Sunday, August 1, 7:00 p.m.

Jess should never have allowed Dan to talk her into this.

Dan. She glanced at the man driving. When they were off duty and she wasn’t mad at him, using his first name was automatic. Instinct.

Funny how those little habits just sort of crept up on a person.

He’d been so sweet yesterday morning. She’d fallen asleep five minutes after they got to her place. He’d covered her up and settled in the chair in her room and gotten some shut-eye himself. He’d stayed with her all morning. Brought breakfast from the Waffle House down the street and run a fresh bath for her before leaving.

He’d left without even a kiss.

On some level she had appreciated his sensitivity but then… she’d wondered. Were he and Annette growing closer? Finally Jess had let it go and just decided to enjoy the weekend.

“Did you and Wells see anything you liked today?”

“She can’t make up her mind if she wants a condo or a house.” Jess pulled down the sun visor and checked her reflection in the lighted mirror for the third time. They were almost there.

Maybe she should have bought something new to wear. But this old sleeveless A-line had two things going for it. The pale turquoise color was her favorite, and the cummerbund-like pleated waistline that flowed down into a form-hugging skirt hit just the right spot three inches above her knees. She’d had the thing at least ten years.

She flipped up the visor. Why in the world had she agreed to have dinner with his parents?

Didn’t matter. It was too late for second thoughts now.

“What about you?” he prodded. “Nothing you toured struck your fancy?”

Ten houses and six condos. She and Lori had spent the entire day with a Realtor who understood Jess could not live on the same street with her sister. That was simply impossible.

She also could not live anywhere near Dan’s neighborhood. Or his parents’. Or Annette Denton’s.

The price had to be as low as possible and well… that was it, she supposed. She had no other requirements.

“They were all in my price range. My preferred neighborhoods. But nothing that made me want to make an offer that probably wouldn’t be accepted.” Most sellers hated when contingencies were added to an offer. But, in her case, there was no choice. Her ability to purchase hinged on selling the house in Stafford.

“You’ll know it when you see it.” He slowed for the turn into his parents’ drive.

Jess cringed. How would she get through the next two hours without doing or saying something she would regret? Really, it didn’t matter what she said or did. Katherine would make something of it.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this.” Her pulse rate had escalated considerably since he put the Mercedes in park.

“Because”—he turned to Jess and smiled patiently as the interior light faded—“the Chandlers are dear friends of my mother and she wants to show her gratitude to you for not giving up on finding the truth.”

Jess exhaled a big breath, wishing the tension could be so easily expelled. “She could have gone the Hallmark route. I love those cute little cards.” God, she did not want to do this. Dan got out and walked around to her side of the vehicle. She considered making a run for it when he opened the door.

“The deputy chief,” Dan said as he waited for her to unfasten her seat belt and climb out of the car, “who allegedly told Salvadore Lopez that she didn’t care whether she took him dead or alive is afraid of my little old mother? Come on now.”

Jess unfastened the seat belt and did what she had to do. When she was on the ground and the door was closed, blocking her escape back into the vehicle, she eyed Daniel Burnett with blatant speculation. “Remind me to remind Harper that he isn’t allowed to talk out of school. And your mother is far scarier than any gangbanger I have ever encountered.”

Dan laughed good-naturedly. “How is that possible, Jess?”

She harrumphed as he guided her with his hand at the small of her back toward the front door. “That’s easy. With a gangbanger you know where you stand. He wants to kill you before you can kill him. With your mother”—she shot him a sideways glance—“you never know.”

Dan senior greeted them at the door. Katherine waited in the formal living room with a bottle of wine already uncorked. Surprisingly, the house smelled of fried chicken. Had to be something else. Katherine Burnett would never in a million years fry a chicken in her high-end gourmet kitchen.

Stemmed glasses filled with a crisp chardonnay Dan senior had selected just for the occasion were passed around.

Jess resisted the impulse to drink hers down and demand a refill.

Katherine lifted hers. “Thank you, Jess, for helping my friends find the truth in the midst of this horrible tragedy.”

Both Daniels echoed a hear, hear.

A broad smile flashed across Katherine’s wrinkle-free face. Figure that one out.

“To you, Jess,” she offered, “for having the relentless instincts of a coonhound.”

Oh, yes, she was going to need a lot more wine.

When glasses had clinked and all had sipped their wine, Katherine grabbed Jess by the arm. “Let’s eat, dear. I’ve prepared a meal that will remind you of the good old days when you and Lily were just kids.”

Jess snagged the bottle of wine with her free hand before allowing the woman to usher her toward the kitchen. “You don’t say?”

“Fried chicken,” Katherine touted. “Buttery mashed potatoes, green beans, and turnip greens. Dan senior even made corn bread.”

Jess propped a smile in place. “That’s just… incredible.”

Whatever the menu said about Katherine’s opinion of Jess’s lower-middle-class roots, the food was quite tasty. Jess actually hadn’t had fried chicken like that since she was a kid. She would, however, go to her grave believing that Katherine had hired someone to prepare the chicken and deliver it to her kitchen.

In the end it hadn’t really mattered. Three, four, maybe five glasses of wine later and Jess was in a calm and happy place, filled with fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

10:08 p.m.

Jess liked watching the stars go by as Dan drove through the darkness. No matter how long she’d been away, she never forgot the way it felt to rush through the night with him. In high school he’d had a convertible Thunderbird. Between the promise of the night and the sultry summer breeze it had felt like they could do anything.

How in the world had the two of them ended up together during their high school years? He had been Mr. Popular. Captain of the football team. President of his class at the city’s ritziest private school. She had been no one with a capital N-O at public school on the low-rent side of town.

They’d literally bumped into each other at Birmingham’s Central Library. Her books and papers had gone every which way. He had apologized profusely while attempting to gather her things into a manageable armload. She had been totally and completely mesmerized. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off his face.

She’d seen him around at various hangouts of course. But not up close.

From that moment she had been completely, utterly in love with him. And he had loved her relentlessly. They had been inseparable.

But that was then and this was now.

She studied his profile, the dim glow from the dash giving her just enough illumination to see the details that had captured her heart so totally all those years ago. That strong, square jaw. The straight nose and full lips. More than just classically handsome, he was pretty damned hot. Had been at seventeen and he still was. It was so unfair that men aged so well while women… grew frumpier and crinkly.

Jess turned her attention forward and laughed. Once she started she couldn’t stop. It was just too incredibly hilarious.

When she finally had to catch her breath and swipe her eyes, Dan demanded, “What’s so funny?”

“Your mother.” The giggles started again. A whole minute was required to regain control. “She compared me to a coonhound.” Jess giggled some more. “But at least she didn’t call me fat.” She dissolved into hysterical laughter. There was just no stopping it.

Dan joined her, his deep, smooth laughter filling the space around her, making her feel warm and safe.

Before Jess had composed herself, he’d taken an unexpected turn and was heading in the opposite direction. “Where’re we going?”

“I’m taking you to a special place.”

That he said this with such mystery aroused her curiosity. “What special place? You know I don’t like surprises.” She hated surprises. She’d had a few too many in her life. But the feel-good factor of the wine and the solving of two cases had made her agreeable. Actually it could very well turn out to be three cases, since the Michelle Butler case had been reopened.

“I think you’ll like this surprise.”

Jess sat up straighter and surveyed the landscape. When he took the exit for Thirty-First Street and meandered around to Thirty-Third, she gasped. “You wouldn’t!”

He flashed a grin. “You dare me?”

She dropped back against her seat, still stunned that he would even consider it. “I double-dog dare you.”

True to his word he drove straight into the parking area for Sloss Furnaces. “We could be arrested,” she warned.

“Not if we don’t get caught.”

With all the public tours and television hype around Sloss Furnaces, one of Birmingham’s oldest and most famous historic landmarks, it was a bit more complicated to enter these days. The old iron blast furnaces once used for turning iron ore into steel served as an open-air museum, but the rusting industrial park was best known for its numerous and infamous accounts of hauntings.

Dan easily found a way onto the property. The old smokestacks and slag buckets were a sight to see in the daytime. At night it was the platform atop Furnace One that had always drawn them. They climbed the ladderlike stairs and settled in their favorite old spot.

“Oh my God,” she murmured as she stared at the city from their perch. Emotion swelled in her chest and she fought the tears that threatened. “I used to stare at those tall buildings and all those lights and wonder how Birmingham could be so big when it felt so small and confining to me. When a train would go by and we were up here all alone and away from everything, the sound just sort of went through me. Made me wish I could jump aboard and go with it.”

He was watching her. She shivered. He’d always been able to do that to her.

As if he feared the breeze that had suddenly kicked up had made her shiver, he shouldered out of his jacket and wrapped it around her. His arm lingered on her shoulders and she couldn’t help leaning into him.

“Your top priority was to get away,” he agreed. “I’m glad you’re back. What you did this week was why I became a cop. You didn’t let the absence of evidence or the unclear motives deter you. You refused to give up. We’re lucky to have you on our team.”

She pressed her lips together to stop their trembling. When she could speak without her voice quavering, she responded to his generous compliment. “I just never could quit picking at anything that didn’t feel right to me,” she confessed. “But I feel like there’s a lot more to do. This gang business is out of hand.”

“That story isn’t over yet.”

Jess looked up at him. “Has something else happened?” Salvadore Lopez was in federal custody but refused to talk, while his sister was giving up all she knew on him and her father.

Dan shook his head. “Unrest is brewing in the community. Families like DeShawn Simmons’s and Jerome Frazier’s are sick of the gangs taking over their neighborhoods and the cops seeming to turn their heads the other way. I think we’re in for a war.”

She didn’t doubt it. “People are weary of waiting to be rescued.”

“People are tired of a lot of things, but maybe there’s more we can do about the rescue part.”

That made her smile. “You’re a good guy, Daniel Burnett. Rescuing is what you do best.”

He’d rescued her after her fall at the bureau. That was for sure.

For a long time they just stood there, enjoying the present and remembering the past. How he remembered so much about the crazy things they did she would never understand. Maybe he remembered more because he had been here all this time… home… where they’d made all those memories.

They climbed down the rusty old ladder slowly and found their way back to the parking lot. The traffic on the nearby interstate overpass hummed and vibrated the air as they climbed into his Mercedes.

“You know that buying this vehicle means you’re turning into your parents,” she pointed out. “And that house, too.” She turned in her seat to face him. “Both scream Katherine, Katherine!”

“I bought this vehicle because it’s big and roomy.” He pressed a button and his seat moved back farther from the steering wheel. He pressed another button and it moved forward once more. “It’s comfortable and I just liked it. My mother had nothing to do with it.”

He turned to her then, as if waiting for her rebuttal. In the faint light drifting in from the streetlamps she could see he was looking for her approval. His jaw was shadowed with a long day’s beard growth. She still wore his jacket, so the white shirt was a stark contrast to his skin… his thick black hair and that face. The one that had haunted her dreams for more than two decades. No matter how far she ran or how hard she tried to forget.

“Push that first button again,” she whispered, her body weak with need.

His seat powered back until it reached maximum distance from the steering wheel.

She moistened her lips and gave him another order. “Take off your belt and unfasten your trousers.”

The ache of need that claimed his face undid her a little more. The hiss of leather sliding through the silk loops lit a fire deep inside her. She kicked off her pumps and climbed across the console, careful of the still-healing injury on his side from last week’s encounter with the Player. He scooted her dress up her thighs and she reached down and felt for him.

He growled with desire when his fingers found her bare bottom. “Do you always go out to dinner without wearing panties?”

“Shut up. I need to do laundry. I didn’t have any clean that wouldn’t show under this dress.” She made a desperate sound as her fingers wrapped around him and guided him to the right spot. Then she eased downward, all thought ceasing as the explosion of sensations filled her mind and body.

He caressed her bottom while she moved in that natural rhythm that had them both rushing toward climax. She ripped open his shirt so she could touch him. The place where the knife had dug in terrifyingly deep… his chest… his face. She wanted to touch all of him and she did not want to close her eyes. She watched. Watched as he unraveled. Watched until passion caught them both in that final incredible burst of pleasure. He pulled her mouth down to his and he kissed her like he had never kissed her before… like this might be the last time he would have that opportunity.

And then he held her there until they had both stopped gasping for breath. Afterward he whispered the sweetest words to her. “I’m taking you home and I’m keeping you at least for the night.”

Every part of her still throbbed with pleasure. His taste had melted in her mouth like the chocolate she loved so. If she could smell nothing for the rest of her life except his skin, that would be enough. Right now, this minute, if she died, she would die more physically satisfied than she had ever been in her entire life.

“What if I don’t want to go to your house?” She licked his jaw just to taste him again.

“What’s wrong with my house?” He groaned as she wiggled her bottom.

“That’s your chief of police house. I’d rather go to my place.”

He laughed. “This is my chief of police car and that didn’t stop you from seducing me.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “I so did not seduce you. You brought me here and gave me your jacket and looked at me the way you looked at me…” She sighed. “And I was besotted and lost my mind for a few minutes.”

He was the one laughing now. The way the sound vibrated in his chest made her breasts tingle. “Okay.” He reached up and traced her cheek with his fingertips. “We’ll go wherever you want.”

“Good answer.” She climbed back across the console, pulling her dress beneath her bottom as she went.

The silence felt good as he drove. She sat with her legs curled under her and her face pointed at him so she could just look. His shirt was ripped open. His trousers hastily fastened. The fancy Mercedes smelled of hot sex. She smiled. The night hadn’t turned out so bad after all.

“If you don’t stop looking at me that way,” he threatened, “we’re going to be making another stop before we get to your place.”

She laughed and faced forward. What she needed was a distraction from him. Dragging her bag into her lap, she scraped around the bottom for her cell phone. Inevitably that was where it always ended up.

There shouldn’t be any missed calls, but she had an app for checking local news.

“What the hell?”

Her head snapped up at Dan’s comment and she saw the flashing lights up ahead.

There were cop cars and fire and rescue… all over the parking lot of the Howard Johnson’s she called home.

She grabbed her shoes and yanked them on, then reached for the door latch.

“Stay in the car until I see what’s going on,” Dan ordered.

“Like hell.” She wrenched open the door and bailed out. His jacket floated off her shoulders and landed on the seat.

She reached the official crime scene perimeter before he did. When she glanced back, Dan had tucked his shirttail in and pulled on his jacket to try to camouflage the fact that most of the buttons on his shirt were missing.

“What’s going on here, Officer?” Jess flashed her credentials.

“A couple of the rooms were vandalized. A lot of gunfire but no one was injured. Just a couple of scared residents.” He lifted the yellow tape for her to cross under it. “I heard one of the detectives say it was gang related.”

The officer suddenly snapped to a higher state of attention as Burnett appeared behind her and showed his ID.

Jess’s instincts were screaming. She hurried through the side entrance she always used and past the swimming pool. Cops were swarming around her room and the ones on either side of it.

The cell phone she was still holding vibrated in her hand.

Harper calling.

“Harris.”

“Chief, we have a problem. Where are you?”

She spotted him beyond the open door of her room. “Coming up on your position now, Sergeant.”

He looked up and nodded. “I see you.”

Burnett beat her to the door but allowed her to enter first.

Her room had been torn apart. Her clothes… all of her stuff… was scattered around the room in pieces. The walls were filled with line after line of bullet holes. Anything breakable was shattered.

“It was MS-13, ma’am,” Harper said as she stalled beside him.

“I see that, Sergeant.” Her full attention remained on the wall above her bed where a warning had been left in what appeared to be spray paint.

The RAGE has started.

She slowly turned around, studying the Roman numerals that marked this work as that of MS-13.

Burnett was talking to a crime scene tech and Captain Allen. The crime scene folks had gotten here in a hurry. GTF as well.

Jess focused on the warning written in big red letters. “Do you know if that means something, Sergeant?” She pointed to the word rage.

He nodded, his face grim. “Yes, ma’am. It’s a video game set in a postapocalyptic world where the players have to shoot to kill, and survival in the new world is about kill or be killed because civilization as we know it is over. A lot of gangbangers talk about the end of the world and a total takeover. They thrive on the anger—the rage. That’s how they keep their members motivated.”

“And right now some of them are pretty pissed off at me,” she suggested.

“Looks that way.”

As if a robocall had gone out to the entire department, Harper, Burnett, and Allen all reached for their cell phones. Jess suddenly felt hers vibrate. Lori calling.

“Harris.”

“Jess, have you seen the news?”

“I haven’t.” From the looks of her demolished television set, she wouldn’t be seeing it anytime soon. “What’s going on?”

“That house on Center Street where Lopez’s crew was hanging out just exploded. A group calling themselves the Black Brotherhood has claimed responsibility. I’m reading you the breaking news scroll right off the screen,” Lori explained. “According to Channel Six and Gina Coleman, an anonymous source reported that this is just the beginning. The day of reckoning is at hand.”

Jess pressed her hand to her stomach and stared at the warning over her wrecked bed. “Whoever is behind this just left me a message at the HoJo’s.”

Now where was she going to stay? More importantly, how many lives would be lost if this situation got further out of control?

“Jess, you can stay at my place.”

There was nothing salvageable here; that was for sure. Everything was destroyed.

“Jess, are you there?”

Lori’s voice dragged Jess’s attention back to the phone. “Yeah. I’m here. But I have to go and figure this out.” She ended the call and surveyed her place again.

Even her shoes had been spray-painted or ripped apart.

Burnett moved to her side. She almost laughed at herself. Less than five minutes at a crime scene and she was already calling him Burnett.

“If there’s anything you want to take with you, grab it. I need to get you someplace safe until this is over.”

She felt reasonably confident there would be no safe place for anyone until this was over.

“Jess?”

She froze as her brain assessed and identified the voice. That was impossible. She turned around, certain she was mistaken. He couldn’t be here.

Supervisory Special Agent Wesley Duvall stood just inside the door of her wrecked motel room. Dressed in a stylish charcoal suit, white shirt, and navy tie, and even at this hour there was not a jet-black hair out of place.

He gave her a nod. “I have to hand it to you, Jess. When you decide to shake things up, you don’t hold back.”

“Wesley.” Jess smiled as best she could, considering Burnett was standing beside her, glaring at her ex-husband and she was… stunned. “What’re you doing here?”

He closed the distance between them and gave her a firm hug. He held on to her when he drew back as if he needed to look her over thoroughly. “It sounded to me as if you were in trouble and I came to give you a hand.”

Speaking of hands, Burnett’s hand thrust between them. “Daniel Burnett, chief of police.”

Wesley released Jess to shake the other man’s hand. “We spoke yesterday. I appreciate the heads-up that Jess was safe and sound.”

This was truly… unexpected.

Wesley turned back to her and flashed a warm smile. “I am so pleased to see you. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

Jess wasn’t sure if that was an invitation or a warning, but right now she needed a new home and at least six hours of sleep.

“Well.” She looked from Wesley to Dan and back. “It’s been a long day. I’m certain I’ll see both of you tomorrow.”

Before either man could summon a proper response, Jess walked away. She didn’t know how far she would get before one or both rushed after her, but it felt good to be the one doing the walking.

She needed a ride to Lori’s for the night. Her Audi was still at the lab. Tomorrow was Monday and time to get back to work. A hurricane was brewing in her hometown and she was, it seemed, right in the eye of it.

Wouldn’t be the first time she’d been surrounded by trouble. She doubted it would be the last.

The truly strange part was that she’d just lost basically everything she owned, yet somehow she felt as if she were finally home.

Right on cue she was promptly flanked on either side by six feet of walking, talking testosterone. Perhaps this aspect of the evening was the really strange part. The two most relevant men from her past were abruptly right here, beside her.

One she had alternately loved and hated for half a lifetime… the other she had married.

“We should get you moved to a new hotel,” Dan suggested from his position on her right.

“Don’t you have a safe house?” Wesley countered from her left. “Until this situation is properly assessed, she needs protection.”

Jess shook her head. What she needed was for Sergeant Harper to get her out of here.

As if she’d telegraphed the thought, he appeared. “Ready to go, ma’am? Detective Wells called to say you needed a ride to her place.”

“Absolutely, Sergeant.” Jess looked from one overprotective high-ranking male to the other. “Good night, gentlemen.”

Whatever happened tomorrow, one thing was absolutely certain. It would be undeniably interesting and immensely complicated.

The story of her life.