Chapter 1

Reagan's phone rang at 11:04 p.m., and by the time she reached her mother's shop two minutes later, the whole block had already turned orange.

She caught the smell before she saw the flames, that thick, acrid wrongness that had no business existing on a quiet Tuesday night, and her stomach dropped so hard she felt sick before her mind even registered what was happening. She started running without deciding to, past neighbors gathered on their porches in bathrobes, past a dog barking itself hoarse somewhere she couldn't see, straight toward the glow climbing up the front window of the shop her mother had spent fifteen years building from nothing.

"Mom!" Her voice split down the middle. "Mom, where is she, is she still inside—"

A firefighter caught her by the shoulder before she could get any closer. "Ma'am, you need to stay back. You can't go in there."

"That's my mother's shop. She was closing up tonight. She has to still be in there, please, you don't understand, let me—"

"Reagan."

She went still. Not because the voice was unfamiliar, it was, and hearing it right now made no sense at all.

She turned, and for a moment the entire street seemed to tilt beneath her.

Silas Cole stood a few feet away, soot smudged across his jaw and down the side of his neck, his shirt torn at the shoulder, one arm wrapped carefully around her mother, who was doubled over and coughing so hard she could barely stay upright.

"She's fine. I got her out in time, and she's breathing on her own," he said, the words coming quickly, as though he needed her to hear all of it before panic could take hold. "The paramedics are already looking her over. Look at me, Reagan. She's fine."

Reagan didn't look at him, not yet. She couldn't. Instead she went straight for her mother, wrapping both arms around her, feeling her chest rise and fall beneath her hands, rough and uneven but undeniably alive, and for a few seconds nothing else in the world existed. Not the fire crackling behind them. Not the ten years standing three feet away in a face she still knew by heart.

Then her hands began to tremble, she forced herself to look up. He hadn't moved. He was still watching her, standing the same way he always had, feet planted like the ground itself owed him something.

"What are you even doing here," she asked, and it came out less like a question and more like an accusation she had been saving for a decade.

"I live two streets over now," he said, as though that explained everything worth explaining. "I saw the smoke through my window and I didn't think about it, I just ran."

"You just happened to live two streets away. After ten years of nothing."

"Reagan." Her mother's voice cut in, hoarse and worn thin. "This man just carried me out of a burning building. You might try saying thank you before you start interrogating him."

Heat crept up the back of Reagan's neck. "Thank you," she said, though it came out sharper than she intended, closer to an insult than gratitude.

Something flickered at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile, gone almost before it appeared. "Still the same Reagan, I see."

"Don't." The word landed harder than she meant it to. "Don't you dare do that. You don't get to walk back into my life covered in ash and pretend the last ten years never happened."

"I'm not pretending anything." His jaw tightened, and for the briefest moment the composure he was holding onto cracked, and underneath it she caught a glimpse of the boy who used to sit on her porch steps at seventeen with his whole world quietly falling apart. "Your mother almost died tonight. I'm not here to relive old history, Reagan. I came because I saw smoke and I knew exactly whose shop that was."

"Then why does it feel like you're not the least bit surprised to see me standing here?"

He didn't answer right away. He only looked at her, long enough that something pulled tight in her chest, long enough that she nearly forgot how to breathe—

"Ms. Hale?"

A man in a fire marshal's jacket stepped between them, a clipboard tucked beneath one arm, his expression already arranged into the careful, grim look of someone who had delivered bad news more times than he cared to count.

"I'll need to speak with you and your mother," he said, then glanced toward Silas. "You as well, since you're the one who called it in and pulled her out."

"What kind of questions?" Reagan's voice wavered despite her best effort to keep it steady.

Then marshal's eyes drifted toward the collapsed front window before returning to her face, and something in his hesitation made her stomach drop all over again.

"The kind that come with an accelerant."

Two hours later, Reagan sat in a plastic hospital chair, a cup of vending machine coffee going cold and forgotten in her hands. Grant sat beside her, one palm resting on her knee, speaking in a low, measured voice about insurance claims and contractors and how everything would be sorted out by the end of the week. She caught maybe every third word of it. Her attention kept drifting across the waiting room to where Silas stood against the far wall, arms crossed, having already turned down the same chair twice.

"Let me take you home," Grant said gently. "I'll stay here and call you the moment there's any news."

"I'm not leaving until I know she's stable."

"Of course, I understand." He paused, his eyes flicking briefly toward Silas, something passing behind them that she couldn't quite name before it vanished again. "I only meant you don't need to sit here all night staring at him."

"I'm not staring at him."

"Reagan."

"I'm not." She was, and she hated herself a little for it. "I haven't seen the man in ten years, and he just pulled my mother out of a burning building with his bare hands. Forgive me for finding that difficult to ignore."

Grant's jaw worked once, then again, before his expression smoothed back into the calm, patient look he wore so effortlessly. "You're right. I'm sorry. It's been a long night for both of us."

"Yeah," she said, turning back toward the double doors. "It really has."

She didn't notice him slide his phone from his jacket pocket beneath the table, or the way his thumb moved quickly and with purpose across the screen, sending a short message that was answered within half a minute. She was too preoccupied trying to understand why a single glance from a man she'd spent ten years convincing herself she was over could still knock the breath clean out of her chest.

The double doors swung open.

"Family of Nora Hale?"

Reagan was on her feet before Grant had fully risen from his chair. So was Silas.

The nurse's gaze moved between the man in the suit and the man in the soot-streaked shirt, hesitated for half a second, then settled on Reagan. "She's stable. Some smoke inhalation, minor burns on her hands, but she's going to be just fine. She's asking for you."

The breath left Reagan's body so quickly her knees nearly gave out beneath her. "Can I see her?"

"Right this way."

She had taken only two steps before something made her stop and turn, just long enough to find his eyes across the room one last time.

"Thank you," she said, quiet now, and this time she meant every word of it. "For getting to her before it was too late."

Something shifted in his expression, something that looked, for just an instant, like it mattered to him more than he wanted her to know.

"I wasn't going to let anything happen to her." A pause, longer than it needed to be. "Or to you."

Reagan didn't have an answer for that. She turned and followed the nurse down the hallway, telling herself the entire way that her hands were only trembling from the adrenaline.

She didn't believe herself, not for a single step of that walk.

Behind her, still leaning against that wall, Silas pulled out his own phone and scrolled to a number he hadn't dialed in years. He typed four words and sent them before he could talk himself out of it.

We need to talk.