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“Seeing you on the ground,” he said in a choked voice, “the blood.” He reared back. His eyes burned into hers. “Can you forgive me?”
“I told you, there’s nothing to forgive.”
“If I hadn’t been fighting with Ash, I would have noticed the bastard and could have—”
She pressed a finger against his lips. “There’s only one person at fault for what happened to me, and that’s not you.”
“I’m going to track him down and make him pay with a thousand lifetimes of pain.”
The ferocity of his vow and the promise in his eyes made her heart topple over into his hands. She loved this big, beautiful man. Probably had, from the moment she saw him sitting alone, staring at his glowing birthday cake.
Her finger traced a path over his full bottom lip, and he drew the tip into his mouth.
A place deep in her core quaked with need. In a voice barely above a whisper, she said, “A relationship with me comes with an insta-family, with all its lumpy richness. Then there’s my job and yours. They’ll likely have a head-on collision at some point.”
She tried to smile, tried to show him that despite the numerous challenges, she still chose him. Chose to do everything she could to make this exciting, terrifying thing work between them.
But the smile never bloomed and persuasive words clogged in her throat like matted, wet hair in a drainpipe.
He raised a hand and smoothed it along her arm until it enfolded her hand still cradling his face. He lifted it a fraction of an inch, kissing each fingertip, one by one.
Liv’s phone rang and she reluctantly lifted it to her ear. “Olivia Westcott.”
“Special Agent Westcott,” a low baritone voice crooned.
Something in the man’s tone dried the smile on her face. She checked her phone’s display and realized the caller wasn’t someone from her contacts. “Who is this?”
“How’s your head and shoulder? Do they burn with pain?”
Liv’s eyes flared, and she quickly hit the Speaker button. In the caller’s background, a door slammed.
“I hope so,” he continued in a hard voice. Footsteps crunched against gravel. “I hope you feel the bone-deep agony of someone stabbing you in the back. As I did.”
“Jeremy Jackson?” Liv ventured.
He ignored her, bent on spewing his vile message. “You shouldn’t have stuck your nose in men’s business, Oliv—” The signal broke off. “—going to like what comes next.”
“What are you talking about? Who is this?”
A long silence, then a muffled woman’s voice. “Fifteen dollars.”
More voices. Dozens. Some talking, some yelling, some laughing.
“I promis—” Another signal break. “—a loss for a loss, Olivia. It’s time I kept it.”
A child screeched. Then another. And another.
Water splashed.
“But unlike you, I won’t steal away those you lov—” Dead air for two breath-stealing seconds. “—last look.”
Her phone chimed, indicating a new text.
“Goodbye, Olivia—” Liv’s eyes burned as she stared at the call’s seconds ticking by on her screen. Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five. “—rot in a puddle of your own misery.”
The line went dead, and Liv tapped over to her text messages, knowing before she opened it what nightmare awaited her, but unable to stop herself from sinking deeper into the darkness.
“Zeke…” she said in a voice that sounded nothing like her own.
His warm hand grasped the back of her neck as he leaned in.
The message held a single image. No words. She tapped the jpeg and stretched two fingers across the image to blow it up.
There, at the end of a long orange slide, Brodie climbed a ladder out of the water. A smile as big as a moon on his sweet, unsuspecting face.
