It was one o’clock in the afternoon, but my brother Dex was just getting out of bed. I knew this because I was sitting in his apartment, watching him put on a disintegrating pair of jeans. “You want a coffee?” he said to me.

“No,” I said.

“Well, fuck that,” Dex said. “I was going to send you out to get me one.” He buttoned the jeans and looked at me. “Jesus, your face looks terrible.”

I dropped into a chair. I had never been to Dex’s place before. He lived in a crappy rental apartment in a faceless Detroit high rise with scratched floors and dents in the walls. The furniture was what should be called hopeless bachelor chic since it wouldn’t have looked out of place in my guest house. “I’ll explain,” I said.

Dex sat on the sofa across from me and rummaged through the junk that littered the coffee table. He hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt. He wasn’t as hard-muscled as I was, but we had close to the same build—strong, not bulky. Dex had a tat on one bicep—he’d gone easy on the ink, like Ryan, because he’d been a cop. Other than that, his physique was lean and mean. Growing up, Dex had always been the master of the dirty fight. He probably still was.

He found what he was looking for, which was a small bowl with weed in it. “Helps me think,” he said as he dug out his rolling papers.

My head was throbbing and my temple hurt. I could feel that the blood had dried on my cheek and my jaw. I should probably get up and wash it off, but I didn’t want to move. I was suddenly very fucking tired.

I opened my mouth to talk when a voice came from the bedroom behind us. “God, what time is it?” A woman. “Fuck me, I have to go to work!”

“Then go,” Dex said without looking up from his papers.

There was a minute of shuffling, and then a woman came out of the bedroom. Even half asleep and disheveled, she was ridiculously sexy—long legs, a fall of honey-blonde hair, dark-lashed eyes, pouty lips. She wore black leggings and an oversized camisole over a black lace bra. “Where are my shoes?” she mused aloud, and then she saw me, dried blood and all. “Oh, hi.”

“Hi,” I said politely.

“This is my brother,” Dex said to the woman, barely glancing at her. “Now go.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “You’re an asshole.” The words had no sting to them. She poked around the apartment, found a pair of three-inch heels in the corner, and put them on. She walked over to Dex—how women balanced on those things, I would never know—and slid a hand over his bare shoulder. “Bye, sexy.”

Dex flinched. “Go,” he said again. It was his usual I-don’t-give-a-fuck tone, but I knew better. I’d seen that flinch, and I saw the brief look in his eyes when she touched him. I recognized it. It was pure, unadulterated misery, and for a split second it overtook Dex like he was going to throw up.

The woman didn’t notice. She gave a huff and a giggle and walked out the door.

“You don’t even like her,” I observed to my brother.

Dex glanced up at me from where he was rolling his joint. “She called me last night,” he said. “She was looking for a fuck. I was supposed to say no?”

That was Dex’s usual MO: let women come to him. I heard Tara’s voice in my head. That’s how people express, however unsatisfyingly, their desire to be close to another person, even for a short time. She was so fucking smart. “You should find a nice girl,” I said to Dex. “Someone who’s good for you.”

Dex licked his rolling paper. “So should you.”

“I did, but it’s all fucked up. I think I’m going to lose her.”

Dex lowered his unlit joint and made the sign of the cross with the side of his hand, like the Pope. “Bless you, my son, for you are truly a Riggs,” he said. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

So there had been a nice woman that Dex had screwed it up with. I briefly wondered who she was. It was interesting, but it wasn’t the reason I was here. My phone started to buzz, and I knew that someone—probably Luke—had told Tara that I was gone. I quickly powered my phone off before I could read her texts and put the phone back in my pocket. “The coke was a setup,” I said to Dex.

Dex had his lighter in his hand, but he went still. “What?”

“Straight up,” I said. “A setup courtesy of the Westlake PD.”

Dex’s dark blue eyes narrowed as he thought it through. “Nora Parker?”

“Not her,” I said about Emily’s mother. “The rest of them. They think she’s gone soft on us because of Luke and Emily.”

“So plant some coke at Riggs Auto, and we’re done,” Dex said. “Shit, I should have seen it.”

“There was a raid on the garage this morning,” I said. “I warned Luke it was coming.”

Dex found his phone on the table and looked at it. “Six phone calls,” he said. “I was asleep.” He ran his hand through his hair. “They won’t find the Thunderbird, but is there anything else there? Anything Dad left? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Dex, it gets worse.”

He looked at me, took in the dried blood on my face again, and he nodded. “Tell me.”

So I told him. About Officer Kyle tailing me, pulling me over. About the fact that he was Tara’s ex-fiancé. About how that made it personal for him. About how Officer Kyle knew I was a CI. Dex was the only person in the world I could talk to, because Dex already knew.

When I finished, Dex tossed the unlit joint and the lighter down on the table and scrubbed both his hands through his hair. “You think he meant it?” he said. “You think this cop will make the call?”

I pointed to my face. “He meant it,” I said. “My guess is that Carter White is getting a phone call right now. If not from Officer Kyle, then from someone along the food chain. And he’s being given my name.”

Even Dex looked pale at that. Carter White was a big name in organized crime in Michigan: drugs, hookers, automatic weapons. There were rumors he’d bought half the politicians in the state, but even I hadn’t found any evidence of that.

Still, I’d informed on plenty of Carter White’s underlings in my career as a CI. He was the man Dad’s entire stolen-car operation had reported to, and that was in ruins. I’d pulled the rug out from under a few of his other operations without being detected—enough that he would be very interested in learning that the leak had been me.

Dex stared at me. His joint was forgotten on the table. “Jace, what are you going to do?”

“There isn’t much I can do,” I said. “If Officer Kyle has called me in, then I won’t live past nightfall. It doesn’t matter what I do or how far I run. He has an entire network that can find me. If Carter White wants me dead, it doesn’t matter if it happens six hours from now, or ten, or twenty. In the end, I am fucking dead.”

Fuck. It was hard to think about. Life hadn’t been easy for me, but there were a lot of good things along the way. I’d met some good people—a few—and I’d read some good books. I had half a shot at connecting with my brothers for the first time in my life.

But it was Tara that made it hurt. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me. The best thing that could possibly ever happen to me. And for a short time, she had really been mine. Her courage and her relentless curiosity and her perfect skin and her sexy body. She had been all mine.

What do you want, Riggs?

All my life, I’d never taken the time to ask myself that question. I wanted to survive my childhood. I wanted enough money to pay the bills. I wanted someone to talk to. I wanted another good book to read. I wanted to get justice for my worthless father. I wanted to be good at something. I wanted to get out of prison. I wanted to be left alone.

I wanted Tara.

I wanted her. I wanted to be wherever she was. I wanted to know every piece of her. I wanted to drive her crazy and make her laugh and exasperate her. I wanted to fuck her and claim her and be the only man she ever looked at ever again.

I had never wanted anything like I wanted Tara Montgomery. Like I had from the first minute she looked at me from across that desk.

What do you want, Riggs?

“Jace,” Dex said.

I looked at him. “Dex, do you remember the time I asked Dad for a bike when I was seven?”

Dex rubbed his ear, a gesture he didn’t even know he was making, and I knew the answer before he spoke. “I remember it,” he said, his voice flat. “I remember everything. Every time he hit me, called me a loser or a retard. I remember every time he called us names and every time he got drunk and forgot about us and every time he laughed at us. I remember every fucking thing.”

“I wanted to get revenge on him,” I said. “That’s why I did what I did. But there was something else I always wanted. Something maybe I want even more. I wanted to do better than him. Be better than him.”

My oldest brother looked, for the first time I could remember in a long time, dead sober and entirely sane. “Why are you here?” he asked me. “Of all the places you could have gone. Why did you come to my apartment?”

“Because you’re the only one who can help me,” I told him.

“Me?” he said. “You think I can actually help you out of this?”

“Of course you can,” I said. “Did you think I was just going to lie down and die? I have a plan, dipshit.”

He looked surprised, and then his eyes got that Dex gleam in them that I knew so well. “That sounds dangerous.”

“It is. We could both get killed.” I thought over the outcomes. “Or we could go to jail. But prison isn’t so bad. I’ll give you some tips. You just have to put up with a lot of jokes about dropping the soap.”

My brother grinned.

“Tell me,” he said. “I’m in.”