She stopped walking. No, it was more like her legs stopped working. Had she heard him correctly?

With a glance at his smug, smiling face, she surmised that yes, she had indeed heard him ask about her panties.

"Have you ever heard of sexual harassment, Mr. Black?"

He shrugged. "The meaning of the two words strung together doesn't escape me."

"Then you must be crazy. Did something hit your head in that fire, too?" The words barely left her mouth and she realized her mistake. Her eyes went wide and she immediately covered her mouth with her hand. She could not believe what she'd just said to him. How stupid could she be?

"I am so sorry. I did not mean to say—"

He leaned forward and re-covered her mouth with his hand to obviously shut her up before she made things worse. What an idiot.

"It's okay." Those two words came out in a dry, raspy tone that made her head swivel to meet his gaze. Mistake number one.

She miscalculated how close he'd gotten and found their lips just a few inches apart. Her stomach flip flopped and her blood rose to a quick simmer. His eyes were hot and intent as they stared at each other. And this close his scent, a combination of the woods around them and a heady unique musk, wrapped around her and warmed her insides like a potent elixir. Or maybe it was an aphrodisiac.

Her head swam with thoughts of touching those beautiful pink lips with the small scar bisecting his top and bottom lip on the right corner of his mouth. To fight the urge, she instead licked her lips and attempted a step back. Her second mistake.

Her heel caught on an uneven portion of the sidewalk and tipped her forward, where she crashed into one hard, delectable wall of muscle.

He wrapped his arms around her biceps and steadied her, with their bodies pressed together. Her brain scrambled until a few moments later he returned her to an upright position. Flustered, she scrambled out of his arms and leaned down to unhook her heel. In that moment, much of her FBI training disappeared along with her pride as she hopped on one foot to steady herself and struggled to fix her shoe with the other.

She could feel the heat of embarrassment flood her face as the cool, calm agent turned into a bumbling woman unable to string words together that formed actual sentences.

"I'm— I mean this is— "

Why the hell couldn't the ground open up and swallow her? She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Because she wasn't that gangly, teenage girl from ten years ago who was afraid of her own shadow that's why. She swallowed down the feeling of being mortified, shoved the rest of her tumultuous emotions into an imaginary box she buried deep and straightened her spine before finally looking up at him.

"I'd really appreciate it from now on if you would refrain from making rude and off color statements. And I’ll try not to ask stupid questions in response. I'm here to do a job and refuse to be some sort of entertainment for you. I've come here with open intentions that I hope will put this case to rest for everyone involved. I expect you and the residents of this island to respect that. If everyone cooperates I will be out of your hair sooner rather than later and we'll all be the happier for it."

He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled down at her. "That was a very nice speech, Penelope. Only one problem."

She winced, hesitant to ask. "What's that?"

"A fancy printed badge in a soft leather case isn't enough to gain automatic respect around here. You want everyone here to do that, then you'll have to show them you can be trusted. I shouldn't have to keep reminding you that gaining trust is the most important thing to the people here." He shook his head as if disappointed in her, then turned in the direction they were originally headed. "Come on. If we have to visit the Diablo, let’s get this over with."

They walked the rest of the way in silence except for the sound of her heels clacking against the road. It sucked that field agents were expected to wear stuffy business attire no matter where their investigation led them. If ever there was a time for sensible shoes...

After only a brief time they rounded the corner and faced the site of what was left of the infamous Club Diablo. Although infamous was more of how she thought of it instead of how it was actually referred to.

With maybe a hundred houses here, the population couldn't be more than a few hundred or so. And while the island had easy access with the bridge crossing the cove that kept them water bound, traffic seemed low.

When she'd discovered their tax records with hefty revenues, she began researching the residents of Devils Point and their out of the way club online. Oddly, there was no website, no history of online advertising and not a single Yelp review. All the typical hallmarks of a thriving nightclub were absent in this case.

That information had fed her curiosity even more. Without transparency came only secrets and to someone like her they might as well have force fed her catnip. She was now drawn to uncover exactly what was going on at Devils Point that not only made them a seemingly popular hotspot, but the best kept secret she'd ever encountered.

"Watch your step."

Sawyer's voice pulled her from her thoughts in time for her to look down and see she was about to step into a big pile of rubble covered in soot and ash. She sidestepped the debris and picked her way up a path no less treacherous, but at least open for her to navigate.

"So this is it," he said, his arms outstretched to encompass the charred remains of the building. "That was the front." He pointed to the hunk of remains that faced the bridge. "Side there, then back and more parking behind there."

Two large pine trees stood sentry at the edge of the building, blocking her view of the lot he pointed to.

"Can you walk me through a little more of what you saw that night? When it comes to catching a criminal, every tiny detail can count."

He didn't answer right away and after a while she began to wonder if he'd heard her. His gaze seemed transfixed on the building remains and the only visible sign that he was paying any attention was that muscle in his jaw hopping again.

She didn't like that she couldn’t see his eyes. He was difficult to get a read on by body language alone. Although common sense said this couldn't be easy on him.

The physical scars she could see had healed, but from her experiences she knew the scars you couldn't see were the deadliest. And in cases of severe trauma they often never healed.

"My memories are muddy when I try to force them. Instead of vivid details, I remember random things. Like the heat pressing at my back as I ran for the door. Or the sound of Creed's hoarse voice as he got closer to me and Dani."

"Dani?" She mentally flipped through all the research she'd memorized. "She was one of the regular dancers here that night, right?"

He nodded. "She was the last to get out. I had to go back in to get her."

His eyes were beginning to glaze over the more they talked. It made her sad to watch him slipping away into what were probably very painful memories. A sudden wave of guilt washed over her.

"I'm sorry you keep having to relive it. We can stop if you'd like."

He shook his head. "Might as well get it over with. But this is the last time. So do whatever you got to do to remember the details." He took a deep breath and watched her turn her notebook to a fresh page and with pencil in hand she nodded up at him, ready to hear his nightmares.

The notebook wasn’t necessary considering her rare gift. Although a lot of times being able to remember every single detail and fact she was exposed to felt like a curse. However, the notebook seemed to comfort people more than the truth. It gave the illusion she wouldn’t remember after the case was closed. But she would. And it would haunt her.

* * *

As his brain readied the words to fill her in, he watched her as intently as she did him. She scribbled a few words on the page, but the look in her eyes was something more than an agent taking notes.

The look on her face seemed one of pain, almost as severe as the pain coursing through him as he relived this nightmare one more time despite it being the last thing on the planet he wanted to do.

What could explain such empathy for a nobody like him? They’d just met. Yet, his instincts told him she understood exactly how this felt and it terrified him.

No one else deserved the memories that regularly tortured him and especially not someone as innocent as her. He cocked his head and looked closer.

Except she wasn't innocent, was she? If her work consumed her, and he'd bet everything he had it did, then she lived with a lot of ugly day and night.

This world had no shortage of people willing to do bad things to each other. Time had a way of repeating that lesson far too clearly. Now he would add to her burden and that didn't sit well with him at all.

Instead he felt the need to wrap her in his arms and shelter her from the bad. Maybe in a weird way they were meant to go through this together. Not that that made a bit of sense. He was a shifter and she was investigating a case on dangerous ground that held far too many secrets for her kind.

That would never mix well.

He shook his head and sucked in air. Whatever happened he needed to get his head in the game and out of the fucking clouds. Whatever "this" weird feeling was, it wasn't real. He rubbed his chest as the ache of rage refilled him. That was real. The need to find the hunters and make them pay too.

He’d use that anger to fuel his days, until everyone who’d dared to take someone away from him was deleted from this earth.

First though. He had to get this woman off the island and out of his hair. She could be more than a simple distraction. So he started the story at the beginning. "I had just arrived at the club when the explosion happened. Except I didn't know at the time what had caused it. I only knew the building was going to come down and I had to get out..."