Cam smiled at her grandmother, hoping it looked more sincere than it felt.

She was ready to leave.

Hell, she hadn’t even wanted to come.

Guilt immediately pinged through her. Of course she’d wanted to visit—she always enjoyed seeing Grandma—but the timing seriously sucked.

She should be at home.

With Alex.

She drew in a shaky breath. Her nerves were on fire over leaving him unattended. But it wasn’t like she had any other choice. Sundays were the day she visited Grandma. She never missed a visit, not even when she was at her busiest with work. Sure, sometimes she cut the time short, popping in for a half hour instead of an entire morning or afternoon, but she always came.

Because Grandma would have freaked if she hadn’t. More importantly, she would have asked why.

Cam smiled thinly. She knew exactly where she’d gotten her own dogged determination from—the elderly woman sitting across from her.

“You are a million miles away,” her grandma commented.

They were parked in her grandma’s studio apartment, sitting across from each other in the area designated as the living room. It had just enough space for a small love seat and a cloth-covered recliner. Grandma was propped in the chair, her legs extended, a thick afghan draped over them.

Cam forced her smile wider and tucked her legs underneath her. She’d folded herself so she only took up one cushion on the love seat. “Sorry,” she said. “Just thinking about a case.”

It wasn’t a lie, per se. She was thinking about Alex, who technically could turn into a case at any moment…

“You’re here early,” her grandma said.

Cam nodded, a little guiltily. “I have some stuff I need to get back to. But I didn’t want to let the day go by without coming to see you.”

Her grandmother’s dark eyes narrowed. “You’ve never missed a visit.”

“I know. I still haven’t,” she pointed out. “And I never will.”

The old woman smiled and her eyes seemed to disappear into a sea of wrinkles. “Good girl, Camila. Always such a good girl.”

The guilt clawed at her. Would her grandma think she was so good if she knew that she was most likely harboring a criminal in her home?

“Where is Miguel?” Her grandma looked toward the bathroom door, which was partially closed, and then at the front door of her apartment. “Is he here?”

“No, Grandma,” Cam said gently. “He doesn’t live around here, remember?”

The woman’s expression clouded. “He’s at school, isn’t he?” She clucked her tongue. “That boy studies hard. Too hard, if you ask me. He should make time for his grandma.”

A new emotion flickered to life inside Cam. “Miguel is a doctor,” she said gently. “He lives up by Red Lake. He’ll be here for Thanksgiving. You’ll see him then.”

Grandma nodded, but she still looked confused, and Cam fought back a wave of despair.

Her grandmother had slowly been forgetting more and more things. It had been subtle stuff at first, things that made sense. She’d forget where she put something. She’d forget if she made a doctor’s appointment, if she’d remembered to take her pills. Those types of lapses had been expected. She was pushing eighty, after all.

But she’d veered into new territory in recent months. There would be times when she would ask when Marta, her daughter and Cam’s mom, was coming over, even though she hadn’t seen her in months. She’d forget to go down to the dining hall for a meal. And she would blur the past with the present.

Cam had talked to her doctor about this, but he’d been dismissive. Those types of memory lapses just happened, he said. At her age, it was expected. There was nothing they could do.

Cam wondered if there was nothing they could do because there was no treatment, or if it was because state-assisted medical care didn’t deem it necessary.

“You brought me soup?” her grandma asked. She glanced toward the refrigerator in the tiny kitchen.

Cam nodded, grateful for the distraction and for the fact that her grandma had apparently come back to the present. “Yes, it’s in the fridge.”

“Good.” Grandma sniffed. “Far better than the food they serve in that miserable kitchen downstairs.” Her gaze bore down on her granddaughter. “You used fresh cilantro, yes?”

Cam nodded.

“And white onions? None of those sweet yellow ones?”

“I used white.”

Another satisfied nod.

It felt like as good a time as any to end their visit. Cam stole a quick glance at her phone, checking the time. She’d only been there for fifteen minutes, but it would have to do. She could always come back later in the week, pop in for a surprise visit. Failing that, she could simply extend her visit next Sunday. Maybe stay the whole day.

Her grandma frowned when she stood up. “You’re leaving already?”

“I’m sorry,” Cam told her. She shouldered her purse. “I told you it would be a short visit today.”

She pouted.

“I’ll be back soon, I promise. Maybe midweek.”

Her grandma looked defeated. Then suddenly she perked up. “That’s alright,” she said. “Marta is coming by. I’ll have company.”

Cam stared at her. “Mom is coming?”

She nodded. “Just as soon as she’s done with her shift at the plant.”

“The plant?”

A frown creased her grandma’s forehead. “The power plant.”

Cam bit back a sigh. Her mother hadn’t worked at the power plant for at least fifteen years. It had been a job she’d somehow scored when Cam had been in middle school, a second-shift job involving custodial work. She’d lasted three weeks.

“Mom isn’t coming,” she said gently.

Her grandma clutched at the afghan, her gnarled fingers digging into the fabric, and said nothing.

Cam crossed the short distance between them and dropped a kiss on her head. Her gray hair was soft and wiry, like the terrier puppy they’d had when she was little. He’d run away after they ran out of dog food. Cam had fed him scraps of her own meager meals, but it apparently hadn’t been enough; he’d disappeared one night, and she never saw him again.

“I’ll be back, Grandma,” she whispered.

Tears welled up in her eyes and she didn’t know what they were for.

For Grandma.

For her mother, whom she still loved despite all the bullshit that accompanied her.

For the little dog she’d lost all those years ago.

Or for something—or someone—else she wasn’t willing to admit to.

She blinked away the wetness and straightened back up into a standing position.

There was one thing Cam wasn’t.

Weak.

And tears symbolized weakness to her.

“I’ll be back,” she repeated, more firmly this time.

Her grandma nodded. She didn’t speak another word about Marta.

Cam slipped out of the apartment and hurried back to her car. With any luck, she’d hit all green lights on the way home and be back before nine. Which would mean she would have been gone for just an hour.

An hour.

A lot could happen in an hour.

She jammed the key into the ignition and pulled out of the parking lot. Her thoughts returned to the conversation she’d had with Alex last night. The information she’d managed to pull out of him were small pieces to the puzzle, but she still played with them, positioning them to see if they lined up to form a cohesive narrative.

He said he’d been jumped. He said he was in a gang. And he said, over and over again, that his being in Aspen Falls, in her home, was putting her in danger.

The admission of being involved in a gang was what had stopped her from making his whereabouts known—to the station, to Nate, to the hospital.

They didn’t have gangs in Aspen Falls, but she’d grown up in a neighborhood where gangs controlled a lot of what happened on the street. There was no doubt in her mind what some of them were capable of doing, and just how far they’d go to exact revenge.

Cam didn’t know what exactly Alex was mixed up in—those were the next questions on her list—but she knew she needed to tread lightly. For his safety as well as her own.

The light in front of her turned red and she slowed to a stop, cursing under her breath. So much for making it back quickly.

She scanned the intersection, just watching as cars lumbered through. Her eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, then to her side mirror. It was something she always did, the habits of being both a good driver and a cop. She was always on the lookout, always paying attention.

Which was why the white Chevy Caprice two cars behind her caught her eye. It was an older model, probably late 70s, which was not something she often saw in Aspen Falls. There were a fair number of antique car aficionados, but this particular vehicle wasn’t one that had been lovingly taken care of. It was a beater of car, with a crappy paint job and rusted out spots.

The light turned green and Cam pulled through the intersection. She drove a couple of blocks and the car directly behind her took a right onto Wilcox. The Chevy Caprice stayed back, keeping its distance.

She frowned.

On impulse, she turned right at the next signal, even though going straight would have taken her home.

The Caprice followed.

She drove another couple of blocks, then hooked a left.

The car mirrored her moves.

Her pulse quickened.

There was no doubt in her mind.

She was being followed.

She stole covert glances at the rearview mirror, trying to get a better look at the vehicle’s occupants. They kept their distance, though, making any identifying markers impossible to see. What she could see was at least three people, two in the front and one in the back. Dark hair. Probably male.

Beads of sweat popped on her forehead.

She wasn’t one to jump to conclusions, but she was the first to take a cautious approach, to work with the available data and posit a theory or two.

There were a few things she knew to be true.

One, there was a car full of men that appeared to be following her.

Two, Alex had told her he was in a gang.

Three, she knew he was on the run, and that he was worried he was in danger.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the last thing she should do right now was drive home.

She quickly assessed her surroundings, placing herself on the mental map of Aspen Falls that she had in her head.

And then she drove in the direction of the one place she figured to be the safest.

Nate’s house.