Springfield, Illinois

Granny’s Bookstore

Kelly’s hands shook as she sat on a crate of books in the storeroom in the back of the store where she could hear the murmur of voices from those waiting to hear her read a passage from her latest book. It was quite a crowd, the store owner told her. More than a hundred people. The largest turnout they’d ever had for a book reading. And it was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, unusual for late February in Illinois. It all seemed like a good omen.

Then why did Kelly feel like she had a target on the center of her chest?

Detective Hood had called that morning and promised that he would have a team of patrol cops in the area, watching out for any sign of trouble. And Ryder, a gun making an obvious bulge in the small of his back, stood off to one side watching all the fuss. She couldn’t believe he was here. It was almost surreal being in the same room with him after all this time.

She’d seen him many times in the past year. From a distance. She would stand outside the building where he had his apartment and watch him leave early in the morning, heading off to work in the same casual attire he once scoffed at.

People who work in jeans and a t-shirt have no self-respect.

She shopped at the same grocery store where he shopped, went to the same diner where he ate the same hamburger and fries for dinner every Saturday night. She watched, from a distance, saw how alone he was, how lonely he seemed. It spawned this hope deep in her heart that he would one day reach out to her, that he would go back on his ultimatum and love her again. A year was a very long time to wait for such a miracle, and there was never any sign that he would give up his belief that he was only capable of hurting the people closest to him.

But now he was here. If only it hadn’t happened at such a terrible price.

“Ten more minutes, Ms. Hobart.”

“Thank you.”

Kelly stood and paced the small space in the back of the store, her thoughts rushing through her head. What if she stuttered? What if she couldn’t get the words out, or forgot what passage she’d decided to read? What if the crowd didn’t like the passage she chose or understand why she chose that particular set of pages? What if they booed her, walked out and left her alone in that huge room?

“You’re going to be fine,” Ryder said from across the room, his voice flat. Unemotional.

“What?”

“You’re overthinking it.” He didn’t move from his stone-like stance, didn’t even look at her. But he was saying exactly what she needed to hear. “You need to take a deep breath and find your confidence.”

“What would you know about it?”

“I saw you through every speech you had to give in high school, every campaign speech when you ran for student council four years in a row, every oratory class. Even that class you took in college. I know.”

He had. And the fact that he remembered, that he was bringing it up, was a double-edged sword. On the one side, it hurt like hell to remember that fact and to know it was in the past, as in over. On the other side, it was encouraging, a hopeful sign, that he remembered.

And he was right.

“You should have your mother here. She’d keep you focused.”

“My mother thinks I’m living in Miami, writing on the beach every day.”

“Why would she think that?”

“Because that’s what I told her.”

“You lied to your mother? That’s a first.”

“Things change, Ryder.”

He glanced at her, but he didn’t hold her eye for long. “I suppose they do.”

Kelly walked over to a small mirror that was hanging on the far wall and fluffed up her hair, touching a finger to her lipstick to make sure it was smooth and not smeared. Then she ran her hands over her blouse, smoothing it down against her ample hips before wiping her hands on the hip of her slacks. She looked all right, but she knew she was going to be under a microscope, and the press would crucify her if even one little thing was out of whack.

She hated these public appearances. If it were up to her, she’d just write the books and let someone else handle the promotion. But it wasn’t up to her.

She wanted Ryder to tell her she looked beautiful, or at least say that she was presentable. But he didn’t feel the need to talk now.

“We’re ready for you,” the store owner said, popping her head through the door.

Kelly nodded, her hands suddenly shaking. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before finally following the woman through the narrow doorway and out into the crowded space they’d set aside for the reading. There was a small platform where a lectern had been set to hold the pages Kelly would be reading. She didn’t have the words memorized because she hadn’t looked at them in over six months.

The room exploded into applause as Kelly took her place. She smiled, the nervousness only growing as she saw how many people there were in the crowd. And they weren’t just her target audience, young women between the ages of sixteen and thirty. It was people of all ages and all genders. Grandmothers, preteens, and middle-aged men. She even saw some older men scattered out there, probably attending only to support their wives or significant others. But it was amazing, just the same.

Kelly held up her hands to calm the crowd.

“Thank you so much for coming. I’m quite amazed that so many would come out just to hear me read what you could read yourself at home, and probably much better.”

There was a little laughter.

“If you’ll bear with me, I’ll just dive right in.”

Kelly opened the binder that had been prepared for her and pressed her finger to the laminated page, clearing her throat as she began to speak. The scene she was reading took place in the middle of the book, an intense scene between the hero and the heroine. As she read, the tension began to leave her shoulders as she was transported into the world of her story, a world she’d lived in for over a year now, a world she was still living inside of as she told the second of the three stories that were to be set there.

As she reached the pinnacle of the scene, she looked up at the crowd. She could see two of the patrol cops Detective Hood had promised he’d send over, one standing near the front door, the other moving among the guests. Her eyes moved over the rapt expressions of the guests, all strangers to her but part of something that was deeply important to her. It was overwhelming.

And then her eyes landed on Ryder. He was also at the back of the room, looking incredibly bored and disinterested as he leaned against a shelf and stared at the ground. But she knew him better than that. She knew how intensely he was listening, knew how each word she spoke was absorbed for analysis later. She knew Ryder better than she knew herself.

“Ollie leaned close to her and whispered in her ear, ‘I’m dangerous for you, Kira. If you stay here with me, you will die. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. It’s a certainty.’

‘Then we’ll die together.’

‘No. I can’t do this if you aren’t safe, if I don’t know that you aren’t here, living your life. There will be no point to it. You have to understand that.’”

Kelly closed the binder dramatically, looking up into the crowd. Applause rang out and then people began to stand, giving her a standing ovation. She blushed, a little overwhelmed by the response. This book had been out for months and people were still so appreciative at these readings. It was more than she ever could have expected.

She sought out Ryder in the crowd again. He had moved up among the shelves, watching over the crowd. His dark hair was so long now, longer than she was used to. His green eyes as beautiful as ever, causing a few of the women in the crowd to give him more than just a second look. He was a big man, husky as her grandmother used to say. He was a linebacker on their high school football team, both tall and wide, his bulk 90 percent muscle. There was once a time when she loved to run her hands up and down the length of his biceps, feeling the power of those muscles vibrating just under the surface. He was capable of inflicting incredible pain, but he would never have dreamed of it when she used to be his.

Hadn’t she said herself that things had changed? She wondered if he recognized himself in her hero, Ollie.

“If you’ll give us a few minutes,” the store owner announced to the crowd, “we’ll get Ms. Hobart to a table so that she can autograph your books for you. For those who don’t have a copy of one of Ms. Hobart’s books just yet, we have a display of them at the front of the store.”

Kelly followed the store owner to the back of the store again, waiting in the narrow store room as they exchanged the small podium for a table. Her heart was still pounding, her hands still shaking. She paced the length of the narrow walkway between crates of books, not sure which was worse, reading from her book, or speaking to her fans one-on-one. She never knew what to say and was never sure what she did say was appropriate. Kelly was a writer. She spent all her time inside her own head allowing her characters to speak for her. And she could go back and edit. She couldn’t do that in real life.

She was pacing, about to turn toward the front of the room, when she realized she wasn’t alone.

“Hello?”

The man was about forty, a small, mousy kind of guy. He was maybe only two or three inches taller than her and that was saying something since she was barely five-foot-four herself. She shouldn’t have been frightened by his sudden appearance, but she was just the same.

He didn’t respond right away, just stood there and stared at her through a pair of thick rimmed glasses. Her heart started to pound and she found herself wondering where the hell Ryder was.

“Can I help you?”

He took a step toward her, and she backed up, fear making her chest constrict. After Tracy—she couldn’t imagine Tracy would have stayed if her blind date had been this man, but she couldn’t be sure—she didn’t know who she could trust. And this man was scaring the crap out of her.

“I don’t know what you want, but—”

“I was just wondering if you’d sign my book, Ms. Hobart. I’m a huge fan of your previous series, and I’m looking forward to diving into this new series.”

He held up a brand-new copy of her book, a shy smile touching his thin lips. Relief suddenly rushed through Kelly and she laughed softly to release the tension.

“You scared me a little.”

“I apologize,” he said, looking truly apologetic. “I didn’t realize. I just . . . I need to get home to my mother and couldn’t wait in that line that’s forming out there.”

“It’s not a problem.”

Kelly took the book and was in the middle of signing it when Ryder came through the door. He crossed his arms over his chest as he waited for her to finish, watching the man leave with eyes she wouldn’t want focused on her.

“You should have called me when he came in here.”

“You should have been here.”

“I was doing my job, watching for trouble out there.”

“But I was in here!” She glared at him. “You’re supposed to be by my side while I’m doing these appearances, aren’t you? Isn’t that the whole point of this thing? Why did I hire your company if you aren’t going to be there when I need someone?”

His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t want this job.”

“But you took it. So, do it right!”

She brushed passed him and slipped out into the bookstore to the applause of the waiting guests. The store owner escorted her to the table they were still setting up, settling her in a chair behind makeshift barriers created out of cardboard displays for her book. Ryder stood at her back the rest of the evening, his arms crossed as he leaned back against the wall, quietly watching the room. It shouldn’t have made her feel better. She should have been angry as hell. If she was smart, she would have called Mastiff and asked for a replacement. She should have known having Ryder here to protect her was a mistake.

But she wasn’t that smart. Or she just missed him that much.

She wrestled with her thoughts as he drove her back to her apartment when everything was said and done. He hadn’t spoken two words to her since she confronted him in the store room, and she wasn’t about to be the first to break the ice that had built up between them. She didn’t even thank him when he came around and opened her door when they arrived at her building. Her eyes moved to the spot where the ambulance had been parked just a few days ago, to the place where she gazed on the face of her murdered friend.

Kelly was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. It was just all too much. Tracy dying the way she had, the knowledge that she’d suffered just two floors below the place where Kelly had been working that night. That she had died because she met a man she’d intended for Kelly to meet, a man she thought would pull Kelly out of the social slump she’d been in since moving into this building. Hell, since her husband decided he was too dangerous for her, he’d walked out on everything they’d built in the fifteen years they’d been together.

Tracy was dead because of her. Now Kelly was forced to deal with Ryder’s bullshit because of it, and she was just tired. Tired of it all.

He walked her to her door, stealing her key out of her hand to open it and check the apartment to make sure it was as empty as it had been when she left.

“The place is secure. You can go inside now.”

Ryder inclined his head. “The next one is Thursday, right?”

“Yes. At seven, so I’ll need you to pick me up around five.”

“No problem.”

She waited for him to go, but he stood by her desk, looking at the collection of things she had arranged there, picture frames and stress balls, even one of those stupid fidget spinners everyone was collecting. Tracy had given it to her thinking the activity might help her focus her attention when she was struggling with a plot issue.

It all came back to Tracy, somehow.

He picked up one of the picture frames and studied it for a moment.

“Your father . . . he still with the police department?”

“He is.”

“And your mother?”

“Still teaching history at the high school. Everything’s still the same back home. Things don’t change that much there.”

“Everything changed in an instant for me.”

“Only because you let it.”

Ryder’s head came up, and she knew she’d just poked a sore spot. But she couldn’t help herself. She was tired of walking on egg shells, pretending that what happened to him hadn’t happened to them both. Did he really think that he was the only one whose world had been turned upside down the night some kid decided to pull a gun on him? Did he really think he was the only one who lost everything in that instant?

“You think I wanted all of that to happen?”

“I think you were deeply affected by the shooting.”

“Affected?” Ryder carefully set the picture back on the desk. “I shot a sixteen-year-old kid, Kelly.”

“I know.”

“A sixteen-year-old kid who was an honor roll student in a neighborhood where a child with that much potential is rarer than a winning lottery ticket.”

“I know that, too.”

“I destroyed his life!”

“He shot at you! What were you supposed to do?”

Ryder shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand?” Kelly snorted. “I lost my husband that night. I think if anyone could understand, it would be me.”

Ryder shook his head. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like, the look of surprise in that boy’s eyes when he realized what had happened. The blood gushing from his wound. You didn’t hear him begging me to help him!”

“No. But I relived it all with you every time you had a nightmare, every time you cried out in your sleep, every time one of those threatening phone calls came, every day the press camped out on our lawn! I was right there beside you through that entire nightmare!”

“I’m not doing this, Kelly.” He strode to the door. “I won’t do this.”

“Of course not. That’s what you do, Ryder. You run away!” She stormed off in the opposite direction, kicking off her shoes as she made her way to her bedroom. “I don’t even know why I bothered coming to you. You don’t care one bit what happens to me! You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

Silence fell heavy around her. She braced herself for the sound of the door slamming behind him, was already thinking about the conversation she’d have to have with that man at Mastiff about hiring a new operative to replace Ryder.

“You’re wrong,” he said, his voice low, sad.

“Am I?”

She didn’t turn. Again, exhaustion weighed heavy on her shoulders and she just wanted to lie down, just wanted to be alone in her misery. The sound of the door quietly snapping closed was like a punctuation mark on the whole thing. Tears burned in her throat, but she refused to give in to them. She’d already given in to tears too many times to count. There was no point in them anymore.

She glanced over at the desk before snapping off the light. The picture he’d lifted was tilted toward her, two smiling faces staring into the room. Two people she no longer recognized.

It was once the most precious photograph she owned. Now . . .

She wondered if Ryder even recognized himself in that picture. Their wedding photo, the photo that was supposed to mark the beginning of a lifetime together. It turned out their lifetime together only lasted three years.

What a depressing waste of time.