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PROLOGUE
The phone ringing in the middle of the night wasn’t new to Detective Colson Ryder.
Crime didn’t keep banking hours.
He rolled onto his back with a groan, smacked blindly at the nightstand, then dragged the phone closer until the glow burned his eyes. The number on the screen snapped him fully awake.
Durham PD. But not the normal number that called him. Not dispatch, not his partner.
He swiped to answer. “Yeah,” he said, his voice thick with sleep.
“Is this Colson Ryder?”
“Yeah.” He pushed himself upright and flicked on the lamp.
“Your father has been in a motor vehicle accident. He’s being transported to the hospital. It’s critical. You were listed as his emergency contact.”
“Fuck.” He swung his legs over the bed. “I’m on my way.”
“You should be aware that there were signs of alcohol. He may have lost control or fallen asleep. The vehicle rolled down an embankment. If a witness hadn’t seen it—”
“Was he alone?” he interrupted, already shoving his jeans on, the phone tossed onto the mattress, speaker on.
“Yes.”
At least he hadn’t taken anyone else with him.
“I’ll be there,” he said and ended the call. Grabbing a shirt and yanking it over his head, he shoved his feet barefoot into sneakers, grabbed his keys and was out of his apartment door as if muscle memory kicked in anytime he got a call in the middle of the night.
The drive was a blur of red lights and clenched teeth, his hands locked too tight on the wheel, his fingers cramping but him refusing to give in to letting go.
He didn’t pray and he sure as hell wasn’t starting now.
It wouldn’t make a difference. Not that it ever did.
He flashed his badge at the ER desk. “I’m looking for Robert Ryder.”
They didn’t hesitate. That alone told him everything.
He rounded the corner and stopped cold.
His father lay on the bed broken, bloodied, unrecognizable beneath tubes and hands and frantic motion. Chest compressions. A bag squeezing air into lungs that didn’t want to cooperate. Blood smeared across sheets and bones bent in all the wrong directions.
The heart monitor screamed one long, flat sound furious enough to tell him nothing was going to change it.
A nurse caught his arm and gave him a gentle tug. “You shouldn’t be here.”
He lifted his badge on instinct, but she saw his face. The shock. The crack running straight through him.
This was different. This wasn’t a case. This was collateral damage.
This was his life changing before his eyes.
The harder they worked, the more obvious it became. Nothing was going to be enough.
“Time of death—”
The words landed heavy and with finality around the room. All activity halted and people stood back.
