Harper tapped her foot impatiently as she leaned on the wall in the courtroom hallway. She couldn’t believe it had gone so badly. Scratch that—she could totally believe it. Nothing had been going her way today at all.

The judge apparently hadn’t been a big believer in the whole innocent until proven guilty idea. He seemed so outraged that some outsider was bringing drugs into his town that he’d made sure to send a message to all possible future drug dealers by setting bail at five hundred thousand dollars. The fact that Lucas, as a non-local, was very likely to leave and never come back for a court date probably had something to do with it too.

She waited by the door so she could make sure Lucas knew she would get the money. He’d seemed so defeated when she visited him earlier that day. Now that he knew the situation was worse than they’d suspected, she needed to offer him some sort of reassurance.

It seemed like an eternity, but it had probably only been two minutes since she came out here. When the bailiff finally brought Lucas out, he looked positively haggard. His jaw was locked, and his eyes had a hard set to them. He was obviously as upset about this as she was, and with good reason. He woke up this morning just trying to do his job, and now he’d been knocked totally off track.

As soon as Lucas was close enough, Harper started to walk alongside him and the officer escorting him. “Hey, I know this seems like a lot, but I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

“Oh, because you just happen to have a half million dollars lying around?”

“Well, if I get a bond, I only need ten percent, and I can scrounge up fifty thousand. It might take a few hours, maybe a day. Don’t worry. You’re not going to be in here for long.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” he muttered.

Harper frowned. What did he mean? It didn’t matter. This whole charge was bogus, and she was going to get him the best attorney in the state to make sure these charges never actually led to anything. It would take money and maybe some time, but she wasn’t going to let this turn into a thing. “Just trust me. I’m going to get you out of here sooner than you even know it.”

They reached the entrance to the jail where she wasn’t going to be able to follow. She was about to say something else when Officer Jenkins walked up to them. “Hold up there,” he said. “We’re prepping you for release, Stone. It looks like you got a secret admirer who paid your bail already.”

Harper’s jaw was still on the ground half an hour later when Lucas walked out of the police station a free man. Well, free-ish considering the charges were still pending. But still, it was an improvement over that morning.

Seeing him in that jail cell had been a shock to her system. Not just seeing him there, but seeing how he was reacting. He seemed... scared. Especially when she’d said she was going to leave. There was almost a desperation in his eyes, as though he were silently begging her to stay. And worst of all, she had a feeling this wasn’t his first stint in jail. Considering that Wade wanted somebody who was flexible with the rules, it wouldn’t be that out of the ordinary for him to hire a criminal.

Who was Lucas, really? She’d only met him yesterday, and she hadn’t really liked him in that short amount of time. She still couldn’t say she liked him now. If anything, she just felt bad for all the shit he had to go through. So why was she so certain that he wasn’t peddling drugs in town?

Whether she liked him or loathed him, the idea that he’d be working for Wade at the same time he was bringing thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs into her town to sell just didn’t make a lot of sense. Of course, she couldn’t tell the police that he was just trying to clear Wade of a murder Wade actually did commit. No, they were basically on their own with this one. But she’d faced down worse odds than this before. It wasn’t like she was scared, just... tentative. From the look on Lucas’s face, right now he felt the same way.

Harper plastered a fake smile on, hoping her enthusiasm would catch on. “Hey there, free man. Did you miss the sunshine on your face for your whole five hours behind bars?”

He gave her an unamused grunt in response. “I need to call Wade and thank him for bailing me out.”

“Yeah, about that....”

“What are you—”

“She means it wasn’t Wade who bailed you out,” said a man from behind them.

Harper looked around, her hand instinctively traveling to the holster at her side. The man approaching wore a well-tailored three-piece suit with thin white pinstripes that made him look all the more out of place in her small town. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. She was sure there were nicer ways to start this meeting off, but right now she was past the point of pleasantries. There were so many damn unknowns and variables between looking into who was trying to frame Wade and who was trying to frame Lucas. She didn’t think she was capable of pleasantries anymore.

“Such hostility, Ms. Sloan. Don’t worry, I’m your friend. Who do you think got Lucas here out of jail?”

“Since I know Wade didn’t do it, I’m assuming it’s the same person who got him in jail in the first place,” she shot back.

Lucas tensed up even more than he already was. “So who are you? The one who got me in or got me out?”

“I had the same thought you did,” she said quickly. “But when I called Wade to thank him, he had no idea what I was talking about. The fact that someone paid so quick means that they’d been paying attention to your case, and the only people who know about your case are locals who probably don’t care, locals who hate your guts for bringing drugs, and the people who planted the drugs in the first place. Care to refute my logic?” she asked the strange man.

The man simply smiled at her. “I learned a long time ago that the woman is always right,” he said with thinly veiled disdain, letting her know just what he thought of her logic. “My name is Alex O’Loughlin. I am but a messenger, Lucas. Your presence is requested in Norwalk, Connecticut. I expect you to be there later tonight. I’ll message you the address you’re expected at. Once you are there—”

“And how the hell do you expect me to get all the way to Connecticut by tonight?”

“By air, of course.” The man reached into his jacket. Harper immediately drew her gun and pointed it at the man as he pulled up a slip of paper. “A little trigger-happy, aren’t we?” he accused.

“If I were really trigger-happy, you’d have lead in you already,” she said threateningly, lowering the gun but keeping her hand on the trigger at the same time.

He handed over the envelope to Lucas, and from where she was, it appeared to be a plane ticket.

“Why the hell would I go anywhere you want me to?”

“If you do, all these charges against you will magically go away. Wouldn’t that make your life so much easier?”

“Why do you think he’d help the people who got him in this mess in the first place?” asked Harper.

“Because if he doesn’t, we will see to it that the charges stick, and he’ll be in prison for a good long while. In fact, I think you’ll be lucky if he makes it out at all.”

Harper narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?”

“I’m sure I have more than you,” he shot back. It was childish, but she also figured he was right too. She wasn’t exactly winning a popularity contest. She opened her mouth to shoot another insult at him, but the man held up his hands. “I said my piece. I’ve extended our invitation to you, Mr. Stone. Whether you choose to accept or not is up to you, but I feel I’ve made the consequences very clear, and you should know that we don’t make idle threats.”

Harper had to struggle to contain her annoyance as the pinstripe-suited man hastily retreated. There wasn’t much she could do about him now, and considering how many times she’d had that thought in the past twenty-four hours, it was only adding to her current level of irritation.

“All right... I guess I’m going to Connecticut.” Lucas’s defeated tone only added to Harper’s increasingly bad mood.

“Are you crazy? You can’t give in to what they want.”

“It’s not like I want to. I’ll go, I’ll play the good little blackmailed investigator, and as soon as they get what I want, I’ll make sure they get what’s coming to them.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I don’t know!” he snapped. “Stop asking me questions, Harper. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just taking this one goddamn step at a time. I don’t know who they are, I don’t know what they want, I don’t know what I’m going to do if they ask me to do it. Now I’m done talking about it. So you go back to work for your little rich friend and go back to your mysterious job and to your nice little bank account and leave me the fuck alone. Got it?”

Harper took a nervous gulp. She’d known all of this had been hard on him, but so far he’d seemed sad and frustrated. This was the first time his anger bubbled over. Part of her was happy it finally happened, but why did it have to be at her? “Lucas, I—”

“Just stop it. We’re done here. I’m going to Connecticut. I don’t need your help. Consider any agreement we had terminated.” And with that, he stomped away from her. Okay, stomping was an overstatement. But he was walking forcefully away from her, and as much as Harper wanted to chase him down, she knew better than most that sometimes anger needed isolation to dissipate.

“I’m not going to let you be stupid about this,” she called out to his retreating back. He didn’t turn to glance at her over his shoulder or even flip her off. He just kept walking away. Harper shook her head and cursed. Like hell was she going to let him turn his back on her. Lucas Stone had another think coming....