A Time for Love (Silver Lake Falls #2)

Chapter One ADAM

Chapter One

ADAM

The puck ricochets off the boards and lands cleanly on my stick. Muscle memory snaps into place. I shift my weight, knees bent, blades biting into the ice as I launch into a glide.

Cold air pinches my skin, but I welcome the familiar burn.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Pete near the slot, wide open, stick ready. Steadying my breath, I snap a crisp pass, heading exactly where it should, and watch as the puck slides smoothly across the zone.

He lines up and—

A loud ringtone pierces the air, and his head jerks upward, the puck skidding past him, into the boards behind.

“Hey,” I shout at the guys, panting. “We said no phones.”

Pete shrugs and looks around as the ringtone continues, shrill and insistent.

Ben skates off the goal line, heading for the bench. “Waiting for a court ruling on an injunction. It’s my last hope.”

Then an unsettling, unsynchronized buzz swells from the bench where we all left our phones. All the screens light up. This can’t be good.

“Shit,” Ben spits out, brows drawn together.

I race to grab mine. If he’s worried, it’s not just a bad verdict. A sense of dread twists my insides as I yank off my gloves, grab my phone, and swipe it open. The screen floods with alerts. News apps, messages, calls from my office, and my parents.

My lungs seize at the first headline, my knees suddenly weak.

Explosion reported this morning at the Rawlings headquarters…

Update: 20 minutes ago…

Smoke visible…

Details unknown…

The world closes in on me, and my ears start ringing.

My helmet clatters on the tile floor as I stumble through the locker room door, yanking at my gear, tearing the Velcro from the shin guards. By the time the guys follow me in, I’m already out of my skates and slamming into my sneakers.

I take off before I can think.

The heavy steel door of the rink thunders closed over someone’s shouts. It might be Pete, but I’m already halfway through the tunnel bay.

I cut left, out of the red loading dock entrance, onto the sidewalk packed with people.

No one’s moving, every gaze pointing upward.

The fact that the Rawlings headquarters is about twenty-five blocks away, and the smoke rising above the skyline is visible from the Chelsea Piers, twists that knot behind my ribs tighter.

My insides feel hollowed out.

One thing I know for sure: my best friend’s safe, in Maine. But his sister’s not. The woman has never missed a workday in her life.

“No…” The sound scrapes out of me, and I sprint toward the distant building. My fingers fumble with the lock screen on my phone. Dialing again and again. Every unanswered call spurs the speed at which my feet hit the ground.

The thought of Jackie being in that tall glass building, hurt or trapped, floods my veins with a cold panic that makes my head spin. Every muscle in my body screams in agony.

I can’t slow down. I need to get to her.

My breath starts to hitch, but I push harder, shoving stunned pedestrians aside.

Three blocks to go, but the streets are at a standstill. Horns blare. People spill out of their cars to find out what’s going on, unease brewing in their tense murmurs.

“Watch where you’re going, jackass!” A biker nearly clips me, leaving a trail of expletives behind him.

I don’t stop.

The air clouds with dust and plastic the closer I get, scorching my airways. Sirens wail. People shout over each other, the chaos growing louder with every step.

By the time I skid to a stop at the yellow tape surrounding the site, my pulse is erratic, and my mouth is dry. Scanning the scene, I desperately try to spot somebody I recognize.

Thick, dark smoke bleeds from the shattered windows around the lobby, curling upward. Above, cracks spiderweb across the glass, creeping toward the middle floors, but a flicker of hope cuts through the panic.

The top floors, the executive offices, still look intact.

“Adam.” Derrick barks over the noise and waves me over, nodding to the officer keeping onlookers at bay.

Sliding under the security tape, I seize on the one thing that steadies me: he looks pissed off, not devastated.

Metal and glass crunch under my shoes, and I take in the clusters of law enforcement officers and FBI agents swarming the scene, hoping to pick up a clue, anything to figure out what all of this means.

A layer of chalky gray powder coats all the cars parked on the curb, some with their windows blown in. It looks post-apocalyptic. I still can’t grasp the reality of what I’m seeing.

I stay close to Rawlings’ security chief, almost afraid to ask. “What the hell happened?”

“Tent,” is all he says, and I have no choice but to follow him toward the large white structure, flapping open as agents move in and out.

“Where is—”

Derrick peels back the fold, and my heart gets stuck in my throat.

There she is.

The bane of my existence.

The stain on my soul.

Unharmed, arms crossed, standing tall amid all the chaos.

Not trapped under rubble. Not maimed. Still on this side of the grass.

Jackie’s alive and scowling beside a large white table filled with papers and laptops, surrounded by Rawlings’ security team and a fleet of men and women in blue FBI windbreakers.

“We’ve cleared the last floors,” a middle-aged agent says. Jackie nods, her features strained, but her shoulders dip just a fraction.

A short-haired woman approaches us, voice sharp. “I want full access to your security footage, logs, employee information, and records.” Her tone leaves no room for argument.

Without looking up, Derrick replies, fingers furiously typing on his tablet. “Sending everything from the past seven days.”

No one is paying attention to me yet, so I edge closer to the table, until I get a clear view of Jackie’s face.

Everything else fades away. All I can focus on is the way her brows are drawn together, and her knuckles are white where she grips the edge of the table.

My muscles coil, every part of me straining to reach for her. Comfort her. But I stifle the urge. Hard.

Her light blonde strands and designer suit are streaked with soot, but thankfully I don’t see any visible injuries. And just like that, the fear, weighing me down since I read the news, pours out of me like sand from a torn burlap sack.

From the command center, I get a better view of the damage.

You’d think somebody hit the front door with a grenade.

Slowly, the veil of charred haze unravels in ripples.

And once it clears, the shiny red letters painted on the unbroken glass stand out, delivering a sharp stab to my insides all over again.

The unwanted urge to protect her slams into me with overwhelming force.

“What does that say?” A voice cuts through the noise. Heads swivel to the window.

A heavy silence falls over the tent.

My jaw tightens, yet when I lean closer, any hint of worry is buried too deep to be detected in my voice.

“So, it’s someone who knows you well,” I whisper in her ear.

Jackie looks ready to jump out of her skin, a soundless gasp leaving her lips. Her gaze works its way over me, up and down, looking a mess in my sweaty hockey gear.

I could swear a wave of relief washes over the worry lines around her mouth, until her nose scrunches with disdain.

“Thought it smelled like a locker room in here,” she grinds out through her teeth. “Go play with your stick. This doesn’t concern you.”

I wish that were true.

She smooths her features and focuses on two screens off to the side.

Beyond her, I finally register the large displays.

Carter’s tense profile fills one screen, and Logan’s on another, tactical gear and all, the corners of his mouth downturned.

I’m not surprised that Carter reached out to his childhood friend, who now runs a military consultancy firm, for help.

Carter’s on the steps of his private jet, frowning at me. “Adam…What are you wearing?”

I exhale a laugh. “Hockey practice. Robertson canceled on me earlier.” The old codger was on his way here when he called. “Wait. Is he OK?”

“He’s at the FBI field office,” Jackie says, her tone clipped. “Nobody was hurt. It went off before the office opened.”

I breathe a quiet sigh of relief. I’d never admit it out loud, but I was happy Carter’s irritating right-hand man was still alive to keep stressing me into a small stroke.

“What exactly was it?”

“We don’t know yet—”

The roar of Carter’s jet cuts through Jackie’s words. “Radu says there’ve been more network breaching attempts this week than all year. Why didn’t you say anything? I could’ve dealt with it.”

I bristle at his tone but bite my tongue. Just as she did when she was younger, Jackie hates it when he goes all big brother on her.

“We handled it in-house,” she says coolly. “I don’t need to come running to you every time there’s a problem.”

A beat of silence thuds inside the tent.

Since meeting Eliza and moving to Silver Lake Falls, Carter seems to have gained some self-awareness, but seeing his little sister in danger has dragged the old helicopter brother back to the surface.

It takes him a moment too long to realize it wasn’t the right move to scold her.

Not like this. Not in front of an audience.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He swipes a hand over his mouth. “I’m terrified. For you.”

That mellows Jackie. Barely, but she lets the moment slide, shifting her focus back to the laptop in front of her.

In all my years in public affairs, I’ve never seen anyone handle a crisis like she does. On the surface, she has the control and confidence of a seasoned general, with no trace of the inner storm she battles. Only a handful of people are privy to that vulnerable side of her.

I used to be one of them.

“We’ve already sent everything to Agent Ruiz,” she says, pointing to the woman with short hair.

The implications of all this start to sink in. “Who are these people? What do they want?” I ask.

Jackie exhales a frustrated huff. “We don’t know. They hit multiple, unrelated points on our servers. We can’t figure it out.”

That’s several notches past worrisome. Rawlings Enterprise isn’t just the largest tech company in this hemisphere. It powers government projects and infrastructure. And then there are the R&D projects nobody knows about.

A leak could be catastrophic.

No wonder the media’s already here, vans and reporters lined up on the side, helicopters circling overhead.

I’d planned to stay as far away as possible from her. Had made a sort of uneasy peace with that decision. Until Carter scared us half to death a year ago, collapsing in his office, and the ground shifted under our feet, pushing us together far more times than either of us ever wanted.

Even so, I’ve fought like hell against life’s incessant attempts to drag me into her orbit.

But this? Somebody threatening her life? It ignites something primal in me. The protective streak I thought I’d buried roars back to life, no matter how deep the scars she left behind.

Of course it takes mayhem like this to force me back. After all, she’s an expert at leaving a goddamn mess behind her.

God, I hate this woman.

And still…I ran through the city like a madman the second I thought she might be in danger.