Chapter 31
Special Agent Tessa Quinn — Evening, Next Day
Tessa hadn’t seen Scout all day.
He’d been out chasing leads—Sinclair, Keller, campus security—while she worked the timelines with Burke and dug through Lauren and Sara’s notes.
None of it touched the silence between her and Scout. Their messages stayed clipped. Case only.
By the time she turned onto Black Bear Ridge, the sun was gone. The road wound higher along the mountain, GPS dropping to nothing, the ridge itself doing the guiding—switchbacks, a stand of hemlock, a mailbox with numbers hand-stenciled in white.
Wilson.
She parked beside a mud-splashed F-150 and shut off the engine.
What if she’d misread everything? What if this ruined what little was left?
She got out anyway.
The cabin sat back from the road, tucked into laurel and rock. Rough-hewn logs. A deep porch. Old boots by the door. Warm light spilled from the windows. Inside, a record crackled—Otis Redding, “These Arms of Mine.”She climbed the steps and knocked.
The door opened. Scout stood there in a gray T-shirt and worn jeans, sleeves pushed up, a gun-cleaning mat spread across the coffee table behind him. His rifle lay open—bolt removed, oil rag folded. Football highlights flickered silently above the fireplace.
He blinked once. “Agent Quinn.”
“Deputy.”
They held each other’s gaze a beat longer than necessary. Then he stepped aside.
“Come in.”
Heat brushed her face as she stepped through. The faint scent of gun oil hung in the air. The place was what she’d pictured: solid furniture, clean but not fussy, books stacked where a man actually read them. Photos lined the mantel.
She held up the manila folder. “Got something.”
He nodded toward the table. “Set it there.”
A beat.
“Beer?”
“Yes,” she said, too quickly.
He opened two, handed her one. She took a pull and laid out the first printout.
“Country Road Farms Nursery he followed, the kiss turning wild and devastating.
Her hands slid up, threading into his hair, holding him there. His groan rumbled against her mouth, low and involuntary. His grip tightened at her waist, thumbs pressing into the heat of her through her shirt, holding her like he wasn’t letting go again.
The room narrowed to breath and heartbeat and the solid weight of him over her.
They stayed like that, foreheads pressed, breaths colliding, heat simmering between them, neither daring to move first.
“Tess,” he rasped, breath unsteady, “if we go any further right now, I won’t be able to stop.”
She let her forehead rest against his, voice shaking but sure.
“I know.”
Her fingers were still in his hair. His hand was still at her waist, thumb moving once—almost a stroke, almost a surrender—before he made himself still.
They stayed there, breathing the same air, the storm between them finally breaking.
After a long moment, she eased back, palms sliding down his chest.
“We have to be able to walk into that bullpen tomorrow and still do the job,” she said quietly.
He huffed out something like a laugh. “Yeah. That.”
She straightened her shirt, he stepped back, and the space between them felt different now—charged, but honest.
“Text me when you get home,” he said.
“I will.”
At the door, she hesitated, looked back once.
“This wasn’t a mistake,” she said.
“No. It wasn’t.” His gaze held hers. “Not for me.”
She left him standing there, the echo of her mouth still on his, and headed down off the ridge into the dark.
Tomorrow they’d walk into the station like nothing had changed.
But everything had.