Springfield, Illinois

District Attorney’s Office

Calder watched the woman’s lips move, bored beyond words. She’d already said the same thing two different ways before this, but she was still talking, still explaining what little bit of a case they had against Quinn Naylor. They had the video, which he’d already seen. They had the damage to her car, which he had inspected this morning before he saw the video. They had her medical records from the emergency room where she was treated after her arrest the morning after the accident, which he had already seen as well.

“You don’t have an eyewitness?”

The woman stopped mid sentence. “Well, no, we don’t. But we don’t need one with the video.”

“The video doesn’t show the actual accident, does it?”

“No. But it shows enough.”

“The victim was still alive when he arrived at the hospital, correct?”

“He was.”

“Did he say anything?”

She tilted her head to one side. “No, he didn’t. He had severe head injuries, which is what took his life.”

Calder stood, sliding his phone into his back pocket as he did. “Thank you, Ms. Tanglewood.”

“Mr. Obre, I thought you—”

He walked away, not bothering to wait and see what it was she thought. It was a damn waste of time, anyway. She wasn’t going to give away any more than she absolutely had to because she didn’t want the other side to know what she was up to until she had to reveal her hand. It was classic, and it was damn annoying.

Calder drove back to Mastiff’s headquarters, amused to notice once again that Durango had no one sitting at his assistant’s desk. Everyone knew how much trouble he had keeping an assistant around. It was a running joke around the office, everyone taking bets on how long each one would last. They’d been fleeing so fast these last few weeks that most of the gamers couldn’t get their bets in before the assistant fled.

Axel was standing just behind Durango’s desk, watching as Durango pointed out something on the computer. They both looked up as Calder walked in unannounced, Axel quickly stepped back with a look of shame on his face. It was like he’d been caught doing something he hadn’t wanted to get caught doing.

It took everything Calder had to keep his tongue in his head.

“Calder,” Durango said with a little caution in his tone.

“I was just coming by to give you a report on my case,” he said as politely as he could, his eyes cutting to Axel. He’d been here just six months longer than Calder, just long enough to be considered the senior operative. Six months. But Calder had more experience in law enforcement, more experience in the field. If anyone should have been promoted, it should have been Calder. He didn’t understand Durango’s choice.

“Is this the Naylor case?” Axel asked.

Calder’s jaw tightened. Of course, he knew about the case. He was the head of operations now, wasn’t he?

But still, it bothered Calder sharing this information with anyone other than Durango or Kyle . . .

It was difficult for him to remember that Kyle was no longer with them.

Durango stood and walked around his desk, folding his hands behind his back as he leaned against the desk and crossed his ankles. He studied Calder for a long second, assessing his mood.

“Axel has been briefed on the case.”

Calder inclined his head. “I assumed so.” He cleared his throat, pressing his own hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “I’ve spoken with the assistant district attorney running the case, Ms. Tanglewood. I’ve also reviewed the bulk of the evidence they have against our client.” He waited a beat, then sighed. “It doesn’t look good. Unless she can prove there was someone else in the car with her that night, they have her dead to rights.”

Durango’s head dropped, his eyes moving over the floor.

“You’ve seen the video?” Axel asked.

“I have. You can’t see the actual accident on the tape, but it’s clear that Quinn Naylor is driving the car, and it appears that she’s alone. And you can see the victim passing just out of the frame seconds before she drives the car onto the sidewalk.”

Axel nodded. “And the medical evidence?”

“Proves nothing. The emergency room doctor wouldn’t say definitively that the injuries she sustained were from a car accident, but he didn’t rule it out, either. And there was nothing on the blood tests they conducted at the time of her admittance that can show she was under the influence of any sort of drugs.”

“I believe her own tests were also inconclusive,” Durango said.

Calder shifted, feeling sorry for Quinn despite everything. “What do you want me to do now?”

“You feel like you’ve gone over all the evidence?”

“Yes. There’s really nothing more to do, except to talk to her again. But her memory of that night is so fuzzy that she probably couldn’t add anything to the investigation.”

Durango nodded. “I agree.” He glanced back at Axel. “What do you think?”

Axel shrugged. “I’ll call her in in the morning and give her your final report.”

Calder headed for the door, a part of him feeling like he’d given up on her. It didn’t make sense to him because he’d hated every member of the Naylor family since he was seventeen. But there was something about Quinn . . . damn beautiful woman! Was he so lonely that even a Naylor could get under his skin?

Maybe his mother was right. Maybe it was time to move on. Ree Ann had been gone over three years now and Addie was big enough that she didn’t need him home every night. Besides, her bedtime routine revolved around his mother. As long as he was there in the mornings to get her dressed for school. That was his routine with her.

But the idea of diving into the dating pool simply didn’t sit well with him. There was too much ridiculousness to the bar scene. It’d never really been his thing. Not really, anyway. He went to bars with his buddies when he was in the Army, but that was different. They were blowing off steam. When he became a cop, he avoided that scene, saddened by the older guys who lost themselves in a bottle at the end of every day. He didn’t want the crutch of alcohol, didn’t want to need a crutch at all. And then he met Ree Ann. After that, it didn’t seem necessary.

He thought Ree Ann would be it for him. They lived together, she wore his engagement ring. They were planning a wedding when she realized she was pregnant.

“I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, but we’re going to have to put off the wedding another five or six months. Maybe slightly longer.”

He’d just come home, exhausted after spending a day chasing down the managers of a half-dozen rental car agencies in Chicago. She was sitting on the edge of the couch, looking up at him the way she had when she was afraid to tell him her sister had arrived on their doorstep unexpectedly.

“Are you cheating on me?”

She laughs. “No, Calder. I’d never do that.”

“Then it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re still getting married eventually, I don’t care.”

“We’re definitely going to get married now. But I won’t fit into my dress in June.”

It took a few seconds for it to sink in. She laughed and joked that she hoped he wasn’t that slow when it came to his work. She was so happy, excited by the idea of having a family together, how could he tell her that the idea of it made this huge lump press painfully against his breastbone, that the idea of being a father had never really been on his radar?

The more excited she grew, the larger the sense of doom that followed him around became. He would lay awake late at night and listen to her sleep, grieving for the life they were supposed to have and hating the misery he suspected was about to rain down on them.

He never wanted to be a father. He resented her for getting pregnant, for changing everything without so much as mentioning it to him.

His resentment grew and grew, but he somehow managed to keep it from her. And then the night she went into labor . . . the sight of her beautiful face twisted in pain pulled him out of his self-pity. All he could think about the entire eighteen hours she was struggling to bring Addison into the world was how much he loved her and how desperate he was to make the pain stop for her.

And then he held Addie in his arms, and it was like all that resentment, all the grief, all the anger, just dissipated like it’d been nothing but smoke. That was the happiest day of his life. Every night became his focus, a joy to come home to that beautiful baby and his lovely fiancée. He was so high up on his cloud that he didn’t see how miserable Ree Ann was until she had one foot out the door.

Calder’s mother believed Ree Ann’s decision to leave was sudden. It wasn’t. They fought for weeks before she left. He tried desperately to convince her that her feelings of inadequacy, her frustration, and exhaustion, would eventually pass. But maybe she knew herself better than he ever did.

She destroyed everything. But she left him with this gift that he would forever be grateful for.

Ree Ann was married now, to some executive with the law firm she’d joined out in California. They were happy, she said, committed to a childless relationship. He’d been married before, had two boys with his first wife. He was no longer interested in parenthood, but he knew all about Addie, saw the pictures he sent her every six months. He understood the choices she’d made.

Calder didn’t. He probably never would.

He looked at the picture of Addie he kept on his desk here at Mastiff and wondered how anyone could walk away from that beautiful face. Then he sighed, shifting to face his computer, pulling up the template for case reports. He’d no more than typed in Quinn’s name, his thoughts again going to the idea of that t-shirt and shorts she claimed to wear to bed when his phone rang.

“Calder Obre.”

“It’s Axel. I don’t think your case is as over as you’d assumed.”

“How’s that?” he asked, both annoyed and curious.

“She just called the operator downstairs. I guess someone shot at her downtown this afternoon. She’s at Lincoln Medical Center getting treatment as we speak.”