by Caisey Quinn
Also by Caisey Quinn
The Nashville’s Finest Series
Lit Fuse
Live Wire
A Nashville’s Finest Novel
Caisey Quinn
INTERMIX
New York
INTERMIX
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Caisey Quinn
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
ISBN: 9780399585418
First Edition: March 2017
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Also by Caisey Quinn
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Epilogue
Playlist
About the Author
For my agent, Kevan, because she never gives up on me and my stories.
“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.”
—Joshua Graham
Prologue
Temporarily blinded by the sunlight, Chase squinted but forced himself not to look away.
He could practically taste the salt water of the ocean as he followed her footprints in the sand. Her chiming laughter danced on the breeze between them, leading him down the trail her sensual vanilla-and-wildflower scent left behind. He tried his best to breathe it in deeper.
Somewhere deep in the dark recess of his subconscious, he knew—knew this might be the last look at her he’d ever get. Remembered that everything bright and shiny and beautiful could be shot to hell in a single second. Knew from years of experience that this was most likely a dream. But he held on, because he hadn’t yet figured out how to let go.
“Come on, slowpoke!” she called out while she jogged in place a few yards ahead of him, quickly glancing over her shoulder to make sure he was still close behind. “We’re going to miss it.”
For a second he couldn’t remember what it was. Why in the hell are we running down the beach at the break of dawn when we could’ve been tangled together getting extremely dirty in the clean sheets?
Oh yeah. Sunrise. The dolphins. Vivien’s innate need to start every day as soon as humanly possible. It was familiar and new all at once. The trip they’d taken together. The secret getaway no one even knew they were on. Because he was her Commanding Officer and it was forbidden.
His feet struggled to tread the sand that she seemed to be navigating easily. Looking down he saw that she was barely touching the ground as she flitted ahead of him like the ginger-haired figment of his imagination that she was.
Son of a bitch.
He knew how this one would end. Knew he was incapable of stopping what was to come. He’d tried every possible alternate route and yet the destination was always the same.
“Viv, wait. Please!” Goddamn her stubborn ass. If she would’ve just waited for him that day. But Vivien waited for no man, ever. Not even him.
He broke into a sprint that felt more like dragging his legs through wet cement. When he got close enough, he reached for her, thrusting one of his muscular ink-covered arms out as hard as he could. So hard he heard a snap, but it wasn’t his bones breaking. It was the sound of Vivien stepping on a land mine.
Her face. God, he’d never forget her face when it happened. Her hazel eyes went wide with shock and realization. The blast wave exploded in slow motion, blowing debris in every direction, causing it to hit him so hard it felt like shards of glass tearing into every inch of his flesh.
He opened his mouth to call out to her, but the silent no remained on his lips as heat filled his mouth so completely he couldn’t breathe.
He came to on the ground, the scent of scorched skin potent under the blazing midday sun. In his hands, threaded through his fingers, were several strands of auburn hair.
The noise that escaped his chest—one more common to a wild animal in pain than a human man—woke him.
Chase Fisk sat straight up in bed, shedding his covers as quickly as he could because he was covered in sweat. It was so damn hot he felt as if every inch of oxygen had been sucked out of the room while he was being roasted alive.
The alarm clock read 4:57 and would go off in three minutes anyway. Composing himself and doing his best to catch his breath, Chase put his feet on the cool hardwood floor and reminded his brain yet again that it was just another nightmare. Another variation on the same one he’d been having for four years.
His warped mind had permanently twisted together the memories of both the best day of his entire life—the day Vivian had told him she loved him on the beach—and the worst—the day she’d been killed in a training exercise at Fort Jackson. Toss in his deployment to Afghanistan and it was the perfect nightmarish cocktail, one that left him feeling hungover and unrested every morning.
She was gone. Vivien Brooks had been killed, on his watch, while being trained under his command, during a routine certification at the end of her EOD training in South Carolina. He thought he’d accepted that nothing would ever bring her back, but the recurring nightmare indicated nothing would ever alleviate his guilt either.
He polished off a half-empty bottle of room-temperature water, wishing it were something much stronger before placing it on his nightstand. The alarm sounded and he slammed his hand down quickly to silence it. If his roommates hadn’t heard the noises his night terror had caused him to make, no reason they should have to be woken up by his alarm clock.
He was pretty sure Luke was off this weekend and Aiden was probably just about to get up himself. Or maybe Aiden would just be getting in. He rubbed his fists roughly against his eyes and trie
d to recall what day it was. Day two of a four-day tour of twelve-hour shifts. Chase could hardly keep his own schedule straight, much less anyone else’s. But that was life in law enforcement. Unpredictable. Erratic. In-fucking-sane most days.
Hence why none of them had serious relationships. Well, it was why his two best friends didn’t.
Chase had his own set of reasons.
The main one still haunted his dreams.
One
A pavement-punishing five-mile run and an ice-cold shower later, Chase reported to the central precinct in downtown Nashville nearly an hour before his actual shift started. He wasn’t vying for membership in the Cop of the Month club. Nearly every member of the explosive ordnance disposal team came in early. Dealing with equipment alone took for-fucking-ever.
After he’d been mildly injured by the explosion that had killed Vivien, his roommate Aiden’s sister, Annalise, had helped him get on as a member of the Nashville PD, where she worked in Intelligence. Luke and Aiden had followed soon after, but then, that had always been their endgames.
It hadn’t been his.
Chase had planned to retire from the United States Army. Medical discharge had never been part of his plan. But as he was learning, every time he made a plan, whatever higher power was in control basically told him to go fuck himself.
He’d planned to be career military. He’d also planned to spend every moment of his life that he could with Vivien Brooks.
Now he was an empty shell of a man going through the motions.
Fate was a cruel bitch.
Pulling his gear from his locker, he avoided eye contact with his fellow officers and focused on the assignment for today. According to his Captain, John Raeder, they were to report to a condemned building on the east side of town that was a former storage facility. They’d been instructed to take the dogs. Someone had reported several suspicious-looking trucks coming and going in the middle of the night.
Strapping his Kevlar vest over his black T-shirt, he brought to mind the blueprint he’d briefly seen of the facility. Nearly two hundred individual storage units ranging in size from four by four to ten by ten. Some still had the old locks on them. Some might still contain people’s worthless belongings. He knew from experience they could be walking up on anything from miniature crack dens to meth labs. It would be a maze and they would be the rats sniffing around and hoping they wouldn’t happen upon anything lethal or worse—something that would haunt all of them, staining their souls for as long as they lived.
No way around it, this was going to suck a huge dick.
He sighed loudly and slammed the door to his locker harder than he intended to.
“Fisk, you forget to jack off this morning or what? Wake up.” Ethan Meadows gave him a solid slap on the back as he passed behind him.
Most of the team let Chase be. Ethan was not one of them. The kid was barely twenty, barely older than Chase had been when he’d enlisted in the Army. It was only eight years ago and yet it felt like a lifetime ago. Someone else’s life.
Ethan was Catholic, never removed the silver cross from around his neck, and had dimples denting both sides of his shit-eating grin that made him look even younger than he was. Other members of the team gave him a hard time about not being able to order a beer at Sirens, the bar all the local first responders frequented. Not that Dugan, the owner and regular bartender, would’ve turned him away if he’d tried. His theory was if you were old enough to die for your country, you were old enough to drink a damn beer. But as far as Chase had seen, Ethan was happy to drink plain old Coca-Cola while playing pool and darts, always laughing and joking around even when people were giving him hell.
Sometimes he wished Ethan would share whatever happy pills he was on. Chase hadn’t ever known what it was like to be naturally carefree and easygoing. He’d joined the Army to get away from an abusive alcoholic father after they’d gotten into a public physical altercation at the factory where they’d both worked.
He’d never looked back.
“Meadows, you get dog-shit duty for that. You’re welcome.”
Ethan grinned. “You got it, boss.”
Happy fucking punk drove Chase to drink some days.
“I’ll get the dogs and put them in the SUV,” Ethan offered. “See you out there.” He made quick work of putting on his gear and was out the door.
The others began to trickle in and Chase was grateful to be done with his vest and gun strap and boots already. It wasn’t noticeably obvious yet, but the nerve damage he’d suffered from the incident that had taken Vivien’s life caused his hands to be less than perfectly steady every once in a while.
Like a surgeon’s, an explosives specialist’s hands were vital. The military doctor that had discharged him hadn’t called it a full-blown tremor, so he could still do his job, for now. But there was always that fear that one day his hands would fail him on duty and then what would he have to live for?
Not a damn thing.
***
Once they pulled up to the location in two tactical vehicles and a marked SUV, the EOD team unloaded quickly and found a spot in clearance distance to layout the blueprint of the facility. Four rows of outdoor storage units meant four teams even though they only had two dogs. Ethan was training to be a handler for Mishka, a female black Lab that was new to the department. Chase kept them and two other officers with him.
After he’d doled out roles and assigned areas to the rest of the team, he approached the first main building with the industrial-sized channel locks. The sun was coming up fast and hot, beating down with a vengeance on the multiple layers of black gear he wore. Still, it wasn’t as bad as humping his ass through the Middle Eastern desert with forty-plus pounds of gear strapped to his back, so it was tolerable.
Once they’d cleared the first few units, which were mostly empty save for a few that contained moldy cardboard boxes filled with random items like old dishes and antique candleholders, Chase told Ethan to take Mishka to the team working on the next row.
As Chase worked with two other members of his team to clear the rest of the units he recalled a story that had gone around the department about a similar facility getting raided, in which a family of drug mules was found living in one of the units. Despite his serious doubts about whether an actual deity existed that would give a shit, Chase sent up a silent prayer that they didn’t come across anything like that today.
“Fisk,” a female officer called loudly across the rooftops. “We got something.” The rest of whatever was said was drowned out by Mishka’s distraught barking.
Chase waved the two other officers working with him over, and they made their way to where chaos was ensuing.
Utilitarian boots pounded rhythmically on the pavement until they reached the largest unit at the very end of the second row.
A female officer behind him cursed under her breath.
“What the . . .” Chase’s eyes rounded as he saw the interior of the unit was plastered with what looked to be city plans and blueprints for downtown Nashville. Several spots were circled in blue marker, some had black squares around them, and others were covered by giant red Xs. He racked his brain to identify a pattern that would help decode the marking system.
“Someone give me a hand with this,” Ethan said, removing one of his gloves to lift the lid on one of several round tubs lining the room.
Chase pulled his attention from the city plans and glanced over, but he was a split second too late. The lid gave way to Ethan’s herculean efforts at that very moment.
The tub was full of a liquid that smelled like toxic waste. There was a splash, and Ethan’s skin was exposed just enough for the edge of his hand to get soaked.
“Call a bus,” Chase barked instinctively to everyone and no one in particular as he practically tackled Ethan to knock him away from the rusted barrel.
A second of sil
ence allowed Chase one full heartbeat before Ethan Meadows began screaming. Then Mishka’s tortured howl pierced the air.
Chase heard the haunting combination of sounds echoing in his head well into the night as he sat in the emergency room waiting area at Vanderbilt Medical Center.
When the sun rose, he realized he’d been awake for twenty-four hours. Moments later a petite blond woman in blue scrubs greeted the team in the waiting area with bad news.
“I’m Dr. Matthews,” she informed them. “Mr. Meadows is out of surgery but not out of the woods quite yet.” She paused, glancing around at the concerned faces of his law enforcement family. His parents had been in Vermont on vacation and their flight hadn’t arrived yet.
“Meaning?” Chase did his best to listen carefully so he could relay the information when they arrived.
Apparently the hydrochloric acid mixture in the tubs they’d found was highly corrosive and must’ve been cut with something lethal. Ethan was lucky to be alive but the damage to his hand was extensive, and doctors would spend the next few weeks performing a series of muscle flap and skin and bone graft procedures to try to salvage what they could. What he wouldn’t ever do again was work with the EOD unit currently filling the waiting area.
Dr. Matthews informed them that since Ethan would be placed in a sterile burn unit immediately after surgery, he wouldn’t be allowed any visitors.
Chase returned to the precinct that morning. Standing in the locker room, his hands began to tremble worse than they ever had. He chastised himself for getting so upset over what had happened to Ethan. The kid should’ve known better than to remove his fucking glove. And he’d done it while half the damn team was standing right there, so there’d be an investigation. Questions from internal affairs about whether or not he and everyone else on the team had received the proper training.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault but if any heat came down the line, Chase was prepared to bear the brunt of it. The kid made a mistake and he’d pay for it plenty with his injuries. It was a mistake any one of them could’ve easily made.
