“I can get my own damn lunch,” I snapped.
Her face fell for just a second before she recovered, making me feel like I’d just landed a kick to a puppy. Fuck. I was turning into my brother.
“Thanks for the offer though,” I added in a slightly less antagonized tone.
Great. Now I had to do something nice. Again. Make yet another I’m-sorry-for-being-an-asshole gesture that I didn’t have the energy for. So far this week, I’d brought in coffee, doughnuts, and—after a particularly embarrassing loss of temper over the thermostat in the bullpen—gas station candy bars.
“I’m heading out to PT. Be back in an hour or so.”
With that, I stepped out into the hall and strode toward the exit like I had business to attend to just in case anyone else had a mind to try to strike up a conversation.
I blanked my mind and tried to focus on what was happening right in front of me.
The full force of northern Virginia fall hit me when I shoved my way through the glass doors of the Knox Morgan Municipal Center. The sun was shining in a sky so blue it hurt the eyes. The trees lining the street were putting on a show as their leaves gave up the green for russets, yellows, and oranges. Pumpkins and hay bales dominated the downtown window displays.
I glanced up at the roar of a bike and watched Harvey Lithgow cruise by. He had devil horns on his helmet and a plastic skeleton lashed upright to the seat behind him.
He raised a hand in greeting before rumbling off down the road doing at least fifteen over the posted speed limit. Always pushing the bounds of the law.
Fall had always been my favorite season. New beginnings. Pretty girls in soft sweaters. Football season. Homecoming. Cold nights made warmer with bourbon and bonfires.
But everything was different now. I was different now.
Since I’d lied about physical therapy, I couldn’t very well be seen grabbing lunch downtown, so I headed for home.
I’d make a sandwich I didn’t want to eat, sit in solitude, and try to find a way to make it through the rest of the day without being too much of a dick.
I needed to get my shit together. It wasn’t that fucking hard to push papers and make a few appearances like the useless figurehead I now was.
“Mornin’， chief,” Tallulah St. John, our resident mechanic and co-owner of Café Rev, greeted me as she jaywalked right in front of me. Her long, black braids were gathered over the shoulder of her coveralls. She had a grocery tote in one hand and a coffee, most likely made by her husband, in the other.
“Mornin’， Tallulah.”
Knockemout’s favorite pastime was ignoring the law. Where I stuck to the black and white, sometimes it felt like the rest of the people around me lived entirely in the gray. Founded by lawless rebels, my town had little use for rules and regulations. The previous police chief had been happy to leave citizens to fend for themselves while he shined up his badge as a status symbol and used his position for personal gain for more than twenty years.
I’d been chief now for nearly five years. This town was my home, the citizens, my family. Clearly I’d failed to teach them to respect the law. And now it was only a matter of time before they all realized I was no longer capable of protecting them.
My phone pinged in my pocket, and I reached for it with my left hand before remembering I no longer carried it on that side. On a muttered oath, I pulled it free with my right.
Knox: Tell the feds they can kiss your ass, my ass, and the whole damn town’s ass while they’re at it.
Of course my brother knew about the feds. An alert probably went out the second their sedan rolled onto Main Street. But I wasn’t up for a discussion about it. I wasn’t up for anything really.
The phone rang in my hand.
Naomi.
It wasn’t that long ago that I would have been eager as hell to answer that call. I’d had a thing for the new-in-town waitress riding a streak of bad luck. But she’d fallen, inexplicably, for my grumpy-ass brother instead. I’d given up the crush—easier than I’d thought—but had enjoyed Knox’s annoyance every time his soon-to-be wife checked in on me.
Now, though, it felt like one more responsibility that I just couldn’t handle.
I sent the call to voicemail as I rounded the corner onto my street.
“Mornin’， chief,” Neecey called as she hauled the pizza shop’s easel sign out the front door. Dino’s opened at 11:00 a.m. on the dot seven days a week. Which meant I’d only made it four hours into my workday before I’d had to bail. A new record.
“Morning, Neece,” I said without enthusiasm.
I wanted to go home and close the door. To shut out the world and sink into that darkness. I didn’t want to stop every six feet to have a conversation.
“Heard that fed with the mustache is stickin’ around. Think he’ll enjoy his stay at the motel?” she said with a wicked gleam in her eyes.
The woman was a glasses-wearing, gum-chewing gossip who chatted up half the town every shift. But she had a point. Knockemout’s motel was a health inspector’s wet dream. Violations on every page of the handbook. Someone needed to buy the damn thing and tear it down.
“Sorry, Neece. Gotta take this,” I lied, bringing the phone to my ear, pretending like I had a call.
The second she ducked back inside, I stowed the phone and hurried the rest of the way to my apartment entrance.
My relief was short-lived. The door to the stairwell, all carved wood and thick glass, was propped open with a banker box marked Files in sharp scrawl.
Still eying the box, I stepped inside.
“Son of a damn bitch!” A woman’s voice that did not belong to my elderly neighbor echoed from above.
I looked up just as a fancy black backpack rolled down the stairs toward me like a designer tumbleweed. Halfway up the flight, a pair of long, lean legs caught my attention.
They were covered in sleek leggings the color of moss, and the view just kept getting better. The fuzzy gray sweater was cropped and offered a peek at smooth, tan skin over taut muscle while highlighting subtle curves. But it was the face that demanded the most attention. Marble-worthy cheekbones. Big, dark eyes. Full lips pursed in annoyance.
Her hair—so dark it was almost black—was cut in a short, choppy cap and looked like someone had just shoved their fingers through it. My fingers flexed at my sides.
Angelina Solavita, better known as Lina or my brother’s ex-girlfriend from a lifetime ago, was a looker. And she was in my stairwell.
This wasn’t good.
I bent and picked up the bag at my feet.
“Sorry for hurling my luggage at you,” she called as she wrestled a large, wheeled suitcase up the final few steps.
I had no complaints about the view, but I had serious concerns about surviving small talk.
The second floor was home to three apartments: mine, Mrs. Tweedy’s, and a vacant space next to mine.
I had my hands full living across the hall from an elderly widow who didn’t have much respect for privacy and personal space. I wasn’t interested in adding to my distractions at home. Not even when they looked like Lina.
“Moving in?” I called back when she reappeared at the top of the stairs. The words sounded forced, my voice strained.
She flashed me one of those sexy little smiles. “Yeah. What’s for dinner?”