On the dashboard of the car, my phone rang. “Callie, grab that for me,” I said, as I drove. We were driving back from gathering all the video surveillance on the streets right outside the dentist’s office. From what Callie and I could see, it was the same masked figure, dressed all in black that was caught leaving the buildings where the cadets were executed in. These cases were somehow tied together.

“Who is ‘Future Baby Mama’?” Callie asked, laughing. She held the phone up in one hand. “Do you have names like this for all your special friends? What am I? I better be ‘Badass Bitch’, or something.”

Shit. It was Brooke. It was about an hour or so since she left the office. She’d probably had enough of Cameron and couldn’t handle him. I knew she couldn’t be as perfect as I thought she was.

I grabbed the phone out of Callie’s hand, and winked at her. “You’re ‘Hot Pop Tart’.”

“What the hell? Why?” she sneered in my direction.

“Because you eat a hot Pop Tart every morning,” I said, laughing and holding up a finger at her. “Hold on and let me take this call.”

I hit the answer button and brought the phone to my ear. “Everything okay?” I asked, without any hellos.

“No,” Brooke’s voice cracked on the other end.

“Brooke? Babe, what happened?” I said, yanking the steering wheel to the right and turning the car in the direction of Brooke’s house.

“Someone broke into my house,” she choked out.

“Are you okay? Is Cameron okay?” I asked, stepping on the gas and hitting the car’s lights and sirens. “I’m on my way.” Is the perp still there? Was someone trying to scare her? Hurt her?

“Cage,” she whispered into the phone. “They wrote the word whore all over my house. It’s on everything.”

“Is the house clear?” I asked, slamming my foot all the way down on the gas pedal.

“Cage, I’m a cop. The first thing I did was make sure your brother was safe and checked the house,” she snapped.

“Okay. Okay. I’m on my way. Do you need me to stay on the phone?”

“No,” she said, and ended the phone call. I threw the phone back on the dash, angrily.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?” Callie said, next to me.

“Brooke’s house was broken into.”

Callie’s head slowly turned toward me, and she leaned back against the car door, crossing her arms over her chest. “Brooke Fury?”

“Yes,” I growled, swerving across a lane of traffic to get through a light.

“Brooke Fury is your ‘Future Baby Mama’ and I’m a freaking ‘Hot Pop Tart’?”

“Shut up,” I laughed, “You want to be my future baby mama? I’m sure we could—”

“I can’t have kids,” Callie said, turning her head away from me and looking out the window.

“Wait what? You’re like twenty-eight or something, what do you mean you can’t have kids? You’ll meet a nice guy and it’ll happen.”

“No, it won’t, asshat. Stop talking about what you know nothing about. For starters, I’m thirty-two,” she snapped, poking her finger into my forearm. “And, I can’t have children. I had a complete hysterectomy when I was younger. I’ll never have a family. Ever.”

“Shit, Callie, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“Just shut up,” she said, quietly. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. Just drive, okay?”

I nodded, focusing on the world outside the windshield, and stomping down the anger I felt for Brooke. She was somehow involved in the middle of one hell of a clusterfuck and she wasn’t telling me things. I had to find out why. And Callie? Callie and I were definitely going to talk about what was going on with her. She was hurting, and there was no way I was going to let her do that shit alone.

I jumped the car over the curb of Brooke’s driveway and yanked the gearshift into park. Callie and I rushed out of the car to find Cameron rocking quietly on a chair in the house, and Brooke in tears on her hands and knees, grabbing what looked at first glance like black and white photographs up off the floor. She had a pile of them clutched to her chest.

Callie tapped me with the back of her hand, “You get FBM, and I’ll go through the house.”

“FBM?” I asked, confused.

“Future Baby—”

I waved my hands for her to shut up, “I got it. Right. Just go.”

Kneeling down next to Brooke, I stilled her grabbing hands, and tilted her face up to mine. Her eyes were rimmed red, and tears fought to tumble over her lashes, but she tried her best to hold them back. “Brooke, it’s okay. It’s—”

The words died lifelessly on my lips when I noticed what she was holding. Pictures—hundreds of them, maybe more—all of Brooke, all in some kind of provocative or pornographic situation. “Brooke?” My own voice sounded foreign to me. I struggled for a clear breath as a burning sensation exploded deep inside my chest. A sharp pain in my jaw stabbed down my neck until I realized how hard I was clenching my teeth looking at the pictures of her with someone that wasn’t me.

She stumbled up, a sob wrenching from her chest, and raced into the bathroom. I scrambled after her, catching her just in time to help hold back her hair as she emptied everything she’d eaten that day into the toilet.

Collapsing back against the wall of the bathroom, she grabbed the towel that hung over a small circular ring, and wiped her mouth. When she moved the towel away her face was pale and her eyes wide, staring up at the mirror that had “Whore” written across it in red.

This was a personal attack on her—so was the break-in at the dentist. I didn’t know how it tied in with the murders, but Brooke was in the middle of it. Was it a jealous boyfriend?

“Come here,” I said, pulling her into me. She was trembling, her entire body convulsing with small, violent, uncontrollable shivers. All I could do was hold her.

Outside the bathroom door, I heard other officers entering the front rooms. Dean’s voice was loudest. Callie must have called everyone else.

I ran a hand over her hair, trying to calm her. In the other hand, I held some of the pictures. The pictures were erotic. It was hard not to look at them that way. Hard to see them with an objective eye or as evidence. They were so alluring. Her smile. The curves. The way she looked on another man. Anger tore through me, and I gulped back a roar. Everyone outside, crunching over the broken glass and all her belongings, were seeing the rest of the pictures, and I could physically feel her humiliation suffocating her.

“Everyone is going to see them,” she whispered, and sniffed. “And the only thing I did wrong was love him.”

“Brooke, babe. You have to tell me who he is.”

She shook her head against my chest. “I can’t.”

Why did she feel like she couldn’t? What would make her not be able to? “Shit. Brooke,” I held her at arms length, searching her eyes. “It’s someone we all know, isn’t it?”

Tears poured out of her eyes.

“Someone in the office?”

She looked away. The noises and voices outside got louder and louder.

Sliding over the glass and debris in the hallway was Dean, Captain Anderson right behind him. She flinched in my arms the minute their faces appeared. “Brooke? Brooke? Is she hurt?” Anderson yelled. “Get your hands off her, Cage!”

She burrowed deeper into my chest.

Dean held Anderson back. “Is she okay, Cage?”

“Yeah, now that I’m here,” I growled, glaring at Anderson. It was him? That’s why she couldn’t say anything. She was too scared. What the fuck was he doing? Using his rank to scare her? She loved him? They had a relationship? That’s impossible? It couldn’t be him. He was at least twenty years her senior.

Dean pulled Anderson out of the doorway. “Get her out and get her talking,” he snarled at me.

Anderson shouted back with his own demands as I closed the door on them.

I pulled her face up. “It’s Anderson?” I whispered.

She didn’t deny it—just looked at me with those big doe eyes and cried.

Anger ripped through my chest. What the hell was she thinking? “And you were okay being his mistress? You were okay fucking a married guy?” I asked, losing every ounce of respect I ever had for her. “I would have never thought you had that in you.”

“What?” she cried, and promptly vomited again, all over me.