Stone Cold Heart (Tracers #13)(39)

He held her arm to steady her and gazed down. “You all right?”

“Yes, fine.” No, she wasn’t.

“I’ll call you when I finish tonight.”

“Don’t.”

His eyebrows tipped up.

“I’ll be asleep.” She stepped away, holding the backpack in front of her. “Early start tomorrow, seven A.M.”

The radio in his truck started squawking again, and he turned and scowled at it.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Sara—”

“Good night.”





CHAPTER 12


Nolan was up with the sun. He downed some strong coffee and checked his phone to make sure he hadn’t missed anything overnight. Then he threw on his running clothes and stepped outside.

His six-year-old neighbor sat on the steps of the porch next door. Emmett had his dog beside him and his feet propped on his skateboard. At the sound of Nolan’s screen door, the dog perked up and trotted over.

Nolan waved at Emmett. The kid waved back.

“Is your mom up?” Nolan asked, making sure to face him. Emmett was deaf, but he could sign and read lips. The boy pointed at the house, where his mother was probably making breakfast or getting ready for work.

Lori Davies was a single mom. Like Nolan, she had inherited her house from a grandparent. Unlike Nolan, she still owed money on it, and she worked two jobs to keep up with the payments. She probably could have found something cheaper at one of the new apartment complexes, but that would mean giving up her yard and her rabbit hutch, and Emmett loved animals.

Thor was sniffing around Nolan’s feet now, wagging his tail, as he sensed a run in his future.

“Mind if I take Thor?”

Emmett shook his head, and Nolan ducked back inside to grab the leash off the table by the door, where he also kept a pile of plastic bags for the two or three times a week he took the dog jogging.

“Thirty minutes,” Nolan said, and Emmett waved.

They set off at a brisk pace, with Thor close to Nolan’s side. Part greyhound, part mutt, the dog was lean and wiry. He had a lot of energy, and Lori was always glad for him to get some extra exercise.

Nolan spent the first mile getting the kinks out. He hadn’t run all week, and his body felt it. He passed a park with a playscape and a basketball hoop. No suspicious people or vehicles. The place was deserted except for a lone guy using the chin-up bar.

Nolan hung a left onto a winding road that hugged a creek. Giant cottonwoods offered shade, and the ground was covered in kudzu. Thor liked it down here, but Nolan had to keep the leash short so he wouldn’t dart into the brush.

Nolan picked up the pace. His breathing settled into a rhythm, and he thought of Sara.

He’d caught her off guard when he kissed her. It wasn’t something he really thought through—he just did it because she was gazing up at him, and it felt right. After a few seconds, she’d relaxed, and that was when things heated up. She’d responded with her whole body—her mouth, her arms, her hips—and he’d been so consumed he’d lost track of where he was. He’d lost track of everything but how much he wanted her.

Nolan couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so turned on, and it was a problem. Sara was far away, and not just in terms of geography. She had walls up. He’d sensed it from the beginning, although he didn’t know why. Getting her to open up wasn’t going to be easy.

Not that he minded. Nolan liked a challenge. But this one came at a tough time. He wished he’d met Sara eighteen months ago, when the biggest thing on his plate had been a serial flasher going around town. Or even last fall, when he’d been working with a DEA task force closing in on a meth ring.

What he had now was bigger. And personal, because of the Baird family. Even beyond that, it was personal because it threatened the very heart of his hometown. Nolan had made it his goal to help hold back the tide of drugs and violence and callousness plaguing the cities around him. For the first time since he’d moved back, Nolan saw the true scope of what he’d set out to do.

The problem was he liked Sara. A lot. He liked the way she tasted. The way she felt. He liked the way his truck smelled like her after she’d ridden in it. And the attraction wasn’t just physical. He admired what she did, too, and how she did it. He’d come to understand that her careful, meticulous process wasn’t something meant to drive him crazy, even though it did. It was who she was. She was thorough and methodical and dedicated to her work. Last night was a case in point. She would leave no stone unturned—literally—in her search for answers. Sure, Nolan was dedicated to his work, too, but that was different. He knew these people. This was his home. Sara worked nights and weekends in the blazing sun, and she did it for perfect strangers because it was the right thing to do.

Thor pulled at the leash, and Nolan reined him in. As his shoes pounded the asphalt, he thought of his last serious girlfriend. He and Michelle had gone from being partners at work to off-duty friends to having an intense sexual relationship that nearly ended Nolan’s career when she was brought up on corruption charges. Nolan thought of how naive he’d been then and how much he’d taken for granted. Growing up surrounded by people with integrity, he didn’t see when someone close to him didn’t have any. The whole thing had blindsided him. Michelle wasn’t who he’d thought she was, and her betrayal still felt like a gut punch.