Chapter One
Present Day
Parker
Nate’s Impala purrs as he shifts into fifth gear.
The faintest whiff of french fries lingers in the air, which shouldn’t be possible given that the interior looks like it’s never seen even a single crumb.
The man is fastidious to a fault, and I stare down at my dusty boots, amazed he didn’t make me polish them before he unlocked the door.
Through the window, I watch Austin’s steel and glass disappear, giving way to strip malls, big box stores, and more construction cranes than you can shake a stick at.
By the time Nate takes the exit for Round Rock, I’ve read the incident report three times and I don’t have anything new to show for it.
He’s been drumming two fingers on the wheel since we left the station. “For the record,” he says, as his GPS directs him to Sam Bass Road, “I had today fully optimized. Color coded and everything. ‘Drive to suspicious fire in hundred degree heat’ was not on the spreadsheet.”
I don’t look away from the window. “What was on the spreadsheet?”
“Paperwork. Lunch at Dot’s, where you’d power through a milkshake in record time and I’d try to convince the owner, yet again, to put a damn salad on the menu.
Followed by a very important two o’clock where I was going to aggressively do nothing for forty-five minutes.
” His fingers drum even harder against the wheel. “I had a system.”
“You always have a system.”
“And yet,” he says, “here we are.”
The asphalt shimmers ahead of us like it’s about to melt. Texas doesn’t ease you into summer. It shoves you full force into a wall so stifling, it’s hard to breathe, then waits to see if you survive it.
I’ve been surviving it my whole life.
Nate, on the other hand, fiddles with the air conditioning…again.
“If we’d taken my car, it’d be a cool seventy-eight degrees right now.” I angle the vent a little higher so it hits my cheeks.
A red light catches us at the next intersection, and then another, the lunch hour traffic working against us at every turn.
Nate taps the brake, eases forward, taps it again.
We don’t talk. Beyond my window, a mattress store’s going out of business sale sign has seen better days.
Unsurprising, as it’s probably been there for ten years.
I roll my head around, my neck cracking more times than I’d like.
A new mattress might help me sleep through the night. I’d never risk that store—I do have standards, after all—but it’d be nice to have a bed that at least pretends to be comfortable at two in the morning when I’m staring at the ceiling. Again.
I don’t remember the last time I had a solid eight hours. Probably kindergarten.
It’s the case load. AJ’s—Chief Stone’s—sabbatical was the right decision for him and his wife, Grace.
They needed to make new memories after she lost all of hers when a sick cult leader calling himself “Prophet” kidnapped her and held her for three fucking years.
All so he could carry out a ceremony designed to bring about the return of some deity he’d invented in a fever dream.
He poisoned and stabbed her, then let her bleed out on a stone altar for his entire flock to see.
And when that wasn’t enough to kill her, Marvin—one of ours, for fuck’s sake—tried to finish the job.
Even thinking about Marvin raises my blood pressure. The asshole was wearing his Ranger star when he kicked Grace in the head, stealing all the memories she had of her life. Her childhood, her parents, AJ…everything.
I stare down at my fingers clutched around the incident report. Burn scars lace the back of my hands. My palms…are worse.
Less than three weeks after Grace came home, the cult—with Marvin’s help—kidnapped her again.
Prophet apparently wanted a “do over” for his goddamn ceremony.
I was in the way, so they took me too. Prophet, deciding I’d be his fifth wife, locked me in a demented sensory deprivation/overload shed he called “the Box” to break me.
We barely survived.
At least in the end, the bus that pancaked Marvin as he was being transferred to a cushy federal prison did the world a favor.
Recovery is still a damn bitch, though. In the past three months, I’ve only carved out a handful of afternoons with Grace—outside of our weekly girls’ nights with Emi and Isabel.
The shiny new Captain badges Nate and I are sporting now come with a shit-ton of paperwork and a whole lot more responsibility.
It’s fine. Totally fine. Except for not sleeping. Much.
The light changes, and Nate eases forward, the Chevy’s pitiful air conditioning trying its best, but losing ground to a stronger foe. Another strip mall—this one a full block long—disappears in the side mirror, and I open the case file again.
“You think there’s gonna be a test?” he asks.
I give him the side-eye.
“Just sayin’. Williamson County deputies wouldn’t know a scantron if one bit ‘em in the ass.” At the next intersection, Nate turns left and snorts. “See? I count two guys—one’s on his phone—and that tape’s gonna be halfway to Killeen before we even get out of the car.”
He’s not wrong. The crime scene tape is attached to the chain link fence by what looks like pure chance, the wind doing its level best to pry it free.
The other end’s looped around the door handle of a Williamson County cruiser.
Not a post. The cruiser. Like that’s going to do a damn bit of good.
If its owner drives off, our perimeter goes too.
The two-story office complex in question probably looked great when it was built ten years ago. Now? It’s a shit show. The second floor’s caved in on the east side, roof open to the sky in half a dozen places, windows blown out, and black char streaming up the exterior walls.
Nate doesn’t cut the engine. Instead, he leans over, pops the glove box, and slides a granola bar from the perfectly organized cubby. “Eat this.”
The bright red wrapper crinkles as it lands in my lap. “Cranberries and cashews? You hate cashews.” He doesn’t respond, and I take a closer look at the bar. “Shit. This expired on Tuesday.”
“Friday’s just Tuesday with a hangover,” he says. “Unless you’re telling me you ate a full breakfast this morning before you showed up at the station.”
I scowl at him. “Don’t give me that attitude. Your spreadsheet had us at Dot’s right about now. Breakfast is a waste when lunch is an overflowing plate of loaded french fries with a milkshake chaser.”
“Parker, eat the damn bar.”
Unwrapping it is easier than arguing with him. I did skip breakfast, and by the time we finish here, I’ll be in a world of hurt without calories.
As soon as he turns the car off, the heat—and the stench of burned insulation, melted plastic, and something chemical—scorches my sinuses. My stomach protests immediately.
“Bet AJ’s lovin’ that chief’s badge right about now,” Nate says as he peels himself out of the driver’s seat.
A deputy pushes off the side of another cruiser and heads our way. Mid-thirties, blond, sunglasses pushed up on his head even though it’s bright as fuck out here.
“Captain Elmore,” I say as I duck under the tape. “That’s Captain Hardison.”
“Fletcher. Fire department cleared out a couple of hours ago. It’s all yours.”
Nate brings the incident report up on his phone. “The medical examiner already take the body?”
Fletcher nods, pulls a notepad from his belt, and flips it open. “Yup. Male. Jerry Hollis. Fifty-four. Security guard for the property management company. His shift ended at oh-four-hundred. Fire started at oh-five-thirty. No one knows why he was still on site. Died of smoke inhalation.”
I look past the deputy to the shell of the building. “Where was he found?”
“Second floor. East side. Near the collapsed section.” Fletcher shoves the notebook back into his pocket. “Let me know when you’re done so I can get the hell outta here. It’s hot enough to melt pavement.”
Nate is already rummaging around in his trunk. Hard hats, safety glasses, N-95 respirators, gloves, and two Tyvek suits.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I shake my head with a glare. “We’re not diggin’ for buried treasure in there. It’s hotter than the devil’s tits already. I’ll combust inside that suit.”
He looks me up and down, his gaze lingering on my dusty boots. “My car has a zero-tolerance policy for soot, and I enforce it aggressively. If I find a single smudge on the upholstery, you’re paying for a full detail plus emotional damages.”
With a huff, I reach into his bag and pull out a pair of white booties. “Fine. I’m good for it.”
Once he’s in full gear, and we both have flashlights in hand, I follow him under the tape.
We enter through what used to be a lobby.
The smell is so much worse inside. The sharp, chemical stench clings to the back of my throat.
The ceiling is still intact, but smoke damage coats every surface in a thick, dark gray film.
Parts of the drywall are cracked from the heat, and the reception desk is nothing but a charred skeleton.
Nate’s already taking photos, the small camera clicking steadily as he moves through the space. “Get the boot prints,” I call. “Probably from the fire crew, but we’ll need to rule them out.”
“Yup.” He’s on it, and I venture deeper down the corridor.
No one tells you how dark a building can get after a fire.
No power, windows covered in soot and debris, but our flashlights cut wide arcs through the inky void.
It’s mainly offices back here, the doors wide open.
A few desks still have photos or coffee mugs intact.
Others are nothing but ash. Fire isn’t always predictable.
One office catches my eye. The smoke damage stops halfway down the wall—a clean line where something tall blocked the heat.
A bookshelf, maybe. Now, it’s just pieces of blackened wood in a pile on the floor.
I step over the remains of a desk chair, shining the light on the unburned patch of drywall. Corporate beige.
“Got something,” Nate says from behind me.