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I’d always handled my alcohol well, so the fact I got blackout drunk, literally, was a shocker. But not nearly as big a one as whoever the fuck was in my house.

Judging by the clothes left behind, it was someone substantially smaller, so I didn’t bother with the gun I kept in the safe in my nightstand. Instead, I clenched my hands into fists as I made my way down the hall, my feet moving silently, knowing exactly which floorboards creaked so I could avoid them.

I kept to the shadows until I reached the kitchen. “The hell is going on?” I barked as soon as I spun to face the person hovering around my space. Her back was to me, her tiny frame swimming in a shirt that I recognized as my own. I barely had a chance to take in the creamy expanse of the woman’s toned thighs when she let out a shriek of terror, whipping around and launching the spatula she’d been holding like a throwing star.

I barely managed to dodge it, ducking a millisecond before it went sailing over my head and slapping against the wall behind me.

“Oh my goddess!” That word jogged something. A memory from the night before tried scratching its way to the surface, but I lost it before it could fully form. “You scared the absolute hell out of me! What are you, a ninja?” Her hands were clenched as she finished that sentence with a stamp of her foot.

My first thought was that she looked cute as hell when she was all flustered. My second thought was; why the hell is Iris Maxwell in my kitchen at the crack of dawn . . . nearly naked?

SEVEN

NORTH

I stood up slowly, my head twisting to look from the spatula on the floor behind me to the redhead standing in the middle of my kitchen, a single brow arching closer to my hairline.

The indignation melted away in an instant, replaced with that blush I’d seen on her more times than I could count. A blush that affected me a hell of a lot stronger than it should.

Truth was, every damn thing about Iris Maxwell affected me. That blush was a fist to the gut. The way she always chewed her lip nervously when I caught her watching me never failed to make my dick stir. But the way her golden caramel eyes clouded over as she stared when she hadn’t realized I’d already busted her had me going rock hard in an instant. And don’t even get me started on the way she stuttered. Fuck, but something about the way she shyly stumbled over words in my presence was enough to make me lose my mind.

But I think my favorite thing about her was the scattering of freckles across the dainty bridge of her nose and the round apples of her cheeks. Every time she blushed, they glowed even brighter.

I liked those freckles way too goddamn much. I had no business daydreaming about fucking freckles, or wondering what kind of constellation patterns I could find if I ever got the chance to study them.

I had no business wondering if her skin was as silky as it looked or if it tasted as sweet as the peaches and cream of her pale complexion suggested. I had absolutely no business wondering day in and day out if the reality of her would live up to the promise that every smile, every giggle or snorting laugh, made. And damn if the promise wasn’t nearly enough to kill my resolve to stay away.

Which was what I’d been doing since I stepped foot into her office a few years back, looking for a realtor to help me find a place in my new town.

Despite feeling like a bomb had gone off in my chest the moment I locked eyes with her, she wasn’t the one who helped me find my house. And I tried not to think about the fact that this place never really felt like home to me and how different things might have turned out if the tiny redheaded dynamo had been the one to lend a hand.

I’d moved to Ashland for a specific reason, one I couldn’t forget, and I couldn’t let my infatuation with a woman I hardly knew (a woman who proclaimed to a fucking goddess, for Christ’s sake) derail my mission.

I wasn’t doing this just for me. What I had planned, it was in my sister’s memory. I was doing it for her and for all the women who had ended up like her.

That was why I was in Ashland. To find out what had happened to a girl named Layne Denning. A girl who had vanished without a trace, just like Cora.

Some people might have compared the two situations and called us the lucky ones since my sister’s body was eventually found, but there was no peace to be had in knowing exactly what had happened to her, what she suffered. It was that knowledge that lit the fire inside of me years ago and refused to be snuffed out.

It was knowing there were men out there, just like Cora’s piece of shit ex, who got off on hurting women. It was knowing that the justice I believed in wasn’t always given to those who deserved it that pushed me.

Layne Denning had become a kind of folklore for the people of Ashland. No one knew what happened to her, but there was plenty of speculation. I recalled hearing the story of the girl who disappeared, but it wasn’t until after I was out of the academy, when a true-crime podcast I listened to covered the mysterious disappearance years later of the town golden boy’s girlfriend, that my interest was piqued.

I started investigating on my own. Off the books and on my own time, of course. The more I learned, the hotter my blood burned. It wasn’t only the townsfolk who believed Tolliver Brady had a hand in the disappearance of the girl who had publicly dumped him. The producers of the podcast and every other true crime junkie out there knew that piece of garbage and his equally crooked family had something to do with it. But like every other rich, corrupt asshole out there, they thought they were untouchable.

The crooked bastards ran Ashland like a goddamn authoritarian government, controlling the people who lived here through fear and money. Shitheads like that used those two things to amass more power until they eventually controlled everything.

I came to find the truth of what happened to Layne Denning, and the first step was to try and get Tolliver Brady out of power. Sure, his father and grandfather had their fingers in everything, but I had to take this one step at a time. Had to be careful, methodical. And out of the entire Brady family, Tolliver was the weakest link I could find. The hothead who couldn’t keep his shit locked up tight enough not to cause trouble for the rest of them. Then again, what would you expect to happen to a spoiled brat who grew up with no consequences and a family who covered up ever vile thing he’d ever done.

If I could get the people of Ashland to let go of their fear long enough to elect me as their Chief of Police, I would finally have enough power and resources to start making moves of my own. As long as men like Tolliver Brady and his kin were in charge, evil would run rampant.

Everything I was doing was dangerous. But I couldn’t stand by and let another woman suffer the same fate as my sister.

That was why I couldn’t bring myself to answer my parents’ calls or texts. Why I couldn’t return their emails. I knew the likelihood of coming out of this unscathed (or at all) was slim to none, and the idea of causing them any more pain than they’d already suffered was like a white-hot blade straight to the heart. I just couldn’t face them.

If I let them in, I might lose my nerve.

That was why I kept Iris at a distance as well. If there was a woman out there who could talk me out of what I was doing, I knew it was her. And I refused to be stopped.