The sun rose above the tree line, turning frosted tips of grass to glittering diamonds as I swung my SUV off the side of the road. I ignored the rat-a-tat of my heart, the sweaty palms, the tightness in my chest.
Most of Knockemout would still be in their beds. In general, we were more a town of late-night drinkers than early risers. Which meant the odds of running into someone out here at this time were low.
I didn’t need the whole town talking about how Chief Morgan got himself shot and then lost his damn mind trying to find his damn memory.
Knox and Lucian would get involved, sticking their civilian noses in where they didn’t belong. Naomi would cast sympathetic glances my way while she and her parents smothered me with food and fresh laundry. Liza J would pretend nothing had happened, which, as a Morgan, was the only reaction I was remotely comfortable with. Eventually I’d be pressured to take a leave of absence. And then what the hell would I have?
At least with the job, I had a reason to go through the motions. I had a reason to get out of bed—or off the couch—every morning.
And if I was getting off the couch and putting on the uniform every day, I might as well do something useful.
I put the vehicle in park and turned off the engine. Squeezing the keys in my fist, I opened the door and stepped out onto the gravel shoulder.
It was a crisp, bright morning. Not heavy with humidity and black as pitch like that night. That part at least I remembered.
Anxiety was a ball of dread lodged in my gut.
I took a steadying breath. Inhale for four. Hold for seven. Exhale for eight.
I was worried. Worried that I would never remember. Worried that I would. I didn’t know which would be worse.
Across the road was the endless tangle of weeds and overgrowth of a forgotten foreclosure.
I focused on the rough metal of my keys as they dug into my skin, the crunch of gravel under my boots. I walked slowly toward the car that wasn’t there. The car I couldn’t remember.
The band around my chest tightened painfully. My forward progress halted. Maybe my brain didn’t remember, but something in me did.
“Just keep breathin’, asshole,” I reminded myself.
Four. Seven. Eight.
Four. Seven. Eight.
My feet finally did my bidding and moved forward again.
I’d approached the car, a dark four-door sedan, from behind. Not that I recalled doing it. I’d watched the dashcam footage of the incident about a thousand times, waiting for it to jog a memory. But each time it felt like I was watching someone else walk toward their own near-death experience.
Nine steps from my door to the sedan’s rear fender.
I’d touched my thumb to the taillight. After years of service, it had begun to feel like an innocuous ritual, until my print was what identified that car after it had been found.
Cold sweat ran freely down my back.
Why couldn’t I remember?
Would I ever?
Would I be oblivious if Hugo came back to finish the job?
Would I see him coming?
Would I care enough to stop him?
“Nobody likes a pathetic, mopey asshole,” I muttered out loud.
On a shaky breath, I took three more steps, bringing me even with what would have been the driver’s door. There’d been blood here. The first time I came back, I hadn’t been able to force myself out of the car. I just sat behind the wheel staring at the rust-stained gravel.
It was gone now. Erased by nature. But I could still picture it there.
I could still hear the echo of a sound. Something between a sizzle and a crunch. It haunted my dreams. I didn’t know what it was, but it felt both important and dire.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.
I jabbed my thumb between my eyebrows and rubbed.
I’d drawn my weapon too late. I didn’t remember the bite of bullets into flesh. Two quick shots. The fall to the ground. Or Duncan Hugo climbing out of the car and looming over me. I didn’t remember what he said to me as he stepped on the wrist of my gun hand. I didn’t remember him aiming his own weapon one last time at my head. I didn’t remember what he said.
All I knew was that I would have died.
Should have died.
If it hadn’t been for those headlights.
Lucky. Nothing but luck had stood between me and that final bullet.
Hugo had peeled off. Twenty seconds later, a nurse late for her shift in the emergency department spotted me and immediately got to work. No hesitation. No panic. Just pure skill. Six more minutes before help arrived. The first responders, men and women I’d known most of my life, followed procedure, doing their jobs with practiced efficiency. They hadn’t forgotten their training. They hadn’t dropped the ball or reacted too late.
All while I lay almost lifeless by the side of the road.
I had no memory of the nurse using my own radio to call for help while she kept pressure on the wound. I didn’t remember Grave kneeling next to me whispering as the EMTs cut my shirt from my body. There was no recollection of being placed on a gurney and hauled off to the hospital.
Part of me had died here on this very spot.
Maybe the rest of me should have.
I kicked at a rock, missed, and jammed my toe into the ground. “Ow. Fuck,” I muttered.
This whole woe-is-me wallowing was really starting to piss me off, but I didn’t know how to climb out. Didn’t know if I could.
I hadn’t saved myself that night.
I hadn’t taken down the bad guy. Or even gotten a piece of him.
It was sheer luck that I was still here. Luck that the nurse’s nephew with autism had experienced a meltdown before bed while his aunt should have been getting ready for work. Luck that she’d helped her sister calm him before leaving.
I closed my eyes and dragged in another breath, fighting against the band of tension. A shiver rolled up my spine as the morning breeze evaporated the cold sweat drenching my body.
“Get a hold of yourself. Think about something else. Any fucking thing that doesn’t make you hate yourself more.”
Lina.
I was surprised where my mind landed. But there she was. Standing on the steps to my apartment, eyes sparkling. Crouched down next to me in that dirty warehouse, her mouth quirked in amusement. All flirtation and confidence. I closed my eyes and held on to the image. That athletic build showcased by body-hugging clothes. All that tan, smooth skin. The brown eyes that missed nothing.
I could smell the clean scent of her detergent and focused my attention on those full, rosy lips as if they alone could anchor me to this world.
Something stirred in my gut. An echo of yesterday’s embers.
A noise to my right snapped me out of my bizarre roadside fantasy.
My hand flew to the butt of my gun.
A yelp. Or maybe it was a whimper. Nerves and adrenaline made the buzzing in my ears louder. Was it a hallucination? A memory? A fucking rabid squirrel coming to bite my face off?
“Anybody out there?” I called.
Stillness was my only response.
The property that ran parallel to the road sloped down a few feet toward a drainage ditch. Beyond it was a thicket of thorns, weeds, and sumac trees that eventually turned into a patch of woods. On the other side was Hessler’s farm, which did a hell of a business with their annual corn maze and pumpkin patch.
I listened hard, trying to calm my heart, my breathing.
My instincts were fine-tuned. At least, I’d thought they had been. Growing up the son of an addict had taught me to gauge moods, to watch for signs that everything was about to go to hell. My law enforcement training had built on that, teaching me to read situations and people better than most.
But that was before. Now my senses were dulled, my instincts muffled by the low roar of panic that simmered just beneath the surface. By the incessant, meaningless crunch I heard on repeat in my head.
“Any rabid squirrels out there, you best keep movin’,” I announced to the empty countryside.
Then I heard it for real. The faint jangle of metal on metal.
That was no squirrel.
Drawing my service weapon, I made my way down the gentle slope. The frozen grass crunched under my feet. Each heavy pant of breath was made visible in a puff of silver. My heart drummed out a tattoo in my ears.
“Knockemout PD,” I called, sweeping the area with gaze and gun.
A cold breeze stirred the leaves, making the woods whisper and the sweat freeze against my skin. I was alone here. A ghost.
Feeling like an idiot, I holstered my weapon.
I swiped my forearm over my sweat-soaked brow. “This is ridiculous.”
I wanted to go back to my car and drive away. I wanted to pretend this place didn’t exist, to pretend I didn’t exist.
“Okay, squirrel. You win this round,” I grumbled.
But I didn’t leave. There was no sound, no blur of rabid squirrel tail barreling toward me. Just an invisible stop sign ordering me to stand my ground.
On a whim, I brought my fingers to my mouth and gave a short, shrill whistle.
This time, there was no mistaking the plaintive yelp and the scrabble of metal against metal. Well, hell. Maybe my instincts weren’t so shot after all.
I whistled again and followed the noise to the mouth of the drainage pipe. I crouched down and there, five feet in, I found it. A dirty, bedraggled dog sat on a bed of leaves and debris. It was on the small side and might have been white at one time but was now a mottled, muddy brown with curly tufts of matted fur.
Relief coursed through me. I wasn’t fucking insane. And it wasn’t a fucking rabid squirrel.
“Hey, buddy. What are you doin’ in here?”
The dog cocked its head and the tip of its filthy tail tapped tentatively.
“I’m just gonna turn on my flashlight and get a better look at you, okay?” With slow, careful motions, I slipped the flashlight out of my belt and played the beam over the dog.
It shivered pathetically.
“Got yourself good and stuck, don’t you?” I observed. There was a short length of rusty chain that appeared to be tangled around a gnarled branch.
The dog let out another whimper and held up its front paw.
“I’m just gonna reach for you real slow and gentle. Okay? You can crawl on over if you want. I’m a nice guy. Promise.” I got down on my belly in the grass and wedged my shoulders into the mouth of the pipe. It was uncomfortably tight and now pitch-black except for the beam of the flashlight.
The dog whined and inched backward.
“I get it. I don’t much like small spaces and darkness either. But you’ve gotta be brave and come this way.” I patted the muddy corrugated metal. “Come on. Come here, buddy.”
It was up on all fours now, well, three, still holding up that front paw.
“That’s a good smelly dog. Come this way and I’ll get you a hamburger,” I promised.
Its grotesquely long nails tapped out an excited beat as the dog pranced in place but still didn’t come any closer.
“How about some chicken nuggets? I’ll get you a whole box.”
The head cocked to the opposite side this time.
“Look, buddy. I really don’t want to drive into town, grab a hook, and come back here to scare the hell out of you. It’d be a lot easier if you’d just tiptoe your scruffy ass over here.”
The matted mess of fur stared back at me, nonplussed. Then it took a tentative step forward.
“That’s a good dog.”
“Nash!”
I heard my name a split second before something warm and solid barreled into my torso. The impact had me rearing up, smacking my head off the top of the pipe.
“Ow! Fuck!”
The dog, now thoroughly terrified, jumped backward to cower in its nest of filth.
I scrambled out of the pipe, my head and shoulder singing. Operating on instinct, I got a hand on my attacker and used my momentum to pin them to the ground.
Pin her.
Lina was warm and soft beneath me. Her eyes were wide with surprise, hands gripping my shirt in tight fists. She was sweating and wearing earbuds.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, yanking one of her earbuds free.
“Me? What the hell are you doing lying on the side of the road?”
She shoved against me with her fists, her hips, but even with the weight I’d lost, she couldn’t dislodge me.
It was right about that moment when I realized the position I was in. We were chest to chest, stomach to stomach. My groin was settled solidly between her long, shapely legs. I could feel the heat of her core like I was facedown in a furnace.
My body reacted accordingly, and I went stone hard against her.
I was both relieved and horrified. Horrified for obvious respectful and legal reasons. The fact that my equipment seemed to be working was good news, seeing as how I hadn’t taken it for a test drive since the shooting. So many things about me were now broken, I hadn’t wanted to have to add my cock to the list.
Lina was panting under me and I could see the flutter of her pulse in that slim, graceful neck. The throb of my hard-on intensified. I hoped to God for a miracle that would prevent her from feeling it.
“I thought you were dead in a ditch!”
“I get that a lot,” I said through gritted teeth.
She smacked me in the chest. “Very funny, you ass.”
Her hips shifted almost imperceptibly. My dick took immediate notice, and no amount of mustered professionalism, no manners could stop the images of what I wanted to do to her from flooding my mind.
I wanted to move, to thrust into that heat, using her body to bring myself back to life. I wanted to watch her lips part, her eyes drift closed as I powered into her. I wanted to feel her tighten around me, hear her whisper my name in that husky, sex-soaked voice.
I wanted to be buried inside her so deep that when she let go, she’d take me with her, wrapped up in all that heat.
This was more than a crush, a run-of-the-mill attraction. What I felt teetered on the line of uncontrolled craving.
The visuals flashing through my mind were enough to put me in actual danger of an even more humiliating situation. I took the frayed reins of my control and willed myself back from the brink.
“Fuck me,” I muttered under my breath.
“Here?”
My eyes snapped open and focused in on hers. Those deep brown depths held hints of amusement and something else. Something dangerous.
“Just kidding, hotshot. Mostly.”
She shifted under me again and my jaw locked. My lungs burned, reminding me to take a breath. There was nothing cold about my sweat now.
“Your gun is digging into me.”
“That’s not my gun,” I said through clenched teeth.
Her mouth curved wickedly. “I know.”
“Then stop moving.”
It took another thirty seconds, but I managed to peel myself off her. I regained my feet, then reached down to pull her up. Flustered, I pulled harder than necessary and had her crashing into my chest.
“Whoa, big guy.”
“Sorry,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders and then taking a very deliberate step back.
“Don’t apologize. I’d only ask you to apologize if you didn’t have a very healthy biological reaction to pinning me down.”
“You’re welcome?”
From the looks of her, she’d been out for a run. She wore tights and a lightweight long-sleeve top, both fitted like a second skin. Her sports bra was turquoise and her sneakers bright orange. She wore her phone strapped to one arm and a small can of pepper spray in a holster tucked into her waistband.
She cocked her head and returned my silent once-over. I felt her gaze like it was a caress. Good news for my dead insides. Bad news for the erection I was trying to will away.
We stood like that, closer than we should, with gazes roaming and breath strained, for a long, heated beat.
Those sparks in my gut had flared to life and spread, warming me from the inside out. I wanted to touch her again. Needed to. But just as I raised my hand to reach for her, a shrill beeping cut through my awareness.
Lina jumped back, slapping a hand over her wrist.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just…an alert,” she said, fumbling with her watch.
She was lying. I was sure of it. But before I could demand answers, a pitiful whimper echoed from the pipe.
Lina’s eyebrows rose. “What the hell was that?”
“A dog. At least I think it’s a dog,” I told her.
“That’s what you were doing?” she asked as she stepped around me and headed for the pipe.
“No. I wedge myself in drain pipes two or three times a week. It’s in the job description.”
“You’re a funny guy, hotshot.” Lina called over her shoulder as she dropped to her hands and knees in front of the pipe.
I stabbed at the skin between my eyebrows and tried not to pay attention to her provocative position, seeing as how my arousal was on a hair trigger already.
“You’re gonna ruin your clothes,” I warned her, looking up at the blue sky and not down at her as she crawled forward on all fours.
“That’s what laundry and shopping are for,” she said, ducking her head into the opening.
I glared down at my erection, which was digging into my zipper and belt.
“Hi there, sweetheart. How’d you like to come out of there so I can make it all better?”
She was talking—crooning—to the dog. I knew that. But something stupid and desperate inside me responded to her soothing, throaty tone.
“Let me handle this,” I said, mostly to her shapely ass in slate-gray tights.
“What a good boy or girl,” Lina said before popping back out. She had smudges of dirt on her cheek and sleeves. “Got any food in your vehicle, hotshot?”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? “I’ve got some beef jerky in the glove box.”
“Mind sharing your snack with our new friend? I think I can get him or her close enough to grab with something tempting.”
She was something tempting. I’d have belly crawled through frozen mud just to get a better look at her, but that was me, not some half-frozen stray.
I headed back to my SUV, willing the blood to vacate my groin. I found the beef jerky and gathered a few more necessities out of the emergency kit in the back, including a slip leash, dog bowl, and water bottle.
When I returned with my haul, Lina was even farther inside the pipe, lying on her belly, visible only from the waist down. I crouched down next to her and peered inside. My filthy little fur ball had inched closer and was almost within licking or biting distance.
“Be careful,” I warned her. Visions of rabid squirrels assailed me.
“This sweet baby isn’t going to attack me. She’s gonna ruin this very nice shirt when I snuggle her up. But that’ll be worth it. Won’t it, princess?”
Anxiety was building in my chest. I didn’t bother trying to figure out what had triggered it. Everything seemed to these days. “Lina, I’m serious. This is police business. Let me handle this,” I said firmly.
“You did not just police business me over a shivering stray.” Her voice echoed eerily.
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m not going to get hurt, and if I do, I made the choice and we both can deal with it. Besides, you and those broad, hero-like shoulders would never fit in here.”
I should have called the county Animal Control. Skinny Deke would fit just fine.
I couldn’t see clearly, but it looked as if the dog inched a bit closer to sniff delicately at Lina’s outstretched hand.
“Jerky me, Nash,” Lina said. She extended her opposite arm back and wiggled her fingers.
My semisolid dick was still having a hell of a time ignoring the way those leggings hugged her ass. But I managed to rip open the bag of jerky and hand some over.
Lina took it and reached toward the dog. “Here you go, cutie.”
The little, muddy fur ball belly crawled tentatively toward her hand.
Small dogs bit too. Lina wouldn’t be able to block an attack. And then there were things like infections to worry about. Who knew what parasites were growing in this half-frozen muck? What if she got an infection or needed facial reconstructive surgery? All on my watch.
Lina kept on making kissing noises and the dog inched closer as my heart threatened to smash its way through my sternum.
“Look at this. A nice piece of beef jerky. It’s all yours,” she said, waving the jerky temptingly in front of the dog.
I locked my hands on Lina’s hips and got ready to pull.
“No, the nice man is just giving me a hug from behind. He’s not freaking you out with his scary vibes at all,” she continued.
“I don’t have scary vibes,” I complained.
“Nash, if your fingers dig in any harder, I’m gonna have bruises. And not the fun kind,” she said.
I glanced down and found my fingers white knuckled on the curves of her hips. I loosened my grip.
“Good girl!” Lina said and I leaned down, trying to see what was happening. But I was hindered by my shoulder and the view was blocked by the aforementioned shapely ass.
“I’ve got our sweet girl all snuggled up in a good grip,” Lina reported. “There’s just one problem.”
“What?”
“I can’t wiggle out and hold on to her. You’re gonna have to pull me out.”
I stared down at her ass again. I was going to have to be real careful how I wrote up this incident report or Grave would have a fucking field day with it.
“Come on, Chief. I won’t bite. Get me out of this disgusting swamp before I start thinking about rabies and fleas.”
I had two options. I could stand up and drag her out by the ankles, or I could pull her back by the hips.
“Just so you know, I’m picking the option that will do the least amount of damage to your lower back.”
“Just grab a handful and pull.”
“Fine. But you stop me if you get uncomfortable or if the dog starts to freak out.”
“Jesus, Nash, I’m giving you consent to haul me out of this drainage pipe by my ass. Get to it!”
Wondering how a brief mental health exercise had gotten me here, I grabbed her hips and yanked them back against my groin. I barely managed to bite back a groan as Lina’s torso slid out of the drain.
“Everything okay?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“All good. She’s a sweet little thing. Smells like a bag of fertilizer, but she’s friendly.”
I took a firmer grip on her hips. “How do you know she’s a she?”
“Pink collar under all that grime.”
I hoped to hell that wasn’t a car engine I heard on the road. “I swear to God if anyone drives by…” I muttered.
“Come on, hotshot. Show me what you’ve got,” Lina encouraged. The dog gave an excited yip as if agreeing with her heroine.
I inched backward on my knees, then dragged her hips back into me. Again, the perfect curves landed in exactly the right place. But this time her head, arms, and the dog slid free of the pipe onto the frozen grass. She was on knees and elbows, ass to crotch with me. My heart hit triple time and I felt light-headed for reasons that for once had nothing to do with anxiety.
A snazzy little Porsche SUV crossed the double line and pulled over behind my vehicle. “Need any help there, Chief?” Naomi’s best friend, Stefan Liao, smirked behind the wheel.
I looked down at Lina, who raised her eyebrow at me over her shoulder. It looked like I was mounting the woman on the side of the road.
“I think we’ve got it handled, Stef,” she called back.
Stef flashed a little salute and grinned wickedly. “Well, I’ll just be on my way to tell everyone I see how Chief Morgan starts his Saturday morning.”
“I’ll arrest you for being a pain in the ass,” I warned him.
“Looks like you would know, Chief,” Stef said. With a wink and a wave, he drove off in the direction of town.
“Nash?”
“What?” I bit out the word.
“You think you could let me go? I’m starting to get ideas that might make our new friend here blush.”
Swearing under my breath, I took my hands—and groin—off her, then slipped the leash around the dog’s skinny neck. It was indeed wearing a dirty pink collar with no tags. Both the collar and the dog looked as if they’d been through a ten-mile mud race.
I didn’t know whether to pick up the woman or the dog and decided it was safer to go for the dog. She shivered pathetically in my arms, even as her tattered tail tapped out a nervous beat against my gut. Lina climbed to her feet.
“Congratulations, Daddy. It’s a girl,” Lina said. She slid her phone out of its sleeve and snapped a picture of me.
“Stop,” I ordered gruffly.
“Don’t worry. I cropped it at the waist so no one will see what kind of weaponry you’re packing,” she teased, coming to stand before me and taking a selfie of the three of us. I scowled for it and she laughed.
The dog scrambled higher up my chest, shivering in my arms. “Lina, I swear to God…”
She brought a hand to my chest and the turmoil inside me quieted. “Relax, Nash.” Her tone was soft, as if she were talking to the bedraggled disaster of a dog again. “I’m just teasing you. You’re fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“It’s inappropriate. I was inappropriate,” I insisted.
“Determined to beat yourself up, aren’t you?”
The dog buried her head under my chin as if I was somehow going to protect her.
“How about this?” Lina said, giving the dog a soothing stroke with her other hand. “I’ll stop teasing you—temporarily. If you concede that there are worse things than making me feel physically attractive even when I’m sweaty and covered in mud. Deal?”
The smelly mongrel chose that moment to lick my face from jaw to eyeball.
“I think she likes you,” Lina observed.
“She smells like a sewage plant,” I complained. But the little dog’s eyes locked on to me, and I felt something. Not the licking of flames that attacked every time Lina was within touching distance, but something else. Something sweeter, sadder.
“So what’s the plan, Chief?” Lina asked.
“Plan?” I repeated, still staring into those pathetic brown eyes.
