Chapter 19
I’m parked in a white velvet chair that looks like it costs more than my truck, holding a glass of champagne I’m not drinking. A tray of pastel cakes sit nearby and I eye them as if they might explode. I’m in a bridal shop where I am so clearly the wrong tool for the job.
But it’s the day Ava chooses her dress, and I have to say my chest tightened when she told me I was the only one she wanted with her here today. Anyone at Monarch Hills is better positioned to give her fashion advice than I am. But she said she wanted blunt honesty.
She’s the kind of family member you love so much, they always look pretty, so I’m not sure I have much to offer, but Ava getting out of captivity—even getting married one day—was something I always dreamed would happen for her.
And now it is.
So I made the hour-long trek to a bridal shop in the city, and now I’m surrounded by taffeta and lace.
I place my champagne down on the table beside me.
Behind the closed fitting room door, Ava is wrestling herself into a wedding gown with more buttons than there are stars in the damn galaxy.
I can hear her muttering, shuffling, the occasional ow that tells me she pinched something she shouldn’t have.
I’ve never seen her in a dress. In captivity, she wore jeans and T-shirts and has always been a fan of hoodies—true hacker wear. We’ve hardly been out long enough for me to see how her style develops, but apart from purchasing a wider variety of Doc Martens, it seems like it hasn’t.
As I wait, my attention won’t settle. I pull out my compass, and this time, it’s more what Freya called it: a worry stone.
Freya told me she wouldn’t leave the station, but I still asked Gabriel and Lara to swing by her desk with lunch.
Once I have a feeling something is wrong, I can’t shake it until every detail is clear. That’s just me.
Part of me is still in Echo Valley. Part of me is tracking Freya. The rest is stuck on the red truck Ingram mentioned.
His explanation is simple enough. He stopped a guy in a red truck. Let him off with a warning. But now—months later—he decides the front-end damage on said truck was strange. So, he looks at Zoe’s car again and lands on a theory: that the truck might have clipped her. Maybe this guy knew her.
The theory itself isn’t the problem. I’ve considered before that Zoe could have been rear-ended into the quarry.
It’s the timing of the realization that doesn’t sit right.
When a case is fresh, everything matters. Every unfamiliar vehicle. Every new face in town. That’s when you notice details—when your brain is still wide open, pulling threads instead of trimming them.
But the red truck didn’t register then.
It registers now.
Only after Freya is cleared to review his work.
Back then, the idea would have carried weight. Now it feels convenient.
And convenience is not how real leads show up.
“Stop brooding out there,” Ava calls from inside the fitting room. “I can feel it from in here. It’s like a cold front rolling under the door.”
“I’m not brooding,” I mutter.
“You’re always brooding. But today it’s louder.”
I scrub a hand over my jaw, the tension living there for too many days. “The Marshall case hit a wall.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, like that explains everything but also changes nothing. “Where’s it at now?”
I hesitate. “Stalling in the research phase.”
Ava hisses. “Crumbs. I think I broke a button.”
“I’m sure they can sew it back on.” I glance around. “Not sure this is a you-break-it-you-buy-it kind of place.”
“How many buttons are on this thing?” she mumbles. “We might not even have a chance to do it on our wedding night…”
I stick my finger and thumb into my eye sockets. “Too much information.”
“Please,” she tuts. “You’re the one who got a woman pregnant. We’re both adults here.”
And it’s true. I see how much she’s grown and flourished as a person in her partnership with Enzo. But most times, I still see her as a little girl.
A seamstress walks by carrying a dress that looks like a cloud had a love child with a chandelier. She smiles politely at me, then slips into the next room.
“If you don’t tell her you like her,” Ava singsongs, “I swear to God, I’ll tell her myself.”
“Tell her what?”
“That you want her…”
“Ava,” I warn.
“What? You checked your phone on the way here every ninety seconds like a middle-schooler waiting for a crush to text. And that’s now. You’ve liked her for a long time. Since… probably since you first saw her. Gabriel told Lara how you went all feral when you saw her in her PJs on the fire escape…”
That guy. He tells Lara everything.
“I checked my phone because I’m worried about the case…” And Freya.
But I leave that part out. I don’t think anyone can understand what’s at stake with a kid on the horizon unless they’ve experienced it themselves.
Chasing happily-ever-afters is easier when you can walk away from someone if they break your heart.
The armor slaps on thick when you know you can’t do that.
Thankfully, she takes my word for it and leans into shop talk.
“I get the obsession,” Ava says. “I’m like that with GhostEye cases…when they matter to me more than just professionally.”
Okay, it’s not just shop talk.
I turn my phone slowly in my hand, like that might somehow make it light up.
“There’s nothing wrong with me wanting Freya to enjoy being pregnant.
She might only get one shot at it.” I toss the phone onto the table.
“I don’t want her running worst-case scenarios in her head while she’s supposed to be reading how the baby graduated from peanut to grapefruit.
The case is getting stressful. If someone has to hold that weight, it should be me. ”
A beat of silence.
“…Anton,” Ava says softly, “that’s how people talk about someone they love.”
I open my mouth—ready to unleash something snarky—but Ava interrupts me.
“Prepare yourself.”
The fitting room door swings open. And whatever smart-ass retort I might’ve had dies on impact.
Ava steps out in a gown that doesn’t just fit her. It frames her. Sculpted bodice, soft shimmer, fabric that captures light like it was woven from it. The kind of dress that turns a woman into something elemental. I stand without realizing I’m doing it.
Her sunshine grin widens. “Well? Gorgeously dramatic, right?”
“You look…” I sniff away the sting in my eyes. I can’t even say anything else.
“Really?” she says, hands on hips. “That good?” She cocks her head.
I nod, throat tight. “That good, Menace.”
Ava steps onto the little platform in front of the mirror, turning slightly so the seamstress can fuss with the train.
Her bright hazel eyes watch me through the reflection. “I always wanted you to find happiness, too, you know.”
I nod with a thin-lipped smile.
“Funny thing is, you already found it, and you’re just too careful to grab it by the reins.”
“This isn’t your average boy meets girl. It’s complicated, Ava.”
She spins around, long red hair fanning over her shoulder. “Of course it is. Love is complicated. But if you don’t take her, someone else will. She’s a catch.”
A hot, ugly spike of possessiveness shoots straight through me—fast enough that I have to lock my jaw so it doesn’t show. I have no claim on her. I know that. Doesn’t matter. The thought of anyone else stepping toward her…even imagining it, makes something primitive in me bare its teeth.
“See?” Ava reads me perfectly and arches an eyebrow. “You want her.”
I exhale through my nose, hard. “I’m a lot older…”
It’s a weak reason and not the real one.
The real one is fear. Fear if I let myself trust again, fall again, be totally devoted again, and it doesn’t work, I could ruin not just my life but also my child’s.
She puts a hand on her hip. “Enzo is older…”
I get closer to the truth. “And there’s a lot at risk for us if it doesn’t work out. A friendship is more important right now.”
“To her, or to you?”
Probably to her.
For me, the problem is more complex. I do want her. I haven’t erased that fact. But when it comes to asking if we might just give us a chance, I can’t let her in, but I can’t let her go.
“She’s…” I rub a hand over my jaw, searching for the least pathetic answer. “She’s made it clear that her career and being a mom are her priorities. I don’t want to stress her out with a conversation about us.”
Fuck. Now I’ve admitted it. It’s official. I want more.
“I know I haven’t lived much out in the real world yet”—Ava sparkles like a fairy godmother on that pedestal—“but…a conversation about how much you care about her is going to stress her out?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds stupid.”
“Isn’t it though? I mean…I was being chased down by my captor and still…love didn’t feel like yet another thing that was making me stressed. It felt like the thing to relieve it.”
I smile softly. “Your case was different.”
“Was it?” she asks, but it’s more of a rhetorical question.
It wasn’t different for her.
She had a hairy predicament, too, more dangerous than becoming a mom. Ava was on the run, playing a secret identity, having to trust a man who was smart enough to figure her out…
I reach up and boop her freckled nose. “Where did you get your wisdom from?”
She rolls her eyes playfully. “Not you, apparently.”
The seamstress finishes pinning the dress up and stands. “I want pictures of you and this nerdy cowboy you told me about.” She turns to me. “Eat the cake or else I will.”
Ava steps down. “Look, if you want to get rid of some of her stress from the case”—she lowers her head and gazes at me from under her brow—“so you two have time to talk about how much you love her”—she winks—“why don’t you just see what GhostEye can do?
Enzo and I are happy to run whatever she needs. We’re a lot faster than the internet.”
GhostEye tools can search deeper and faster than any department database on the planet. Where Ingram only gave Freya the date, time, and bodycam photo of the man driving the red truck, she’s not searching with much data.
But if Freya starts getting involved at both the station and with the madness that is Ava Scott, she’ll be working double time. Maybe Ava and Enzo should have a look but not reel Freya in yet?
How can I be thinking that?
I only just made Gabriel and Rio know how important it was that they loop Freya in to the other quarry case from ten years ago.
And that has me circling back to how much work this case is becoming…
“What are you thinking?” Ava asks.
“I’m thinking…that maybe I don’t want her working double shifts. If you start digging, she’ll be at the ranch offices after an eight-hour shift at the station.”
“Why don’t we just do a little digging and not say anything unless there’s something to talk about?” Ava proposes. “You’ve got enough intel to get us started, right?”
This is both a good and bad idea rolled into one. I don’t want to go behind Freya’s back because she might feel disenfranchised, but equally, at the pace her search for Red Truck Man is going, Freya might be working on this case into her third trimester. Or not even finish before having the baby.
I want her stress gone now. Urgency makes it feel like the right move.
Grabbing my cell from the table, I slide it open. “There is a bodycam photo you might be able to help with. Using your image recognition?”
“Do you have it on your cell?” She points to my phone.
I asked Freya if she’d send it to me on the off chance the guy rolls back into town.
“Yeah.” I find it and forward it to Ava’s email address. “Just sent it to your inbox.”
Ava’s eyes light up, the way they do every time a new puzzle comes into her life.
She shuffles over, swathes of fabric rustling around her as she heads to her backpack and grabs her cell out.
She dials a number. “Hey, babe. If I send a photo over to you in a few minutes, could you run it… I know you’re busy, but it’s for Anton. ” A beat. “Love you, too.”
She texts the photo, then throws her cell back in her backpack. “Let’s see if we can speed things up then, shall we?”
She lifts the gown and rushes back into the changing room.
Ava takes just as long undoing the buttons as she did doing them up, and I tap my foot, thinking about this call so many times, I’m surprised I don’t end up in the basement.
Ten minutes later, Ava is out and discussing bridal accessories with the shopkeeper.
Buzz.
Enzo
Something popped on first pass. Not done yet. Come to the office when you’re back.
A cold pulse hits my spine.
Me
Can’t leave me hanging like that, brother.
The typing bubble appears…disappears…comes back.
Enzo
Nothing concrete. Just…I found a match. The guy pulls up noise in old social feeds. I’ll keep digging for contact details.
Ava glances over from the jewelry case, sees my face, and her smile softens. “Everything okay?”
Not even close. But I nod anyway. “Enzo texted, and he already found the guy.”
“God, I love that man.” She hands a necklace back to the shopkeeper. “I’ll come back another time. We gotta go.”
“You’re good, Ava. Don’t cut this short because of…”
Ava cuts me off. “As if I’m staying here now. Anyway, clues are my diamonds.”
Inside, I’m glad she’s obsessed in this way because now this isn’t just a dead-end stirring again; this is a lead that might actually matter.
And if it does, I’ll have to face a new problem.
Freya’s going to ask why I sent it to GhostEye without asking.
Why I made a call that should’ve been hers.
And the truth is…she’s not wrong.
I know why I did it. I don’t want her working more than she has to. My intentions were solid.
She might be happy about it and see I was well-meaning, right? Maybe she’ll be so relieved to finally have Red Truck Man’s name, she won’t worry about how she got it.
Ava hooks her arm through mine, tugging me toward the door. “Come on,” she says softly. “Let’s go see what you found.”
What I found.
What I set in motion.
Damn it, Easton. This wasn’t the right call…
I didn’t have bad intentions…but she’s still going to feel betrayed.
Freya isn’t fragile. I’ve watched her take hits and keep moving. But trust isn’t built to absorb impact. Once it cracks, it changes the structure.
And I’m suddenly aware of how much I have to lose if I’m the one who caused it.