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Hanna ignored him, instead turning her attention back to Niccolo and the man on the phone. “Magnus Ralston Junior was a televangelist who kept ministry at the top of the hill in town.” Her words turned bitter. “He was a hateful, fearmongering monster. For years, the old sheriff believed he was laundering money through the church.”

Ash sighed. “Like father like daughter.”

Hanna shook her head. “Ralston Junior was bad. Ralston III, Ash, he is so much worse. I don’t think this is about laundering money, at least, not only about that.”

“What is this exactly?” Niccolo asked.

“Right.” Hanna took a deep breath. “Grace’s husband is one of the major powerbrokers in the church. He has a lot of money from his work in oil and real estate, and that money is helping fund some of Ralston’s more…focused missions.”

“I don’t love the sound of that,” Jinx muttered from the phone.

Hanna nodded. “And you shouldn’t. Grace told me she had information that could get the church in a lot of trouble. And not tax audit trouble, either. Problem was…she was scared shitless of her husband.”

“So, you got her out?” Niccolo prompted.

“I did,” Hanna replied. “I set her up at a local safehouse and was discussing her transfer with the local FBI field office.”

She looked down at the coffee in her hands. The milk made small swirls that had her stomach spinning. “She kept the information, as leverage. She was going to hand it all over once she was safely away from Iverson and Ralston. But…”

“But someone broke into the safe house,” Ash filled in for her.

Hanna bit her lip, welcoming the sharp pain that meant she was still alive, and still able to help. “The only people who knew about Grace’s location were in my office. And now, Grace is missing, the evidence is missing, and I have a deputy holed up in the ICU with a stab wound fighting for his life. And…I don’t know who to trust.”

Ash gave her the first real smile she’d seen from him all night, and it transformed his face, making him look young and full of vitality, hinting at the funny boy he’d once been. He placed his hand on hers, and the touch was warm, familiar—comforting in a way it had no right to be.

“You can trust us, Han. I promise.”

Niccolo nodded, and the intense expression in his eyes made it feel like he could see too much, could read her inner most thoughts at the moments when she most wanted to keep them hidden.

“We’ve got your back. For as long as you need cover.”

And somehow, the words felt at once reassuring and dangerous for a totally different reason.

Chapter Three

“I’ll give five to ten that they slept together.”

Nicco shook his head, grateful Jinx couldn’t see his face over the comm line as he sat parked a block away from Bryce Iverson’s office. “No bet.”

“No bet because you think it’s gross or because you think I’m right?”

“Both,” Nicco muttered. “And because Ash’s comm is open and he can definitely hear you.”

Nicco could practically hear Jinx’s grin on the other end of the line. “He could place a ringer bet for sure.”

“Double the odds.” Ash’s voice came over the comms, and despite himself, Nicco’s lips twitched in the near approximation of a smile. Seeing Ash the night before, jittery and irritable from the moment he’d gotten the sheriff’s phone call, had been like looking back in time, at the young, angry boy Ash had been when they’d met. Nicco knew how hard his sergeant worked for what seemed like easy smiles, but there had been a darkness pulling him back in, anger and heat and…

Something else, when it came to Sheriff Hanna Van Rijn.

Another time and another place and he might have poked at the bruised skin of his theory, even teased Ash about it the way Jinx was doing now, but Nicco’s own darkness wasn’t a house on a cul-de-sac miles from the compound they now called home. It was the leather jacket he wore riding on cold winter nights, a shadow that never left the corners of his eyes, weighted and heavy and always, always close.

“What do we know about Iverson?” Nicco asked. In the last year, he’d gripped onto whatever could keep his head above water, and it turned out trying to save other people was a hell of a way to forget about saving yourself.

“Iverson is definitely a snake,” Jinx replied, typing away on the other end of the phone. “He grew up rich—private schools, expensive sports, the whole nine. Got his MBA and went into the family business.”

“What’s the family business?” Nicco asked.

“Oil,” Ash said before Jinx could reply. “And real estate, too, but most of the Iverson fortune comes from oil. He was a few years older than me growing up, but everyone knew the Iverson family.”