CHAPTER 3
Cole
The rainstorm that rolled through earlier has burned off, leaving the air rinsed clean and the pavement in Fremont damp.
I ease my truck down a narrow side street tucked off the main drag, an area I’m so familiar with I could drive it with my eyes closed.
The houses here are early-century bungalows and Craftsman-style with deep porches framed in wood railings and tapered square columns.
The yard is modest with low hedges trimmed tight and a narrow path of stone pavers leading from the sidewalk to the front door that I helped her lay one summer.
It’s the kind of house you buy when you’re determined to build something permanent, and there was a time in my life that I thought this would be my forever home too.
My chest tightens the closer I get to her driveway. It’s been five years without her voice and I thought I’d moved on. If my level of unease over seeing her again is any indication, I’m guessing not.
I shouldn’t have fucking come.
I know that.
But the moment she said she needed help, my body moved before my brain could argue. It was made even more urgent by the fact that Tessa never asks for help, so I know this is bad.
I pull up parallel to the curb and kill the engine, sitting there for a beat to consider how I want to play this. My hands are wrapped around the steering wheel like it’s the only thing keeping me anchored and my palms are sweating.
It’s goddamned ridiculous.
I’ve survived firefights and infernos and have lost brothers in two different uniforms. I have external and internal scars that I’ve overcome and yet the idea of seeing Tessa Ward again knots me tighter than any battlefield.
I get out of my truck anyway, pocketing my keys after locking the doors.
My heart slams hard against my ribs as I recall how scared she sounded on the phone and I trudge up the front steps, wondering what in the hell could have scared a woman that is as fearless as they come.
I don’t even make it to the top step when the front door opens.
And there she is.
My eyes roam over her, hungrily soaking up her beauty and warily, her pain. She looks wrecked.
Still gorgeous enough to punch the air from my lungs, but pale beneath her freckles. Her long chestnut hair is tangled and while her blue eyes are sharp and alert, they’re rimmed with a fatigue that can’t be hidden.
Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Hey.”
Every memory I buried claws its way up—her smile the first time she climbed into my truck, the sound of her laugh in the dark, the way we held hands when we shared morning coffee at the kitchen nook table.
“Hey,” I answer, eyes roaming over her again to soak in all the minor differences that five years might have wrought. There are none as far as I can see. Tessa’s the same, not even extra laugh lines, but there is weariness.
She steps back from the door. “Come in.”
The house feels the same the second I step inside. It smells of lavender, her preferred scent in the wax warmers distributed throughout. It was a scent I learned to love.
The entry opens into the small living room with its original hardwood floors, slightly scarred but polished.
Built-in bookshelves I helped install flank a brick fireplace that’s more decorative than practical this time of year, though we always had it lit in colder months.
A low slate-blue sofa sits exactly where it always has, angled toward the coffee table instead of the television, because Tessa has never been one to sit still long enough to watch.
A woven rug softens the space, and a standing lamp in the corner casts a warm, steady glow.
But the walls are different.
The frames are still there—black metal, clean-lined—but the photos have changed.
Where there were once shots of us on the Oregon Coast, her laughing into the wind, my arm around her waist, now there are landscapes.
A wildfire skyline she must have photographed from a ridge.
A black-and-white shot of the Seattle waterfront in fog.
A close-up of old brick in Pioneer Square.
No trace of me at all, but I would expect nothing less. All my framed photographs of her were tossed when we ended our relationship but for some reason, I never deleted the digital stuff. That’s still buried in a folder on my phone.
Tessa moves into the kitchen wordlessly, shoulders slumped as she works the coffee pot.
Nothing’s changed in here. Same white cabinets and butcher-block counters, a narrow island that doubles as a workspace and dining table.
I’ve stood there with her at midnight, both of us leaning over takeout cartons while she outlined a story on a legal pad.
Tonight, that island is covered in paper.
I look down to see topographical maps marked in red ink.
Without hesitation, I flip through documents and see printed land transfer records clipped together in neat stacks.
A legal pad filled edge to edge with her tight handwriting.
Her laptop glows at one end of the island, screen split between spreadsheets and what looks like a property database.
Beside it sits a flash drive—small, silver, looking ominously important.
I glance up at Tessa and she’s watching me as the pot begins to brew. “I didn’t know who else to call,” she says quietly.
“Tell me what happened.”
She approaches me from the other side of the island, eyes flicking to the piles of papers and back to me.
“I’m investigating a big story, but I didn’t think it would be dangerous.
” She waits a moment to gauge my reaction, because the danger is what broke us completely.
“I didn’t think someone would die,” she whispers.
My body jolts, feeling like I’ve been zapped with electricity, followed by a hollow cold slicing through me. “Someone died?”
She nods. “Tonight. A whistleblower.” Her voice cracks, and she crosses her arms over her chest as if holding herself together.
“His name was Erik Lanning and he worked for a company called RainVest Holdings. He contacted me a week or so ago with a story about his employer, a major land developer, who was buying fire-damaged land at deeply discounted prices using shell companies.”
“I imagine that’s a common practice,” I observe.
Tessa grabs the silver flash drive and holds it up. “It can be… but Erik said he had proof that RainVest was actually starting the fires.”
My eyebrows shoot up as that’s quite a bold claim.
“And the evidence is on that drive?”
She nods, dropping it back onto the pile. “Along with all the other public documentation I accumulated. He gave this to me tonight, in a parking garage.”
Dark parking garage. That’s so very Tessa. “And?”
Her eyes gloss. “I watched him die.” She takes in a ragged breath as she grips the edge of the counter.
“An SUV ran him down. I was ten feet away and the sound when he was hit…” Tessa experiences a full body shudder, and I have to suppress the instinct to take her into my arms for comfort.
It’s not my place anymore, and that’s not why she called me.
“Any chance it was an accident?” I ask, hoping beyond hope that’s all this was and then I can reassure her and leave.
She shakes her head, a fall of that glorious red hair covering her face. “I saw the driver get out. He checked Erik’s pulse.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “He almost saw me. I’m pretty sure he knew I was there, but then other people entered the garage, and I think it scared him off.”
A flash of heat surges through me—anger, sharp and violent—followed by a flash of fear. Tessa isn’t one for hysterics or exaggeration. If she feels like she was in danger, it’s real.
I take a step toward her. “Jesus, Tessa. You should have called the cops immediately.”
She laughs bitterly. “And say what? That a multibillion-dollar company is orchestrating arson to buy cheap land? And they ran down the whistleblower? They’d crucify me for accusing anyone without proof.”
“You have proof.” I tap the flash drive. “I’m guessing this is a hell of a lot more than speculation. Publish and expose it.”
“It’s not enough. It’s still speculation.”
I nab the flash drive, move around the counter, and hold it in front of her face. “This is the proof, and we’re going to the cops now.”
She snatches the little silver unit from my hand, her face lit with anger. “I’m not going to the cops, Cole. The minute I expose myself as a witness, they’ll come after me.”
“They’ll protect you—”
Tessa barks a laugh that cuts off my words. “Tell me you are not that naive. Jesus, Cole… you work for a security agency that specializes in this shit. This amount of money at stake? I guarantee RainVest has cops on the take.”
I can’t argue with that. While almost the entirety of the Seattle Police Department is filled with the best of the best, I happen to know there’s one or two bad eggs as evidenced by Brady investigating them undercover.
“Then just drop it,” I say, tucking my hands in my pockets. “Drop the investigation and you stay safe.”
Her chin lifts, that old defiance sparking. “There it is. Same argument. Same damn fight as before.”
My jaw tightens. “That’s not what this is.”
“Really?” she fires back. “Because it sounds exactly like you telling me my job is too dangerous and I need to back off.”
I look away hard, fighting my temper. When I lock eyes with her again, I say through gritted teeth, “No. It’s me saying someone might want to kill you and maybe you ought to take a fucking clue that it’s time to back off.”
We stare at each other, in the same exact position we were in countless times before. I brace for all the arguments I’ve heard dozens of times.
“This is my passion.”
“If I don’t expose the truth, then who will?”
“I’d never ask you to give up your career.”