hold her breath, waiting for the worst of whatever she was feeling to drain. But it wouldn’t. Realizing her father might not have been the upstanding chief of police she’d believed him to be all these years was a hard pill to swallow, and Adrial couldn’t hold the distance between them. To allow her to use him to stay standing. “That’s a good plan, Red, but you don’t have to rush into it right now. You have all the time in the world.”

This was the pain he’d been too cowardly to witness firsthand all those years ago, when he’d been the one to break her heart. He caught her bottom lip with his thumb, halting the slight wobble. That was all she allowed herself, but he could feel the shift under her skin. Feel the ramping up of something devastating and heart-rending just under the surface. She was holding it together in front of him, but the minute she was alone, Winnie would break.

“You mean I’m not fit for public consumption in my current state.” Her self-deprecating humor didn’t put a dent in the shadows swimming in her eyes. Her entire world had been turned upside down in a matter of days, and she was in free fall, but he would catch her. If she let him. “And…is there still blood on me?”

“A little.” Adrial skimmed his knuckles through the hair at her temples. It was coarser than it should’ve been, frozen through, broken, frizzed and holding on to things he didn’t want to think about, but still beautiful and enthralling. It’d always made him want to bury his hands in it, twist it around his fists and use it to guide her mouth to his. Mesmerizing. Like her.

He was careful as his hand slid down her jawline. The bruise still took up one side of her face. From what he’d read of her statement to the police, the killer had knocked her unconscious before dragging her into that boathouse, and he wanted nothing more than to erase the evidence so she didn’t have to recall those memories every time she looked in the mirror. But that wasn’t possible. They were both going to have to learn how to deal with what’d happened and everything that came after, but Winnie didn’t have to do it alone.

She stared up at him with those hazel eyes, her mouth slightly parted, as she leaned into his hand. As though she’d been starved of human touch, and that just made him angrier. Knowing his decision to leave Black Hollow had been to protect her, to give her the chance to live a better life and realizing the man she’d ended up with hadn’t been smart enough to know how good he had it. Winnie hadn’t told him what had brought about the divorce—something she obviously couldn’t talk about yet—but it’d been easy enough to put the evidence together with a cursory look at the man’s phone records and finances thanks to that contact Baxter had established inside BHPD. Databases did wonders in the right hands. Dan Reynolds had been sleeping with one of his coworkers upward of a year before handing Winnie the papers for the divorce, and Adrial wanted nothing more than to make the bastard hurt. To take the anger he had for himself and shove it down Dan’s throat.

Adrial memorized her face all over again, counting the spread of freckles across her cheeks and nose. It was a mistake, leaving her here. They could’ve gone to Chicago together. He could’ve convinced her to elope, to forget the plans they’d made. They could’ve sold the house he’d bought for her. Hell, he could’ve told her the truth. Given her the choice instead of running like a coward, but he hadn’t. He’d made the choice for her, determined she wouldn’t have been strong enough to come to the same conclusion then as she was now. That the man she’d admired her entire life was a liar.

Adrial would spend the rest of his life regretting the time he’d wasted away from her. Not Katie. Not their baby. Never them or the life they’d had for those short five years, the healing she’d helped him find and the future she’d laid out in front of him. They would always hold significant space in his heart, and he would do whatever it took to find the person who’d taken them from him, but right now, there was only Winnie. Right here in front of him, when he’d come so close to losing her.

His insides ached with something he hadn’t felt for another woman in a long time. She was so damn soft—her skin, her curves, the way she bit that bottom lip that’d always driven him a little crazy—and he wanted it all again. To chase that sense of feeling she’d elicited in the past few days. But Adrial forced himself to take a step back and withdrew his hand. A groan lodged in his throat as she leaned forward to follow, but she pulled herself back in time to save herself, blinking up at him in a kind of daze. He threaded his hand through his hair to give him something to do other than to drag her against him. Where she belonged. He hadn’t done the right thing by her when he’d fled to Chicago ten years ago, but he’d be damned if he took advantage of her emotional state now. “You’ve been through a lot the past few days, and you didn’t eat very much in the hospital. You go take a shower, and I’ll get us something to eat.”

Winnie opened her mouth—probably with something entirely meant to flay the flesh from his bones on the tip of her tongue—but rolled her lips between her teeth instead. “I still need to find that death certificate.”

“We can get a copy from the medical examiner’s office.” The case. They had a case to work. A killer to find. Answers to uncover. But all Adrial could think about was the invisible sensation streaking across his knuckles from where he’d touched her. “You just have to pay a fee.”

“Oh. That makes sense. Okay.” She slid her palms down the fronts of her stained and torn jeans. “Thank you. For—for everything, Adrial. I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for you.”

Another crushing wave of need tore through him at that genuineness is her voice, and he fisted his hand to stop himself from reaching out for that mass of hair begging for his fingers, for that throat where he could feel her pulse speed up when he kissed her. To show her just how grateful he was she was still here. “Just doing my job. Can’t have my clients dying on me, can I? Not good for business.”

A flash of hurt exploded in her eyes. Like a shooting star he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen, there one second and gone the next, but he’d caught it. “Right. Well, thanks.” She pointed down the hall, where the bedrooms, a bathroom and the door leading to the garage lined up. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”

“Take your time.” She didn’t look back as she headed toward the back of the house, and Adrial had never been more thankful. He wasn’t sure what he might do if she hesitated. His growl threatened to rattle the framed family photos off the wall. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t some unexperienced teen who’d never gotten to first base. He had control.

But did he really when it came to Winnie? She’d been his first. His first everything. First fantasy. First girlfriend. First kiss. First orgasm. She knew him better than he knew himself in some ways, always keen on learning how to make him feel good, and he’d never—not once—felt the need to hunt for something different. Seemed she hadn’t lost that little talent. Only now, she had become far more dangerous, not even needing to touch him to get his blood boiling.

Adrial forced himself into the kitchen and took stock of the contents in the pantry and refrigerator. It was obvious Winnie hadn’t been shopping since her return to Black Hollow, which didn’t leave him with a whole lot to work with, but he’d promised her food, and after everything she’d been through, she was going to get it. He grabbed his phone, placing an order with the pizza place in town. No one would know it by looking at her, but Winnie would fight dirty for a good meat-lovers pizza. It would be the perfect comfort food and distraction from the rampant thoughts she had trouble shutting down.

Adrial collapsed onto one of the ugly floral couches, not overly surprised when a layer of dust shot up at the disturbance. Arthur Hutton hadn’t done a whole lot with his life once his wife had died, especially when it came to Winnie, but could he really judge the man? There’d been days Adrial couldn’t remember after Katie’s death, entire weeks he couldn’t recall more than a few memories, and most of them included a good bottle of whiskey and that photo he’d kept on the bookcase in his front room. He’d gotten stuck there, in his grief. Day after day. The department had put him on leave, slapped him with an order that kept him from working the case and told him it would get better. Only Baxter had recognized his grief hadn’t been so much about losing Katie—though that hurt more than he wanted to admit—but the need not to feel a damn thing.

Adrial glanced toward the hallway where Winnie had disappeared. That seemed impossible now. Within fifteen minutes, the pizza had arrived and was starting to go cold on the table as he waited for Winnie to finish with her shower. At thirty minutes, he was ready to start climbing the walls. Pulling up short from his pacing at the head of the hallway, he waited. Another five minutes passed, that pressure in his chest nudging him toward something. And then he was moving.

He passed Arthur’s office and the room Winnie had grown up in. He didn’t bother checking the hall bathroom or the guest room at the end. He headed straight for the main bedroom with the king-size waterbed, dark bedding, old carved headboard and the air conditioner sticking out the single window. The sound of the shower registered from behind the door on the other side of the room, the light bleeding through the crack between the wood and the floor. Adrial grabbed for the door handle, then thought better of it. Barging in on her would only put her on the defensive. He knocked, every cell in his body ready to retreat if she told him to eff off. “Winnie?”

But she didn’t answer.

Concern hooked itself into his chest and refused to let go. He knocked harder, then tested the doorknob. Locked from the inside. “Winnie, open the door.”

No response.

And he couldn’t hold back that sick part of him that worried something had happened, that she’d needed him and he hadn’t been there for her. Again. “Stay back from the door. I’m coming in.”

Adrial pressed his good shoulder against the door. It didn’t take much to break through the sixty-year-old ravaged wood, and he had to catch the door before it hit the wall behind it. Steam soaked straight into his pores and blinded him for half a second. Just before he saw her.

Fully dressed. Huddled underneath the spray at the bottom of the shower pan. Soaked through with her arms wrapped around her legs. He didn’t think, didn’t give himself time to reconsider. Adrial pulled the frosted shower door open, then stepped inside and was instantly doused in hot water. It slicked into his boots as he took up a position next to her and hauled her into his lap. “I’m here, Red. However you need me, I’m here.”

Winnie peeled her face from his chest, raising her gaze to his.

And then she kissed him.

Chapter Twenty-One

This wasn’t like the first time he’d kissed her.

And nothing like the second.

Her brain had gone offline the second Adrial had pulled her into his lap, giving her the first real sense of peace since she’d woken in that hospital bed. Like her entire body trusted the man securing her against his broad frame and she could finally just…let go.

She’d had every intention of getting out the blood and whatever else was making a home out of her hair, but after turning on the shower water, her thoughts had gotten the best of her. They always did. She was always in her head too much, not living in the present moment, not paying attention to Dan’s latest complaint about upper management screwing over the little guy, always stuck with her nose in a book or the countless other ways she seemed to fail the people in her life over and over. One stray glance at the bruise on her face had thrown her down a rabbit hole she hadn’t been strong enough to climb out of.

But Adrial was.

He was here. In the shower with her, water dripping down the sharp angles of his face and plastering his hair to his forehead. He was holding her—like he’d known she was seconds away from breaking into a thousand pieces—and telling her he wasn’t going anywhere.

And she needed him.

More than she needed her next breath. She needed to feel something real to keep her from losing herself in her head again. And so she’d kissed him. Was kissing him. Those thoughts faded into the background as his mouth moved over hers, as he threaded his uninjured hand into the hair at the back of her neck. He massaged her scalp, giving her something for her senses to latch on to, and angled his mouth over hers, deepening his access and penetrating the barrier of her teeth with his tongue. The kiss had started as a way to reconnect with her body, but now, she felt as though she was on fire. A jolt of voltage raced through her veins the moment she’d pressed her lips to his. In a matter of seconds, she was reduced to nothing but a handful of sensations and instincts. Completely aware of who held her and that the past didn’t have a stronghold in this moment.

Home. Adrial felt like home.

She fisted both hands in his jacket collar, silently begging to get closer, but there were too many pieces of clothing between them.

He seemed to understand the desperation roiling through her, but he always had, hadn’t he? Breaking the kiss, Adrial smoothed her hair away from her face as the most embarrassing whimper left her mouth. “I’ve got you, Red.” Maneuvering to one side, he peeled the sling from over his neck and tossed it through the open shower door.

She hadn’t realized water was escaping the confines of the shower, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. There were too many emotions clogging her throat and trying to convince her this was a mistake, but he felt so right pressed against her. Not in the way she’d convinced herself she’d been in love with Dan when they’d met in college, and she found herself going through the motions to make it one more day while her soul slowly rotted from the inside, but like a piece of herself had been stolen the day Adrial left Black Hollow. And it was finally snapping back into place.

He dragged his jacket free of one arm, then the other, flinching under the strain on his wound. He wasn’t moving fast enough. The flood building inside of her was going to sweep her under any moment, and he was the only one who could stop it. Winnie tore at his jacket and tossed it free of the shower, then dragged his shirt over his head. She forced herself to slow down to be careful around his stitches—knowing he shouldn’t have gotten them wet—and got rid of the soaked material as fast as she could.

Pressing her lips against his chest, she counted off his heartbeats with every kiss as a bit of relief eased through her veins.

His laugh reverberated through her, and Adrial drew her chin up, nipping at her throat. “So greedy.”

She couldn’t wait any longer, straddling his hips right there in the too-small shower. This feeling—everything she’d tried to bury in the past few days, during her father’s funeral, in the years she accepted her marriage, the heartbreak she hadn’t let anyone see—was seconds away from bursting from her chest, and she didn’t know if she would ever be able to recover from that. She needed the release. The permission to let go, and he was giving it to her. Knowing exactly what she needed. Winnie drew her blouse over her head, not bothering to see where it landed.

Adrial’s pupils blew wider as he took her in, his hand stilling at the bottom of her rib cage. As though he’d never seen anything so amazing in his life. “You’re beautiful.” He kissed her, reverently, then again, his intentions clear in that moment. He was going to worship her. “So beautiful.”

“So are you.” She didn’t give herself a chance to sink into embarrassment as she devoured his mouth all over again, tilting his head back. He was beautiful. Not just physically, but in the way he’d risked his life to give her a chance to escape the killer and how he’d given clear directions to shower and taken care of the paralysis that sometimes came with making decisions on what to eat and when. In seconds, Winnie had discarded her too-tight jeans and stripped free of her bra and panties. He did the same with the rest of his clothes, revealing all that hard muscle, an entire playground of skin she couldn’t stop herself from touching and the second stab wound in his thigh.

Winnie couldn’t make herself believe this wasn’t some kind of dream she’d wake up from. That he was really here, touching her, holding her, silencing that internal critic and bringing her to the edge of release over and over until the sobs broke free and she was begging for him. Only when that flood of raw emotion had been depleted did he push her straight over that cliff and cross his own finish line.

He’d caught her before the crash, before giving away too many pieces of herself for years had eaten her alive from the inside and destroyed what was left for good.

Adrial peppered kisses over the bruise along her face as the world righted itself again, his strong hand holding her head level. She could breathe. She could feel. Her brain wasn’t trying to sabotage the moment as he reached up and grabbed for the travel-size shampoo she’d brought, or as he’d worked it through her hair. Her mind was clear as he rinsed the evidence of what they’d done from her body with gentle strokes of body wash and turned off the shower spray. Even quieter when he guided her from the shower and dried her off from head to toe before dressing her in her favorite sweatshirt and sleep shorts.

Euphoric bliss warmed her from the inside out as she sat on the edge of her dad’s waterbed and waited for Adrial to dry, but she couldn’t hold back the laugh as he tugged on one of her father’s—presumably clean and much too large—T-shirts and a pair of old jeans. Beads of water clung to his hair as he stepped free from the bathroom and offered her his hand. “I had your favorite pizza delivered.”

And then it happened.

The moment she’d dreaded arriving the second she’d stepped into his office at Cold Hollow Investigations became a reality. Because she’d known it was bound to happen. How could it not when it’d been so easy to fall in love with him the first time around? A tugging that had nothing to do with how hungry she was started in her stomach, then spread like warm honey into her chest. It was familiar and made her feel less alone but stronger. She’d thought she’d loved him all those years ago, but this… She couldn’t describe the feeling that’d stolen her next breath. Like all those jagged pieces of glass inside of her had finally been ground to dust. They couldn’t hurt her anymore, couldn’t tear her apart or cut any deeper. Because he’d demolished them in a matter of days. “Those have to be the most romantic words anyone has ever said to me.”

Adrial’s smile lit up his entire face, and for once, the shadows in his gaze were nowhere to be found. She’d believed him beautiful before, but this… He was exquisite. “Come on. Let’s get you fed.”

“Second most romantic words anyone has ever said to me.” Winnie slid her hand into his, memorizing the calluses in his palms all over again. The shower had washed away the physical dirt and grime she’d been carrying since the incident at the lake, but inside, she felt entirely new as they made their way to the kitchen.

The pizza had gone cold, but there wasn’t anything the microwave couldn’t do, though she had to hold the door closed to get it to work. How her father had lived in such disrepair… No. He didn’t get to intrude on this moment. She wanted these ones with Adrial to last, and maybe she was being a bit of a coward by ignoring the world outside these four walls, but reality sucked. And it’d been sucking for a long damn time.

The pizza wasn’t the best she’d ever had, but every bite hit right as she sat across from Adrial in comfortable silence as they might have if they’d gotten married. And, afterward, when he’d collected her paper plate and gotten her a glass of water and directed her to her childhood bedroom and slid beneath the covers behind her, she let herself imagine what life could be like with him. Well, minus a few details, including the N*SYNC and Backstreet Boys posters hanging on her walls. The lava lamp probably wouldn’t have come with her, but she definitely would’ve packed her purple satellite chair. Because…naps.

“That was…perfect.” Winnie slid her hand over his resting at her hip. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been held like this, with a strong thigh tucked between her knees, like he couldn’t get close enough and his beard tickling the back of her neck. Every muscle in her body felt as limber as a wet noodle. There was no chance in hell she’d be able to do more than fall straight to sleep tonight, but for the first time in years, she wouldn’t be doing it alone. She’d missed that. Missed him and the way he seemed to fit against her so perfectly. And while they hadn’t talked about any kind of future past their plans for the investigation, she knew she wanted more nights like this. She wanted to be wanted. Loved. Accepted. Maybe Baxter was right. Maybe Adrial considered her more than an obligation and there were feelings on his side, too. She’d spent so many years waiting for Dan to notice her, hoping he could see what was right in front of him, but she’d never gotten the courage to outright ask for what she needed. She wanted to be brave now. Because Adrial had been brave for her. “Adrial?”

His sleepy hum had her turning to face him. She was careful with his wounds, trying not to shift too suddenly. His eyes were closed, his face soft and free of all that pain he carried. Framing his jaw with one hand, she skimmed her thumb along his cheekbone. She kissed him, the feeling light and dreamlike, a perfect reflection of what she felt inside. “I think I… I think I’m falling in love with you again.”

That got his attention. He snapped his eyes open, his hand tightening on her waist, and Winnie couldn’t help but smile as the split second of surprise etched into his expression.

But instead of pulling her closer, Adrial tossed the covers off and left the bed. She didn’t understand. Where was he— “This was a mistake.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

He shouldn’t have let it get this far.

He shouldn’t have given her the wrong idea, but she’d been so close to falling apart, Adrial didn’t know how else to keep her together. And it’d worked. Those long stretches of his moans and her gasps and their mutual ecstasy wouldn’t only play on repeat in his head forever, but they’d grounded her in a way nothing else could. But love? Winnie didn’t love him. He didn’t deserve that from her.

She stretched for the bedside lamp and turned it on, her movements accentuating all those curves he’d taken advantage of in that damn shower. “A mistake?”

He grabbed for the jeans and T-shirt he’d discarded before climbing into bed with her and held in a groan as he stretched the stitches in his shoulder. His clothes were still in the dryer, nowhere near close to being done, but he couldn’t stay here. Not when she was looking at him as though he’d just torn her heart from her chest. “You can’t love me, Winnie.”

The open hurt left her face in an instant. Replaced by something far more dangerous. Her skin flushed a pretty pink as she got out of the bed, showcasing those long legs he’d enjoyed wrapped around his waist a mere hour ago. “Please, go on. Tell me how I feel about you then.”

Hell. He wasn’t going to survive this. Not in one piece. Adrial shoved his legs into a pair of Arthur Hutton’s old jeans, catching the edge of his wound dressing on the coarse material. Every cell in his body was clawing for him to put some distance between them so he could think clearly. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Things I’m not proud of.”

“This coming from the man who told me you were the one person who might know me the best.” She shook her head. The flush up her neck and into her face hadn’t eased, an obvious warning sign he was caught in the calm before the storm, but the trembling in her bottom lip told him the storm clouds were on the verge of breaking up. That was when the real destruction hit. Crossing her arms over her chest, Winnie stood her ground between him and the door. “Which is it, Adrial? Are you the person I think you are, or have you been lying to me this entire time?”

He didn’t know how to answer that.

And he caught the second she realized the truth.

That he’d been lying since the moment she’d walked through the door of Cold Hollow Investigations, and hell, long before that. When he’d left Black Hollow and disappeared without a word. Because he hadn’t wanted this to happen. For her to realize he wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be.

“What did you do?” Her arms fell to her sides, a hollow devastation clear in her voice. She’d whispered the question, but the words themselves stabbed through him as easily as the killer’s blades. “Just tell me. Please.”

He couldn’t keep running from this. From the shame and the lies and the secrets. Winnie might’ve set them on this path by digging into the Lila Mercer investigation, but he’d willingly walked alongside her. Held her hand. Led her to believe he was innocent in all this. “The case is unsolvable.”

She flinched as though he’d physically struck her, and that invisible knife cut deeper. This was going to hurt her, was hurting her. “What are you talking about? We have a real lead for the first time in twenty years. The killer—”

“Was telling the truth. In a way. Arthur…your dad compromised the investigation.” His heart felt as though it’d break straight from his chest. He couldn’t get a full breath, but he deserved the pain building behind his sternum. Deserved far more than that. “He stole both key pieces of evidence that might’ve identified Lila Mercer’s killer, and I know that because… I caught him doing it.”

One second. A minute.

Winnie didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe.

And he couldn’t take it. Her stillness. Adrial took a step forward. Only to be rewarded with her retreat. He could explain. He could fix this, and then maybe one day in the future she’d forgive him, and she’d tell him she loved him all over again. “The investigation had already been considered a cold case by the time I came on with the department, but I was so sure I could solve it, if I could just be given the chance. Arthur gave me that chance. Told me to knock myself out.” His laugh didn’t feel real. Nothing did. “Every single day, I pored over those files. I studied the crime scene photos until they were burned in my brain, and I reinterviewed Lila Mercer’s neighbors and coworkers and the fishermen who’d found her. I went out to the scene and searched those woods until the sun went down. Your dad… He told me he’d never seen anyone so dedicated to the job, and part of me took that and ran with it. He’d taken me under his wing, and I wanted to make him proud to have me as a son-in-law. To prove I was worthy of his daughter.”

Adrial waited for her say something—anything—but he’d wanted the chance to explain, and he had it. He’d had so many opportunities to come clean, but protecting her had always won out. Only now, he realized he hadn’t protected her at all. He’d once again taken away her choice. “Looking back, I think that’s what scared him into acting. It was later than I thought it was when I got back from the crime scene to the station, but I needed to return a piece of evidence I’d taken with me to the box stored in the back. We had our wedding rehearsal dinner that night, and everyone was already there, so I knew I didn’t have a lot of time. But when I got to the evidence lockup, Arthur was there.”

How many times had he wished he hadn’t gone through that door? Adrial had lost count, but as he watched the silent tears slide down Winnie’s face, he realized this was the heartbreak he hadn’t been courageous enough to face the first time.

“The box he’d dragged off the shelf was labeled with some case number I didn’t recognize, so I went about my business and put the evidence back in the Lila Mercer box. I made a joke about him not being late to the dinner, but he didn’t laugh.” The nightmare was playing out right in front of him, as though he was living it all over again, and Adrial still couldn’t justify what he’d done. Even after all these years. “And then I realized the evidence bag in his hand was open. He’d torn it open and removed a sample of DNA logged to whatever case he’d been in and exposed it. It was useless at that point.”

Winnie still hadn’t said anything, and his own heart was in the process of tearing through all the stitches he’d gained over the years. The ones from realizing he’d never be good enough for Winnie, to the larger ones that’d nearly destroyed him after Katie’s and the baby’s deaths. And the new ones from nearly losing Winnie on that ice. They’d held him together long enough to survive, but now… They were snapping, one by one, just from raw heartbreak on her face.

“I didn’t know what to think.” Adrial was suddenly back in his body, back in front of the woman he’d risk anything to protect but had failed so many times. “My partner, the man I looked up to my entire career and who’d gotten me the job, the man whose daughter I was set to marry the next day, was actively destroying evidence from one of his cases, and I… I didn’t know what to do.”

Silence closed in, punctuating the hard thud of his heartbeat in his ears.

“So when the killer accused my dad of destroying evidence in the Lila Mercer case, you weren’t surprised, were you?” She shrugged into the oversize hoodie that smelled like her shampoo. “You just pretended for my sake?”

“I was never pretending. Not with you.” He couldn’t swallow past the knot lodged in his throat.

Winnie didn’t look convinced, and who could blame her? He hadn’t earned her trust. If anything, he fully expected her to reach for her lava lamp and hurl it at his head, knowing he’d be able to handle her anger so much better than her withdrawal. Everyone who’d ever meant anything to her had failed, and right now, it seemed she’d finally reached a point where she wasn’t even surprised anymore. How would he live with himself knowing he’d been the one to strike that final nail in her hope that someone would come along and do better? “What was the case?”

“What?” His brain veered off course.

“The case you witnessed him destroy evidence for. What was it?” There was no agony lacing her voice anymore. No hint as to what she was feeling, and that was… He was losing her. Standing less than three feet away, and he was losing her all over again.

Adrial forced himself to focus on her question. “A home invasion. It wasn’t one of my cases so I don’t remember all the details. But I think the homeowner got the intruder with a knife before he escaped. Techs found blood at the scene but had yet to submit it to the lab.”

“Why would he do that?” Tears glimmered in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Why that case? Why steal the evidence from the Lila Mercer investigation?”

Wasn’t it obvious? Adrial dared a step forward, as though approaching a wild animal set to lash out at any moment. “I think you know why, Red.”

“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that again.” She lost the leash of her anger, her words more growl than human. The final line had been crossed, and there wasn’t any chance of going back. “It was his DNA, wasn’t it? In the Mercer case. On her underwear and that hair. He was the one…” Color drained from her face, and her expression went slack a second before she centered her attention on him. Winnie shot her hand out to the nearest wall for some kind of stability, but there was no recovering from this. Not for her. Not ever. And he hated that he’d been the one to lead her here. “You helped him cover it up. You knew what he’d done, and you kept it quiet. You chose to leave like a coward instead of doing the right thing.”

“I didn’t know he’d compromised the Mercer investigation, I give you my word, Winnie. You have to believe me. I didn’t even know that evidence existed until you found that list in Arthur’s things the other day, but when the killer accused your dad of destroying the DNA evidence…it wasn’t hard to imagine why.” That Arthur Hutton had potentially worked a case for twenty years in which he would’ve been the primary suspect. Not to solve it but to ensure no one else came close to putting the pieces together. And Adrial hadn’t seen it. Had been blinded by his partner and his future father-in-law until that day.

He swallowed against the desperation to make her understand, to give her the closure she’d been craving all these years. That was what he did, that was his job, but this… This felt empty. “I made a mistake, but you know exactly what would’ve happened if I reported him, Winnie. It wouldn’t just have come back on him. It would’ve come back on you, and the people of this town had already made your life hell. I couldn’t watch them turn against you, and I couldn’t be the one to ruin your relationship with your dad. So I did the only thing I thought would save you that pain. I left. That night, I called up a friend in Chicago and had him pull strings with CPD. I was on a plane within a couple of hours. I thought… I thought you’d be better off without me.”

Closing the distance between them, Winnie craned her head back to look up at him, all emotion wiped from her face. “You didn’t leave to save me pain, Adrial. You left to save yourself. And now, you can do what you do best. Get out.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

She ripped another stack of papers free from her father’s nightstand.

None of it had anything to do with the Lila Mercer investigation. Nor did it make the pressure in her chest unwind. He’d known. Adrial had known what her father had done all these years, and he’d lied about it by keeping it to himself, by convincing himself he’d done it for the right reasons. But that didn’t fix the newest hole in her heart or suddenly give her the ability to breathe.

He’d held her together knowing how quickly she was on the verge of unraveling. He’d kissed her, touched her, brought her out of debilitating panic and helped rebuild that need for acceptance that’d been missing all these years. She could still feel him inside her, and her lower belly contracted at the memory. But had any of it been real? Or had he simply been trying to distract her from his part in burying all these frozen secrets? Winnie emptied the bottom drawer and dragged the wood from the frame, searching inside the cavern left behind. Empty.

She tossed the drawer on the bed and moved on to the other nightstand, tearing at the top drawer. And her anger—at her dad, at Adrial, at Dan, at everyone else who’d steamrolled her from every angel in her life—drained. Fingers shaking, she reached into the drawer to pull the framed photo of her mom from the depths. She looked just as she remembered, with that bright red hair matching hers, but her eyes had more brown than Winnie’s. The green had come from her dad. The freckles, too, but she liked to think she’d looked more like her mom, for obvious reasons. No one wanted to be related to a killer. Brushing her thumb through the layer of dust on the glass, she sat back on her rear and crossed her legs. “Did you know?”

She couldn’t even hear her mom’s voice in her head after all these years. Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten what it’d sounded like, the patience imbued into every word, especially when Winnie had gotten into something she wasn’t supposed to. She couldn’t help but laugh with tears in her eyes the longer she stared at the framed picture. It’d been taken before Winnie had been born, a brightness in her mom’s eyes that wasn’t there for as long as she could remember. Newborn sleep schedules, fights at school, sneaking out of the house to meet Adrial waiting in his car down the street. She’d put her mom through the wringer, and yet her mother had still somehow managed to put up with it all. Winnie leaned against the waterbed frame. “Do you remember the time you found me in the attic eating the salt dough Christmas ornaments? You hung them high enough I couldn’t get to them on the tree that year, but I showed you. Dad screamed at me for hours. He was so mad I got into all those boxes to look for the ornaments, but you didn’t yell at me. You just laughed then held the garbage can under my head since I couldn’t stop throwing up all night.”

One of the tears fell. “You were the only person I was never too much for. You loved all the songs I made up and stopped whatever you were doing to hear the latest one. You let me switch from ballet to tumbling, then back again. I wish you would’ve talked to me about my period before you died. Dad tried. That was awkward.” Her heart thudded hard once against her rib cage. “I don’t know how you didn’t lose your mind. You understood me when nobody else did, and I’ll never be able to thank you for that. For believing I belonged.”

Adrial did. At least, she thought he had. But now… Winnie pressed a kiss to her first two fingers then transferred it to the glass before setting the frame upright on the nightstand. She turned back to her dad’s bedroom. It was a mess, but this was possibly the only room Arthur Hutton hadn’t stored boxes and boxes… She sat up straight. “He screamed at me for getting into the boxes in the attic.”

Scrambling to her feet, Winnie winced against the soreness along her right side and other places she couldn’t think about without picturing Adrial right there with her, too. And she wasn’t ever going to think about that. Not about him or the shower or the pizza. Not about how he’d saved her life or read her articles. And certainly not about how, for the first time since leaving for Seattle, she’d felt whole these past few days. He’d lived in her gray matter for almost a decade without paying rent, and she wasn’t going to give him a minute more. She stumbled into the hallway, eyes cast upward to the attic entrance.

She tugged on the string, then held her breath and turned her head away from the cascade of dust and whatever else lived in an attic as the stairs descended and locked into place. If she was being honest, she’d avoided this area of the house because of that day her father had screamed at her. Well, that, and the high potential she’d find rats living in the beams. Winnie didn’t give herself a chance to back down as she climbed the stairs. Old wood protested under her weight but held as her head crested the rafters.

It was dark, eerily so, without so much as a window to help her navigate the insulation and beams. She grabbed for the drawstring attached to the bare bulb above her head. Instant blindness caught her off guard but fled all too quickly to reveal the true state of the space. Webs everywhere. Droppings everywhere. Was that a freaking bird carcass? Nausea churned acidic rage in her gut, and Winnie buried her nose and mouth into the crook of her arm. Didn’t help. She’d probably need a rabies shot after this. Forcing herself higher up the stairs, she evened out her weight on one of the main support beams.

The Christmas tree box stood like a sentinel to her right and had been thoroughly taped several times around. Her dad hadn’t bothered with it all these years. Decorating the tree had always been her mother’s thing. Her mom had spent days getting everything just right and adding to the Christmas spirit, a tradition Winnie had tried to re-create in her own marriage, but Dan had about as much interest in the holidays as her father had. If it didn’t make him money, it wasn’t worth his time. There was a hard lesson somewhere in there she didn’t want to look at too closely. She moved past the tree and the stack of decorations. Halloween, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, the Fourth of July. She’d forgotten how much her mom had loved celebrating the little things, how she’d liked to hold on to everything to one day pass down to Winnie. Her heart hurt for a different reason then, as she recognized the slim chance she’d get to do the same for her kids one day. She’d always wanted a family, but Dan hadn’t admitted until two years into their marriage that he’d had a vasectomy without telling her. Probably to lower the risk she’d find out about the affairs. She wanted to smack herself for not recognizing the red flags, but gaslighting herself into believing she had everything she’d ever wanted—that she was in love—had been easy when she just wanted to belong to someone. The signs were clear now, though.

A separate stack of boxes, once stored next to the decorations, had been moved across the attic into the corner. She navigated the beams—harder than she remembered—and avoided as much of the stains and whatever that hunk of fur was over there as she moved toward them. These hadn’t been labeled in her father’s familiar handwriting like the ones downstairs. As though their owner had simply gone out of his way to pretend they didn’t exist.

Bracing both legs on two separate beams, Winnie cracked the lid on the first box. Another full of files. Though these seemed to belong to a number of different cases. Maybe even the ones her father had worked before he’d become chief of police. “The department is going to lose their minds knowing you kept these here all these years.”

If she was right about what her father might be hiding, they’d lose more than their minds. The town may very well fall apart right alongside the Black Hollow PD. But she couldn’t think about the ramifications of what she and Adrial had discovered. Because until she had proof, they had nothing. She sifted through the case files in the first box, moving on to the second, then the third, and found one of her father’s old handguns stuffed inside. Not loaded. And more case files, spanning thirty years of Arthur Hutton’s career. Cracking the lid on the fourth box, she was assaulted by the built-up odor of something dying. No. Most definitely dead. Her eyes watered as her entire body revolted against the smell.

An animal had gotten inside this box. She could see the hole eaten straight through one corner of the box and the droppings piled along the bottom. A dozen stretched-out pieces of plastic littered one corner with what remained of multiple evidence bags. And her heart stopped. There was no reason for a law enforcement officer to hold on to evidence in their personal residence. All evidence pertaining to cases was logged and stored in official evidence lockups. Her father had taught her that. Winnie pulled the top bag free, the details written on the outside of the bag torn through by tiny claws. She could still read some of the words. Case number. Description of enclosed evidence. “Blood sample, unknown source.”

No names. No way to tell if the swab inside belonged the Lila Mercer case or the home invasion Adrial had told her about. Did it matter? This…shouldn’t be here. None of this should be here. Because that meant her father had been corrupt. That he may have had something to do with Lila Mercer’s death. That the years he’d spent trying to solve the case were a lie. For nothing. He’d worked that case every day she could remember and left her to sit in her own grief and raise herself and ignored her for nothing.

Her next inhale trembled as she set aside the top bag. And found a sealed bag of underwear. She couldn’t touch the evidence. Couldn’t make it real in her mind. “What did you do?”

A creak registered from behind. “I knew he’d hidden it somewhere, but this house is a mess.”

Winnie turned…too fast. The box tipped to one side, spilling decades of compromised evidence and spraying animal droppings as her balance wavered.

“I just had to be patient enough for you to get desperate to move or destroy it.” The killer—her features hidden behind that all-too-familiar ski mask—maneuvered across the attic, seemingly taking in all the little nooks and crannies of a house well-lived in with the grace of a cat. “If you’re not aware, that’s not one of my strong suits. Something you and I have in common.”

She grabbed for the overhead rafter, careful not to step down onto the insulated space between the beams. They were over the garage. Any misstep could be fatal from this height. Her heart pounded so loud, she could barely hear her inhale. Winnie slipped her hand into the third box stacked beside her, moving slower than she’d moved in her entire life, and wrapped her hand around her father’s first service weapon. He’d taught her to shoot with this gun. She remembered every lesson. “We don’t have anything in common.”

The masked attacker took another step forward. “Come on now, Winnie. There are lots of things we have in common. For starters, we both lost our mothers. We agree Arthur Hutton is the human equivalent of garbage, and oh, yeah.” The killer tugged off her mask, revealing her face. “The freckles. We get that from our dad.”

Our dad. Winnie blinked to bring her brain back online. No. That wasn’t possible. She wasn’t… Her breath left her chest in a rush. Adrial had been right. Lighter hair, a slightly brighter shade of green in her eyes, same face shape. Winnie dragged the weapon from the box. It hadn’t been cleaned in years. Boxed up and forgotten. Just like her. But firing it was a risk she was willing to take. “You’re lying.”

“Surprise.” The killer lunged for her, and Winnie pulled the trigger.

But the gun never fired.

Chapter Twenty-Four

He couldn’t go back to that house.

Couldn’t face the photo of Katie on the bookshelf or the little reminders of Winnie that’d accumulated over the years. The color of green she’d dreamed of putting on the walls, the counters she’d gone crazy for and imagined filling with cookies for the neighbors every Christmas, her favorite flower in the damn boxes he’d built under the windows.

Every single detail testified to his failure.

Adrial stared at the case file on his desk, reading the same details for the thousandth time. None of them had changed in the hours since he’d returned to the office or in the two years since he’d told his lieutenant back in Chicago to go screw himself and took the case file with him against orders. Katie’s murder—the murder of their unborn baby—had consumed him every second of every day since he’d come back to Black Hollow, but he hadn’t dug this folder from his desk since Winnie had walked in and demanded his help to investigate the Lila Mercer case.

His office door swung inward, centering Baxter in the frame, holding two coffees. Hell, it’d felt like weeks since the forensic investigator had brought Winnie in when it’d really been just five days ago. Time had lost its meaning since she’d shown up, and he… He didn’t want to think about that. How being with her these past few days had resembled what he remembered peace feeling like.

She’d told him she’d was falling in love with him.

And he’d told her them being together was a mistake.

He didn’t get to come back from that. There wasn’t a world where Winnie would ever forgive him for lying all these years, he knew that. But that didn’t mean he should’ve just walked away, either. He hadn’t deserved her before, and he sure as hell didn’t now.

Adrial closed the file on his desk, setting it to the side, but always within reach. He didn’t miss Baxter’s attention settling on the creased folder, the multiple coffee rings stained into the cream cardstock, or the pity in the man’s cold blue eyes. He didn’t want it. He didn’t deserve the concern that followed or the days, weeks and months Baxter had spent pulling him back from the edge while trying to hold himself together at the same time. “You hear from the ME?”

“You were right.” His best friend handed off one of the coffees and took the same chair he always did when inviting himself in. “Guy’s up to his eyeballs in debt. Took me a while to get it out of him, but there’s no denying it. He was paid to lie about the cause of death on Arthur Hutton’s death certificate. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“Not many people have that kind of cash lying around to spend on an ME.” Adrial chugged half the coffee in one go, leaning back in his chair. Both stab wounds were doing a hell of a job of keeping him awake, but he needed to be focused. To find the threat to Winnie before it found her. Starting with her father’s death. “Electronic?”

“Cash.” The forensic investigator had a knack for getting information out of people when he wanted it. It was one of the reasons they worked so well together. Baxter took a sip of his coffee, rolling his lips between his teeth as his gaze diverted back to Katie’s file. “I handed off one of the bills to Michal. She’s going to run a trace through a contact at the treasury. See where the money came from. Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours, but until then, you need to take a break.”

Adrial knew exactly where to send that suggestion. He set aside his coffee, then dragged the Lila Mercer file Winnie had put together from her father’s files in front of him. “How did Arthur die?”

Baxter’s concern spread into the set of his mouth and deepened the lines in the corners of his eyes. “Insulin.”

That one word had Adrial closing his eyes. Hell. His former partner wouldn’t have gone out gently into that good night. He would’ve suffered, which revealed more about his killer’s intentions than anything else. She could’ve stabbed him and gotten away with it by having an ME in her pocket, ended it quickly, but she’d chosen to draw it out. Maybe even watch the life leave his eyes.

“Manner of death could suggest a personal connection. She may have wanted him in pain.” Knowing what he did now—that Arthur may have very well been involved in Lila Mercer’s death—gave them a new angle.

“You’re thinking revenge?” Baxter took another drink. Just another day in the office discussing murder and how someone might’ve gotten away with it. And while Adrial had resigned himself to this life, his best friend had too much life still left to share instead of wasting away in the town where he had lost everything.

Adrial tapped his middle finger on the top crime scene photo, one of Lila Mercer laid out on the exam table before the autopsy. “We looked into every aspect of Lila Mercer’s life, but we never had reason to believe the lead investigator had anything do with her murder. That’s changed. Assuming the evidence he compromised could identify him as the killer, there’s a good chance Arthur Hutton had a personal relationship with the victim. One his wife and daughter might not have known about. You ask the ME about who paid him to lie?”

“Said it was all done through that app that automatically deletes messages. Snap something. Never met in person, never heard their voice. Completely anonymous, but he did say whoever it was knew he was spending money he didn’t have on things his wife probably didn’t know about.” Baxter stared down at his coffee, driving the edge of his thumb against the lid. “Your killer targeted him. Knew he could be bought. We can subpoena the platform, but we’ll be waiting years just for them to acknowledge we exist. It’s a dead end.”

“Just add it to the list.” Adrial skimmed through the crime scene photos. The exhumation order for Lila Mercer’s body had been another one of those dead ends. No judge would sign off on digging up the remains of Black Hollow’s sweetheart on the off chance of getting a lead. They needed something concrete, but the medical examiner had taken plenty of pictures. Though they hadn’t done him an ounce of good in the past. While the lake had preserved a good amount of the victim’s tissue, clear animal activity exposed bone, destroyed most of Lila Mercer’s facial features and sped up decomposition. The medical examiner hadn’t been able to tell them how long she’d been in the water, but it’d been well before winter had frozen the lake considering the damage. Days, if not weeks. That complicated a solid suspect list considering it’d taken her fellow nurses a while to report her missing. It’d only been through the process of elimination they’d been able to identify Lila Mercer at all, her teeth and fingers removed before the remains had been dumped.

Arthur would’ve known how to slow down identifying the body.

“And you had no idea your partner had his hands caught in the cookie jar on this one?” Baxter set his coffee on the edge of the desk.

Of course, Adrial had told him about the incident in the evidence room and why he’d left Black Hollow in the first place, but the rest… He’d always wondered, but putting Winnie at risk of the heat that would destroy Arthur’s life hadn’t been an option.

But had he done it for the reasons he’d told Winnie? Or had he merely convinced himself it’d all been for her as a way to justify hurting the one woman in this damn town who’d looked at him like a person, instead of a tool to be used or put on display? You didn’t leave to save me pain. You left to protect yourself. Air stalled in his throat. Of course, she’d been right. Revealing Arthur’s secret would’ve destroyed what was left of Winnie’s life, but worse, she would’ve blamed him for bringing it all into the open. She would’ve hated him, left him, stopped loving him. And he… He hadn’t been able to deal with that. So he’d left.

Adrial brought his attention back to the man seated across from him, heat flaring through his thigh and shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I know you. This case wouldn’t be hitting you this hard unless there was something you’re keeping to yourself.” The forensic investigator had gotten so good at getting information out of people because he intuitively saw what others didn’t. Could read them as though their entire lives were written on their faces and in their body language. In the words they said and didn’t say, and Adrial had been a fool to think he could get away with the weight on his shoulders. “Adrial, I’ve seen you at your worst. There’s nothing you can say to me that will make me walk away. I told you that two years ago, and it still holds today.” His gaze slipped to the other file on his desk. “Is this about Katie?”

Yes. No. Hell, he didn’t know. He scrubbed a hand down his face. Exhaustion was winning out. Soon, he’d crash, and it’d take a miracle to pick him up off the ground. “Winnie told me she loves me.”

He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to hear those words from her mouth, to know that they’d moved past him leaving, that maybe she’d forgiven him, but he didn’t deserve her love. Staring at Katie’s file had only solidified that belief. He’d loved his wife, but it hadn’t been enough to keep her safe. To find the person who’d killed her.

Baxter leaned back in his chair. “And you have a problem with that because you’re married to this tragic version of yourself you’ve decided doesn’t deserve to move on?”

“I started this company with one goal in mind—to provide closure for our clients. How the hell am I supposed to do that if I can’t even get closure for myself?” He grabbed for Katie’s well-worn file. “And even if I somehow convince myself I’m allowed to move on, how do I let Katie go?”

“Do you love Winnie?” Baxter leaned forward in his chair, locking his eyes on Adrial as though trying to speak to a child.

He tossed the file onto the desk. “It’s not about whether I love her or not—”

“Do you love her?” The forensic investigator wasn’t letting this go. “Yes or no? Don’t think about Katie or what you believe I want to hear. Don’t think about how Winnie might feel. What are your instincts telling you?”

The tightness Adrial had carried since coming back to the office eased. “Yes.” It was the easiest response in the world. He’d always loved her, and while he’d also loved Katie and their life together, loving Winnie had shaped him since the day he’d pulled her out of the damn locker. She was part of him, his very DNA, his breath, his heartbeat and neural pathways.

“You know I’d give anything in the world to see Lainey again.” Baxter shifted his weight between the elbows planted on his knees. His gaze was soft whenever he spoke of the wife who’d gone missing right here in Black Hollow a year and a half ago. “I can’t tell you it’s going to be easy to fix things with Winnie or that you’re going to solve Katie’s case one day. What I know is living without the other half of your heart is a death sentence, and you’ve been suffering for a decade. Winnie told you she loves you? Hang on to that, boss. Get out of your own damn way and hang on to that with everything you have.”

Adrial didn’t know what to say to that, what to think. Other than he’d felt more in the past five days with Winnie than he had since leaving Black Hollow. Because of her. And, hell, he loved her. Was in love with her.

A quick knock on his office door preceded the agency’s forensic anthropologist, Ruby Swanson, who tossed a thick file on his desk. “The husband is still alive. The remains we recovered aren’t him. He faked his death and took off to heaven knows where. You’re welcome.” She cocked her head to the side. “Ooh, who’s the midlife housewife?”

Adrial lifted his hands and searched his desk. “What are you talking about?”

“The body on the table.” Grabbing for the Lila Mercer autopsy photo, Ruby let that dreamy look on her face whenever confronted with remains take over. It was creepy as hell but she was the best forensic anthropologist in the country, so he’d let her google dead people all day if it got the agency results. “Look at how straight that Y incision is. Whoever’s work this is did a very good job. Can I meet them?”

Baxter shoved to his feet. “What do you mean ‘midlife’?”

“These are the remains of a middle-aged woman.” She pointed at the photos. “See? You can see all the wear on her joints where the animals fed.”

“Midlife?” Surely, he hadn’t heard her right. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.” Ruby handed back the file. She wasn’t the kind to explain herself unless absolutely necessary. “Why?”

“Because Lila Mercer was twenty years old when she was killed.” Adrial looked at Baxter as he tossed the file onto the desk and grabbed for his coat. “If you’re right, that means investigators misidentified the damn body.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

She couldn’t feel her fingers.

Winnie tried raising her head to get a better idea of where she’d ended up, but all she saw was endless white. Ice. Snow. Clouds. She curled her fingers into her palms, chasing some semblance of heat, and craned her chin up. Wind blew a thin layer of snow directly into her face and shocked her into full consciousness. “No.”

She wasn’t here. This wasn’t real. Pressing onto all fours, she caught the sound of clinking metal. Her spine protested as she curved to see thick chains secured around her ankles, both sections attached to cinder blocks positioned about three feet away. And padlocked to keep her from getting free.

“It’s just a nightmare. You’re going to wake up. This isn’t happening.” A sob burned at the back of her throat as her situation sank in. It wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks. Lila Mercer’s body had been disposed of in this same manner, and the killer—the woman who looked just like her—was going to send her out the same way. Pieces of memory puzzled into place as she swiped at her face. The attic. The evidence. The gun. It hadn’t been loaded, and the killer… Pain shot through her right eye and stole her vision for a few seconds. The killer had hit her. Hard enough to knock her unconscious, but that didn’t explain how a woman her size had managed to get Winnie out here.

Winnie clamped her teeth together to control the shivers wracking through her. In vain. She’d been taken straight from her father’s house, dressed in nothing but her jeans and a thin blouse she’d put on after Adrial had left. Her feet were bare without any give in the chain, her hands, neck and face exposed to the elements. Palms slipping on the glossy wet surface of ice, she gauged the distance between her and the shore and tried to stand. Too far. Coupled with the cinder blocks, there was no way she’d make it across the ice.

“You really can’t fault Arthur for his plan.” The voice barely raised above the whistle of wind cutting through the pines, and Winnie turned to confront the killer positioned in her blind spot. Still dressed in head-to-toe black, she’d forgone the mask. Guess there wasn’t any point now. Winnie wasn’t leaving here alive. “It has its merits. The chains, the blocks. They’ll take you straight to the bottom of lake, but Arthur made a mistake when he got rid of my mom’s body. He didn’t take her out far enough. I don’t think we’ll have that same problem here.”

“You’re Lila Mercer’s daughter? Is that what this is all about? You figured out my dad had something to do with her death, and you’ve decided to make his daughter pay the price? He’s dead. You killed him! Isn’t that punishment enough?”

“No!” The shout bounced off the surrounding mountains, and a faraway groan answered in reply. Hard lines etched deep into her attacker’s face. “It’ll never be enough because you knew what he’d done. You knew he’d taken that evidence and made sure no one would solve her case. You let him erase her. You pretended she didn’t exist and stood by doing nothing while my entire life fell apart.” Shoulder-length blond hair streaked across the killer’s freckled face as she sauntered over the ice as though it couldn’t pull her under with one wrong step. “But you have it all wrong. I’m not Lila Mercer’s daughter. Want to take another guess?”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t. I swear. I only wanted to work the case to do something good for my dad, but I never knew…” Winnie backed away at her approach, not wanting to risk too much weight in one area. She spread her hands out to evenly distribute what she could, but there was no stopping what was coming. No matter how hard she tried, there would be no happy ending here. “You said… You said ‘our dad.’ Back in the attic. That’s why you look like me. Arthur was your dad.”

Her father wasn’t just a liar or a killer. He’d cheated on her mother. Had she known? Was that where the brightness in her eyes had gone after Winnie had been born? Had she known her husband wasn’t the man he’d presented himself as to their family, the community?

“Technically, you look like me since I’m older by about two months.” Her attacker smiled. “Daddy Dearest sure liked to play the field, didn’t he? Who knows how many others are out there? I wonder if he killed them when they wouldn’t get rid of their babies so his wife didn’t find out, too.”

Winnie’s mouth parted to say something—anything—to make this better, but there was no justifying her father’s actions. All these years she’d given excuses for why he’d rejected her over and over, telling herself he was grieving for the love of his life, that he only felt whole working that damn case, that she wasn’t enough for him. But it’d all been him. He was the failure. He was the one who didn’t belong. “I’m—I’m sorry.” Understanding clicked into place, and Winnie snapped her mouth shut. “You’re not Lila Mercer’s daughter. You’re Lila Mercer.”

“Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.” The killer pointed at her with that wide smile that reminded Winnie of sociopaths mimicking others. Practiced.

“You were sixteen when she disappeared.” A crack sounded beneath Winnie’s feet, spidering from her heel and chasing across the ice toward the cinder blocks. Her heart jumped into her throat, verging on panic, but if she could just get Lila to believe her, they might be able to walk away from this alive. “The same age I was. How did they get it so wrong?”

“My mom was a nurse. That much was true. She got pregnant with me during a fling with a police officer who promised her the world, but he refused to leave his wife. So she broke up with him, only learning about me afterward. She never told him. She knew he’d demand for her to have an abortion to save his marriage and his precious image. Bastard children don’t really make for good campaign material.” Lila circled to the left, toward the cinder blocks, and the ice fractured in little lines from her added weight. “I was handed around to neighbors and friends whenever she had a shift. She didn’t have the means to leave the town that’d judged her for being an unwed mother, so we stayed in that crappy little house at the edge of town for years. Until one night, there was a knock on the door. My mom was in the kitchen, so I answered it. And found a BHPD officer staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. I think he knew then. Who I was. What she’d done. I must’ve been a spitting image of you at that age, and if anyone were to put two and two together, he’d lose everything he’d built with his lies.”

Winnie braced as another crack streaked between her feet. The ice was at a breaking point, heavier with Lila closing in.

“The officer left without saying anything. I didn’t even tell my mom about his visit. I don’t know why he was there or what he wanted. I just went back to watching TV, but that night, there was a break-in. The intruder came through the back door. She woke me up with a hand over my mouth, shushing me when I heard them inside. She had a knife. I don’t know how she got it, but after she went into the living room I heard her scream. Then a groan.” Lila’s gaze came back to Winnie. A split second before she stomped one foot near the cinder blocks. The ice splintered and protested, fractures barreling outward, and Winnie braced herself for the final fall. “She called the police and filed a report. He’d left blood at the scene. She’d somehow managed to stab him before he fled, but, as you can imagine, nothing came of it.”

Winnie’s breath shuddered as she tried to back up, to put as much distance between her and the spreading cracks as possible. But the cinder blocks were heavier than they looked. The chains snapped around her ankles and nearly took her down. Her skin felt too tight, her tongue too big for her mouth. She was going to die out here. Die with the knowledge her father had deserved every ounce of pain Lila had most likely put him through, deserved every friend, neighbor, officer and his own damn daughter abandoning him so he could rot in this world alone and with a guilty conscience. Arthur Hutton wasn’t the hero she’d believed. He was nothing. Nothing. And she was going to die because of him. She was going to lose her chance to tell Adrial she didn’t hate him, that all these years apart was like a piece of her soul had lived outside of her body and that she’d finally felt whole in his arms.

Winnie hadn’t fought for her father’s attention after her mother died or when the kids in high school took their turns humiliating her. She hadn’t fought when her fiancé had left town, leaving her to pick up the pieces of the future they’d planned together. She hadn’t fought to keep her husband after discovering the affair. Life had kept happening to her, and she’d let it. But she was going to fight now.

“But one little stab wound wasn’t enough to stop him for coming for her. I waited for her to come home from work for hours. I called the clinic where she worked. No one had seen her since her shift ended, and I knew. I knew something had happened and that it had something to do with the officer who’d shown up at our door and the break-in that same night. We’d spent our entire lives just trying to survive, and that instinct told me I needed to get as far from the house as possible. That she was never coming home. That he took her from me.” Lila’s voice had taken on an animalistic sound, more predatory and unnerving. She slammed her boot into the ice a second time, and one of the cinder blocks went under.

The chain jerked tight against Winnie’s ankle and swept her leg right out from under her. She hit the ice. Hard. Clawing against the weight dragging her toward the fresh hole in the ice, she tried to breathe through the pain, but her fingers kept slipping. Her body remembered what that water felt like, tensing up in all the wrong places. She dug her opposite knee in, her screams lost as the wind cut across the lake. “No! Please! Don’t do this. Please!”

A pair of boots centered themselves in front of her face. “Turns out BHPD did not have a reliable way to age remains twenty years ago. The technology wasn’t there, and forensic anthropology was being used to identify victims of mass genocide overseas. Not so much in small towns with no resources and no future.” Lila crouched, hovering over Winnie with her head positioned against the overcast sun like an angel of death coming to finish the job. “Our neighbors watched me for her, but they weren’t our friends. They didn’t know her like they knew me, but I’d left Black Hollow. Got in the first car that’d stopped on the highway and kept on going, for weeks, so when reports of a woman with blond hair found in Hollow Lake started coming in, everyone assumed it was me. And with her teeth and fingers missing, they couldn’t prove otherwise.”

Winnie fought against the pull on her ankle, tears freezing on her face as the chains cut into her skin. Her toes skimmed the water’s surface. “Please.”

“Do you think she begged him for her life?” Lila stood, planting her boots mere inches from Winnie’s face. “Do you think he would’ve let me live, taken me in, raised me with you?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

“I didn’t think so.” Lila Mercer kicked the last cinder block into the water.

And Winnie went under.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Black Hollow PD had misidentified the body.

Adrial had torn through the official investigation file before running for his vehicle, looking for any signs one of the many detectives—including him—had been blinded by their bias over the years. It wasn’t hard to imagine Arthur Hutton had known exactly who’d been recovered from Hollow Lake, seeing as how the son of a bitch had most likely put her there in the first place, but original investigators had identified the remains as Lila Mercer. Had it been intentional, a process of elimination, or had the chief of police been the one to make the determination? Detectives had no reason to believe that assessment had been wrong, but it changed everything now. If the body wasn’t who they believed, who was it? And where had Lila Mercer been all this time?

Adrial gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles felt as though they were going to break through the skin along the backs of his hands. Well, he certainly had cause for exhumation now. He’d handed the file to Ruby with orders to put together everything she could on the victim, but just with her offhand examination, a judge had no reason not to grant the exhumation order and give the forensic anthropologist a chance to identify the victim.

The picturesque homes, tree-lined streets and naked snowmen standing guard in front yards blurred through the windows as he fishtailed onto Winnie’s street. The SUV tilted to one side but managed to stay connected to the road. Hell, even if he’d rolled, Adrial would find a way to get to her. This—all of this—was connected back to Arthur Hutton’s sins, but Winnie would be the one to pay for them. There was still so much to unravel between them, but he wouldn’t slow down until he had Winnie in his sights. She could be angry with him. She could hate him and tell him she never wanted to see him again, but she’d be alive. He’d make sure of it.

Baxter grabbed for the handlebar above his head, bracing himself but not saying a word. His friend knew all about this feeling bubbling up inside Adrial’s chest and squeezing his heart with every breath. The numbness Adrial had slid into over the past two years was gone. Only panicked fury remained, and it wouldn’t budge unless he had Winnie in his arms. The SUV righted itself a split second before Adrial slammed on the brakes in front of the ugly kelly green house with redbrick. Burning rubber infiltrated his senses as Adrial grabbed for the handgun in the center console. “You armed?”

“That’s a dumb question.” Baxter didn’t wait for orders and shoved free of the vehicle. They’d worked together long enough they each fell into step as they rounded the hood of the SUV and checked their weapons. His best friend would go around the back while Adrial went through the front. They’d meet in the center of the house and clear it together.

“It’s a sliding glass door. She still wants to sell the place, so try not to break too much.” Adrial holstered his weapon opposite where he normally kept it thanks to the damn sling strapping his injured arm to his chest. He’d trained to compensate for situations like this, but the difference might cost him a second or two. He just hoped it didn’t come to that.

Baxter tucked his pistol into the shoulder holster beneath his jacket. “What if there’s a broomstick in the track?”

“I’ll pay for any damage. Get moving.” Because staying still was starting to eat at him. There was a chance Winnie was inside, safe, sound and asleep since he’d left her, and, hell, he’d give anything to have her throw him out on his ass again, but this tightness—his instincts—were telling a different story.

“See you on the other side.” The forensic investigator offered his knuckles, and Adrial met them with his own. It’d become a ritual between them on cases like this, a reminder they had each other’s backs, and infused Adrial with a shot of determination to see this through.

The willow out front wasn’t doing its dance, since it was laden with at least a half inch of snow on each branch, silent and imposing. Its position in front of the living room window kept him from making a quick assessment of the situation inside, but it also kept anyone inside from seeing him before he crossed the threshold. Sidestepping, Adrial watched that window as he approached the front door. Another window—belonging to Winnie’s bedroom—stared out over the porch, but it was impossible to see past her curtains. He tested the scuffed gold door handle, compressing the flat lever with his thumb.

Unlocked.

Every hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Winnie wasn’t the type of person to leave her front door unlocked. Even in the neighborhood she’d grown up in and was occupied by multiple police officers. She knew better, had memorized every single safety rule her father and his cop friends—Adrial included—had ingrained in her over the years until she could recite them in her sleep.

Something was wrong.

Shouldering through the door, he cringed as the rubber seal screamed his arrival. Damn it. Moving fast, he cleared the front room as Baxter tested the sliding glass door at the back of the house. He maneuvered through the arch leading to the kitchen, clearing the hallway leading to the back rooms as he passed, and lifted the old broomstick from the track. The door slid back on the sticky tracks. Hell, it was like this house wanted them to be discovered.

“Anything?” Baxter unholstered his weapon, scanning the oversize kitchen Adrial and Winnie had eaten in like they were the only two people on the planet mere hours ago.

Adrial shook his head, pressing his finger to his lips. He pointed to the hallway, heel-toeing it as Baxter followed behind. They each took a side, Adrial on the left, the forensic investigator on the right, and cleared every room one by one, going around the bulky wood stairs in the middle of the hall. Once he determined the rooms were empty, they turned back to the stairs. Baxter covered him as Adrial ascended in the attic. The bare bulb buzzed overhead, the string dragging across his face as he caught sight of the hole in the middle of the space.

Leading straight down into the garage.

“Clear.” Staring through the person-size hole in the drywall, Adrial holstered his weapon as every scenario played across his mind. Debris littered the cement below. Along with a multiple reddish stains that’d already dried.

Baxter didn’t waste his time joining him, swatting webs out of his face. “She’s not here.”

No. She wasn’t, but her car was. It was parked on the other side of the two-car garage. Which meant she could be anywhere. Adrial did a quick scan of the space. “Call the hospital. See if anyone has been checked in under her description.”

“On it.” Baxter unpocketed his phone, but Adrial already knew the answer by the time the forensic investigator hung up. “She’s not there.”

“Someone went through that hole.” Adrial threaded his hand through his hair and tugged on the strands, his heart rate racketing higher and higher every second Winnie was out of reach. Was she hurt? Had the killer gotten to her? Had it been an accident and she needed his help? His mind wouldn’t shut down, spinning him in circles and drawing him to a panic. Numbness prickled at the tips of his fingers and raced up his forearms. Flexing his hands against the hollow sensation spreading in his chest, he forced himself to focus on her. On how Winnie’s brain worked, how she liked to have control.

Then he caught sight of an evidence bag. Adrial picked it up, recognizing an open crime scene swab inside. The evidence bag had been shredded, but the sample hadn’t budged. Righting one of the boxes that fell over, he found more bags. More evidence. “She found it.”

“Hell. Is that what I think it is?”

“Every piece of evidence Arthur Hutton compromised.”

“There has to be multiple cases here.”

“Bastard.”

This was what the killer had been looking for, blamed Winnie for. And if she’d come here… There was only one place this could end. Adrail gathered every evidence bag into a single box and shoved it at Baxter’s chest. “Collect it all and take it back to the office. I want it cataloged and retested. All of it.”

His best friend latched on to the half-eaten box. “What will you be doing?”

“The lake.” It was the only location that made sense. It was where this entire nightmare had started and where the killer would want to make a final statement. “The killer blames Winnie for hiding all the evidence Arthur stole, but she left it behind. She doesn’t care about the truth. She’s just out for revenge.”

“Go. I’ll make my own way back to the office and keep you updated on what I find. I’ll get Michal to meet you out there.” Baxter maneuvered out of the way, slapping Adrial on the back as he descended the stairs. “Good luck.”

Adrial didn’t hesitate. His thigh burned as though a thousand ants had started eating him alive as he burst back through the front door and headed for the truck. Every cell in his body honed on getting to the lake. He raced through Black Hollow, not seeing the haunting memories as he drove passed his parents’ home, but the joy-filled memories to come, memories he wanted more than he wanted to hang on to the past. The ones where Winnie finally moved into the house he’d bought just for her. Where they walked these quiet streets and she wore his ring on her hand. Where he pressed her into the mattress every night to calm her racing brain and kissed her awake every morning. Where he slid his hands over her pregnant belly as they relaxed in front of the fireplace and decorated one of the extra rooms as a nursery.

He wanted it all—wanted to be whole again—and she was the key. He’d known it the moment he’d left Black Hollow, was reminded of it when she’d stepped into his office and couldn’t stop from needing it now. Winnie. His Winnie. The past would always be there—Katie and their baby would always be part of him—but Baxter had stood as an example that while loss changed lives, it didn’t have to dictate the future.

And he wanted a future. With Winnie.

Adrial blazed through the town limits, heading east faster than was probably safe, but there were no other cars heading for the lake this time of year. Slush sprayed up the edges of the SUV as the distance between him and Hollow Lake shortened. He could see the expanse of ice cresting over the ridge through a grouping of trees. Then another vehicle. Cutting the daytime running lights, he swerved into the parking area, barely shoving the vehicle into Park before his feet hit the snow. Winds kicked up a layer of fine powder, cutting off his visual across the lake.

But he could make them out. The killer standing over her. Winnie on all fours. He could already see what would happen next, and Adrial was sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him. He left the shore behind, his boots failing to cling to the ice. Fighting between keeping his steps light and getting to Winnie raged beneath the surface of his skin. Biting cold infiltrated his clothing, but he kept going. To get to her. “Winnie!”

The killer kicked the cinder block into the lake.

Dragging Winnie down into the icy water.

“No!” He stripped off his jacket, tossed it aside and pushed himself harder. Time. He was running out of time. That future he’d imagined was slipping through his fingers. The killer turned and ran. For the moment, he didn’t care about her. All he could think about was Winnie. He had to get to Winnie. Adrial sucked in a series of deep breaths as he came up on the wide hole in the ice and dove into the blackness after her.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Winnie clawed and kicked with everything she had toward the surface, but the cinder blocks had already snapped the chains tight. This wasn’t like the first time, mere days ago. Lila’s second attempt to kill her was going much more to plan, and there was nothing she could do to fight it.

A waterlogged scream burned as freezing liquid drove down her throat, but no one would hear her down here. No one would find her, just as Lila had planned. Adrial wouldn’t know anything was wrong after the way they’d left things, and Winnie wanted nothing more than to rewind time to go back to that moment he’d laid behind her in that bed. Well, that, and to be able to breathe. Priorities.

The chain cut into her ankle, rubbing against the sensitive bone on the side, and stole her last air reserves. The hole above her was growing so small, so out of reach. How much farther would she fall? Her fingers hurt, her feet locked in place. The cold was doing its best to suck the life from her. And she couldn’t breathe.

A tremor jarred her from the spiral her thoughts had taken. The chain had slackened. The cinder blocks had hit rock bottom. A pale watery circle barely registered through the dirt and gloom living under the sheet of icy glass overhead. Winnie grabbed for the chains and pulled with everything she had. Because if she didn’t, she was going to die here, but they wouldn’t budge. She’d always prided herself on training for strength and function rather than aesthetics, but the blocks were too heavy, fear draining her energy from every pore.

She tugged again. And again. One of the blocks tipped to the side and trapped a section of chain underneath, cutting off her range of motion. It was no use. Bubbles escaped up her throat, as though the water itself demanded payment for her presence. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her mind quieted in much the same way it had over the past few days around Adrial, but this… This didn’t feel the same. This felt empty and cold and dreadful. But he’d felt solid and warm and strong and…hopeful. He’d given her hope. Real hope that’d kerneled in her chest and bloomed in a matter of days. That she didn’t have to accept the leftover scraps of her life and make something of it. Heaven knew, she’d survived enough to host an entire daytime talk show for seasons on end, but that didn’t mean she had to keep accepting survival as the only way forward. She could do more. Be more. Have more. He’d given her that. Showed her what it might taste like to have real happiness like she’d felt at that quiet dinner table seated across from him. No expectations. No demands or performances. Just being.

Her eyes closed without her permission, but she wasn’t panicked. Releasing her hold on the chains, Winnie let herself drift. The lulling beat of her heart kept her company, soothed her strained nerves. The sway of the water settled something deep in her that’d missed the days when her mother had rocked her to sleep and hummed that lullaby whenever she was sick. She couldn’t even feel the bite of the cold anymore. That was good, right?

The sway got a little more aggressive, but she couldn’t make herself care. All she’d done her whole life was care too much. About taking care of herself and her father because he wouldn’t do it himself, about staying on the good side of the bullies at school, which had never worked, and about Dan and whether or not he loved her as much as she loved him. He hadn’t. But she couldn’t care anymore. For once, she needed someone to care about her.

Adrial had. He’d taken care of her. He’d helped her with the investigation against all the reasons he shouldn’t have, saved her life by putting his own at risk. He’d worked around her panic by giving her clear instructions to shower, eat and rest, knowing that was the most efficient way to get through her own destructive thoughts, and he’d tried to save her relationship with her dad by not taking her only living parent from her. She’d accused him of doing it to save himself—his career—and maybe some of that was true, but Adrial wasn’t the kind of person to put himself first. He never had been. Not with leaving Black Hollow or working his wife’s murder investigation or going against his values to solve the case of the very man who’d broken his trust all those years ago. And that made her sad. That she wouldn’t get to tell him she hadn’t meant it, that she’d been angry and shocked and felt a little bit betrayed he’d kept the truth from her. But she understood. Forgiveness was for the forgiver, but understanding? That went deeper, that felt like warm hands sliding around her waist and holding her up. Felt like the press of a mouth against hers and a rush of air coursing down her throat.

It felt so real.

She’d gone her entire life starving for that kind of love—from sources who would never change, never make an effort—but Adrial had given it so freely. It was easy to imagine that warmth came from his hands, that pressure on her mouth came from him. Even when it couldn’t possibly be true…

Something tugged at the chains secure around her ankles, and she dragged her eyes open at the bite of pain. A dark shape materialized around her feet. Another tug shocked her back from the invisible edge of unconsciousness, and she blinked against the cold flood of murky water in her eyes. She wasn’t imagining things. Grabbing for the mass of dark hair near her knee, she brought the face level with hers. Recognition flared, then a jump in her pulse. That intense dark gaze that had starred in so many memories and dreams stared back. It was him. He was here. How? Callused palms framed her jawline, and he pressed another sweet kiss to her mouth.

In an instant, Adrial was gone. Or maybe she’d closed her eyes. It was really hard to tell when her brain was slowly freezing to death. The pulls and grips on her ankles jolted her fully awake. The killer had secured each end of the chains with padlocks, one set at her ankles, the other around the cinder blocks. There was no getting through that, and Adrial would drown himself trying. He needed to get to the surface. Save himself.

But instead of responding to her attempts to pull him away, Adrial hefted one of the cinder blocks. And slammed it down on the other. The impact wasn’t as jarring as it would’ve been above the surface, but Winnie swore she saw a crack splinter through the block. He brought the block down on the other. Twice. Three times. The cinder block broke in half, and the chain was free.

Tendrils of darkness seeped into the edges of her vision as he attacked the second block with the broken half of the first. It took everything she had to keep her eyes open, her body shutting down faster now. A lightness she’d never felt flooded through her.

Anchoring her hand in his, Adrial kicked for the small hole beaming through the water, dragging her upward. Away from that watery grave where no one would remember her. Within seconds, he broke through the surface and hefted himself free of the water, all the while keeping his hold on her. The whitewashed world blurred as Adrial hauled her onto the ice, his front pressed to her back. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m here.”

She believed him. Believed in him. Winnie couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t get it to obey any commands. Her head dropped back as he shifted her into his arms, taking the rest of her body with it. Water choked her for a split second as it evacuated her lungs and stomach, thundering coughs keeping her immobilized. Movement registered from over his shoulder. She gripped his shirt, lips barely able to form one word. “Lila.”

Adrial rubbed heat into her arms as he laid her out on the ice. Grabbing for her chin, he angled her face toward his. “What did you say?”

Winnie strained to talk louder. “Behind…you.”

Understanding hit. He turned just in time to bring his good arm up and block the downward stroke of the blade in Lila Mercer’s hand.

“Seriously.” She kicked him square in the chest, sending Adrial sprawling across the ice. Out of reach. “Why can’t you people just die already? It would make my life so much easier.”

The killer took the momentary paralysis to straddle Adrial across the hips and bring the knife up a second time. Winnie’s heart stopped in her chest. Literally or metaphorically, it felt the same, but Adrial dodged the strike—the knife buried in the snow near his head—and bucked Lila Mercer off him. They rolled near the growing fragile hole in the center of the ice, almost going in.

Winnie groaned against the pain ricocheting through her veins. Not just her muscles and joints and limbs, but in her very blood as though it’d solidified some in the minute or two she’d been lost to the lake. She rolled onto her front, digging her nails into the ice for purchase.

A hard thud registered as the killer’s fist connected to Adrial’s face, but his kick forced Lila’s knee to overextend. Her scream and the visceral crunch of bone chilled Winnie straight to the core.

Winnie put everything she had into her forearms, crawling toward the duo fighting for dominance. Adrial was double Lila’s size, but the killer more than made up for it with skill. Slicing the blade horizontally, Lila Mercer carved a slash into Adrial’s face. Blood splattered across Winnie’s face a split second before Adrial hauled their attacker upright and tossed her over his shoulder.

Lila landed hard, another bone cracking. Or was it the ice? Winnie couldn’t tell as she slid her knees under her. Every cell in her body refused to work right, and getting to her feet was costing her precious energy, especially with the chains still holding her back.

The killer threw a punch, rocking Adrial back. She didn’t hesitate. Lunging after him, Lila Mercer brought down the knife.

And hit something fleshy.

Winnie’s entire world imploded as blood pulsed from the new wound in Adrial’s already injured shoulder. Her own scream took on a life of its own as she closed the distance between her and the killer. Fear drove her to grab for one of the chains wrapped around her ankle and thread it over Lila Mercer’s neck. Her half sister jerked back against her, the knife still lodged in Adrial’s shoulder, but Winnie only held on tighter. Her hands hurt, the chains pinching the tender skin of her palms, but she wouldn’t let go. She wouldn’t let this woman take the only person she had left.

Lila’s heels struggled to gain traction against the ice, her legs thrashing as she tried to pry away Winnie’s grip. Time lost meaning, and the killer’s kicks slowed, one after the other.

“Winnie.” Adrial was there. Standing in front of her, a bloodied hand pressed against her face. How had he moved so fast? Or had she spaced out again? “You can let go now.”

She looked down at the unmoving woman pinned to her chest and instantly released the chain burrowing into Lila Mercer’s neck. The metal hit the ice, but no new cracks surfaced. Someone was running toward them. Winnie thought she might recognize the woman with the gun raised from Adrial’s office, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything right now. Lila slid down her body, collapsing face-first onto the ice. Dead? She couldn’t tell.

“It’s over, Red.” Dragging her into his chest, Adrial pressed his mouth to her forehead in a grounding kiss. “It’s over.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Another set of stitches. And a fifteen-minute lecture about having torn through a few of the older ones. Once he’d had Winnie looked over by the ER doctor on call, he’d kept his word, sitting without complaint while his wounds had been cleaned, stitched and dressed. Apart from a mild case of hypothermia, all in all, Adrial felt they’d really walked away in one piece.

Two cups of hospital cafeteria coffee weighed heavily in his good hand as his injured arm had been jammed back into the sling. He turned down the hallway where Winnie had been put into a room at the end. Bruises ached up and down his body, but he’d suffer them all over again if it meant Winnie had walked away unscathed.

For the most part. Her body temperature was still too low an hour ago, but the physicians here knew the drill. She was in good hands.

Lila Mercer was alive. Well, she had been up until a few hours ago. For twenty years, BHPD and Black Hollow had believed one telling of events. The twenty-year-old nurse had been a victim of random violence, beaten and drowned in Hollow Lake by her killer. Arthur Hutton had done a damn fine job ensuring nothing endangered those lies, but from what he and Winnie had put together over the past few days told a different story. That her father had gotten involved with a woman who was not his wife, accidentally impregnated her and then did whatever it took to make sure his infidelity wasn’t discovered. It’d taken some gentle soothing, but Winnie had admitted to her theory that her father had broken into the Mercer house not to kill Lila’s mother, but to kill the daughter he didn’t know he’d fathered. Unfortunately, her theory was entirely possible. He wasn’t sure when Arthur Hutton had decided murder was the only option to hide his mistakes, but a lot of people had suffered for it. Including Winnie.

Baxter had worked through the evidence recovered in Hutton’s attic. Most of it had lost its efficacy to do any good, but the underwear—labeled with the Mercer case number—had managed to survive whatever animal lived in the box. Samples were being taken as they should have been years ago and processed in an independent lab separate from the department. As much as Adrial wanted to believe Arthur hadn’t recruited anyone else at the station to help him cover up his mistakes, BHPD would be investigated. Thoroughly.

Adrial set his sights on a man in a suit at the end of the hall, loitering outside of Winnie’s room. The guy paced back and forth a few steps, then raised his hand to knock. Only to back off and start pacing again. Adrial’s grip on the cup holder tightened as his brain instantly jumped to a name. Dan Reynolds. Winnie’s ex-husband. “Help you?”

The suit did nothing to add years to the ex-husband’s boyish features. Hell, from where he stood, Adrial was surprised there weren’t patches in that meticulously maintained beard. Dan ran on the thin side, barely filling out the shoulders of his very expensive-looking suit jacket as he straightened. “Oh, I’m…” He ran a hand through long, styled hair. A hand very much sporting a plain silver-colored wedding ring. “I’m here to see my wife.”

“Ex-wife.” Adrial couldn’t keep the growl out of his response. “Last I heard, the divorce was final, and you’d run off with one of your coworkers.”

Confusion only graced that not-so-mature face for a fraction of a second. “Do I know you?”

“We’ve never met. Adrial Tucker.” He nodded toward Winnie’s hospital room door. He’d already been gone too long, and he knew how she could get into her head. She’d probably already started blaming herself for being the one to put Lila Mercer down and for him getting stabbed—again—and he just couldn’t have that. None of this was on her, and he wouldn’t let her spend a single day believing she should’ve done something different. “Excuse me. You’re in my way.”

But Dan didn’t move. His jaw snapped shut as he shifted on those shiny shoes of his. “Adrial? The Adrial? The guy she was engaged to before I met her?”

Adrial pulled up short, turning to face the man who’d broken off pieces of Winnie without ever having the intention of putting her back together. Winnie had talked about him to her ex. That shouldn’t give him as must satisfaction as it did, but he was going to carry that with him for the rest of his life. “The one and only.”

And he meant that. He’d be Winnie’s only from here on out. The only one whom she turned to in the middle of the night for warmth, the only one she trusted with her fears and her secrets and her uncertainty, without judgment—the only one she would need to rely on. He’d spend the rest of his life earning that title if that was what she wanted, and he’d do it with a damn smile on his face and gratitude she’d chosen him.

“So…what?” Dan motioned toward the door. “You guys are back together?”

“Yeah.” Adrial took a single step forward. That was all he needed to make it clear Dan Reynolds was not stepping one foot into that room, or darkening Winnie’s doorstep ever again. He’d lost that privilege the moment he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. “We are.”

The ex’s laugh didn’t carry an ounce of humor. “Wow. Didn’t take her long, did it? We haven’t even been divorced for two months, and she’s already screwing—”

“Let me make one thing clear, Mr. Reynolds. If you finish that sentence, you will leave this hallway on a stretcher. Understand?” His knuckles ached under the pressure of his hold on the cup holder. Winnie deserved hot coffee. “Now, I’m guessing things didn’t work out with whatever coworker you were using to cheat on Winnie with, and you’re wishing you hadn’t thrown away the life she helped you build. I can understand that, but you’re not getting through that door. You will not come here again unless she invites you. You will not try to contact Winnie unless she reaches out to you first and you will not use anyone else to try to get to her. Is that clear?”

“Whatever, man.” Dan took a step back, like a halfway intelligent man Adrial believed he could be if he pulled his head out of his ass. “Just tell her to stop using my insurance and change her emergency contact information. I’m not paying for these hospital visits.”

“Noted.” Adrial watched the cheating son of a bitch scramble down the hall until Dan was out of sight. Sucking in a deep breath, he cleared the tension and simmering rage from his body before managing to get the door open and face Winnie.

She’d buried herself beneath a dozen separate layers of blankets the nurses had been all too willing to cart in here, in addition to the electric blanket. How she wasn’t burning up, he had no idea. No. He knew why. Her body temperature had dropped so low from exposure to the lake’s cold depths, her organs had begun shutting down, and they were working overtime to regulate. Fortunately, Michal had gotten to the lake in time to get them to the hospital before Winnie fell unconscious. “Please tell me whatever is in those cups is hot.”

“Coffee.” He crossed the room, offering her the first cup.

She wrapped both hands around the plastic and pressed it to her chest. He saw a shiver coast between her shoulder blades, and Adrial tugged the blankets higher as she sat up. She took her first sip, closing her eyes. “Thank you.”

“You need me to adjust the heat level on the blanket?” He searched for another layer he could add, but he’d been warned that while Winnie would want to add to her already heavy nest, they had to be careful of overheating her at the same time. The human body was a delicate thing, and she’d already been through too much in the span of a few days.

“It’s already as high as it can go.” Embarrassment laced her words, but he’d get another electric blanket if she needed. “The nurse said I have to be patient.”

“Ah.” He took a seat in the chair he’d claimed since their admission. “Your favorite instruction.”

“I told her to shove it.” Her smile lit up her whole face as she took another sip. “I thought I heard voices outside the door.”

His chest tightened as he leaned back in the chair, careful of the wound at the back of his shoulder and how he adjusted his thigh. Getting another round of stitches would take him away from Winnie, and he wasn’t leaving until he absolutely had to. “Dan was here.”

“Dan?” She nearly dropped her coffee, remembering to clench her fingers at the last second. The bruise along her jaw had lightened, but he could clearly make out the split in her lip. From what he’d been able to put together from what she remembered and his own visit to her dad’s house, the killer had surprised her in the attic. They’d struggled, and both women had fallen through the weak drywall into the garage. Only Winnie had broken Lila Mercer’s fall. It was a miracle she hadn’t broken any ribs. “My ex-husband, Dan?”

He took a sip of tasteless coffee. This stuff was garbage, but he wasn’t going for taste. He’d set out to find something to warm Winnie up faster. “Mmm-hmm.”

She lowered her voice, partially hiding behind her cup of coffee as her gaze cut toward the door. “Is he alive?”

“Barely.” Adrial distracted himself memorizing the shape of her mouth and the way her smile transformed her entire face. “He told me to tell you to change your emergency contact information. Apparently, the hospital called him.”

Adrial had already handled the bills for the hospital visits. She’d never have to worry about finances again if she decided they deserved another chance.

“That’s it? He hated this place every time I made him visit. Figured the only reason he’d set foot back in this town was to beg for me to take him back.” Winnie waited for his answer, her mouth parting as realization struck. “He did, didn’t he? That bastard.”

“He won’t be back.” His heart suddenly became too big for his chest as Adrial studied the cup in his hands. “Unless you want him to be.”

“Hell, no. I can go the rest of my life without every hearing from Dan Reynolds again, and I’ll die a happy woman. For now, all I want is to be warm again, sell my father’s house, and…” Winnie fixed her gaze on the cup in her hands. “I guess I don’t know what I want to do after that. Coming home was supposed to be temporary, but I don’t really have anything to go back to. Or anyone.”

“You could stay.” Adrial sat a bit straighter, willing himself not to give away how much he wanted her to consider his suggestion. “You could keep writing your articles.”

“That was just a job to pay the lawyers and start over, but this case…” She shook her head. “I wanted nothing more than to escape Black Hollow when you left, to become someone new and forget about all the hard things that’d happened, but I feel like I could do a lot of good here. Like I could make a difference. I know the town and the people here and the history, and as much as I wish I hadn’t learned all that stuff about my dad or, you know, nearly died, I felt useful during the case. And I liked being part of it.”

“It wouldn’t have been solved without you.” He couldn’t catch his breath at the glimpse of hope in her gaze, and Adrial decided right then, he’d take his shot. He shifted in his chair, trying to go for casual when his entire body sparked like a damn electrical circuit. “Lucky for you, I know a guy who could use a researcher such as yourself for private investigations if you’re interested. Though I have to warn you, he’s won several jerkwad awards.”

Her gaze went wide. “You want me to work for you?”

“You’d be working for Cold Hollow Investigations, helping my investigators with research, case files and whatever else they might need.” He smiled. “Yeah, Red. I want you to come work for me. With me.”

“I would love that. Thank you.” She dragged her thumb over the mouth of her cup. “And thank you. For coming after me. I wasn’t… I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the chance to tell you how sorry I am for what I said.”

Adrial sat forward. “Winnie.”

“I mean it. All you’ve ever done was try to protect me. That’s why you became a cop.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “You wanted me to feel safe after we got married, and I threw that in your face when you told me about what you saw my dad doing with that evidence.”

He somehow got to his feet, planting himself on the edge of the bed. “Winnie.”

“And if you can’t forgive me, I’ll understand. I just…” She blinked, and the tears escaped. “I needed you to know it doesn’t change how I feel about you. I still love you.”

“Winnie.” He set his hand against her face, forcing her to look him dead in the eye as he swept the tears away. “I love you, too.”

Her shoulders rose on a deep inhale. “You do?”

“I’ve loved you since I was thirteen years old. That’s never changed.” And it was true. Nearly every day of his life had been connected to hers—in laughs, in inside jokes and tears—and he wouldn’t change it for the world. “It just took me almost losing you—twice, I might add—to start looking forward to the future instead of living in the past.”

She swiped at her face. “But Katie’s in the past. Your baby is in the past.”

He nodded. “And I’ll keep them with me. They’re important to me, but my love for them doesn’t take away from my love for you or what I hope to build with you.”

“Are you sure?” Hazel eyes bounced between his.

“I’ve never been surer about anything in my life.” He kissed her then, letting his body heat sink into her. His Winnie. “I love you. I’m want to marry you. I want to make babies with you. I’m going to give you the life you deserved from the start and hopefully I’ll spend every day of the rest of my life making you happy. What do you say, Red?”

“I say…” She smiled against his mouth, kissing him back with her fingers tangled in his hair. “Let’s get started.” Winnie dragged him onto the bed.

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