Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
RIOS
The question hung there like a live wire.
Who might want to kill you?
I’d known it was coming. I’d known it since the second I saw the chain on the door, since the stench of gasoline hit the back of my throat and my body chilled with certainty.
But up to now I’d been focused on doing the thing right in front of me.
Getting the lock off, door open. Getting Madden out. Getting her to treatment.
But there was no next right thing in this moment. No action to distract from the brutal reality she faced.
Madden didn’t answer right away.
She looked at me instead.
Not for reassurance or permission. For calibration. As if she needed a gauge of how much truth she should reveal for the sake of the case. And that said everything about where her faith in the system stood.
And where her faith in me stood.
That faith absolutely cut me off at the knees. Because it said she believed I was the good guy. That I was worthy of trust above and beyond this man who’d once meant something to her as part of a system she used to trust. She’d decided I was a touchstone. A protector.
Something tight and sharp shifted unmistakably in my chest. This was the part I couldn’t protect her from. Not with my body. Not with speed or force or adrenaline. This was the part where survival turned into consequence.
“I’m sure you’re already aware that we believe Chief Carson prematurely closed the Shah case.” Though her voice rasped, it remained steady in a way that cost her. “As I implied when we spoke at Willie Sanders’s apartment, we’ve continued looking into her disappearance.”
Something flickered over the other man’s face. Discomfort. With the way his department was being run? Hard to tell. I didn’t get the sense that he was Carson’s lackey, but I wasn’t sure where he stood.
“Were you not warned off doing exactly that?” Grant asked.
Madden’s chin lifted in a faintly mutinous tilt. “Technically, we were warned off the investigation into Willie Sanders’ murder, which was never our focus to begin with.”
A muscle jumped in Grant’s jaw, but he didn’t correct her or call her out on the technicality. “What exactly have you been doing?”
Madden only blinked at him. “Other than speaking to everyone the department spoke to about Priya’s disappearance? Whatever research we can. Since Carson conveniently made sure that my FOIA request was stonewalled, I haven’t spoken to anyone directly.”
Of course she wouldn’t betray Rosa.
Grant pinned her with his gaze, but Madden only stared back at him.
Finally, he sighed. “Do you have any reason to think that your involvement has… upset someone?”
It was my turn to stare at him. The restraint it took not to snap back surprised me. Maybe because I was past rage now. Past shock. What was left was colder. Heavier.
“You mean aside from the fact that someone chained her inside her boat and set it on fire?” I said.
The silence that followed was loaded.
Grant angled his head in acknowledgment. “That’s fair.”
He asked a few more questions after that, but they were procedural.
Loose ends. Time stamps. Who knew what. None of it went anywhere useful.
Whatever line had been crossed tonight hadn’t left a paper trail behind, and given the remains of the boat had sunk, there was unlikely to be much in the way of physical evidence to process.
Finally, Grant closed his notebook. “If you think of anything else—anything at all—please call.”
She nodded.
Grant hesitated, eyes flicking between us again—taking in the oxygen, the IV, the way I hadn’t moved more than a foot from her side since he walked in.
“Take care of yourself,” he added, quieter.
The door closed behind him with a quiet, deliberate click that sounded far too final for a room this small.
For a second, I expected the world to rush back in. To hear voices in the hall, the scrape of shoes, the hum of movement that meant things were still happening. Instead, there was only the low hum of the oxygen and the faint buzz of the overhead lights.
Too quiet.
I stayed where I was, standing close enough to Madden’s bed that I could reach her without leaning, far enough away that it still looked like restraint instead of instinct. My hands ached with the need to do something—anything—and there was nothing left to do.
No fire to fight.
No door to break through.
No one to pull out of harm’s way.
Just the knowledge that someone had tried to kill her, and the sick certainty that if the timing had been even slightly off, I’d be standing in this room alone. Or not standing at all.
Madden lay back against the pillows, oxygen still in place, her skin pale beneath the harsh clinic lights.
The color had come back to her cheeks since the dock, but she looked wrung out in a way that went deeper than smoke or shock.
As if her body had finally been allowed to stop and hadn’t yet decided whether it was safe to start again.
At last, I dragged a chair closer and sat, elbows braced on my knees, hands hanging uselessly between them. The burns on my arm throbbed now that the adrenaline had fully burned off, a deep, pulsing ache that felt almost welcome. Pain I understood. Pain I could catalog and endure.
This—whatever this was—I had no system for.
“You okay?” I asked.
It was a useless question. We both knew it. But it was the only one that didn’t feel like pushing.
She nodded anyway. “I think so.”
I didn’t call her on it. Didn’t tell her that “I think so” was what people said when they were still sorting through the wreckage. When their brain was stacking the facts in neat little piles because if they didn’t, the emotional reality would hit all at once and knock the air out of them.
I’d been there.
Her eyes flicked to the gauze on my arm. “You should’ve let them take you to a bed.”
I snorted under my breath. “Not happening.”
She studied me for a long moment, like she was filing the answer away for later. “Why?”
Because if I’d let them move me, I’d have had to step away from you.
Because the image of you trapped behind that door won’t stop replaying, and I need to know you’re still breathing.
None of that came out.
“Because I’m fine.”
Her mouth twitched. “Liar.”
That almost cracked something in my chest. Almost.
The silence that followed was heavier than the last one, pressing in on all sides. I stared at the floor, at the scuffed linoleum and the faint smear of soot my partly melted boot had left behind, and tried not to let my mind go back to the marina.
Tried and failed.
I still felt the heat of flames on my skin, still smelled the gasoline underneath the burning fiberglass. “Madden.”
She shifted slightly, the blanket rustling. “Yeah?”
I looked up at her, really looked, and the breath caught in my chest in a way I didn’t have language for yet. She wasn’t crying. Wasn’t shaking. She was watching me with that sharp, assessing focus she used when she was thinking something through.
“I need you to understand something,” I said.
Her brow furrowed. “Okay.”
“This wasn’t random.” I kept my voice level, even as something dark and furious curled tighter in my gut. “Whoever did this didn’t just get lucky. They came prepared. They knew the boat, the layout, and how long it would take for heat to build.”
She absorbed that without flinching.
“They chained the door because they wanted time. They wanted smoke. Confusion. They wanted you trapped long enough for…”
Her fingers curled into the sheet as I trailed off. “For me not to get out.”
“Yes.”
The truth settled between us, heavy and unmovable.
She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in the oxygen. I watched her throat move as she swallowed, watched the way her jaw set like she was bracing against something internal.
“Madden, they could try again.”
I needed her to hear that. To understand it.
Her eyes opened, and she shoved the canula off, as if she wanted to be extra damned sure I heard her reply. “I can’t stop.”
There it was.
Not bravado. Not defiance.
Resolve.
“You should. At least for a while.” I didn’t want her hurt. Didn’t want her in harm’s way.
Those sharp eyes stayed steady on mine. “That’s easy for you to say.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because you’re trained for this,” she said quietly. “You know how bad it can get. You chose that life. I didn’t.”
The words weren’t an accusation. Just a statement of fact.
“And yet,” she continued, “someone still decided I was a problem.”
My jaw clenched.
“You could have died.” The words scraped out rough with an emotion I didn’t have a name for.
“I know.”
The calm way she said it was what undid me.
“That’s not a shrug-it-off statement.” Heat crept into my voice. “That’s a line you don’t cross without it changing everything.”
Her gaze held mine, unwavering. “It already has.”
I stood, the chair scraping softly against the floor as I moved closer, drawn by something I’d been pretending not to feel for days.
“Can you walk away?” she demanded.
The question hit me square in the chest.
I knew she was asking if I could walk away from the case. But I saw her as she’d been on the dock—soot-streaked, pale, and so very still. I saw the version of her that might have been zipped into a black bag if the night had gone a little differently.
I saw the part of myself that had already crossed a line the moment I decided her fight was mine too, and the question I answered was whether I could walk away from her.
“No.”
The truth of it settled over us, into me.
Madden Reilly wasn’t who I’d have picked in a million years. But I hadn’t known her before. She was complicated. Sometimes difficult. And fucking fascinating. This unwavering commitment to doing the right thing, even when it might cost her everything… Brave, stubborn, brilliant, beautiful woman.
I couldn’t stop myself from reaching for her, from gently cupping her jaw. Something flickered across her face—surprise, relief, something softer threading through it.
“You’re an eternal surprise, Counselor,” I murmured.
That surprise brightened to something that might’ve been pleasure as I closed the distance between us and brushed my lips to hers.
For one, two, three heart-stopping beats, she froze, and I worried I’d crossed a line.
But just as I would have pulled back, apologized, she reached for me, hands curling into my T-shirt and tugging me closer.
I fought not to sink too deep because she’d been through hell.
Then her mouth opened beneath mine, and it was like we’d both finally found oxygen.
Or perhaps we both just needed the reminder that we’d survived tonight.
As the taste of her flooded into me, my pulse stuttered, and my fingers tightened in her hair.
One of her hands slid along my jaw, scraping against the stubble in a way that made me growl like some big damned cat. I leaned into her touch, wanting a hell of a lot more than this…
“Contrary to popular opinion, this particular variety of swapping oxygen is not actually more effective than the classic medical intervention.”
At the sound of my baby sister’s voice, I stood bolt upright. Every cell of my body protested, We weren’t done yet.
Madden blinked up at me, dazed, her lips pretty pink and kiss swollen.
Gabi’s gaze flicked between us, unimpressed and unsurprised all at once. “I’ve got discharge instructions. And before either of you argue, you’re staying at Caroline’s tonight. Both of you. No exceptions.”
Her look told me there wasn’t a chance in hell she was keeping this juicy detail from our older sister. Right. I’d cross that bridge when we got to it.
Madden glanced at me, something bright and unsettled still in her eyes.
I exhaled slowly, tightening my fingers on hers. “Let’s get out of here.”