Reggie clutched her clothes to her chest, trying to cling to something concrete to steady the rapid beat of her heart and the matching jump of her thoughts. But her mind didn’t want to settle. It wanted to bounce around with worry and curiosity. It wanted her to chase after Brayden to make sure he was being as cautious as he said he’d be. And to ask him a hundred questions about the little bit of information he’d just divulged.
Fifteen years.
It was a long time to be following a single case. Or she thought so anyway. Long enough to go cold, for sure. So why was Brayden still following it?
She undid her dress, puzzling it over. And as she slipped on the retrieved jeans, an explanation struck her.
Something personal.
She paused, midzip. Yes, that had to be it. And it seemed obvious now that it occurred to her. What else could make a man chase the same crime for a decade and a half? She didn’t yet know Brayden well enough to hazard a guess as to exactly what it was, but she was confident that he was the kind of person who would see something through, no matter how hard it became. And hadn’t he said as much? Told her just how committed he was?
She dragged the T-shirt over her head, then ran her fingers through her hair, still considering the various angles of her theory.
The personal aspect fit. But she couldn’t picture Brayden going after straight-up revenge. He was too calm. Too logical. He was definitely the kind of man who thought things through. But he was far from cold. Which meant she also couldn’t picture him sitting on a personal case for this many years if his only objective was to make the people on the other end of the crime pay. On top of all of that, he was a police detective, sworn to uphold the law. And the thing she could picture least was him abusing that role in order to get back at someone.
She slid her feet into her shoes, convinced that she was right about his motivation, but unsure what his end goal was. She’d have to ask him. A trade of information—her somewhat-embarrassing romantic history in exchange for his disclosure.
Except you already promised to share, provided he comes back safely.
And yes, that was definitely more valuable than hearing what prompted him to chase an old case to Whispering Woods.
“Already taking too long,” she grumbled at the closed door.
She wanted to push it open an inch or two so she could see him. Just enough to reassure herself that he was fine. But before she could truly consider doing it, a wordless holler—Brayden’s voice, she was sure—from outside made her jump back. Then came a crash, which made her shiver with fear, and the thump of receding footsteps, which made her freeze. Finally, a pain-filled groan carried through the wood walls, spurring her to move.
She shoved open the door and almost tripped over Brayden’s wide form, which lay sprawled out at her feet. Drawing a startled breath, she managed to stumble past him instead of onto him. But she immediately dropped to her knees anyway, placing a hand on his face as he blinked up at her groggily. Her heart slowed only marginally when he spoke.
“Reggie?”
“Yes. Right here.”
“You’re all right?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s my line.”
He pushed up to a sitting position. “Got clocked pretty good in the back of the head. Hurts a bit. Otherwise I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Just startled.”
“Startled? That’s what you call getting hit in the head?”
“Speaking of which...” He trailed off, sat up a little straighter and swept the space with a heavy-lidded stare.
“I think whoever it was, they’re gone,” Reggie said. “I heard someone running away.”
His shoulders dropped. “Scared ’em off with my incredible collapsing-man act.”
“It’s not funny.”
“I know.” He smiled anyway, then immediately winced and put a hand on the back of his head. “Give me a hand up?”
“Do you think you should be standing?”
“I think we should get out of sight.”
“That didn’t work out so well last time,” she pointed out.
“Now who’s funny?” he replied, holding out his hand. “Pull.”
She closed her fingers around his, feeling immediate relief at how solid and warm and safe they were. She gave a little tug, and he came up easily. Thankfully, he didn’t sway or show any other signs of dizziness as he stood. But he did tuck an arm firmly over her shoulders and pull her close.
“C’mon,” he said.
“Where to?”
He nodded across the yard. “The guy that hit me came from inside that house right there.”
Reggie followed the nod. “The one missing half its roof?”
“Yep.”
“And you want to go inside? Putting aside the fact that it’s falling apart and probably not even close to safe...what if there’s someone else there?”
“They would’ve come out by now. Taken advantage of me while I was down. Besides that. If he left someone behind, he’d have taken the time to close the door.”
“Okay. I’m trusting your expertise. But if we get jumped, don’t be surprised when I use you as a human shield.”
Brayden pulled her a little tighter and started up the grass toward the house. “Trust me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He sounded serious enough that her next breath burned. She didn’t want him to be a human shield for her. Not really. But there was something overwhelmingly romantic about knowing he’d be willing to do it. And something scary, too.
She started to take back her comment, but stopped as they reached the door and she spotted what was inside. The living room, which was adjacent to the entryway, had been converted into a studio apartment amid the mold-stained floor and chunks of broken drywall. A tarp hung on an angle over the spot exposed by the roof. A mattress had been pushed against one wall, while a hot plate and a set of dishes sat against another. A bowl of food—stale looking, but not yet rotten—sat atop a TV tray. The floor on the other side of the room, which presumably led to where the bedrooms once were, was a dilapidated mess.
Reggie swallowed. “Someone’s living here?”
Brayden’s reply was grim. “So much for the lack of vagrancy.”
“I don’t even want to look around. It’s...” She trailed off, unable to find a suitable word for the squalor in front of her.
Brayden filled in a few descriptors for her as he slid his arm free. “Dirty, dangerous and depressing.”
“Yes. That.”
“Hang tight here for a second, then,” he said.
“You’re really going all the way in?”
“Halfway there already. Might as well see if there’s anything worth checking out.”
“Okay. Just be careful. Again.”
“I will.”
He gave her a quick kiss, then stepped farther into the room. Fighting a need to drag him back, Reggie watched as he made quick work of examining the room. He lifted the mattress and checked underneath. He examined the accessible corners, checked under the scant few pieces of furniture and dumped out a small bag of rumpled clothes. When he was done, he turned back her way with a disappointed look on his face.
“Nothing?” she said.
“Just the impression that for a little guy, my head basher likes big T-shirts.”
“Which doesn’t help, I guess?”
“Nope. No other hint of who’s staying here. Or why.”
But as he crossed the floor, he paused. He stopped and took a step back. Then bounced in place. And smiled.
Reggie leaned forward, curiosity outweighing her nerves as she tried to see what he was up to. “What is it?”
He rocked a heel. “A loose floorboard.”
“Aren’t they all loose? The place is falling apart.”
“Not like this.” He bent down, lifted the wood in question and shot her a triumphant look right before digging in to the space. “Definitely something hidden here. Feels like paper. Aha. Yep. Newspaper clippings and some photos.”
He held them up, scanning them as he did. Then he frowned, and his face went whiter than she’d seen it.
Reggie felt her own heart skip a beat in response to his expression. “What’s wrong?”
He breathed out heavily. “Do you know the name Tyler Strange?”
“Yes. Everyone does. He was the tourist who was accused of lighting a pipe bomb on Main Street quite a few years ago. I don’t remember much about it, to be honest. But I do know that the bomb started a fire that destroyed a coffee shop and shut down the whole strip for almost a month. Why?”
“Have a look at this.”
He held out the little stack of paperwork, and she flipped through them. The newspaper articles were local. Old and faded and all related to the fire and investigation. The one on the bottom featured a photo of Tyler himself, standing outside the police station. Reggie squinted down at the picture. The man was big and brawny, his clothes disheveled and his hair wild. He looked like the kind of person that would make someone cross the street in order to avoid contact with him.
With a little shiver, she handed the articles back to Brayden. “He was never charged, though. Something went wrong at the last second. Some technicality, maybe?”
“Not a technicality. Lack of evidence,” Brayden corrected. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here. If we wait much longer, your alien-paranoid friend will call in the cavalry. I’ll walk you all the way there.”
“I don’t under—wait. You’re walking me to the fair?”
He nodded. “Don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before that I could do it. Five minutes, you said?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. I’ll take you to the edge and make sure no one sees me, then I’ll come back on my own and we’ll carry on with the rest of the plan.”
“What about Tyler Strange?”
“To start with... I think this might be his hideout.” He met her eyes. “And that little explosion of his? It’s the reason we found Whispering Woods in the first place. I’ll explain once we’re moving.”
* * *
Brayden ran his free hand over his hair and squeezed Reggie’s palm with the other. He wasn’t certain if the latter move was for her comfort or for his. The fact that the person who’d hit him had run off made him think the guy wasn’t after a confrontation, but it wasn’t a guarantee. Either way, it felt good to keep their fingers locked together. It was somehow even more reassuring than the fact that he had his weapon tucked back in place at his side.
But neither the close contact nor the gun helped him shake his nerves completely. He remained on high alert, scanning the path in front of them, then around and behind them every few seconds as he delivered the explanation he promised.
“This thing with the pipe bombs goes back a lot further than Tyler Strange and Main Street,” he said. “In fact, my team and I have been tracking similar bombings for as long as we’ve been with the force. Looking for one that fit. Do you remember the Freemont City bombing, fifteen years ago?”
“At the police station?”
“That’s the one.”
“Yes. Vaguely. I mean, I was a kid, but it was still pretty big news. Some people actually died, didn’t they?”
Some people.
Even though she’d said it in an appropriately respectful tone, it still sounded far too generic. Far too casual. It made Brayden have to forcibly push past as stab of grief that threatened to derail his ability to speak impartially.
“Yes,” he made himself say. “Three officers. They were all working in the evidence room at the time, which is where the explosion occurred. They’d been on a case together and had some kind of breakthrough, but everything they’d gathered was destroyed in the subsequent fire.”
Reggie frowned. “And you think Tyler Strange had something to do with it? He would’ve been a kid at the time, too. I think he’s only a year or so older than I am.”
He shook his head. “No. I know for a fact that he didn’t bomb the station, and I’m reasonably sure he didn’t bomb Main Street here in Whispering Woods, either. But that’s exactly what we’ve been looking for. An MO that matches the Freemont incident but that doesn’t fit with the suspect.”
“And those are the leads you’ve been chasing? You think the original bomber is somewhere in Whispering Woods.”
“Yep. Until now, none of the clues have ever turned out to be anything related to our case. But Tyler...even though he was never formally charged, he did spend an awfully long time in police custody. But after they released him, he disappeared. The official story is that there wasn’t enough evidence to put him away. I don’t think that’s true.”
“So you think he’d come back now?”
“I don’t know.” He paused, hesitant to tell her what their working theory had been.
She figured it out on her own anyway, before he could come up with a way to put it gently.
“You thought he was dead,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “There was a best-case scenario, where Tyler was wrongfully accused, was let go, then took off because it was in his own best interest. But the worst-case scenario just seemed more likely.”
“And that worst case was that Tyler witnessed the Main Street explosion, and whoever was actually behind it made sure he didn’t tell anyone else.”
“Exactly.”
“But if he wasn’t killed, and he came back to Whispering Woods now...”
“Then I need to figure out why, in order for us to move on with our case,” he said. “It has to be connected.”
She drew in a breath, then went quiet for a few moments before speaking again, and when she did, it was slightly off-topic. “You keep talking about your team and saying we and our. Where are they?”
“Back home in Freemont,” he told her.
“They made you come in alone?”
“I guess you could say I’m the scout. Far less obvious to send in a lone wolf than a whole team. And even if that weren’t true, some of the guys are a bit more temperamental than I am. I nominated myself as their slow-and-steady man.”
“I guess that makes sense.” She sighed. “Can I ask you something else? Something personal?”
“Sure.”
“Is this personal?”
Out of habit, he went for a deflection. He paused in their walk, tugged her to face him and smiled down at her.
“Doesn’t it feel personal?” he teased.
She blushed prettily, but she didn’t let it go. “The case, I mean.”
Brayden cleared his suddenly itchy throat and powered through the truth. “Yeah, sweetheart, it’s personal.”
“Revenge?”
“Justice,” he corrected.
“What’s the difference?”
“It’s a fine line. But revenge is about anger. About emotion.”
“And you aren’t angry or emotional?”
“I am,” he admitted. “But more at the way the system worked—or didn’t work, I guess—and how it let a crime go unpunished. And obviously I’m not trying to take revenge on the system, either. If I were, I wouldn’t have joined law enforcement. I became a cop because I saw a gap in the way justice was carried out. I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again. Someone got away with murder, and I don’t think there’s much more injustice out there than that. But I’m not trying to dole out punishment on my own. I’m just trying to see things put right. Which is what should’ve happened in the first place.”
“You mean the Freemont bombing?”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes for a second before continuing. “I was a kid, too, when that bomb went off at the station. And my dad was one of the cops in that evidence room.”
Reggie’s eyes filled with sadness, and that was the only warning he had before she pushed to her tiptoes and threw her arms around him in a tight hug. For a long second, he stayed rigid. He wasn’t accustomed to letting anyone get behind this particular, carefully crafted shield. But somehow, he’d already revealed more to Reggie Frost about his personal and professional life than he had to anyone in years. Possibly ever, if he wasn’t counting those who were directly affected by the bombing.
And you’ve known her for all of five minutes.
But the time frame seemed irrelevant as his shoulders dropped and he lifted his arms to return her warm show of understanding.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Brayden,” she said.
He could tell her words were more than just an empty expression of sympathy, and he swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Me, too.”
“I know what it’s like to lose a parent,” she admitted softly. “My mom died almost ten years ago, too. Cancer.”
He felt a thread of mutual loss form between them, cementing into an unseen bond. “Sorry to hear that, sweetheart.”
“Thanks.” She exhaled a shaky breath.
“Life’s not fair sometimes,” he replied gruffly. “Losing my dad was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through.”
“Another good reason to make sure nothing like this happens again.”
“Exactly.”
With a sigh, Brayden pressed his chin to the top of Reggie’s head, and mentally tested out the waters of the unusual instability in his emotions. His care and caution were still there under the surface. But rising above that, he had to admit to a stronger, wilder pull—an urge to plunge headlong into...something. He wasn’t sure what it was going to be. He just knew it was risky and unlike him.
So why do I want to say even more?
The only thing that stopped him from actually doing it was a sudden chime of his cell phone in his pocket.
“Should you get that?” Reggie asked into his chest.
“Probably.”
“Okay.” She squeezed him once more, then backed up.
When he pulled the phone out, though, the text message wasn’t for him at all. Not directly anyway.
I can see u, u giant liar, it read.
Stifling a laugh, Brayden held the phone out to Reggie. “Here, I think this is for you.”
“What?” Her puzzlement turned to a groan as she scanned the message. “Seriously, Jaz?”
He followed her gaze as she lifted her eyes to the seemingly empty horizon. They’d left behind the abandoned street and made their way through a series of overgrown paths that led to a thick row of trimmed hedges that blocked out whatever was on the other side. He couldn’t see Reggie’s friend, or even a hint of where she might be.
“Where is she?” he muttered.
“Probably in one of those bushes with her binoculars,” Reggie replied.
Unable to decide if he should smile or frown, Brayden asked, “Your best friend is some kind of spy?”
She made a face. “Actually, there’s a park on the other side of the hedge. If we take fifty more steps, you’ll be able to hear the kids playing. The town square is one street over.”
The phone chimed again.
“What’s she saying now?”
Reggie glanced back down. “She says that you’re definitely a man, that my pants are practically on fire and that we should get a room.”
The smile won out. “I can’t say I disagree. Well. Except for the fiery-pants part.”
“Yeah, you two should get along great,” she grumbled. “Shouldn’t you be worrying about our cover being blown instead of laughing about it?”
“It was your idea to keep our meeting a secret,” he reminded her.
“Because we don’t want Chuck to know.”
“It only matters if Chuck thinks we’ve got something to hide. My cover’s still good. And this’ll give you and your friend something to gossip about while you’re painting all those little faces.”
“Is that what you think we like to do? Gossip about questionable manhood?”
“Questionable?”
He grabbed her by her elbows and tipped his mouth to hers. He started out slow, tugging on her bottom lip with his teeth, then sucking it until a gasp escaped Reggie’s mouth. Next, he moved to the top lip, this time tracing it with his tongue. He slipped his arms around her waist and pressed his palms to the small of her back, dragging her flush against his own body.
In her hands, his cell phone went crazy, chiming on repeat. He still didn’t let her go. Instead, he kissed her even harder. Even more thoroughly. He could feel the sharp thud of her heart and the quick, unsteady inhales and exhales that drove her chest into his.
His cell phone dropped to the ground with a clatter.
He still didn’t stop. He dragged one of his hands up again, pushing it along the length of her spine. With the other, her clasped her hip and squeezed possessively. He kissed her once more, then pulled away slowly and raised an eyebrow down at her flushed face.
“How about now?”
“Okay,” she breathed. “Not questionable.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He slid his hands down her arms, then bent to grab the phone from the ground. He eyed the screen and smiled.
“Your friend says—and I quote—‘O. M. G.’ About ten times.”
“Of course she does.”
“C’mon. You can introduce us.”
“Great.” Her one-word reply was heavy on the sarcasm.
“It’ll be fine.” Chuckling at the dubious look on her face, he threaded their fingers together. “You’ll see.”
“And then what?” she wanted to know. “What are you going to do while we ‘gossip’?”
Brayden’s amusement slipped away, but he kept his tone light. “I’m going to eat cotton candy.”
“If you get hurt while I’m painting faces...”
“I won’t,” he promised. “I still need to hear that sob story of yours, remember?”
One corner of her mouth tipped up. “Right. Something to look forward to.”
“So far...every second I’ve spent with you has been something to look forward to,” he said, then pulled her toward the row of hedges.