I knew this place.

White curtains with teal trim, the ‘grown-up’ ones I’d wanted to replace the dinosaur ones I’d had since I was six. Dark gray carpeting that matched the rest of the rooms up here.

Right.

Stairs.

I was on the second floor. The scratch-scratch scratching was a tree branch against the aluminum siding. It was always louder after the leaves had fallen.

I frowned. What season was it? The room was warm enough, but it didn’t feel artificial, and I didn’t smell the almost antiseptic scent that came with filtered central air. I took a step toward the window, holding out my hand to see if I could feel a cold draft.

Nothing.

Not that it mattered whether it was spring, summer, fall, or winter. I was here, and it was good.

I breathed deeply, wanting to fix the smells in my mind. I knew this place, and it was important to me.

A sugar cookie candle mixed with vanilla body spray, but both faint, like neither of them had been used in a while. Carpet cleaner that was baking soda based. ‘Sunshine-scented’ laundry detergent or fabric softener came from the basket of clothes sitting at the base of the bed.

It was half-empty, like putting things away had been interrupted.

I’d been interrupted. This was my room. My home.

I’d been putting away my laundry when something caught my attention.

But what?

Fear was a metallic taste on the back of my tongue. Nothing here was scary, but my body was suddenly in fight-or-flight mode. A noise came from downstairs, and I took a step toward the door. I needed to go, but even as I thought it, I realized that I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to know what was down there, waiting, lurking–

I jerked awake, my heart in my throat. For a moment, I didn’t recognize my surroundings and the fear from the dream translated into real life. Then I saw Stevie, my stuffed blue whale, and knew I was home. Or at least where home had been for the past two months. Since I’d sold Anton’s loft in New York before I’d gone to the academy, I didn’t really have a home. I thought I’d be going straight from training to an assignment, and that’s when I’d find a real place of my own. A place where I’d start a real life with a real home.

Instead, I’d gotten kicked out of the academy and found myself homeless. I had money, at least, so I’d stayed in a hotel for a couple days as I figured out what I wanted to do. Then it’d been a weird game of darts where I’d moved from place to place, picking them at random by literally throwing a dart at a map on a dartboard.

I’d gone to Nashville, then Little Rock, then Sacramento, staying a couple weeks in each place while I tried to decide if there was anything there I actually wanted to do. I looked into a lot of different jobs, but I didn’t find anything that really struck me.

I climbed out of bed and walked over to the window. The Rocky Mountains were about thirty to forty-five minutes from Fort Collins, Colorado, which meant that the west-facing window of my apartment had a gorgeous view.

I’d ended up here almost by accident. My dart throwing would’ve had me going to Denver, but that was one of the places I’d been hoping to be assigned. Instead, I’d picked a place at random, keeping it in the same area because I’d always wanted to see the Rockies. The moment I got here, I’d fallen in love.

Not with a person, of course. With the place. The more time I spent there, the more I loved it. I’d found an apartment, put down a deposit, and officially moved in by the end of August.

I moved away from the window and started my morning routine. It wasn’t the same routine I’d had in college or at the academy, but it was a routine, and it worked for me. A mile run even though there was a bit of bite in the early October air, a shower, then work. Today, it went smoothly, and as I pulled my nearly shoulder-length hair back from my face, I’d mostly forgotten about the nightmare that had woken me up. By the time I was ready to leave, I’d locked it all away, ready to focus on my day.

It was a quick commute to work since I lived next door, which I had a feeling I was going to love even more when the weather turned bad.

I had to admit, I thought my life had gone to shit after I was kicked out, but now I was starting to think that it might not have been such a bad thing after all. I wanted to help people, and I wasn’t a fan of following the rules. What I was doing now fit around both of those things perfectly.

I smiled when I saw the sign on the door. Burkart Investigations. I’d been considering looking for a security job when I’d stumbled on this place, and it had felt more like coming home than anything else had in a long time. It wasn’t just that the business side of things was exactly what I needed. It’d been Adare.

Speaking of the owner, she was sitting in her usual morning spot in the tiny lobby. She’d managed to squeeze four comfortable chairs into the space and still leave room for the coffee maker. Every morning, she’d choose one of the chairs and sit there with her coffee as she waited for the first client to come in.

“Morning,” she said with a wan smile, looking more tired than usual.

“Good morning,” I replied as I poured myself a cup and sat down across from her.

Adare Burkart was nearly fifty but looked closer to forty. She kept her jet-black hair pulled back in a simple ponytail and didn’t even try to hide the streaks of silver. Of Middle Eastern ancestry, she had toffee-colored skin that never came close to burning in this high-altitude environment, unlike my own fair complexion.

My first assignment with her had been at the end of August, and I’d been tailing a man whose wife suspected was having an affair. Adare had warned me to use sunscreen, but I hadn’t listened. I’d had on a hat, so my face hadn’t been too bad, but by the end of the day, my arms had been painfully burned.

“You look tired,” she said as she studied me over the rim of her mug. “I know you’re not out partying until all hours, so what’s keeping you from getting a good night’s sleep?”

Adare lived in the apartment above the office, which meant she was my neighbor, but the buildings weren’t quite close enough for her to hear me if I woke myself up screaming. I considered that a good thing. She’d been really good about not asking questions, especially for a private investigator, but she didn’t let my desire for privacy keep her from checking on how I was doing.

“I haven’t slept well the past couple nights,” I admitted but didn’t comment on the dark circles under her eyes and how sleep must be evading her too.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

Usually, when she asked that question, I said no, and we moved on, but today, I had something I could share. It wasn’t the reason for last night’s nightmare, but I knew it was the reason I’d been run-down in general the past few days. Besides, she deserved to know something about my past that went deeper than the surface.

“Three years ago, this past Friday, my uncle was murdered.”

Adare’s eyes widened, and I saw horror mixing with the sympathy in her eyes. She didn’t say anything though, letting me get through it at my own pace, revealing only what I wanted.

“Anton was an environmental lawyer in New York City, and we were close. October of my sophomore year at Columbia, a former client who wasn’t happy with the way his case turned out showed up outside the courthouse. Gunshot to the heart. He bled out on the courthouse steps. The guy tried to kill himself too, but a cop stopped him. They got a full confession, and he’s serving a life sentence, but it didn’t change the fact that my uncle is gone.”

After a moment of silence, Adare spoke, “I had a cousin who was killed in a hit and run when we were kids. They caught the woman the next street over when she ran her car up onto the sidewalk and into a lamppost. Her blood alcohol was three times the legal limit, and she’d lost her license for drunk driving three weeks before. She was convicted and sent to jail, but it didn’t bring back my cousin.”

She didn’t explain why she shared the story, but I didn’t need her to. I understood it completely. Just because we’d gotten justice, closure even, didn’t make the hurt or anger any less. In a way that we wouldn’t have wished on anyone, we understood each other.

Another few seconds passed before she broke the silence again, this time bringing attention back to work. “I’ve got an assignment for you.”

I managed a partial smile. A distraction sounded good right about now.