Crimson Refuge (Echo Valley #4)

Chapter 1

My best friend, Lara, slides the last shot of tequila onto the bar and grins at the crowd packed in around us with laughter, music, and bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder. The Wild Cantina hums.

Lara couldn’t resist throwing a celebration. Not when there’s something worth marking.

I’m officially a police officer.

The words still feel strange in my head, as if I borrowed them from someone else’s life. I would’ve said I didn’t want the fanfare. But honestly, I wanted the excuse to come back to Echo Valley, even just for this one night of celebration.

I love it here.

That’s the part I never say out loud.

I didn’t move back to LA because Echo Valley was the problem.

I was.

When I decided to become an officer, I told myself I had to do it somewhere bigger than here. Somewhere that felt like it counted more.

Still, being back here settles into me in a way I didn’t expect. Friends. Familiar faces from the ranch.

The crowd closes in on me for yet another round on the house, shot glasses lined up, warmth gathering around me.

Lara lifts her tiny glass. “To LAPD’s newest officer,” she announces.

Tequila sloshes in the air as people clink glasses, and a dribble finds its way onto my shoulder. The whole Mendez crew and half the town chime in with what is clearly a rehearsed cheer. “To Officer Johnson!”

It’s been a full night already. Someone brought a pinata shaped like a police badge and filled it with tiny donut-shaped candies. There was even a cake—frosted handcuffs and all—that Luis insisted was “thematic,” but given he runs a spicy book club, it hit different.

We’ve line-danced our way through two country playlists, as well as a Beyoncé set Lara put together for me, and watching some of these country boys get down and dirty had me laughing until my cheeks hurt.

I smile and take in the noise around me, trying to stay in it. I let the noise wash over me but feel something tight and restless twist low in my gut.

The alcohol has calmed some of the nerves, but mostly, my stomach’s been doing laps all night waiting for Anton to walk through the door.

In a lot of ways, he’s the reason this even happened. If he hadn’t pushed when I hesitated, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.

I already said thank you once when I graduated. Over text.

Saying it to his face is another thing entirely.

Especially when he’s close. When my body starts remembering things my head keeps trying to forget.

Despite knowing I’ll be weak in the knees all over again when he arrives, I can’t wait to thank him in person for this.

Anton was the one who let me tag along on stakeouts, who answered a million questions about clues and motives without ever making me feel stupid. The one who listened when I admitted I wanted to do something that mattered. The one who told me about open enrollment at the Academy.

Even though he’d added, Not that I want you to leave.

I clung to that statement a little too hard because whenever we were together, I didn’t want to leave either.

Long hours in the car, easy conversation—it took effort not to cross a line. Being around him stretched me. Made me feel like maybe I could grow into something bigger simply by staying close enough.

But being more actually meant leaving.

I hadn’t expected it to hurt to leave. Roots aren’t supposed to grow that fast.

But sometimes, the right decisions have unpleasant consequences. I know my search for meaning wouldn’t stop in a one-horse town. Even if that horse is a stallion…a six-five, hot-as-fuck stallion…

Just then, Lara leans in with my second Long Island.

I should probably switch to water, but my hand wraps around the glass before I can think twice. Anything to untie the knots in my stomach.

She lifts her glass with that cocky grin of hers. “Something on your mind, Frey? Regretting the life of law and order already?”

“Just wondering how many of these I can have before I’m under the table.” I lift the drink Lara bought for me. “You know I’m a lightweight.”

The glass is cold and heavy, a good distraction from the jitter under my skin. I sip once, then again, faster than I should.

Somewhere between watching people dance and pretending not to check the door every thirty seconds, my glass empties itself. I blink down at the ice, the edges of the room a little warmer, softer. And finally, I breathe deeply again. That’s why they call the stuff liquid courage.

Lara’s brows lift. “I bet your mom is crazy proud of you.” She peers into a bowl of popcorn set out on the bar as if one puff might be better than the others. “Now you’re both boss bitches raining down justice on the world.”

Graduating was the proudest moment of my life.

Fighting through those fitness tests as a curvy girl who hadn’t run since high school basketball took every ounce of willpower I had.

And then seeing my mom—my hero, a badass district attorney—beaming at me the way she did?

I barely made it across the stage before the tears hit.

I laugh lightly. “She is…and yeah. She needed the tissues last week for sure. It never really occurred to me that she’d rather see me on the beat than stuck behind a desk.

She’s such an overachiever, I assumed she’d want me pushing paper and doing something nerdy, but I think she was actually a little jealous when I told her what I was doing. ”

“Your mom would probably love being a cop.” Lara tosses a puff in her mouth. “She’d be scary as hell.”

She would be.

Lara sips her drink. “Anton’s proud of you, too.”

I arch a brow. “Funny way of showing it. Could he be any later?”

“There it is…” she says, smirking.

“What?”

“The real reason you’re off.”

The alcohol loosens my tongue. “Sue me. I want Anton here. He was the whole reason I took this step in the first place.”

“That’s the only reason you want him here? To thank your teacher?” The word sounds sexy coming from her.

“Teacher?” I huff a laugh.

A dreamy look fills her eyes. “I do love a student-teacher romance.”

I roll my eyes but don’t deny it was something like that.

Whatever existed between us wasn’t friendship exactly, but it wasn’t anything else I could name either. Mentor and mentee. Repressed attraction. Too many late nights full of laughter and almosts.

Too bad this town isn’t for me.

As if on cue, Gabriel, Lara’s fiancé, comes back from chatting with his brother near the jukebox, eyes on his phone. “Ant was at a meeting and got caught in some traffic.”

“Echo Valley traffic?” Lara muses.

Gabriel slips his cell into his pocket. “He had to drive through San Jose.”

I should have known he’d be here on time if he could have been. He’s not the fashionably late type.

And their company is branching out to the city? That’s good. Anton once told me he wasn’t sure the slower pace of life here would suit him, even though he really wants it to. He wants to settle here, but he admitted one night, there’s not enough chaos.

“Do you like to be driven crazy?” I’d asked.

He’d looked right at me, his gorgeous bass voice rumbling straight through my body. “Always.”

Ugh. The way he’d said always. The confidence of that man.

Yet another reason I couldn’t lean into him. Anton needed to be here, and I needed to build a life that was mine.

“Why weren’t you with him?” I ask Gabriel because they work together at Shadow Justice.

“It was just a client meeting, and I was helping this one with her best friend’s party.” He wraps his arm around Lara’s waist and tugs her into him.

“What’s the case?” I joke. “Farmer lost his pigs?”

He quirks an eyebrow. “Already wearing that cocky big-city vibe, are you?” Gabriel replies.

I slurp my watery drink and look at him coyly from under my brow.

Lara leans her head into the crook of his arm. “Didn’t feel like a small town when they found that body at the quarry…”

Gabriel’s jaw tightens.

I sit up a little straighter. “Oh my God. A body? The quarry on the way to the observatory?”

Gabriel’s voice is low, and he corrects Lara’s statement. “It was a car and a body. She went off the road.” A solemn expression fills his gaze. “She was only twenty-three. Whole life ahead of her.”

“That’s awful.” Poor thing. “Was she drinking or…”

Gabriel takes a pull of his beer. “I thought you were off duty?”

“You know how it is.” I shrug. “Curiosity killed the cat.”

Lara grabs one of the donut candies off the bar and unwraps it, popping it into her mouth and clearly not wanting to dwell on something so morbid. “We need some music to keep the party going. G, would you give Santi some quarters and choose something we can dry-hump to?”

He laughs. “Don’t have to ask twice.”

Suddenly, I wonder if Anton dances.

I glance at the door again.

Lara nudges me as if reading my mind. “You still have that thing for him, huh?”

I twirl my straw in the ice at the bottom of my empty glass. “I don’t have a thing. I have…a healthy appreciation for tall, broody men who know their way around a firearm.”

Lara laughs. “Honey, join the club.” She perches her small frame on a stool. “I guess you’ll have plenty to choose from in LA.”

“I’m done with men,” I say, half-heartedly, because judging by how I keep glancing at that damn door, it sure doesn’t look like it.

“Can’t say I blame you,” Lara says softly. She knows how badly my last relationship, if you could call it one, went down.

I swirl the ice in my glass again, pretending I’m not counting the seconds to Anton’s arrival. Saying that, counting is harder than it was an hour ago because the drinks are now heavy in my system.

I’m drunk.

Condensation slicks my palm; my pulse is loud in my ears. The cubes clink louder than they should. The mix of nerves, four different types of spirits, and anticipation fizz through me like carbonation.

The music stutters as someone fumbles with the playlist, and then, a cool draft from outside slips across my shoulders.

If someone’s coming in, it could be him.

The thought barely lands before my body moves. I turn my back to the door, smooth my hair. My fingers dip into my handbag on instinct. Lipstick, quick swipe. I press my lips together and let out a slow breath, like I’m steadying myself.

Why do I even care what I look like? He’s just a friend.

But when I turn…there he is.

My so-called friend.

Anton Easton.

Six foot five, broad shoulders, leather bomber jacket open. That same composed intensity in his bright blue eyes that silences a room without a word. He sweeps the space, and his gaze finds mine.

My legs almost forget how to hold me up.

My breath catches. The room drops away, sound thinning to nothing.

For one suspended heartbeat, I understand how fragile the word friend really is.