I got dressed and left at six o’clock in the morning. It was a weekday, and Tara had to go to work. For that matter, so did I.

It wasn’t easy to leave. Jesus, how many times had we had sex last night? Three? That wasn’t even counting the blow job she’d given me when we’d finally come up for air long enough to take a shower. The memory of Tara Montgomery’s mouth on my cock was going down as one of the best things that had ever happened to me, bar none. I’d be reliving it when I was ninety, how she’d pushed her wet hair back and gone down on her knees. It was one of those things that made a man wonder what the hell he’d done to deserve it.

Still, I put on my jeans and my tee, my boots and my leather jacket. I’d said a sleepy goodbye to Tara after a few hours’ sleep, because taking off while she was sleeping was not how I roll. I kissed her and told her I’d talk to her later. I didn’t tell her I loved her, that she was the only thing that fucking mattered to me, because after so long alone, that shit is hard. But I was kind of hoping she was getting the idea.

Emily’s car took a hard crank to start, as advertised. I felt like a giant inside this tiny Tercel, but even so, it felt good to be driving again. I’d told Tara that cars were in my blood, and I meant it. When I was driving I didn’t feel like a con or a failure or a guy who’d waited until twenty-five to get laid. I just felt like Jace Riggs. The only thing better was the way I felt when I was with Tara.

There was no traffic in Westlake at this hour, with dawn still slowly lighting the sky and the street lights still switching off. I felt like I had the town to myself. I was relaxed and bone-tired and I felt so different that I was almost outside myself. I was lost in thought when the cherry lights started flashing in my rearview mirror, telling me a cop was pulling me over.

It made no sense. I wasn’t speeding and I hadn’t missed a light or a sign. Maybe the taillights on Emily’s car were out, or there was a problem with her license plate, but deep down I didn’t think so. I had a feeling that something was about to go very fucking bad.

I pulled over, rolled my window down, and waited for the cop. He took his time, parking behind me and leaving his lights on, strolling slowly up as I watched him in my rearview mirror. He was alone, a fit guy with light brown hair and a uniform that fit like a glove.

“License and registration,” he said when he got to my window.

I handed him my license, then flipped open the glove box and rifled through it. Damn it, there was no registration in here. I looked again.

“Registration,” the cop said, harder this time.

So it was going to be this way. Fine. “It isn’t here,” I said to him.

The cop shifted his weight. “Is this your car?”

“No. I borrowed it.”

“You borrowed it.”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause. “Step out of the car, Mr. Riggs.”

I did as I was told. The cop was a few inches shorter than me, and when he looked me up and down I caught a hot blast of disgust and resentment. I tried to think of what I’d done to piss him off and could think of nothing.

“Where are you coming from?” the cop asked me.

“My girlfriend’s place,” I said.

The cop’s eyes went hard as flint as he looked at me. “Is that fucking so?”

Something ticked over in my mind. An idea, maybe. This wasn’t just a traffic stop. It was personal somehow. But how?

The cop held up my driver’s license between two fingers, then flicked it into the dirt at the side of the road. “You’re a convicted felon, Mr. Riggs,” he said, “and you’re driving a car that isn’t yours. That gives me the right to search your vehicle.”

He hadn’t run my license, yet he knew I had a record. He hadn’t run my plates either. What he was saying about his rights was probably bullshit. Still, I said, “Go ahead.”

He put me against the car and patted me down first. His hand in my jacket pocket found the condoms I’d put there, and he pulled them out.

“I told you,” I said. “I was at my girlfriend’s.”

The cop dropped the condoms into the dirt next to my driver’s license. “Unfuckingbelievable,” he said, the word spitting with contempt. “As if she’d give you the time of day.”

I went still. Every alarm in my body was wide awake and screaming. Think, Jace, think. Who the fuck was this guy? If he knew who I was, he’d been looking for me. Targeting me. Which meant he’d followed me—from Tara’s.

He’d staked me out at Tara’s.

And then I figured it out.

I remembered Tara sitting across from me in the Greek restaurant, her cheeks flushed after she’d had a few glasses of wine. I don’t know what to tell you about Kyle, she’d said.

Tara’s face when I’d asked if the man she almost married was a client. No, she’d said, not a client, but there had been something she wasn’t saying. Something big. Something fucking huge, and I was so wrapped up in her, so worried that this thing would die before it started, that I hadn’t asked her.

He was nice, she’d said. I only sort of loved him. The sex was terrible. I watched the cop open the back passenger door and stare into the car’s empty back seat, a frown on his good-looking face, and I knew. I knew the way an alpha dog knows that another alpha dog is on his territory. Tara’s ex was a cop. A fucking cop. And he knew about me.

The cop slammed the passenger door and straightened, looking at me over the roof of the car. “Keep your hands on the car,” he said, though I hadn’t moved.

I just stared back at him and said nothing.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You have something to say, Riggs?”

“You think this is going to get her back?” I asked him.

“Fuck you,” he spat, and I knew I was right.

Tara’s ex-boyfriend, the man she almost married, was a cop. And she’d never told me.

He rounded to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He stared into it, pushing things around—if I knew anything about Luke, he’d put a jack and a jump kit in Emily’s car at the very least. I watched as Kyle the cop yanked up the panel where the spare tire was kept, stared into the well blankly for a second, then pushed the panel down again.

My blood was pounding in my ears. I stood rigid, unmoving. He’d looked in the fucking wheel well. Where the coke was stashed in my last car.

Because he was looking for it.

And now he seemed pissed because it wasn’t there. He slammed the trunk and looked at me, his face going red. “Whose fucking car is this?” he asked.

I made my voice stay even. “A friend’s.”

“Is it?” The cop came around the car, coming closer to me. “Or is it yours?”

“It’s a friend’s.”

“Fuck you, liar.”

I couldn’t help it. “I borrowed the car,” I told him, “but your ex-girlfriend is mine.”

I was half expecting the hit. He caught me under the jaw with his fist while kicking the back of my knees at the same time. I tried to brace myself, but I still lost my balance and dropped to my knees. My arm came up just as his cop’s boot took a swing at my face, and I blocked it.

“You fucking piece of shit,” Kyle said. He drew his boot back and took another hit, this time to my kidneys. Pain flashed up my back and down into my stomach, and I tried not to fall over. He took another kick and connected with my temple and my world went white for a second before I found myself on my back in the dirt.

I blinked my eyes open to see him standing over me, looking down. “A Riggs,” he said. “A fucking Riggs, of all people. I thought Tara would stoop low, but I didn’t think she’d stoop that low.” He leaned closer. “Tell me where you put it, and maybe I’ll get you and your brothers off the hook and out of federal prison.”

The coke. He was talking about the coke. My head was throbbing, as was my spine, but I kept my eyes open and held his gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Everyone says you’re the smart one, but you’re not that fucking smart. All it took was a little bit of money to one of your employees, and you had a present left in your car. No one is loyal to you, Riggs. No one is loyal to any of you. Your entire family is Westlake’s embarrassment. Your father, your brothers, and you. If you think you’re protected because Luke Riggs is fucking Nora Parker’s daughter, you’re wrong. She might not have the guts to get rid of you, but the rest of us on the force do.”

I breathed through my closed throat and said nothing.

He kept talking. “Maybe you hid the shit, but there’s a raid coming down at Riggs Auto. They’re busting the door down right now. Wherever you hid it, we’ll find it. And you and your brothers will go down.”

Jesus. This was bigger than I’d imagined, than any of us had imagined. The only card I had in my pocket was that Officer Kyle obviously didn’t know about the fire at Casey’s junkyard—or he hadn’t connected the dots yet. But he would. I had no doubt he would. Sweat broke out on the back of my neck.

Why? I wanted to ask him. Why? But I already knew the answer to that, didn’t I? He’d told me so himself.

I was a Riggs. I was born one, and I’d always be one. It was a life sentence.

“As for Tara,” Officer Kyle said, “the fact that you put your fucking hands on her disgusts me. I wanted to get her back, but now she’s damaged goods. I wouldn’t touch her if she begged me. Still, though, here’s a little souvenir from me to you.”

The blow from his boot hit me hard right over the eye. I felt the skin scrape off on his sole as the pain pounded through my skull. My world wavered again but the lights didn’t go out.

He was trying to provoke me. Deep down, I knew that—that he wanted me to get up, to charge him. Even better, to pull a weapon. I was a con who had just finished parole, and assaulting a police officer would be just the ticket for him to put me away—or shoot me—with no questions asked.

He wanted me to do it. He was dying for me to do it. I looked in his face, and I knew that was true. He wanted me to make a move. And I wanted to do it more than I’ve wanted to do almost anything in my life. In that moment, my rage was so white-hot I could have put my hands around his neck and squeezed.

I could do it. I could kill him right fucking now. This man who had me in the dirt after all I’d done, after I’d tried so hard. This man who could kick me on the ground because he knew I was dead if I got up.

“I bet you think you’re protected, don’t you?” the cop said as he stared down at me. “Because you’re a CI. I bet you think I can’t touch you.” Surprise must have shown in my eyes, because he grinned. “I bet you think no one can touch you, but you’re wrong. I know who you are. I also know you pissed off some very dangerous people. All I have to do is make a phone call, and the hit is out and your life is over. We were happy enough to watch you and your brothers swing for the coke, but now you’ve fucked my girlfriend. You think I won’t make that call?”

I stayed on the ground and looked up at him and said nothing.

Officer Kyle and I stared each other down for a long minute, alpha to alpha.

“I will end you,” I said to him, my voice low. A promise.

He grinned again. “No,” he said. “I don’t think you will.”

Still I stayed on the ground as he walked away. As he got in his cruiser and drove off.

Only when the sound of his motor vanished in the distance and I was alone on the road did I sit up. I picked up my driver’s license, but I left my condoms in the roadside dirt. I got up gingerly and brushed myself off, feeling myself sway with dizziness from the head blows.

Think, Riggs. Think.

This isn’t over. It’s never over. Not until you’re dead. So what’s next?

I got in Emily’s car and started it while warm blood ran down the side of my face. I pulled out onto the highway and drove, not knowing where I was going, not thinking. My thoughts were spinning.

I couldn’t go home, or to Riggs Auto. I had a little bit of money, and Officer Kyle hadn’t taken my phone. Other than that, I had the clothes on my back and that was it.

I mopped some of the blood out of my eye with my jacket cuff and kept driving. I didn’t think the drug bust was a lie—I had to warn my brothers, especially Luke. When it came out that the Thunderbird had burned in a fire in Casey’s dump, my brothers would get questioned. We’d done it clean, but I hoped to God we hadn’t made any mistakes. There were no drugs in the shop, and no evidence we’d set that fire, so in the end we’d probably skate on that one.

The bigger problem was what Officer Kyle had said about me being an informant. He knew who I was, which meant he was telling the truth about knowing the enemies I’d made. He’d pulled me over coming from a night at his ex-girlfriend’s house with my pockets full of condoms—he was fucking furious. I had no doubt he’d make good on his threat and make that call.

When he made that call, my life was forfeit, and so were my brothers’ if I avoided the hit.

If I disappeared, drove myself south and over the border to Tijuana or north and over the border to Canada, my enemies would kill my brothers in retaliation. And probably Tara.

I couldn’t run. I couldn’t dodge this. I’d made my choices years ago, and now I had to face the consequences.

I drove and drove, and slowly, through the haze of pain and anger, I felt a plan start to form. Something I just might be able to do.

It would be a sacrifice, but it would be worth it.

I pulled over, took out my phone, and made some calls. I sent a text.

Then I started the car, got back on the road, and went in the other direction, heading for the freeway to Detroit.