Six and a half months later

“I cannot believe that in exactly seven days, you’ll be married.”

Isabella looked up from the clutter and chaos of her desk in the intelligence office to meet Addison’s dreamy gaze. Her friend-slash-fellow-detective had gone all-in with her girly side regarding her impending wedding, a fact that Isabella would have teased otherwise-tough Addison about relentlessly if not for the fact that the woman’s girly side involved not a small amount of help with the last-minute details. Isabella opened her mouth to reply, but before she could eke out so much as a syllable, her partner, Liam Hollister, threw down with his two cents from the desk next to hers.

“What I can’t believe is that in exactly nine days, you’ll be in Fiji on your honeymoon while the rest of us are stuck here, freezing our asses off and regretting all the eggnog we drank at your reception.”

“Actually,” interrupted their tech and surveillance guru, James Capelli, from his work station along the far wall of their open office space. “With your track record, what you’ll likely be regretting is all the liquor in the eggnog. Although, nutritionally speaking, that stuff is pretty much cardio-thoracic napalm.”

Hollister lifted one corner of his mouth in a smirk, and Isabella bit back a laugh at the memory of him doing the Electric Slide—complete with exaggerated hip swivels and thrusts, thank you very much—at last year’s Christmas celebration at the Crooked Angel. “For the record, I can’t be held entirely accountable for my shady past with adult Christmas beverages. How was I supposed to know Kennedy spikes that stuff with cognac, bourbon, and rum?”

“Damn. Sounds like I missed out.” That from Matteo Garza, who worked with the intelligence unit from time to time and was helping out with their case load while Isabella was on her honeymoon.

“Don’t worry,” Isabella said with a wry smile. “Kennedy’s already handed over her recipe to the catering staff for the wedding reception. I’m sure plenty of people will follow in Hollister’s footsteps as soon as Kellan and I tie the knot on Sunday.”

Addison chimed back in. “Fabulously boozy eggnog or not, I think it’s great that we get to replace our annual Christmas gathering with your wedding. It’s so romantic.”

Isabella paused, her throat growing tight. She didn’t want to admit that she and Kellan hadn’t chosen the date so much for the romance of a Christmas wedding, or even the fact that the holidays were a great time for their families and friends to gather together. No, she’d wanted a Christmas wedding for a far more bittersweet reason, one that only Kellan knew.

This Christmas would have been her cousin Marisol’s twenty-seventh birthday. And even though twelve years had passed since a deranged criminal had kidnapped her, raped her repeatedly, then strangled her and left her body in the basement of an apartment complex in downtown Remington, Isabella still missed the cousin that might as well have been her sister as if it had happened just yesterday.

Heart panging, Isabella sat up straighter against her creaky old desk chair. Breathe deep, girl. “Yeah, well, it’s not going to be romantic if I don’t make it to the church on time because I’m buried underneath all this paperwork. I still have a week’s worth of kicking crime’s ass before I get to walk down the aisle.”

She pinned the words with just enough humor to slide them by as a carefree joke, and not one that was entirely unfounded. Between the string of robberies they’d just kicked to the D.A. and two separate assault cases that had unfolded over the last twenty-four hours, the intelligence unit had definitely seen their share of pre-holiday action. Isabella turned back to the arrest report on the guy they’d nailed for the robberies—you had to be a special sort of scumbag to steal from church donation boxes the week before Christmas—and re-channeled her focus. There were nasty criminals out there, people she could put away in the here-and-now. She owed it to the people they’d hurt to get justice for those crimes. To keep everyone else protected. Safe.

God, I miss you, Mari.

“Moreno?” Addison’s partner, Shawn Maxwell, poked his shaved head into the intelligence unit’s main work space from the hallway leading to their sergeant’s office. “You got a second? Sinclair wants to see you.”

With his nearly black eyes, tough-as-spikes demeanor, and gruff attitude, Maxwell was never easy to read. But the unspoken tension knotting up both his request and his expression? Yeah, it wasn’t lost on Isabella.

“Sure,” she said, not surprised when Maxwell tilted his head toward Sinclair’s office in an unspoken signal of right now. Four sets of brows lifted just slightly as she stood, but she ignored the eyeball code being slung around by her co-workers. Sinclair could want to talk to her about one of nearly a billion things, and anyway, while she might have had a tendency to go rogue and fracture the rules in the past, last year she’d learned all too well to trust her team and her boss. This was probably just some routine thing that had to do with an old case or her being out for two weeks after the wedding.

Maxwell led the way to the threshold of Sinclair’s office, shocking her when he closed the door behind her rather than following her inside.

“Hey, Sarge.” Isabella’s pulse kicked faster at the seriousness in Sinclair’s already steely eyes. “You wanted to see me?”

He nodded in just one lift of his chin before sending his stare to the chair across from his desk. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

Oh God. Oh God. She’d worn an identical expression enough times for her heart to crank down like a rusty vise.

After all, no matter how often you delivered life-altering news to a person, you still couldn’t erase the dread of it from your face.

“Did something happen to Kellan? Is he alright?” She wrestled the words past her suddenly dust-dry lips. He wasn’t on shift today, but still…

“This isn’t about Kellan,” Sinclair said, with enough honesty in his voice that Isabella swayed in relief. “As far as I know, he’s just fine. But still, you should sit down.”

She did as asked, perching on the edge of the thinly cushioned chair a few feet in front of her boss. “Okay. Is there something wrong with a case?”

“In a manner of speaking.” He paused to hold up one hand. “Look, this might be nothing, so I don’t want you to get spun up here. But I also thought you should hear it from me.”

“Jesus, Sam.” It was rare that she—or anyone around here, really—went for somebody else’s first name, Sinclair’s least of all. Which just went to show how freaked out she was, even if she hadn’t realized it fully until right this second. “What’s going on? Just tell me, please.”

He looked at her, and then he said eight little words that would change her life forever.

“There may be a lead in Marisol’s murder.”

* * *

Kellan looked at the printouts, Post-it notes, and index cards covering every inch of his dining room table and pondered the merits of eloping.

“Okay,” Kylie said, examining the mess (a.k.a. the final seating arrangements) the way a drill instructor eagle-eyed new recruits. “I know we have to make a few last-minute changes, but I think most of this will work.”

Kellan shifted his gaze to his best friend, Devon Randolph, who just so happened to also be his brother-in-law. “Tell me again why we can’t just let everyone park themselves wherever they want to,” he said, but Devon shook his dark blond high and tight as if to warn Kellan not to ask questions.

Kylie’s arched brows hammered the sentiment home. “I know you and I don’t have a whole lot of family, but Isabella’s got enough for the two of you combined. If we don’t get these seating arrangements just right, things could get chaotic. Not to mention ugly.”

“Nothing’s going to get ugly,” Kellan said, grabbing a slice of Kylie’s homemade pizza from the tray on the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the cozy dining area where the three of them stood. Damn, she was an incredible chef. “My wedding is going to be chock-full of cops, firefighters, and bodyguards. If there’s anything we know how to take care of, it’s ugly.”

“Gotta admit, your brother has a point,” Devon said. Smart man that he was, he waited until Kylie had turned toward the open kitchen to give Kellan a fist bump in solidarity.

“Fine. You might be right.” She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, giving in to her smile as she added, “I just want this to be perfect for you guys.”

“It will be,” Kellan said between bites of pizza, and funny, he didn’t even have to think twice. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. Isabella and I are happy we’ll have everyone with us for the ceremony, and it’ll be great to celebrate with a nice party afterward. But I just want to marry her, you know? That’s what will make it perfect.”

Devon nodded, his eyes locked on Kylie for a long second before he looked at Kellan from the other side of the dining room table. God, the guy had come such a long way from the rough, gruff Army Ranger Kellan had once known.

“Yeah, dude,” Devon said, nearly under his breath. “I know exactly what you mean.”

A ball-busting answer was halfway between his brain and his mouth—he was happy Devon and Kylie were together, but hello, she was still his sister—when the unexpected sound of a key in the lock yanked his attention to the front door.

“Hey,” Kellan said, concern chasing his quick pop of happiness at the sight of Isabella on the threshold. “You’re home early.” It was barely one o’clock, for Chrissake. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m…” Lying. Kellan could see it in her eyes from a mile and a half away. “I just have a really bad headache. I’m sorry, I forgot you guys were going over the seating arrangements today.”

As if she sensed the same thing Kellan did, Kylie capped her bottle of water and scooped up the coat she’d hung over the back of a nearby dining room chair. “Actually, we’re all done and Devon and I were just headed out. I’ll take the printouts to triple-check them and make sure everything’s good to go to the event coordinator.” One quick grab had them in her hand on her way to the door. “Hope you lose that headache really soon.”

“Thanks.” Isabella nodded absently, kicking the unease in Kellan’s gut into fifth gear. He gave up a pair of economical goodbyes to Kylie and Devon, locking the door behind them before turning back to the spot where Isabella still stood in the open living space.

“Okay, what’s really going on?”

“Nothing, I…” She stopped. Closed her eyes. When she opened them a heartbeat later, they were full of tears that ripped at Kellan’s chest. “There’s a possible lead in Marisol’s murder case.”

Holy shit. “After twelve years?” he managed, his breath log-jamming in his windpipe. The case had dead-ended not long after Marisol’s funeral. He hadn’t been around then, of course, but Isabella had given him the full rundown when she’d first told him about her cousin’s rape and murder, not long after they’d gotten together. “How did you find out?”

“Maxwell and Sinclair were going over the case file on that kidnapping we had a couple weeks ago so they could send it to the D.A. You know, that custody battle where the dad snatched the kid from the mom?”

While sharing every gory detail of a case was a pretty strict no-no, Isabella still sometimes shared basic, no-names information with Kellan in a hey-how-was-your-day sort of way. “Yeah, I remember. But you guys closed that one quickly,” he said. They’d located the kid—safe and sound—in less than a shift, if he remembered right.

“We did,” Isabella said, her voice stony. “But when they went to enter the case report into the database, a string of other recent kidnappings popped up along with it, and Sinclair noticed that some of the details on one case in particular matched those from Marisol’s case.”

“Okay.” Kellan’s brain spun like a blender during a power surge. “Is the guy from this other case in custody?”

Isabella shook her head. Her tears breached her eyelids to spill over her face, and Kellan’s thumbs were on her cheeks before he even recognized his brain’s command to move.

“No,” she whispered. “But the details are all exactly the same. The girl was walking alone in the same part of Remington where Marisol was when she disappeared. She was missing for three days before…”

Kellan led Isabella over to the couch, and it was a true testament to how rattled she was that she let him without protest. “You don’t have to tell me all the details,” he said. Not that he didn’t want to hear them, especially if she needed to give the story air time, but… “I know this is hard for you.”

“Yes, but it’s happening, and I can’t ignore it.” Swiping at her face, she firmed up her expression before continuing. “The girl’s body was found three days after she disappeared. There’s strong evidence of sexual assault, although the autopsy’s not back yet to say definitively. Cause of death is listed as probable strangulation. The victim was fourteen.”

“Jesus.” Bile rose in the back of Kellan’s throat, capturing all the other, harsher swear words he wanted to launch. Fourteen? This guy needed to be found and castrated. Slowly.

“She was found in the laundry room of an apartment complex downtown, about twelve hours post mortem. That was four days ago. Maxwell and Sinclair caught it today.”

Kellan’s brows pulled down in confusion. “Wait. If the cases are so similar, how come nothing popped up in the database to connect them? Isn’t there an alert system for that?”

“There is,” Isabella agreed, slumping back against the couch cushions. “Well, there is now, anyway. But our database is only seven years old. The RPD is slowly adding old cases, but it takes time and resources, both of which are at a premium. There are hard copies of the reports and investigation notes, of course. But Marisol’s case file hasn’t made it into the database yet. Sinclair only caught it because he knows the details as well as I do.”

Although Kellan hated it, that did make sense. The RFD worked the same way with everything from incident reports to flat-out arsons. “So did Sinclair take this new kidnapping case?”

“No.” Isabella waited out the flare of surprise that must have been written all over his face before she continued. “Technically, he could. Homicide over at the Nineteenth has it right now, and their track record for solving crimes like this isn’t great. But it’s not terrible, either, and there’s no definite link between the cases other than matching M.O.s. The police never found a suspect in Marisol’s murder, let alone a match for the traces of DNA they managed to find in her underwear. The crime scene unit turned up damn little from the laundry room that could be definitively tied to this new murder, and the medical examiner’s initial report doesn’t show any DNA evidence at all. Plus, there’s a twelve-year gap between the two crimes.”

“That does leave a lot of maybes,” Kellan reluctantly agreed.

“And even more what-ifs. The whole thing is pretty much a speculation field day right now.” She paused for a deep breath, and Jesus, the look on her face just gutted him. “Sinclair doesn’t want me getting involved. He’s worried I’m too close to the emotional aspect of the case.”

Ah, hell. “He’s not entirely wrong. Surgeons don’t operate on their family members for the same reason, right? Because it’s too hard to be subjective? Maybe you are a little too close to this one.”

Kellan gentled the words as much as he could. Even the truth could sting like a sonofabitch, and the last thing he wanted to do right now—or ever—was hurt her. But Isabella surprised him by nodding in agreement.

“Of course I’m too close. She was my cousin. My best friend. As a cop, I know how dangerous it is to investigate a case with personal ties, especially ones that run this deep. But I promised to keep Marisol safe, Kellan. It was my job to take care of her.”

“Don’t.” Kellan’s pulse jumped. Isabella had carried around a ton of guilt over her cousin’s murder until just this past year. She’d come a long way toward being at peace with herself, but dredging up the case now could smash that peace like a wrecking ball. “Marisol’s murder wasn’t your fault, Isabella.”

“I know,” she said, automatically enough to chip away at Kellan’s unease. “But if this guy is out there, hurting girls again after twelve years, close or not, I need to do all that I can to stop him.”

“Sinclair told you not to touch this, didn’t he?”

Kellan knew the answer before he’d even let the question fully fly. No way would her salty, no-bullshit sergeant green-light her digging into this, especially if another unit had jurisdiction. Marisol’s murder had messed with Isabella for far too long. Hell, the guilt had fueled actions that had nearly cost her her job and her life last year.

“He did,” Isabella said.

But Kellan knew her all too well. “You’re not going to listen to him, are you?”

Her chin dropped toward her chest, the front of her dark green sweater lifting as she took a shaky inhale. “I don’t know if I can.”

He paused. Part of him—and not a small part, mind you—wanted to tell her what a spectacularly bad idea this was. Poking around in this case without permission was dangerous on a billion different levels, both physical and emotional. But Kellan also knew that right now, Isabella didn’t need a lecture. She didn’t need anyone to tell her this could go wrong, or hurt her, or maybe even amount to nothing.

Right now, what she needed was someone to have her back.

And dangerous or not, that someone was always going to be him.

“Okay,” Kellan said, his stare not budging from hers, even when her eyes went round and wide. “I guess you should start from the beginning, then. Let’s see what we can figure out.”