Page 2 of Driven By Impulse

What felt like hours later, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, Hanna stood on the walkway in front of the safehouse and watched the ambulance drive off into the night, the blaring lights and sirens cutting through the eerie stillness of the dark. Frankie would make it. She couldn’t think anything else. Frankie would survive, because Hanna had promised his momma the day he’d taken the job that she would never let anything happen to him.

And because he couldn’t die. He just…couldn’t.

The lights disappeared out of sight, and Hanna’s adrenaline begin to drop, dragging her bones and muscles toward the earth, as if she was made of stone, as if she could no longer support her own weight.

Finally, she dropped to the front steps, the cold concrete a welcome reprieve from the heat racing through her veins, cooling the terror and fear that had taken root the moment she had seen the smashed front door dangling on its hinges.

Keeping Frankie alive had been a temporary distraction, but now that Hanna was alone in the dark night with only her own thoughts for company, she knew it was time to face the truth.

Grace Iverson had been taken from the safe house.

A safe house no one knew about but cops.

Hanna reached for her phone, stilling her trembling hand before dialing a familiar number, a number she had told herself she wouldn’t be calling ever again.

It picked up on the second ring.

Hanna didn’t let the silence in. “I need your help.”

Chapter One

The action of unlocking the back door felt so much like a memory that Ash had to dig his nails into the flesh of his palm to make sure he was on the right side of the soil. It had been a long time since he’d snuck into the house on Marigold Lane after dark, and back then there had been no distant highway lights or condominium uplighting to help him see the low lock beneath the kitchen window. All those years ago, it had been him and the moon, the terrible scent of gas station cologne to cover up the worse scent of cigarettes and cheap beer, holding his breath as he hoped Wil wouldn’t wake at the sound of the key turning in the lock.

This time, the faint light pollution from the city made the sky a soft lavender color, the addition of great stretches of highway meant the occasional headlight flashed across what had been fields of wheat, and it wasn’t his house key in his hand—for as long as he’d had a house to call home—but the spare key he’d found under the small, brown-speckled rock, the same place it had been kept so many years ago.

The house was mostly dark, though soft golden light filtered out from a familiar lamp in the front room, and a sharp pain swelled in Ash’s chest, catching his breath like he was out riding on an icy cold Colorado night. Even when he’d broken curfew, even when he’d run with the wrong people at the wrong hours of the night, even when the family who had taken him in had known they were losing him…

They had always left the light on.

Wil Van Rijn’s house was the closest thing Ash had ever had to a home.

And that had been why he’d left it behind.

Left her behind.

Ash had been young and stupid, fueled by an anger innate to every seventeen-year-old orphan, and then some, good sense clouded by desire—for power, passion, strength, a place to belong. And even in the fugue state of red he’d lived in for most of those final years, he’d known it was a shit way to repay Wil for everything he’d done to drag Wil’s last remaining family down with him…

Nicco’s voice cracked the layers of topsoil that had crusted over with memories, and Ash turned to face the only man who had dragged him further from the dark than Wil Van Rijn.

“You could just call her.”

In the near dark, Ash could barely make out Nicco’s expression, but he didn’t need to see to recognize Nicco at a hundred paces, the familiar scent of nicotine and oil and leather, the innate power, even in a form that was erring on this side of too thin, that ease Ash always felt when Nicco was close by.

All the things he’d never said out loud.

And would never say.

Instead, he forced a chuckle. “This is more fun. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve broken curfew?”

That was much less damning than the truth—that when it came to Hanna Van Rijn, it was always best to take the advantage where he could get it.

Finally, the nearly antique lock clicked into place and Ash pushed the door open. The kitchen was exactly as it looked in his memories, a butcher block countertop across from the sturdy old fridge, small café curtains framing the windows, the scent of rich coffee filling the air.

Ash squeezed his eyes closed, not sure what he was hoping for when he opened them. But there he was, in the kitchen on Marigold Lane. Sneaking in the back door. Again.

“Hanna!”

He couldn’t take the memories a second longer, or the way Nicco’s intense, unyielding gaze felt on his neck, as if Nicco was trying to read every one of Ash’s thoughts, watching for signs that he was losing his shit.