CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

Seattle, Washington

October 2022

"How far would you go?"

Gideon's words stopped Brooke short. She was already late and she felt the seconds ticking by. Turning in the small cabin of his sailboat, she found him where she'd left him, lying on his bed, his tanned body entangled in the sheets, dark hair falling over his forehead.

"What do you mean?"

He pushed himself upward, levering on an elbow, muscles visible beneath his tanned skin, gray eyes assessing. As if he knew. Outside a seagull cried, and she caught its image flying past masts of neighboring sailboats, then skimming over the gray waters of the bay.

Tell him. Get it over with. End this now!

"For something you wanted," he said, and he wasn't smiling. "How far would you go?"

"I don't know." She finger combed her tousled hair, then started for the short flight of stairs leading to the deck. "Pretty far, I guess." She glanced at her watch. "Look, I really have to go."

Tell him.

"Wait." He rolled off the bed, and she noticed his tattoo, a small octopus inked at his nape, barely visible when his hair grew long. He caught her wrist, spinning her back to face him. A little over six feet, he was lean and fit, his skin bronzed from hours in the sun. "Why don't you ask me?" he said and he leaned down to touch his forehead to hers. His fingertips moved against the inside of her wrist and his pupils darkened a bit. Tell him! that damned inner voice insisted. Tell him now!

"Ask you?"

"How far I'd go."

Her heart started beating a little quicker, his fingers so warm, the boat rocking slightly under her feet. "Okay," she said, and hated the whispery tone of her voice. "Okay. How far would you go?"

"For something I wanted? For the person I was supposed to be with?" His gaze locked with hers and the breath caught in the back of her throat. The walls of the boat's tiny cabin seemed to shrink, and for a heartbeat it was as if they were the only two people on earth. He leaned close and whispered in her ear, "I would do anything." She swallowed hard.

He repeated, "Anything."

"Anything?" She couldn't keep the skepticism from her voice.

His gaze held hers. "If I had to, I would kill."

Seattle traffic was a nightmare.

And she was late.

Of course.

Not only had she chickened out and not told Gideon that what they'd shared for the past few months was over, she was running late. Again.

"Come on, come on," she said, as much to herself as to the other drivers in the snarl of vehicles clogging the streets. She drove her SUV through the knots of vehicles, slipping from one lane to another, then turning her Explorer onto a steep side street, hoping to avoid the crush heading to the freeway.

"Come on, come on," she muttered as she caught up with a huge red pickup that inched forward. She glanced at the clock on the dash. She was supposed to be at the school in five minutes. At this rate it would take an hour! She pounded on the horn just as they reached a construction site.

The pickup, laden with a load of cordwood, eased past the orange cones guarding a wide hole in the asphalt as a bearded construction worker held up a stop sign. Though his eyes were shielded by aviator sunglasses, he glared at her through the windshield, daring her to try to slip past.

She didn't. Waited. Impatiently drummed her fingers on the steering wheel while a monstrous backhoe, alarm beeping, backed into the street, then moved forward. It was a warm day for October in Seattle, sunlight streaming through her dusty windshield. And the backhoe seemed to inch its way across the street.

"Oh, come on!"

She wouldn't make it.

Especially now.

Great.

"Damn."

She picked up her cell phone and texted her daughter: Running late. On my way.

How many times had she typed in those exact words and sent them to Marilee? At least once a week, often times more. Especially recently.

Marilee, all of fourteen, no, wait, "almost fifteen," would be pissed.

So what else was new?

Spewing exhaust, the backhoe inched forward, a hefty driver working levers to scrape up huge chunks of concrete and asphalt. In what seemed like slow motion, he swung his bucket high into the air, then tilted it to pour his load into the box of a massive, idling dump truck.

The minutes ticked by before the backhoe started moving out of the street and into an alley.

"Finally."

Her cell phone rang. Startling her.

Then she realized it wasn't her cell, not the one registered on her family plan with Neal and Marilee but her other phone. The burner. Not connected to her Bluetooth. The secret phone no one knew about. No one but Gideon. She flipped open the console, scraped out the bottom of the small space, and found the burner. Yanking it from its hiding space, she glanced at the screen.

She didn't recognize the number.

"What the hell?"

She answered abruptly, her foot easing up on the brake. "Hello."

A pause.

Her SUV started rolling forward.

"Hello?" she said sharply again.

The street cleared and the flagger turned his sign from Stop to Slow.

A rough, whispered voice was barely audible over the rumble of engines and shouts of men on the work crew. "He's not who you think he is."

"What?" she said, straining to hear. "Who's not—who is this?"

The call disconnected.

Her heart sank. Someone knew! Oh God, she'd been found out.

She blinked, staving off a panic attack. No one was supposed to know. No one did. Of course no one did. The call had to be a mistake. Someone who had punched in the wrong numbers. That was it. Sweat began to moisten her fingers and she mentally kicked herself for not having the guts to break it off earlier. She hadn't even found the courage to tell him today.

"Chickenshit," she grumbled. "Coward."

The flagger was motioning her through, frantically waving his arm, but her mind was on the message. What if it wasn't a wrong number? What if someone knew? Oh God.

She stepped on the gas, her heart pounding, her pulse pounding in her ears.

This couldn't be happening—From the corner of her eye, she saw a blur of yellow, a sports car speeding around her, cutting her off.

"Jesus!" she cried, nearly standing on the brakes as the disgusted workman kept waving her through, though he gave the yellow car a shake of his head.

But the Porsche was already through the construction zone and caught at the next light. "Idiot!" she muttered under her breath, driving forward, hoping to make the light as it started to turn green.

The burner jangled again.

What the hell?

The same unknown number showed on the screen.

Oh. God.

She answered sharply. "I don't know who you are, but you've got the wrong number!"

A pause, and then the whispered voice: "I don't think so, Brooke."

The caller knew her name?

"Who is this?" she demanded, frantic. Oh no, no, no . . .

"He's not who you think he is." The voice—male? Female? Old? Young? She couldn't tell. "You'd better be careful—"

Bam!

The front end of her Explorer slammed into the back of the sports car with a horrendous crunch of metal and plastic.

Her body jerked.

The seat belt snapped hard.

"Shit!" She hit the brakes, dropped the phone, her pulse shooting to the stratosphere.

The Porsche screeched to a stop.

The car behind her—a white boat of a thing with an elderly man at the wheel, his wife beside him—stopped within an inch of plowing into her. The driver looked up, startled. In front of her, the guy in the damaged Porsche jumped out of his car and strode to her window.

"What the fuck?" he yelled, his face all kinds of red, his jeans and black T-shirt faded and worn over a large, burly frame.

As she rolled down her window a little further, he yanked the hat from his head and threw the Mariners cap onto the pavement. "You fuckin' hit my car!"

Her mind was racing, her breathing shallow. "You started to go, then stopped."

"So what? You're supposed to have control of your vehicle. You hit me, lady!" He jerked a hand toward the curb. "And if you'd been paying attention, you would have noticed, a kid—that kid—was playing with a ball near the curb!" He stabbed a finger at the boy—four or five years old from the looks of him—staring at them with wide, frightened eyes. "The ball rolled into the street," the driver explained and she peeked past his angry body to see a basketball still rolling slowly on the pavement in front of a stopped van in the opposite lane. "I thought the kid might run after it. Jesus, what are you? A fuckin' moron?"

There was no way to deny it. When she looked to the near side of the street, she saw an older woman dragging the kid into an apartment house.

"You're just damned lucky he didn't chase the fuckin' thing!" The driver was still ranting. "Cuz if he did? And I didn't hit him? You sure the hell would have."

Her heart knocked painfully. He was right. She'd been so distracted by the phone call, by Gideon, by all of her messed-up life that she hadn't been paying attention. At least not enough attention.

But it would be fine—just some twisted metal. Nothing more. Nothing life-threatening. Thank God.

She peered up at him. "Are you okay?"

"Do I look okay?" he demanded, his bald head glistening in the sunlight, wraparound sunglasses hiding his eyes. Beneath a two- or three-days' growth of beard, a muscle in his jaw was working overtime.

"I don't know."

"Well, I'm not. Thanks to you. And my car! Shit, I just got the temporary plates removed! Brand-new and now—Now? Fuck!" He stripped off his sunglasses and looked about to throw them as he had the cap, then thought better of it and pushed the mirrored shades back onto the bridge of his nose. "Do you know what this is?" he said, jabbing a finger at his car. "Do you?" Before she could answer, he filled her in. "It's a fuckin' Nine-eleven! Did you hear me? A fuckin' Nine-eleven."

"Got it!" she shot back, her temper spiking. She gritted her teeth and tried to remain calm, even though this jerkwad was punching all of her buttons and her nerves were frayed to the breaking point.

The man in the white behemoth of a sedan had stepped onto the street. "We saw the whole thing," he shouted from behind the open car door. "If anyone needs a witness. Aggie and I saw it all." He motioned toward his wife, sitting stiffly on the passenger side of his Buick.

"Are you all right?" Brooke asked, yelling out her open window as other cars eased past them. "And your wife?"

"Yeah, yeah, we're both fine," the old guy said, flapping a hand.

Thank God.

To the angry driver, she said, "I think maybe we'd better pull over," noting the crowd that had gathered on the edge of the street. "Get each other's information."

"Fuckin' A," he said. "You're goddamned right we're going to do that! You're fuckin' gonna pay for this!" He motioned to his car before jabbing a finger at her face. "This is on you." Then he yanked his phone from his pocket, snapped a picture of her Explorer's license plate before motioning jerkily to the parking lot of a strip mall across the street. "Over there," he ordered.

He swiped his cap from the street and jammed it onto his head. As he climbed into his car, he shot her a look guaranteed to cut through steel.

"Ass," she said under her breath and watched as he rammed his sports car into gear before roaring across a lane of traffic to nearly bottom out as he hit a speed bump in the parking lot.

Served him right. Yeah, she was at fault, but the guy was being a jerk about it. She slid her Explorer into a parking slot in front of a FedEx and got out of her vehicle to survey the damage. The front bumper was destroyed, crumpled beyond repair, a headlight cracked, and who knew what else? But the Porsche had fared worse, a huge dent in the back end, paint scraped away, the hood creased.

"Jesus, would you look at that," the driver said, stalking to the back of his car and shaking his head at the dented metal, twisted to the point that she caught a glimpse of the engine. "I'm lucky I can still drive it. The engine's in the back, if you didn't know."

"I do know." From what she could see, the engine didn't appear to be damaged.

"Who taught you how to drive?" he asked.

Her temper flared hotter and her back stiffened. No way would she tell him she learned to drive a tractor at eleven, a truck for the fields of her uncle's farm at thirteen. None of his business. With an effort, she held her tongue. Don't get into it with him. It's not worth it! You have other problems to deal with, bigger than this ass's car. "Let's just exchange phone numbers and information," she suggested as evenly as possible.

"But it's all your fault. You rear-ended me."

"I get that," she shot back, her temper snapping. "Okay? I was there!"

"Good." He started back to his car.

"But you don't have to be a prick about it."

He whirled, his face contorted. "What did you say?"

"That you don't have to be a prick." She'd had it with the jerk. "Yeah, the car's a mess. Mine too, but what's done is done, so let's just get down to business."

"‘A mess?' Do you have any idea how much this car costs?"

"A lot. Yeah, I know. But yelling at me about it won't help."

"‘Yelling at me won't help,'" he singsonged back at her.

She bit back another hot retort, refused to be baited any further, and took a picture of her insurance card with the camera in her phone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw people collecting on the curb. "I'll text this to you. What's your number? Oh, and send me yours."

Grudgingly, jaw set, he rattled off his cell number and she, ignoring the curious looks from cars and trucks driving slowly by, typed it in. "I'm Brooke Harmon."

"Jim Gustafson. But James. Legally. It's James."

"Got it."

"Good, so, you know, when you hear from my lawyer."

"Great. Your attorney can contact mine: Neal Harmon."

He stiffened slightly, obviously catching the connection.

She filled him in anyway. "My husband."

He frowned slightly and she felt a second's satisfaction, then she offered Jim—legally James—a cold smile and sent the text before glancing up from her phone again and spying her distorted image in the lenses of his sunglasses. "We'll let the insurance companies sort it out."

"Not much to sort. Remember, I got witnesses. I took pictures of the license plates of the cars that were nearby. And that old guy and his wife in the Buick? They saw it all." Gustafson's smile was smug. Proud of himself.

"Good. Then we're done here." She only hoped it was true as she caught a glimpse of the flashing blue and red lights of a police cruiser in her mirror.