It was miserable outside.

Drizzling rain. Humid air. Unforgiveable heat.

It fit Gage’s mood to perfection.

“Yo, Harvey, how’re our photos looking?” Cardeaux asked as their unit sat in the bearcat, prepared to deliver another warrant. “Your girl have any news?”

His girl.

It was the first week of October, three days since they’d spent the night in Hackberry, around a month since she’d first waltzed into Inked on Bourbon for a butterfly tattoo. It seemed too short of a time for someone to fall in love, wasn’t it?

But for seventy-two hours now, her words stayed locked in his brain: I love you, Gage and I kind of adore you.

Seventy-two hours since he hadn’t returned the words because the last two, and the only, women he’d ever said those three little words to had left. Hell, he wasn’t sure if he even knew how to say them anymore.

He and Owen hadn’t traded “I love you’s” since they’d been kids, and Gage sure as hell didn’t go around saying the words to his boys at work. Not unless he wanted a good ribbing, and a crap ton of snark for the rest of his life.

“Gage, man?” Cardeaux prompted. “The calendar?”

His hands clenched down on the government-issued body shield. “She’s good. Working on them.” He was pretty sure she was, anyway. She’d spent the day they returned to New Orleans fussing around with the photos of Mayberry House. Gage couldn’t pretend to understand what she did to them, but by the time she’d finished, the stars in the night sky above Mayberry shone like diamonds, and the cast of the moon on the cream-colored building offered a dream-like glow.

When she’d left the room for a glass of water, he’d snuck a quick picture on his phone and had later set it to wallpaper mode.

Fucking hopeless.

The bearcat hit a pothole, and the lot of them swayed, shoulders brushing, shields clashing.

“Are the proceeds still going to that group of yours?” Cardeaux pushed, shoving Timms to the side when they bounced against each other. “What’s it called again?”

Gage bit the inside of his cheek. “Care for Blue and Red.” It was a stupid name, but he’d never claimed to be creative anywhere outside of the bedroom. He’d started CBR in his twenties as an attempt to provide aid to first responders, and their families, who struggled with the stress of their jobs. CBR was both a call center and an anonymous hotline, a local place for cops and firefighters and EMTs to go when the darkness swarmed in and all hope seemed lost.

Owen told him he was nuts for taking it on, for bleeding red every time a new officer came in, a wild look in his or her eyes and a desperation in their voice.

That’s how he’d gotten to know Kevin and Carli Simpson before Simpson had joined S.O.D. He’d been one of the program’s first attendees, his depression turning to a heavier abuse of alcohol. Now the guy volunteered at the center over in Mid-City twice a week, sometimes with Carli, sometimes alone.

There hadn’t been a program in the city like it when Gage’s parents had died and his fiancée had left. Owen had gone on his bender, and Gage had clammed up—for fourteen years, it seemed.

“I bet I’m going to look delicious as Mr. December,” Timms announced, his eyes bouncing around the other guys as the bearcat swung a right. “I’m going to have women dropping at my feet.”

“Yeah,” Cardeaux muttered, “but only because I’ve walked in right behind you, and they’re in awe.”

“Y’all are a bunch of idiots.” This came from Luke O’Connor, and Gage swallowed a grin. “I swear I lose brain cells every time I get in this damn van.”

The bearcat rumbled to a stop, and Gage thumped his buddy on the back. “Guess it’s a good thing that we’ve arrived. Time to rock and roll.”

Another warrant. Another day at the office.

This time their guy was a white male in his twenties. Heroin. Crack. Weed. Guns. You name it, and this guy probably dabbled in it. Task force had been called in to help again today, and Gage issued the men a single nod as he and his boys climbed out of the bearcat and took their positions.

It was a routine call, something Gage had been doing for years now.

He tried not to let his mind wander as he took to the front of the group. Since Hackberry, he’d been more jittery than usual. Probably due to Lizzie’s “I love you,” if he had to guess. Though the nightmares waking him at night had nothing to do with a blue-eyed woman, and everything to do with his mother, Bethany. His dad, too.

He tossed and turned at night, seeing their faces, seeing bruises and the blood and the scars marring the body of his mother. Disturbing, that’s what it was, and distracting.

There was a reason why Gage was frequently named officer of the month—because he put the job first, always. He needed to do that now. Just shove everything else aside to be dealt with at a later date.

Birds chirped, followed closely by a siren some blocks away.

Gage’s boots crunched across the gravel walkway. His right leg pinched as he took the first step up the porch. A light flickered on inside the house, and he made a small prayer, no matter that he wasn’t religious in the slightest.

“Gonna do the honors tonight?” Luke said from beside him.

“Hooah,” he grunted.

“Hooah.”

The guys behind him shuffled into position, poised to strike if the scene took a turn for the worse.

“Police with a warrant!” Gage bellowed, just as he’d done hundreds of times, his boot hitting the door, cracking it open, letting it swing on the hinges. A thousand times. He’d operated scenes like this for a decade. Knew it inside and out. Could run an operation with his eyes closed.

He just hadn’t expected the sight before him.

Their target with his arm wrapped around a woman—a woman that looked eerily like Michelle—a gun positioned just under her chin.

The guy held a Glock, and the momentary silence that filled the room was fraught with tension. Glock’s didn’t have an external safety switch. The “safety” was your finger, which meant . . . Gage swayed, his gaze latched onto the woman’s face.

Blonde hair.

Pockmarked skin.

Full body.

It wasn’t Michelle, but it sure as hell looked like her.

He heard Cardeaux radio in to task force.

Heard the heavy, ragged breathing of the woman as she stood frozen in the man’s arms.

Heard his own heavy, ragged heartbeat.

Disable the guy or start up negotiations.

Those were their only two options, and yet all Gage heard was the ringing in his ears, saw not this woman’s tears but saw his mother’s. The blood on her chest from the gunshot wound. A gun which had once belonged to Ben Harvey.

The blood-soaked area rug in the living room.

The tears staining her cheeks.

He’d been home in Hackberry for the weekend—proposing to Michelle—and he’d been the one to find her. The one to call 911. The one to hold her limp body, fruitlessly trying to staunch the blood loss.

Around him, Gage heard the commotion even though it felt like a fog had closed in, hammering at his vision, roiling his stomach.

Luke talking to the guy, ordering him to put the weapon down.

The woman’s sobs as she begged her boyfriend to let her go.

The boyfriend’s demands that he’d be released, allowed to leave city lines, the state completely.

Cardeaux’s consent.

The woman stumbling forward; Timms’ attempt to calm her down.

A shot fired.

Another shot fired.

And then nothing but silence.