Chapter 18
Eighteen
MADDEN
The drive to Sutter House took less than fifteen minutes, but my nerves managed to age a decade with every mile. Rios didn’t say much, and strangely, that helped. The silence between us wasn’t hostile anymore. It was… bearable. Companionable, even—if I didn’t look at it too hard.
But that didn’t help the swooping sensation in my stomach when he pulled up in front of Sutter House.
I’d been here before, years ago, for one function or another, back when Willa’s grandparents had effectively run the island.
But I’d never been here as part of the group.
Rios, Sawyer, Ford, and Jace had all been older.
Willa and Gabi were younger. I’d gone to school with all of them, grown up on the fringes of their orbit.
Always Gwen’s cousin. Always the one who preferred rules and routines to bonfires.
Never quite inside the circle. Never hated exactly, but not beloved either.
I hadn’t fit. Not with them. Honestly, not really with anyone.
Now I was walking into what amounted to their inner sanctum beside the man they all knew I’d once maligned.
Fantastic.
Rios cut the engine and looked at me. “Ready?”
“No, but I’m good at faking it.” I blurted it out before I could think better of it.
He huffed something like a laugh, and the warmth of it skated over my skin like a touch, dragging my brain back to what it had been like to be wrapped up in him.
A hug. A completely platonic friend sort of thing to do.
A gesture that had shaken me more than I knew how to admit, not just because of the inconvenient attraction I was struggling to deny, but because I simply wasn’t accustomed to physical affection and support.
Which was probably a terribly sad commentary on my life overall.
Realizing he was now standing in front of the truck, one brow arched in expectation, I slid out and followed, adjusting the strap of my bag. Why had I even brought it? As if I was going to show up with a PowerPoint? I tried to match his unbothered stride as he headed for the side entrance.
Just before we reached the porch steps, his hand slid to the small of my back. Barely a touch. Just a warm anchor guiding me forward.
My breath stuttered. He didn’t seem to notice he’d done it.
I absolutely did.
The kitchen door swung open before either of us reached it, Bree’s voice barreling out ahead of her. “Finally! We were two seconds from—oh.” She stopped when her gaze landed on me. Not hostile. Not warm. Just… taking my measure. “Hey, Madden.”
“Hi,” I managed.
A blur of fur streaked past her legs. Roy, tail whacking everything in reach.
A second dog followed, gold to his black.
The pair of them bounded around us, wriggling with joy at seeing literally anyone.
Roy barked once, then immediately shoved his entire head under Rios’s hand for pets. The shepherd mix came for me.
I crouched to greet her. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“That’s Keeley,” Bree said. “She loves everyone.”
The dogs apparently had fewer reservations about me than the humans. Fair enough.
“She’s adorable.”
“And the love of Roy’s life,” Willa added from just inside.
Sawyer appeared behind her, looping his arms around her waist. “Pretty sure that’s still you, Wren.”
“Come on in, y’all,” she invited.
With nowhere else to retreat, I trailed them all to the kitchen.
It buzzed with activity—pots simmering, cutting boards covered in vegetables, multiple conversations happening at once.
Ford stood at the stove, stirring something fragrant and spicy, while a guy I didn’t recognize chopped cilantro with knife skills that suggested he’d had a lot of practice.
Gabi perched on a counter stool, sorting tortillas into neat stacks.
The moment she spotted me, she moved to the fridge and began filling a glass with water.
She thrust it in my direction. “Drink. And sit. You look wrung out.”
“I—” My brain stalled, trying to reconcile this no-nonsense doctor with the dreamy romantic who’d been one of Gwen’s besties. “Thank you.”
I took the glass more because refusing Gabi Carrera seemed like an act of hubris. As I settled at the long butcher-block island, she added a plate of sliced mango and some tortilla chips.
I blinked at the spread before glancing at Rios. “Is this a family trait?”
“What?”
“Ordering people to sit and eat.”
“Damn right. It’s a time-honored Carrera tradition to solve everything with food.” Rios brushed past me to grab a beer from the open fridge. His arm grazed my shoulder—barely there, the most incidental contact imaginable—and yet a spark zipped straight down my spine.
I stared determinedly at the mango.
Bree dropped onto the stool opposite mine. “Okay. Tell us what the hell happened. The island gossip train is going wild, saying y’all walked in on a dead guy.”
The guy I didn’t know snickered. “Slow your roll, Bree, and give the woman a chance to actually do some of that eatin’ before jumpin’ to the punchline.” His rolling drawl was all bayou as he turned his attention to me. “I’m Daniel LaRue, by the way. Gabi’s other half.”
“Um, hi. Madden Reilly.” Though I guessed he already knew that. I wondered what Gabi might have said to him about me before they’d shown up for this confab. “And I don’t mind getting into it, if that’s how y’all want to do things.”
I wasn’t exactly clear on what we were here to do, but Rios obviously wanted to loop these people in. His people.
At least it would give me something to do other than sit here on my ass while the rest of them moved around the kitchen with the well-honed chaos of a family. My own family hadn’t been anything like this, and I felt extra out of place not knowing my role here beyond that of outsider.
Rios’s hand brushed my forearm as he plucked a slice of mango from the plate, and something fluttered again behind my ribs. “I got the timeline. You got the details?”
“Sure.”
As the rest of them continued prepping food, we ran through it—from Willie’s wee-hours text to finding him in the bathroom, unresponsive and showing lividity that told us he’d been gone too long for intervention.
By the time we’d finished, the rest of the ingredients had gone into a pot on the stove, which smelled like spicy heaven.
Gabi winced. “Damn.”
Ford muttered a curse under his breath. Sawyer shook his head.
“Overdose.” My voice came out just a little ragged. “That’s going to be the line.”
Rios slouched against the counter, snatching another slice of mango. “It fits. At least on paper.”
I slanted a look at him. “You don’t believe it.”
“I believe he used,” he qualified. “We saw the paraphernalia. We saw him high yesterday. But he texted me in the middle of the night to set that meeting. People planning to help don’t usually plan to die before breakfast.”
My mouth twisted. “People planning not to die do it all the time.”
“Overdose is the preliminary ruling,” Daniel said. “I heard chatter from local LEOs over the radio driving in. As you said, they found paraphernalia, and with his record…” He trailed off, expression tightening.
Mild surprise flickered through me. “You’re on the radio how, exactly?”
“I’m Coast Guard. Task force covering drug traffic up and down this stretch of coast. We work pretty close with local agencies. Even when they don’t like it.”
“Ah.” What more was there to say than that?
“If they want to slap a bow on it, OD is easy,” Ford said. “People will believe it.”
The truth of that reality had me rising to Willie’s defense. “But he asked us to meet. Why would he reach out if he planned to get high enough to kill himself before we even got there? He was nervous, yes, but he wasn’t self-destructive. He was scared. There’s a difference.”
“Could’ve meant to do a little to take the edge off and misjudged the purity,” Daniel offered, though his tone suggested he didn’t quite buy it.
Gabi crossed her arms, doctor mode activated. “Did you see needle marks?”
“One on the inside of his elbow,” I admitted. “But with him? Could’ve been anything. I don’t think it was an opioid OD. No pinpoint pupils. No foam. His coloring wasn’t quite right for respiratory depression. And the timing doesn’t line up with what he told Rios.”
Daniel lifted his brows. “Damn. You’ve seen some things.”
A humorless smile tugged at my mouth. “My job put me in contact with a lot of witnesses who used. A lot of defendants, too. And that doesn’t touch the crime scene photos and police reports from other ODs. You learn patterns.”
“And this didn’t fit.” Rios’s voice was steady, but something colder lurked underneath. A steel thread I hadn’t noticed in him before.
“No,” I agreed. “It didn’t. He wasn’t weaving when we saw him last. He wasn’t sweating or shaking.
His attention was scattered but coherent.
He looked… overwhelmed. Not intoxicated.
Not fully. He was in enough of his right mind to be aware he wasn’t in his right mind and needed to sober up before we talked further. ”
“Withdrawal?” Ford asked.
“Maybe,” Gabi said. “But sudden death from withdrawal is rare. And his body position—face down, arm outstretched—doesn’t scream collapse. It screams… interruption.”
The room went quiet, weight settling over the conversation like humidity before a storm.
Sawyer broke it first. “Let’s say it wasn’t an accident. Why him? Why now?”
“Because he saw something,” Bree said bluntly. “That’s what you said, right? He saw someone getting assaulted behind Home Port. And now he’s conveniently dead? Come on. That’s not coincidence.”
Daniel scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Small islands breed a lot of rumors. But one thing I’ve learned working narcotics here—if someone needs to disappear, drugs make a great cover story. No one asks questions they don’t want the answers to.”
An icy shiver slipped beneath my skin. “He was trying to do something good. God, he was scared, and he still stepped up. And he ends up on a bathroom floor.”