1 5
D E X
MY THUMB SWEPT across the screen of my phone, all the data I’d gathered in the last twelve hours flying past. I’d built a casefile app from scratch for my brothers and me. It gave us the ability to store any information we found in a place where we could all access it.
The app was different from what law enforcement used because we had different needs. It also had a handy self- destruct button in case anyone we didn’t want sniffing around got too close.
As I skimmed the words, images of Brae flashed in my mind: her blond hair woven into pigtail braids, swinging as she spoke; those warm amber eyes, flashing gold with hope or anger, deepening to nearly black with sorrow or grief.
The woman was a war. A study in opposites. She let all those emotions fly yet held so much close to the vest—layers of secrets she wasn’t ready to let me or anyone else in on.
And that was fair. It wasn’t as if I’d been honest with her.
All I’d given her were half-truths. Something about that had guilt digging in.
I looked up, taking in the sign carved into the wood above the double doors:Juniper County Sheriff’s Department. My back molars ground together. It was the last place I wanted to go but the first place I needed to be.
Shoving my phone into my pocket, I grabbed the stack of papers on the seat next to me. If the sheriff had moved Nova’s disappearance to cold-case status, then there was no reason for them not to share their files. But it was going to piss Miller the hell off. That was just a bonus.
I climbed out of my 4Runner and headed for the station, calling on my mask that wouldn’t let anyone know exactly what I was thinking or how I was feeling. It was the ultimate protection.
But it slipped into a grin the second I stepped inside and caught sight of Travis holding a box of donuts and talking to whoever was on duty at the desk.
“A cop and donuts. Isn’t that a little cliché?” I asked.
Trav’s head jerked up, and a huge smile split his face as he set the donuts down. “I heard the rumors, but I don’t think I believed ’em until I saw your ugly mug.”
I chuckled and pulled him in for a quick back slap. “You’re jealous of my chiseled jawline, don’t lie.”
He barked out a laugh. “You caught me.”
The man behind the desk eyed me with a cross between suspicion and derision. It wasn’t anything new, but it still clawed at me. I tried to remember his name. Gus or Gary, something with a G. He’d been in Wylder’s grade, if I remembered right.
“What are you doing here?” Travis asked, bringing my attention back to him. “Don’t tell me you already have parking tickets to pay off.”
My lips twitched. “That’s why it’s good to have friends in high places, right?”
Travis just shook his head. “If you parked in the diner’s five-minute spot too long, I can’t help you. You know Susie will lock that down with an iron fist.”
He wasn’t wrong. The owner of the diner wouldn’t take any flack. And she wasn’t afraid to shoot someone with a soda gun if they got out of line.
I gave an exaggerated shiver. “No way, man. She scares me.”
“As she should,” Trav said with a chuckle. “So what’s up?”
I tapped the papers against my free hand. “Got an open records request.”
His brows lifted, and I saw Gary or Gus stiffen behind the counter. Travis quickly pulled the surprise from his
expression. “What’s the case?”
“Nova Monroe.”
A hint of wariness found Travis’s face, maybe even worry as he glanced at the man behind the counter. “Rog said he was giving your name to Brae. I just didn’t think there was a chance in hell you’d actually help.”
Didn’t that make me feel like the world’s biggest asshole?
But wanting the world to think I’d never get involved with this sort of thing, letting them think all the Archer brothers would do anything to avoid being on someone’s radar, was by design.
And here I was, drawing a big red target around us again.
Because we were all linked with the kind of brand that having a serial killer for a father gave you.
“Well, she pleaded her case,” I muttered.
A hint of amusement entered Travis’s expression.
“Roger’s asked her out no fewer than twenty-one times.
Brae’s shot him down for every single one. Might be fun to watch you shoot your shot.”
I glowered at him. “I’m not interested in her like that.”
But something stirred low in my gut at Travis’s words and the idea of Brae and Roger. Something unsettling.
Travis just grinned. “Oh, of course. Too close to home.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I clipped, annoyance digging in deeper.
“Come on, Dex. Your whole MO through high school was nothing within a ten-mile radius. Every homecoming date and field-party hookup was someone from another town. Every summer, you went for the tourists, never a local. Never
someone close. It pissed every girl at Starlight Grove High way the hell off.”
My skin felt too tight for my body, like a million eyes were on me. Because Travis was right. Never letting anyone too close was my MO. I just hadn’t realized it was so damn obvious.
“I think a thing or two has changed since high school. At least, I hope to hell it has,” I grumbled.
The grin on Trav’s face only widened. “Unless you hit perfection the first time around.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I shot back. “I swore Cora would realize she could do so much better.”
“Thank God she hasn’t,” he said with a laugh. “Come on, let’s get that request filed for you. Grady can help.”
Grady. Apparently,Gus andGary were both wrong.
The man scowled as we turned to him, but Travis wasn’t in any way affected. He just shook his head. “Stop looking like someone poured salt in your coffee. It’s just a records request.”
“You know,” I said, sliding the paperwork across the counter, “my legal right.”
“It your legal right to stick your nose where it don’t belong?” Grady shot back.
I didn’t miss that good ole Grady hadn’t progressed past deputy rank while Roger and Travis, who were both younger than him, had. I didn’t mention that fact. Instead, I pasted on a bland smile. “It’s my legal right to be a pain in the ass, and it’s one I take seriously.”
“That’s always been your way, hasn’t it?” a new voice asked.
Sheriff Miller sauntered out of a back hallway as if some Bat-Signal had gone out announcing my presence. I took a second to study the man I hadn’t seen in years. Lanky with a thick mustache—now pure white—and more lines in his face than the last time I’d seen him. But a kind of ugliness that had nothing to do with appearance shone through his eyes.
Miller had never liked my brothers and me. Hated that Uncle Waylon had taken us in and brought the media’s attention. Their fascination with us had waned, only popping back up on anniversaries now and then, but Miller took it as a personal attack onhis town.
Or maybe he just thought we were all serial killers in the making. That we would turn into our father. That we would systematically stalk women. Abduct them. Torture them.
Murder them. Keep souvenirs of our kills.
Even just thinking it had my gut roiling. But the fact that Sheriff Miller suspected us gnawed at me. Because a tiny part of me wondered what darkness lay dormant beneath my skin that my father had left behind.
But I didn’t let him know any of that. Instead, I just beamed at him, throwing the man off-kilter. “Sheriff Miller, it’s so good to see you.”
Travis snickered, trying to hide it with a cough.
Miller’s scowl deepened. “What are you doing in my house?”
The fact that he called the stationhis house told me everything I needed to know about him, but I just kept my smile pasted on. “Funny. I swore this was a place of county services. I guess I could go to the state level and—”
“What do you want, Dexter?” Miller ground out.
“All reports relating to Nova Monroe.”
Miller’s eyes flashed, turning a golden color. But it wasn’t anything like the gold in Brae’s eyes. His was all anger and meanness, no life in it at all. “Why am I not surprised she got mixed up with the likes of you? I wonder if anyone’s told her who you really are. What runs in your veins.”
It took everything in me not to let his blows show on my face. Not to let the rage take hold. But I kept a smile fixed in place as I tapped the papers on the counter. “I trust you’ll respond in a timely fashion. I’d hate to have to see if my FBI colleagues have any contacts at the California Department of
Justice who might be interested in a case of negligence and corruption.”
Splotches of redness erupted on Miller’s neck and cheeks.
“Get the hell out.”
I gave him a mock salute, knowing it would only piss him off more. “I’ll be seeing you, Ezra.”
And with that, I stalked out into the bright May sun. I sucked in air the moment I was outside. Cleaner than DC air.
A hint of pine clung to every molecule of oxygen, even downtown. I tried to focus on that, picturing it cleansing me from the inside out.
If only it could. If only it could wipe away every infected strand of DNA. If only it could cure what lay in wait.
But it couldn’t. And I had to live with that.
I wasn’t ready to climb back into my SUV or sit behind a computer screen. I needed to move. My fingers twitched at my sides, and I knew I needed to ask Kol about the gym a town over that he worked out at. Or hit a trail. There was nothing like climbing up the side of a mountain to burn out everything that was eating you up inside.
Instead, I found myself walking down the block until I reached the black wood siding of the Boot. I told myself I stepped inside with the goal of seeking out my brother, but I was a fucking liar.
The place only had a couple of patrons now that it was past the lunch rush and before the dinner crowd. Aidan refilled condiments at one end of the bar as Cora rolled silverware into napkins next to him. I could just make out the cook, Fiona, through the pass-through window, washing dishes. I didn’t see Wylder and knew he was likely in the back, cursing over order forms or bookkeeping. But then, I saw her.
Brae’s hair was out of the two braids now, but her golden strands still held the wave of their earlier arrangement.
They cascaded down her back, falling around her in the kind of curtain I ached to sift through with my fingers. I wanted to
tug the strands so her face tipped back and I could take that perfect damn mouth and—fuck.
I tried to think of anything but what Brae would taste like.
Would her morning coffee still cling to her tongue? Or would she taste like pure sunshine?
Because that was what she looked like. A braid at her crown held the waves back, khaki shorts exposed tanned, muscular legs, and she had on those shoes that were an explosion of color. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was Owen who had doodled all over her white high-top Converse.
As if sensing eyes on her, Brae lifted her head. She took me in for a beat of one, two, three as she paused mid-wipe at a table. And then she was striding toward me, tucking the rag into her back pocket.
She might’ve been tiny, but she crossed the distance in the blink of an eye. “What’s wrong?”
“What makes you think something’s wrong?” But my voice was too tight, my throat strangling every word.
“Oh, I don’t know, Buttercup. Maybe it’s the fact that you’ve got storms gathering in your eyes. Or that your hands are fisted so tightly, you look like you’re going to break a knuckle. Or that you’re making your earlier glowers and glares look like sunny smiles.”
I wasn’t sure how, but she somehow made me want to smile in that moment. Her no-bullshit, cut-straight-to-the- point-while-giving-me-shit way eased something inside me.
The honesty of it.
“Sheriff Miller is a prick.” It was the most honesty I could manage, but it was something.
A hint of surprise hit Brae’s golden eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know.” But those eyes searched deeper, pulling together pieces I both wanted her to see and desperately wanted to hide. “Something he said got to you.”
Right to the point. That was my hellion. Never pulling a damn punch.
“He goes for the jugular every time.” But that wasn’t exactly right. “No, he goes for the sucker punch.”
“He goes for the tender spots. The injured ones,” Brae said softly. Her slender throat worked as she swallowed, and I swore I could feel her warring with herself to let something go. “He almost made me quit looking once. Got me that good.”
“What’d he say?” I had no damn right to ask, but the words tumbled out anyway.
Those golden eyes lifted to mine, darkening with pain and doubt. “Told me I shouldn’t be taking time away from a son who needed me to chase a ghost because I felt guilty. That my kid deserved better.”
A different sort of rage caught fire in my veins. Because I saw exactly the kind of mother Brae was. She was the kind who gaveeverything for her kid but still second-guessed if it was enough. Because she cared. And that bastard had twisted her up about it.
“He’s a goddamned fool. But a manipulative one. And he loves to get in a kidney shot,” I growled.
Brae’s lips pressed together in a half smile. “Felt more like an ovary punch, but he certainly fights dirty. And he’s smart enough to get in the kill shot, take a half-truth and twist it. Because Ido feel guilty.” Those golden eyes turned glassy. “Because I wasn’t there when Nova needed me.”
I stared at her for a long moment and felt the sudden urge to tell her about my past. The excuse my mind made was that someone would. Hell, Miller had just threatened to do as much. And countless other residents in Starlight Grove could do the same. Maybe someone had already let something slip.
As my gaze slid around the mostly empty bar, only a couple of lunch stragglers in a far corner left, I could stillfeel the possibility of someone telling Brae their version of my story.
But none of that was thereal truth. I wanted to give Brae something that would show her she wasn’t alone, even if I
couldn’t exactly give that to her. “Half-truths turned to lies,”
I rasped.
Brae studied me for a long moment, peeling back the layers I’d become an expert at keeping in place. “What truths does he twist for you?”
That urge to tell her intensified. I’d never wanted to tell a soul. I’d only wanted to bury it deep. But Brae’s vulnerability made me want a piece of that bravery, too. And I didn’t want her to be alone in her pain.
I didn’t look away as I gave her ammunition Inever gave people. Because they could use it the way Miller did. The way so many others did—by accident or on purpose. But I handed it to her anyway. “My father…was a serial killer.”
