Page 34

TWENTY-FOUR

Killian

The message was simple: a location and a we need to talk from Jamie.

The place he sent me to was an abandoned house, one of many left behind on a road littered with rusting signs for reinvestment opportunities.

These had been family homes once—before an extension to the main road had sliced through the neighborhood like a blade.

The man behind that decision had been dealt with by the Cave a long time ago, but it didn’t make the sight any less depressing.

Mailboxes stood like gravestones. Porches sagged under the weight of years of neglect.

I parked down the block, out of sight, then walked the rest of the way.

No sign of a car. No cameras. Just a chain-link fence bent out of shape and weeds reclaiming cracked concrete.

I ducked under the broken fence and circled the house slowly.

A two-story structure, old clapboard siding faded and peeling.

The windows were boarded up in places, but the back door had been broken.

I stepped through it into a kitchen that still held the ghost of a home—cabinet doors hanging open, a stove rusted into silence, the stale scent of rot beneath the dust.

“Jamie?” I called.

“In here,” he answered.

Just hearing his voice made my chest ease a little. I followed it, through to a front room that felt strangely intact. The floor groaned under my boots. Dust motes danced in the air, silver in the low light. And then, I saw him.

Jamie stood by the window, flicking his lighter open and closed.

My gut clenched at the sight—something about the rhythm of it—too measured, too deliberate—set every nerve on edge.

The tension in the room wasn’t only in the air—it was in him, tight and coiled, and now it was winding itself into me, too.

The small flame reflected in his eyes and made shadows leap across his face.

He looked tired—bone-deep tired—but still sexy as hell.

Rumpled hoodie, loose jeans, one boot untied as if he’d thrown himself into this without stopping.

His hair curled a little, damp maybe from sweat or mist. I couldn’t see the full blue of his eyes from here—ten feet between us and the only light came from the moon spilling through broken blinds, a flickering streetlamp beyond the cordoned-off road, and that damn lighter.

But I could feel them. That bright blue, watching me, challenging me, hurting beneath the surface.

I swallowed hard. My body knew before my brain caught up—something was wrong. The air was too quiet.

“What’s wrong, Jamie?” I asked, voice low, already bracing for whatever storm he’d pulled me into.

Jamie kept flipping the lighter open and closed, the metallic click a nervous rhythm. Then, without turning, he said, his voice eerily calm, “I should explain first that this entire room is rigged to burn.”

My heart stuttered at the matter-of-fact delivery, and for a second, the air around me felt thinner—too dry, too quiet—as though the house itself was holding its breath.

That stopped me.

“Huh?”

He glanced over his shoulder, eyes sharp now, watching me register the weight of what he’d said. “Not right now. Not by accident. I haven’t armed anything. But if I wanted to, I could turn this whole place into a bonfire in under fifteen seconds.”

I looked around, more carefully this time.

Wires snaked up behind the moldy couch and along the baseboards.

There was a faint chemical tang in the air, something sharp beneath the dust. I spotted the glint of copper wire coiled near a cracked outlet, a bundle of what looked like tubes behind an overturned chair.

“You’ve been busy,” I murmured.

Jamie shrugged. “If I needed to destroy everything, it’s all here. I rigged it using old ignition relays and a salvaged Arduino module. One push of a button, the spark arcs, magnesium ignites, and boom. All gone.”

His voice was calm. Too calm. That same eerie stillness he got when his emotions ran too deep to show.

“You planning on burning me?” I asked carefully.

The question felt ridiculous the moment it left my mouth—but it wasn’t. Not really. Not here; not with Jamie standing in the center of a fire trap he’d built himself. My throat felt tight. Was it fear? Guilt? Maybe both. “Burning us?”

That got a smile. Brief, brittle.

“Well, that depends on what you know about State of Nevada v. Zachary Hillway-Spencer. You know, the high-profile murder trial dismissed on a technicality involving mishandled evidence and a missing chain of custody report.” His words spilled out, but the name Zachary Hillway-Spencer was enough to send chills down my spine.

It was inevitable that he’d find out what we’d done for Lassiter—I just wished he’d found out when I could control the narrative and be honest about my past dealings with him.

Long after Lassiter was dealt with when it wouldn’t damn me in Jamie’s eyes.

“Jamie—”

“Stop talking. You need to know what kind of room we’re standing in before you talk to me. Because after you tell me all your truths, you won’t be able to pretend anymore. Not about you and Lassiter. And not about what you did. I trusted you, Killian. I let myself believe in you.”

I took a step closer, the boards groaning beneath me. “It’s not what you think.”

Jamie let out a sharp, humorless laugh, the sound cutting through the heavy air.

“How did I know you’d say that?” he said, still not meeting my eyes.

“You’d tell me anything right now to make it out of here alive, wouldn’t you?

All the pretty lies that mean you can carry on hurting me—like none of this matters. Like I don’t matter. ”

His voice cracked, but he covered it by flicking the lighter one more time, letting the flame dance before snapping it closed again. The silence that followed felt unbearable.

I took another step, more cautious this time, the old wood groaning again. “Pretty, you do matter. I never?—”

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped, his gaze meeting mine, sharp and full of fury. “And don’t lie to me.”

I stopped where I stood, frozen by the weight of those words. He thought he didn’t matter to me?

“Let me explain,” I said, quieter now.

Jamie’s expression twisted—hurt, angry, betrayed. But underneath it all, there was a glimmer of something else. Maybe it was still hope. Or perhaps the last trace of what we’d once been to each other.

He didn’t answer. Not yet.

I took a breath and ran a hand through my hair.

“Lassiter came to me. It was my first high-profile case—my shot. I was young and hungry and didn’t ask too many questions at the time.

I was part of the prosecution team, not the lead, but I had access to the information.

Then, I met the defendant, Zachary Hillway-Spencer. ”

Jamie didn’t move .

“The minute I looked him in the eye, I got this feeling,” I continued.

“A niggle in my gut that the man was innocent. It didn’t make sense with the file in front of me, but it wouldn’t leave me alone.

And I didn’t think Lassiter was crooked—not then.

Not at all. But something about the case didn’t feel right. ”

I stepped around a broken board, closer to Jamie, his gaze fixed on me. “So, I played the game. I kept my mouth shut so the Cave could dig. Quietly. Behind the scenes. They went through everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

I paused, heart beating hard. Jamie’s grip on the lighter was tight, his knuckles white. Flicked on. Off. On. Off.

“We found that evidence had been tampered with. Reports rewritten. Photographs doctored. But nothing pointed directly to Lassiter building a case against an innocent person at that point. There was no smoking gun. Just a whole lot of wrong.”

Still, Jamie said nothing. That silence was heavier than anything he could have shouted.

“The Cave found a way to challenge the case without exposing our hand. They focused on the evidence mishandling. Turns out, one of the detectives on the case—a guy named Collins—was sleeping with Zachary’s wife. The same wife Zachary supposedly murdered.”

I let the weight of that sit before continuing.

“Legally, it was a nightmare. Conflict of interest. Undisclosed relationships. The chain of custody for critical evidence was deliberately broken. Inadmissible. We handed everything over to the defense team anonymously, separate from Lassiter. The defense filed a motion for dismissal based on prosecutorial misconduct and contamination of the evidence trail. The judge had no choice but to throw the case out.”

I looked Jamie straight in the eye, trying to get through the fury I saw there.

“Lassiter came out of it clean. The official narrative? He helped the DA’s office avoid a costly trial once the evidence fell apart.

He got praise. Credit. He was furious that the whole thing had stopped being some huge show trial, but we thought nothing of it. ”

My voice dropped. “And I regret every single thing I ever did to build his reputation. It was the only case I worked under his name, and I swear to you, Jamie—I didn’t know how deep his rot went until you pulled the name from John Mitchell.

Until then, he was just another political player.

I didn’t know about the money, the laundering, the trafficking, or the rest of it.

He was on our list as morally ambiguous, but way way down, and we never saw it. ”

Still, Jamie didn’t speak. But something in his stance had shifted, and I clung to that. Maybe he was still listening.

“Then, he called me, a while back, wanted me to look into a certain suspicious fire at a club, a missing laptop, aka your fire.” I paused to let that sink in. “He told me he knew that I’d handed over prosecution research to the defense team when he’d wanted it quashed.”

Jamie stiffened. “He’s blackmailing you?”

“I guess. It won’t work. He comes for me and my team, and we’d destroy him in a heartbeat. He just doesn’t know that yet.”

I took one more step, slow and deliberate, until I stood so close I could almost reach him.

“You won’t reach me in time to stop me burning this place,” Jamie warned, voice low and rough. “So don’t try.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I said, calm but firm.

“I want you to know I trust you. And if that means I stand here with you until you trust me back, then I will.” I let that settle for a moment, heart pounding.

Then added, “I love you, and if you go up in flames, I’m going with you.

That’s how this works. You burn. I burn. Together.”

Jamie’s eyes widened and then his lips twitched, a half-smile flickering and fading like the flame he kept playing with. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah,” I said, the hint of a smile tugging at my mouth. “But I’m your idiot.”

Another step, and I reached out, my fingers closing around the lighter in his hand. It was hot to the touch as if it had been burning too long. I didn’t flinch. With my other hand, I cradled his face, brushing my thumb along the sharp edge of his jaw, then up under his eye.

“I didn’t know about Lassiter,” I said, voice low, the words meant only for him. “I swear to you, if I had, I would’ve stopped him a long time ago.”

His breath hitched, and I leaned forward until our foreheads touched.

I stayed there, grounding both of us, waiting. “Do you believe me, Pretty?”

His lashes fluttered. Then, after a beat, he sighed and reached out to flick something on the wall behind him. I didn’t move. I just waited. No fire. No click. No hiss of ignition.

He trusted me. Maybe only a little. But enough.

“In the spirit of honesty,” Jamie murmured, “the wall of fire would’ve stopped two feet back from me. And the window’s unlocked for me to get out.” I blinked, and he gave a lopsided shrug. “You’d have been the only one dying.”

“Hmm, doesn’t sound as romantic,” I deadpanned, letting my voice drop into a mock-serious tone as I kept my forehead against his.

“Did you mean it?” he asked, softly.

I was confused by the shift in tone. “I swear, we didn’t know the depths that Lassiter?—”

“No, the other thing,” he interrupted, more insistent this time, his gaze locked onto mine.

“What thing?” I teased, brushing my thumb along his cheek again, the warmth of him grounding me.

“You said you loved me,” he murmured, voice smaller now, as if it cost him something to say it aloud.

“I do,” I said, without hesitation.

“Repeat it?”

I smiled. “I love you, Pretty.”

“What does it feel like?” he asked, his fingers tightening at my hip.

“Me loving you?” I echoed, tilting my head so I could see more of his expression.

“Yeah.”

“Obsession at first,” I let each word linger.

“ Need.” I brushed my thumb along his cheek again.

“Quiet peace.” I took a shallow breath. “Anger. Lust.” My voice dipped lower.

“Desperation to touch… wishing for a future with you, whatever happens. That’s my love.

” I cupped his jaw fully, making sure he heard every word.

He hummed again, then his other hand slid to rest at my hip.

“Then, I love you, too, Killian,” he said, with all the raw honesty I’d been desperate to hear.

“But if you lie to me, if I find out that you’re not for real, then I will end you,” he said, not with anger, but with a cold finality that made my breath catch.

The words hit hard because they were true. Not a threat, but a promise born from pain. I nodded slightly, not to agree, but to acknowledge the weight of it. My chest ached with everything I still hadn’t said. This wasn’t a man bluffing.

“I know.”

“And fuck, Killian, for the love of all that’s holy, stop calling me Pretty.”