8 months later…
The afternoon sun was bright, the air fresh and cool, clinging onto spring although summer was only a month away. It was a glorious seventy-six degrees, with big, white clouds speckling an endless blue sky. I parked my Jeep between two jacked-up Chevys with American flags and tool boxes in the back.
I took a moment to look up at the thriving tree in front of me. I’d never seen a green so vibrant. So healthy. Squirrels zipped from branch to branch. There was even a blue bird, as bright as turquoise, sitting only a few feet above my Jeep. I can honestly say, it was the first time in my life, I took a second to appreciate a single tree.
I turned the ignition and climbed out of my Jeep. Yes, in case you’re wondering, the same one. The same one I’d had when the world burned down around me. The same one with ripped seats and a busted air conditioner. I never got the thing fixed. I don’t know why really, other than I’d come to like the fresh air. The Jeep’s flaws were like a badge of honor, a weakness in the vehicle that I not only accepted, but embraced.
A metaphor, no doubt about that.
“Let’s go, Brute.”
Oh, and there was that. Nothing easier for hauling dogs around than a vehicle without doors.
Brute jumped out, tail wagging and took off into the woods, as he always did. A smile caught me as I watched him sniff like a bloodhound. Turns out, the pit was one hell of a detection dog. I watched him as he meandered through the new grass and seedlings, budding along the forest floor that eight months earlier had burned to the ground.
One thousand acres had burned during what was now dubbed as the Moon Magic Fire. It would have been a lot worse—catastrophic—if not for the river that helped contain the flames until the sky opened up six hours later and rained for almost an entire day. Autumn, followed by an icy winter, didn’t allow for much regrowth, but so far, the season of new life was living up to its name.
Renewal.
Rebirth.
I straightened, stretching my spine, my hand almost instinctively going to my lower back.
The sound of tires on rocks had me looking over my shoulder at the black sedan slowly inching to a stop behind my Jeep.
“Hey, old man.” Darby pushed out of the car.
“Hey, shorty.”
He sauntered over, a new swagger I’d never seen in the kid. “How’s the back?”
“What do you have behind yours?”
A shit-eating-grin crossed his face as he pulled a God-awful gold cane with an eagle head hand mount from behind his back. “Picked you up a cane.”
“Thanks.” I plucked it from his hand and hurled it into the woods, the sunlight glinting off the gold as it faded out of sight.
“Hey! That cost me seven dollars.”
“More than those shoes, I’m guessing.”
Darby kicked out the professional black loafers that had replaced his millennial white kicks. “At least they don’t have holes anymore.”
The kid had a point.
“How’s the shoulder?” I asked.
He rolled his arm in a circle. “Good as new. Except when it rains. For some reason it aches when it rains.”
“It’ll keep you tough.” I looked him over. Darby’s blue button-up and khakis were freshly pressed with not a drip of syrup, ketchup or chocolate milk on them. Starched too, best I could tell. And not a speck of dirt. The kid had gained seventeen pounds of solid muscle since fully recovering from being shot three times. The added weight and ability to defy death gave him instant respect at the station. The scars from taking three rounds to the torso gave him a golden dick, apparently. Tommy Darby had become the most unexpected ladies’ man in Berry Springs. I saw more than that, though. I saw confidence. And it looked damn good on him.
I lingered on the shiny badge on his hip for a moment, memories flooding me.
Times had changed. In eight months, my life had taken me down paths I’d never expected.
“Come on,” I grabbed my bags from the back and nodded to the trail through the woods that had been carved out of foot traffic over the last few months. Darby fell into step next to me.
“You know,” he said, “That cane really would have gone with this new caveman look you’ve got on.”
I ran my fingers through my hair, catching on a snag. That was a first. I couldn’t remember a time that my hair was so long that it tangled. Went with the beard, though. I also couldn’t remember ever having so many gray hairs. Only at the temples for now, but spreading nonetheless.
It felt good, believe it or not. The beard, the shaggy hair that curled just below my ears. Another inch and I’d be able to pull it back. I’d spent my life sporting crew cuts and smooth chins. Not anymore.
“So,” Darby started, redirecting the conversation to the purpose of the announced visit. “I wanted to get your thoughts on this case I was just handed…”
Our conversation seamlessly switched to homicide, to me listening to Darby and doing my best to guide him in the right direction. I didn’t know why the kid trusted me so much, but because he did, I wasn’t going to let him down. He wasn’t going to be the next Dog, he was going to be the next Pit Bull.
I was proud of him. He was the youngest cop to ever be promoted to detective.
As we took a curve in the woods, the sounds of nature faded to shouts, curse words, something about “your mama,” tools banging, saws and drills. The fresh smell of lumber perked my senses—but that was nothing compared to seeing the woman standing at the edge of the woods.
Wearing a pair of khaki pants tight enough to hug that perfect ass, a pair of workman boots—although she’d kick my ass for calling them workman boots instead workwoman boots—and a T-shirt that read Goal Digger, Sunny Harper stood with her hands fisted on her hips, her focus zeroed in on the project ahead of her. Her hair was down, flowing in the wind, just the way I liked it. The tool belt around her waist had my dick pulsing, the dirt smudged on her cheek had my heart kicking. Over the last eight months, I learned Sunny’s loyalty and hard-working nature had no bounds.
She was the perfect woman.
And she was mine.
As if sensing me, she turned, a breeze catching those long curls as she met my gaze and smiled.
New beginnings.
Her attention dropped to the bags in my hands. Her eyes lit as we walked up.
“A picnic lunch?”
I lifted the brown sacks in one hand and a bag carrying our plaid blanket and bug spray in the other. Picnics had become a thing for us. Shoes off, every time.
“Breakfast burritos for my queen,” I said.
“Oh, gag.” Darby rolled his eyes.
“I actually cook my woman breakfast in the mornings, Darby, not send them out the door with a bottle of prescription ointment.”
“Dude, that was poison ivy, I promise.”
We laughed.
“Well thanks for showing up, Sally.” My gaze shifted to Gage Steele, sauntering across the field. In the distance, a dozen workers, including Gage’s brothers, Axel, Gunner, and Phoenix, slinging hammers and pushing drills into the nearly finished frame for the lake house.
Our lake house.
Gage tossed me a hammer. “Added an extra grip around the handle, made special for fingernail-less nubs. I call it the Cripple’s Clout.”
I caught it mid-air and hurled it back. He doubled over, grabbing his groin.
“I think I like Ball Blaster better.”
“Asshole,” he squeaked out like a pre-pubescent boy.
Grinning, Phoenix Steele, the CEO of the project and a man of recovery in his own right, walked up, grinning at me. “Well, you’ve still got your aim at least.”
“Big target,” Gage ground out between clenched teeth.
Phoenix shook his head and refocused on me. “Rough plumbing and HVAC wiring should be done by Friday. We’re ahead of schedule. Hopefully we’ll start on the drywall within the next few weeks.”
“Sounds like you could use a break, then.” I jerke
d my chin to the trail that led to the Jeep. “I’ve two coolers filled with sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs. Water, beer, and three handles of Jack.”
Phoenix grinned. “You had me at handle.” He glanced back at the crew. “I’ll let them know. Might even give them the afternoon off after. Your brother’s connections are solid, man. We’re way ahead of schedule.”
I looked over Phoenix’s shoulder to my brother, Ryder, straddling the center beam of the roof, high above the other workers. While everyone else worked in pairs, with occasional jovial banter back and forth, my brother worked solo. He was the first one at the site in the morning and the last to leave. His commitment to helping me out reminded me of the good ol’ days when we used to be inseparable. Before his life had imploded and he’d turned into an agoraphobic mute. Sunny had tried to set him up with Briana Morgan, to which he denied with a quick change of subject and turn of his back. As I watched him hammer nail after nail, the sweat pouring off of the hard lines of his face, I wondered if I’d ever have that brother back. Until then—or if ever—I’d settle for someone, who regardless of his callous exterior, would take a bullet for me. That was more than enough, and I loved him for it.
“So, you ready for Monday?” Phoenix asked.
I pulled my gaze away from Ryder, a zing of excitement shooting through me at Phoenix’s question.
“Hell, yeah.” I nodded. “Brute and I will be there at eight, bells on.”
Hell, yes, I was ready to get back to work. Two days after the fire, I sent my resignation to my boss and tossed my badge on Chief McCord’s desk with a smile on my face, and Sunny waiting for me in my Jeep. Almost losing her, and Darby, for that matter, had jolted me more than any near-death experience had before. Life was short. It was time to change mine. To be a better person. To be a better man. To be like Sunny. And that started with ending my career as a homicide detective. I walked away from everything I knew, from the job that had become my life, from everything I ate, drank, and slept.
Although removing my badge from my belt had been like removing my right arm, it felt right.
It was time to slow down, switch paces.
I’d had too much death in my life. Too many lives taken, too many lives lost, too much pain, too all-consuming in what had become an unhealthy way of life for me.
Three weeks after that, on my fortieth birthday nonetheless, I’d gone in for back surgery, at Sunny’s urging, to finally correct the problem that had been plaguing me for years. The recovery wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, especially with Sunny as my sizzling-hot nurse—I even talked her into wearing one of those dirty nurse costumes—and Brute as my misery-loves-company partner. He’d gone in for doggy-shoulder surgery a week after mine. We’d recovered together, him and I, and the damn dog hadn’t left my side since.
I’d been a fish out of water. No job, no strength, no plans. Totally lost. All this while detoxing off, what I realize now, was a very real addiction to pain pills. I haven’t touched a pill since.
And it was the day I stopped trembling that I picked up the phone and called my mother, taking the first step in mending the crack from a two-decade-long grudge. She’d cried when I said simply, “hi.” I cried when she told me she loved me.
It had stripped me raw, and Sunny had been my strength, my light. My path.
On Christmas morning, I’d taken Sunny to the tree in the park, once known as the Voodoo Tree, now known as the place where I dropped to my knees and asked her to marry me. She was my gift, my woman, my savior.
My own.
She said yes, and a week later, we’d begun designing our new lake house to sit on the scorched land we’d purchased from Sunny’s dad. No handouts.
We had plans to rebuild the forest around our house, which was going to consist of a full-blown K9 training facility. After delivering the fourth Cedonia scroll to Briana, Sunny hung up her hat as an art investigator and decided to put her full focus on what truly made her happy, her business, Sunny’s K9 Security. And me? I signed on to become Steele Shadows Security’s latest consultant. It would be less physical, less death, but still in the realm of what I knew. What I was good at, what I was born to do. And the pay was damn good, too.
Gage slung his arm around Darby’s shoulder and the two began the ball-busting banter they established since I’d taken him to the Steele compound for hand-to-hand combat training a few months earlier.
Sunny beamed up at me, a smile brighter than the spring sun. “It’s really coming along isn’t it?”
I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her forehead. “I’d live in a matchbox with you.”
“Been there, done that.” She winked, then closed her eyes and inhaled, a sweet little habit she had when I kissed her face.
I took her left hand in mine and fingered the ring I gotten her. It was a band of diamonds, and in the center, three emerald stones to match her eyes. Unique, timeless, gorgeous. Just like her. I threaded my hand through hers and kissed her again, this time on lips.
“Let’s eat.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.”
As the construction crew disbanded, we settled onto the picnic blanket and fell into that carefree, comfortable, easy conversation I’d come to love almost as much as her ability to bend like a pretzel in bed.
For the first time, I felt happy. Free.
Light.
Looking back, it’s funny how one single event can change a life so drastically. How it went, the paths you chose after, for better or worse—was your decision.
I chose better. Like Sunny had chosen.
And I wasn’t ever going back.
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I killed a man.
Paid ten years of my life for it.
Then she blew through my front door, all trainwreck and temptation.
A broken soul.
… An invitation to danger.
Ryder (Steele Shadows Investigations)
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Amanda McKinney is the bestselling and multi-award-winning author of more than fifteen romantic suspense and mystery novels. She wrote her debut novel, LETHAL LEGACY, after walking away from her career to become a writer and stay-at-home mom. Her books include the BERRY
SPRINGS SERIES, STEELE SHADOWS SERIES, and the BLACK ROSE MYSTERY SERIES, with many more to come. Amanda lives in Arkansas with her handsome husband, two beautiful boys, and three obnoxious dogs.
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THE AWARD-WINNING BERRY SPRINGS SERIES
The Woods (A Berry Springs Novel)
The Lake (A Berry Springs Novel)
The Storm (A Berry Springs Novel)
The Fog (A Berry Springs Novel)
The Creek (A Berry Springs Novel)
The Shadow (A Berry Springs Novel)
The Cave (A Berry Springs Novel)
#1 BESTSELLING STEELE SHADOWS
Cabin 1 (Steele Shadows Security)
Cabin 2 (Steele Shadows Security)
Cabin 3 (Steele Shadows Security)
Phoenix (Steele Shadows Rising)
Jagger (Steele Shadows Investigations)
Ryder (Steele Shadows Investigations) ***Coming Fall, 2020!***
★The Beautiful Series, coming 2021★
Like your sexy murder mysteries with a side of
evil witch? Check out THE BLACK ROSE MYSTERY SERIES about three super-rich, independent, badass sisters who run a private investigation company in a creepy, southern town…
Devil’s Gold (A Black Rose Mystery, Book 1)
Jagger (Steele Shadows Investigations) Page 31