It was Saturday morning, and three fresh inches of snow covered the ground. Lucas should’ve been sleeping in, or enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee and a plate full of scrambled eggs.

So why the hell was he parked outside of the Dans family home? Why had he gotten up at 7:00 a.m. to shovel out the driveway and navigate the unplowed side streets to make his way there?

It was simple, really.

He felt like an ass.

He’d gone home the day before, after Alaina had stormed out of his office, and spent the night feeling like absolute shit. Two Surlys—his favorite type from the Twin Cities brewery was Furious, a hoppy IPA—over the course of the night and an emphatic Minnesota Wild win hadn’t improved his mood.

She’d accused him of giving up. On the case and, in effect, on her.

He felt horrible. It didn’t change the facts of the case—essentially, that he didn’t think there was one—but he wished he’d handled it better. Handled her better.

He shook his head, his hands still gripping the steering wheel. Alaina wasn’t something to be handled. He wasn’t a police officer anymore, didn’t need to think about people as witnesses in that detached way he’d become so adept at. She’d hired him to help, and he should’ve used a little more finesse in discussing why the case was ending. Hell, he’d handled Mariah more delicately than Alaina, and this was a woman he actually cared about.

His breath caught in his throat as the admission came through like a bullhorn inside a sports arena.

Of course he cared about her, he thought dismissively, once again trying to reason his way out of the emotions coursing through him. She’d gone through hell over the last few weeks. A lot of it was self-inflicted, but still. A person would have to be heartless not to care. That was the reason why he was sitting outside of her parents’ house instead of wrapped in his flannel sheets, toasty warm.

The only reason.

But a small, insistent voice was whispering in his head, telling him there was more.

More reasons.

Her fierce determination. Her courage. Her vulnerability.

Her lush hair and soft lips and supple skin.

The way she melted in his arms. The way her lips felt pressed against his. The way she moaned softly when he touched her.

He had to tune it out. He didn’t want to hear it. Not now.

Pocketing his keys, he stepped out of the car. His boots crunched on the fresh snow as he made his way up the sidewalk. It hadn’t been shoveled yet.

Barbara answered the door. She was already dressed, and Lucas breathed a quick sigh of relief. At least he hadn’t woken her.

“Mr. McGowan.” Her fingers immediately flew to her neck. She was wearing a gold chain with a teardrop opal. She held the stone between her fingers. “What can I do for you?”

“Actually, I was hoping I could take one more peek downstairs.” He avoided mentioning Noah’s name.

She glanced behind her and then back at him, her eyes filled with uncertainty. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said.

“I need five minutes, tops.” He smiled. “I’ll be gone before you know it.”

“Barbara.”

Barbara Dans flinched.

A man appeared behind her, a giant looming in the doorway. He eyed Lucas with suspicion, frown lines etched deep into his forehead.

“What does this man want?” he demanded.

Barbara’s shoulders hunched, and Lucas watched as she literally seemed to shrink in front of him.

“Lucas McGowan,” he said with an easy smile.

The man scowled. He was a distinguished-looking man, with blond hair that had gone silver and blue eyes that matched both his wife’s and Alaina’s. But that was the only resemblance he saw between this man and his daughter.

“You’re the detective who’s been snooping around.”

Lucas arched a brow. “I’m the detective your daughter hired.”

“I don’t have a daughter,” he barked.

“Alan,” Barbara said with alarm.

He silenced her with a look, then turned his attention back to Lucas, who made a conscious effort to stand even taller despite the menacing look on the man’s face.

“Leave,” Alan seethed.

“Look, I—” Lucas began.

“If you don’t leave now, I’m calling the police. You understand me?”

Lucas stared at him, trying to see if this was bluster or if he really would follow through.

Alan pulled out his phone and Lucas knew.

“Fine,” he said shortly. He spun on his heel and trotted back to his car.

Alan watched from the door, his phone still clutched in his hands. Lucas started the car and drove away from the curb. He watched in his rearview mirror and saw the front door close.

He took a right at the stop sign and circled the block slowly, thinking.

Barbara had clearly told her husband about Lucas’s previous visit. And it had obviously not sat well with him.

Lucas sighed. He could see why Alaina had left home when she did, and believed her now when she said she had no relationship with her father. He had probably been the one to sever ties, not Alaina.

He turned right again, and then again, slowing to a crawl as the county snowplow cleared the road in front of him. He took one more right and was back on the Danses’ street. Instead of pulling up in front of the house, though, he parked at the beginning of the block, directly behind an HVAC van. He grimaced, wondering if the house it was parked in front of was without heat.

Not a fun morning to be dealing with that, he thought.

He sat in his car, the engine idling, and waited. Because something occurred to him. It was relatively early on a Saturday morning and both Barbara and Alan Dans were completely dressed. Barbara had her jewelry and makeup on, and Alan was clad in an argyle sweater and navy dress pants, hardly what one might wear for a casual morning at home.

To Lucas, this meant one of two things. Either they were expecting company, or they were heading out.

He had his answer five minutes later when the Danses’ garage door opened and a silver Lexus backed out of the driveway. Lucas was a little surprised that they hadn’t bothered to shovel before leaving, but that just told him they were in a hurry to get wherever they were going.

He watched as the car trundled down the street and then took a left at the stop sign, the direction toward downtown. They might be sticking around Aspen Falls or they might be taking the main road to the highway, which led straight south to the cities. Whatever the case, Lucas shifted the car into Drive and headed toward the house. He didn’t know how much time he would have, but he wasn’t going to waste a single second of it.

He parked a few houses down, just in case, and then walked back up the sidewalk he’d been on only moments earlier. He went through the motions of ringing the doorbell and waiting for an answer. And then, when the door remained closed, he looked around the neighborhood, making sure no one was out shoveling or snowblowing. The street was quiet, and the homes within viewing distance all had blinds and curtains closed. He made his move.

He hurried across the front lawn, trying to line up his steps with the indentations he and Alaina had made the other day. It wasn’t hard to do, even with the couple of inches of fresh snow; he just hoped no one would look too closely, see they were relatively new.

He got to Noah’s window and crouched down. Nothing had been disturbed, at least not as far as he could see. He yanked off one of his gloves and fished around in his coat pocket for the slim leather case tucked inside.

He ripped off his other glove and got to work, dusting both the lock and the surrounding frame for prints. He didn’t expect to find much, especially because of the outside elements he was dealing with, but he wanted to be thorough.

Lucas hadn’t changed his mind about what happened to Noah. He still believed it was a suicide. But Alaina’s words cut into him, her accusation that he had given up. And he knew there was one thing he could do, one thing that might help prove once and for all that the official story of Noah’s death was in fact the accurate one. It would suck having to tell her, but the proof would be irrefutable. And maybe, armed with that, she could move forward in her grieving process. She could put to bed the what-ifs in relation to the cause of his death and begin to deal with the other emotions warring inside of her.

It felt like the least he could do.

Lucas finished with the exterior and sat back on his haunches for a minute. His fingers were numb with cold, and his ears were sore from the arctic wind. He’d somehow forgotten his hat.

He leaned close to the house again and pushed gently on the window. Unsurprisingly, it slid easily to the right. He carefully removed the window screen, propping it against the side of the house. He took out his kit again and dusted as much as he could of the window ledge, then reached into his pocket for a plastic baggie and used it to hold the pebbles and sand he scooped up.

Satisfied, he stuffed the plastic baggie and the kit back into his pocket. He was just about to replace the window screen when the bedroom door burst open. He fell back on his ass, but not before he saw who was standing in the middle of Noah’s room.