Page 1 of Never Alone
CHAPTER 1
Cole
I'd made peace with a lot of things. Not her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
The thought surfaced the way it always did: uninvited. I shoved it back down and went back to the tack strips along the baseboard, working the pry bar under each one until the wood gave with a small crack and came up clean.
I'd been at the house on Ashford since five, working on the front bedroom, cutting the old carpet into strips, rolling and hauling them out to the truck bed in the gray quiet of early morning. The floor underneath was oak, beat up but solid.
The crew had been asking, since I'd bought the place, why I'd put money down on an abandoned house that could have ghosts in it. I told them what was true on paper. A fixer-upper in a good neighborhood went for less than half what a finished house would, and if you did the work yourself, you walked away with a home worth twice what you'd put into it. For a thirty-four-year-old who'd just made lieutenant and had no plans to live anywhere else, the math was the easiest part of the decision.
That was the version I gave them. The truth was simpler. I'd wanted something to build that wasn't a scale model—something with rooms in it, something that would still be standing in fifty years.
I checked the time. Just past eleven. If I left now, I'd have time to shower before the barbecue.
I pried the last tack strip up and dropped it in the bucket, swept the staples and the carpet dust into a pile by the door, and locked the house behind me. Drove home with the windows down and the dust still in my hair. Stripped, showered, and found a clean shirt in the closet that didn't smell like the station.
My phone buzzed against the dresser while I was buttoning it.
Jamie
Swing by Mrs. Thompson's on your way?
I'd texted back "Yeah" before I'd finished reading the message. That was how it worked. Jamie ran the Reeves household the way Sam ran Station 33. If she needed a cake picked up on the way, you picked up a cake.
Mrs. Thompson's bakery sat wedged between a flower shop and a tailor who'd been dying a slow death since I was a kid. The building leaned a little to the left. The sign above the door had lost two letters, and nobody had replaced them.
Last time I'd been in here was for Aunt Jenna's birthday cake. Quinn had called ahead and asked Mrs. Thompson to make a German chocolate with the coconut frosting Aunt Jenna had grown up on.
A bell jingled when I opened the door.
Inside, it smelled like butter, sugar, and something yeasty rising in the back, warm enough that the windows had fogged at the corners.
Mrs. Thompson wasn't at the counter. The woman who looked up was someone I hadn't seen before. Small. Dark-haired. Blue apron with a smudge of flour on one hip.
She smiled at me.
"Pickup for Reeves," I said.
"Reeves," she said. "Right. One second."
She disappeared through a swinging door and came back with a white box tied in twine. She set it on the counter with both hands, carefully.
"Wait—one more thing." She stepped back through the door and returned with a small paper sack. "Mrs. Thompson wanted Sam and Jamie to have these. She made it fresh this morning."
I pulled out my card.
"Oh. It's already been paid for."
Jamie. Of course.
I put it away. She slid the receipt across the counter. Her fingers came close to mine without touching.
"Have a good one."
"You, too."
I got the cake settled on the passenger seat, the bag of extras tucked beside it, and sat there for a second with my hand on the key.
