Chapter 2

      Abi still wanted to scratch someone’s eyes out an hour after leaving the stakeout. An hour after meeting Silver Valley’s fire chief. She poured herself a cup of the awful SVPD coffee and waited for the rest of the case team to get their notes together for the wrap-up meeting. And of course they had to wait for the Silver Valley Fire Department officials to show up.

      Which would bring her face-to-face with Fire Chief Keith Paruso again.

      It’d been a couple of hours since she’d met Keith Paruso and her body had yet to stop humming from the immediate attraction he’d lit in her. It was as real, as strong as her certainty that not only was he a fire chief, he was a dog. As in capital-H hound dog. He had the bod and smile to get a lot of women in his bed, for sure. She almost giggled, thinking about how puzzled he’d appeared that she hadn’t fawned at his every word.

      Focus, focus, focus. She was undercover as a Trail Hiker agent, but outwardly a special advisor to SVPD. That made any kind of romance with other LEA off-limits until this case was solved, especially with another Silver Valley public official who didn’t know what she was really doing. Who didn’t even know about Trail Hikers. There was at least one if not more arsonists to apprehend. In fact, after today, Abi was certain there was more than one and that the fires were being set individually.

      So her love life had to take a backseat—nothing new. The case stretched before her as none other, however. Even with all the twisted cases and sociopaths she’d analyzed for the FBI, she had to admit the Silver Valley fire starter had even her stymied. It was a first for her in a long career of catching arsonists. A career she’d committed to while still in high school, when she’d been brokenhearted at the accidental death of her classmate in a house fire. Don’t go there. She tore her thoughts from the dark memories.

      Making her way through the break room and down the corridor of the medium-size station, she stuck her head in Rio Ortego’s office.

      “Hey, Rio.”

      “Abi! Come on in for a bit.” He didn’t look as tired as she felt, yet he’d been up all night, too.

      She sank down in a worn leather chair and took in the framed photo of Rio and his girlfriend, Kayla, that rested near his monitor. Why did everyone but her seem to have a life partner? Would a move to Silver Valley bring her love life back in line? After this case was closed, of course. Not one minute sooner.

      She’d been recruited for the secret government shadow agency when she’d left the FBI after ten years of honorable service. The offer had been too good to be true; she’d work contracted missions that paid enough to maintain her Old Town Alexandria town house while traveling the world to complete missions her FBI training seemed perfect for.

      Except going “home” to DC had gotten harder. The town house was nice and its location prime—for a commuter, which she no longer was. The days and weeks in between Trail Hiker missions felt longer and, in fact, boring. She’d been toying with making a move to somewhere free of DC’s political pressure, away from the abysmal traffic, away from the city life she was ready to leave behind.

      “Good work out there this morning, Abi.” He didn’t look up from the report he studied, and he waved at his coffeepot. “Don’t drink that crap from the break room. Have some real joe.”

      “Thanks, this is fine for now.” They had to be in the briefing room in less than twenty minutes and she needed a comfortable spot to sit more than she needed a cup of better brew.

      Rio and Abi were the only Trail Hikers on the case at the moment, if she didn’t count the police chief. As such, they took pains to keep to the storyline that Abi was a contractor hired to help with the arson cases. Her prior experience as FBI wasn’t a secret and served her alibi well, as she posed as simply an arson expert. As the case was almost certainly entwined with the cult, it made her presence more validated. Since the FBI was being called in to work with SVPD to take out the True Believer Cult once and for all, no one questioned Abi’s role. And better, no one suspected she was part of anything clandestine.

      “Close the door for a minute, will you?” Rio spoke quietly and she knew he needed to talk about something Trail Hiker–related.

      “Sure.”

      Once the door was closed Rio leaned forward, his forearms on his cluttered desk. “I can’t afford for you to be exchanging barbs with Keith Paruso. I’m pretty sure he’s aware of Trail Hikers, abstractly, but he doesn’t have any official knowledge of the agency. As much as this case may necessitate the need to pull him into TH, with his compliance, we’re still obligated to maintain our cover story.”

      “I get that, Rio.” She tried to not let him see how stung she was by his statement. Did he think she was going to jump in the sack with him and tell Keith whom she really worked for? “I understand what a security clearance is.”

      “It’s not about Keith as much as it’s about every other officer and firefighter who’ll never be part of TH, who don’t need to know about Trail Hikers and what we’re doing.”

      “Understood.” She dug her bottom teeth into the foam cup. It felt like her father, lecturing her for dating the wrong kind of boy. And she wasn’t considering dating Keith Paruso—she didn’t know the man.

      “Abi, I’m not saying this as any kind of reprimand. You’re the perfect Trail Hiker agent—Claudia doesn’t hire deadweight.” Claudia Michele, the former US Marine Corps General who was the Trail Hiker CEO, had been a tough sell when Abi had reported for her initial interview. Even though Abi had been recruited for the interview by the government shadow agency, she’d still had to prove her worthiness to Claudia, both in the field and at the desk.

      “I didn’t take your comments personally, Rio. You’re not the first alpha male I’ve worked for, you know.”

      He smiled. “Alpha male? What the hell does that mean? Is that like some kind of millennial code for ‘dickhead’?”

      She laughed. “God, I’ve missed laughing with teammates since I left the FBI. It was the best choice for me, to make a change and come here to Silver Valley, but this kind of camaraderie is rare in the civilian world.”

      Rio grunted. “I’ve found it to be nonexistent, frankly. Law enforcement is a family, for sure.”

      “Working for Colt Todd has to be enjoyable at times, doesn’t it?”

      Rio’s eyes flashed. “Chief Todd’s the best, hands-down. And you know he’s fully invested with the Trail Hikers, too, but more on a need-to-know basis.”

      Abi