Page 61 of Fire Fight

Was someone trying to help me? Or was it merely a taunt?

“Aspen?”

Crew’s voice came closer as he continued to call for me, though it sounded like a distant echo as the world spun out around me.

And then he appeared in the doorway, and everything snapped back into focus in time with me slamming my laptop shut.

“Hey you,” he said, though the wariness in his eyes belied his warm greeting.

“Hey,” I said quickly, practically leaping from the chair.

“You okay?” he asked, that shrewd blue gaze not missing a thing.

“Fine!” I said, both too quickly and too cheerfully.

I was so far from fine we weren’t even in the same country, but I wasn’t about to dump my shit on him. This man had already done more than enough for me; he didn’t have to take this creepy emailer on too. Not to mention the way I was trying—and failing—to deal with my trauma. Somehow, though, being near Crew settled everything for me, made it easier to think and to move forward. Already, the tension in my body eased.

“Are you sure? You’re acting kind of weird…”

“I’m sure, Crew. You don’t know me well enough to know if I’m acting weird or not,” I gritted out, immediately regretting the tone when he blinked in surprise and yielded a step, as though I’d slapped him.

I couldn’t take the words back though, especially because they weren’t even a lie. Letting me sleep under a roof didn’t givehim the right to…hover. I had my very own helicopter parents for that.

Parents I wasn’t currently speaking to for that exact reason.

“Sorry,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Just checking.”

I sighed roughly through my nose and squeezed my eyes shut for a beat, willing myself to calm down.

“Where have you been?” I asked, scanning his face. His expression was tight, lips flattened into a thin line, the normally clear blue of his eyes hardened. “Areyouokay?”

“I’m fine. I was with Lane. I went to go ask him about those case files and ended up riding along to a suspect interview.”

Instantly, I perked up. “For this case?”

He nodded. “Drug dealer named Chris Taal. He’s a janitor at the school and has been long enough that he would’ve been around the night Vicky and Roger were murdered.”

“And?” I prompted, practically vibrating now, my mood doing an impressive one-eighty, cryptic email momentarily forgotten.

“Decades of cops seem to think he’s good for it, but they’ve never been able to pin him down. The interview was kind of a bust, but he ended up holding a knife to my brother’s neck, so at least Lane can hold him on that for a while.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed. “Is Lane okay?”

That was the first time I’d called his brother by his given name instead of “Sheriff,” and it felt funny on my tongue. Like I was doing something I shouldn’t be—like I was claiming an intimacy between me, this man, and the members of his family. I wasn’t sure I deserved it, or that there’d ever be anything between us beyond working this case together, but I couldn’t deny how much I liked it. Like Crew and I were discussing the daily happenings in our lives instead of talking through the first interview in a murder investigation.

Crew snorted, oblivious to my mental gymnastics. “He’s fine. My big brother is invincible.”

“I want to talk to this guy.”

“No,” Crew said quickly, and I met his eyes quick enough to see what looked like fear pass across his face, there and gone so fast I wasn’t entirely sure it’d been real.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean, no, you can’t. He’s in police custody, where he’ll likely stay for a while. Maybe when he’s out, but…he’s a bad guy, Aspen. A long-time drug dealer who associates with the bottom dwellers of this town. I don’t want you anywhere near him if I can help it.”

My blood pressure rose instantly.

“That’s not your decision to make. I need to interview him for my own investigation, and I’ll do so with or without your permission.”