And finally, Mo showed, had a ten-second huddle with Axl and then glued himself to me before Axl took off.

“Uh, Mo—” I started but Mo glanced down at me before he looked over my head and did a chin lift.

I turned and that was when Boone was there.

Boone did a body scan, which was intense, and then a face scan, which was about seven hundred notches above the intensity of Axl’s.

He then came to me and pulled me into his arms.

Okay, that felt good.

I pressed into him.

“What’s going on?” I asked his chest.

I asked this just as a male voice stated, “Sadler, we need to talk to your girl.”

“A second,” Boone replied.

“Right,” the man said. Then he went on, “Morrison, need you.”

Mo grunted and I felt him leave us.

I pulled slightly away (but not fully out of Boone’s arms) and looked up at him.

“What’s going on?”

“Babe, fuck,” he muttered. Then, “There’s a dead guy out on your back deck.”

Okay, first, evidence was suggesting that Brett did not back off like he’d promised Boone he would.

Second, it couldn’t be argued that Brett was pretty dedicated to making absolutely certain “his girls” were okay.

Last, if I didn’t keep a lock on it, this was going to freak me right the fuck out.

“The cops are going to have to do some stuff that’s probably gonna take a while,” Boone kept talking. “But then, I’m sorry, sweetheart, they’re gonna ask you to go out there and have a look at the guy to see if you knew him.”

Fabulous.

“Boone, I need to tell you something,” I said, and then I was treated to a face scan the intensity of which had not yet been charted and it was a damned miracle it didn’t sear the skin from my flesh.

After he did that, he murmured, “Later.”

Yeah.

Good idea.

Later.

It was then the cops chatted to me.

I told them I’d been asleep. I told them I saw and heard someone trying to break in. I told them I called Boone. I fielded the now-familiar questions about why I called Boone and not the cops. I then fielded the same question about why I again called Boone and not the cops when I heard gunshots (this had an easier answer, he was the last call I’d dialed so he was the easiest to hit when I was freaking out). And then I fielded these questions again when it came to light that I’d been visited by Englewood police officers the day before due to an acquaintance of mine being murdered and I was up for questioning since I was semi-kinda-kidnapped by an alleged cop killer.

I did not tell them that shortly after gunshots sounded at the back of my house, said alleged cop killer, Brett “Cisco” Rappaport, popped on the phone to share he’d had someone murdered on my back deck.

Which was something I probably should have shared.

After a bit (and during that bit, there were a lot of police officers milling about in my house, all of them going through my kitchen, tramping flour everywhere), one of them gave Boone a chin lift and Boone took my hand.

“Ready?” he asked.

I had not seen a dead body before or after the funeral of my Aunt Flo, who was actually my mom’s Aunt Flo, whose husband for some ungodly reason demanded she have an open casket at her funeral.

Aunt Flo had not been young, but when she’d been alive, she’d been full of life. Always had rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes and a stash of Andes mints she passed off like she was a spy handing over state secrets.

It never failed to make me laugh and feel important and I figured Aunt Flo knew I needed both of those, especially the last.

Dead she just looked…dead. And it only compounded all that was lost, seeing her that way.

After that, I never wanted to see a dead body again.

So the answer to Boone’s question was, hell no, I was not ready.

I nodded anyway.

We went to the open door at the back of the kitchen.

The first thing I noticed was that, outside, standing beyond the cars and all around the alley, there were a lot of onlookers.

However, inside the crime scene tape that held the onlookers back were Mag and Auggie, Boone’s two other close buds, along with Axl and Mo.

Also with them was Hawk Delgado, Boone’s boss.

Many would disagree at this juncture that it was important to describe Augustus Hero and Hawk Delgado.

These people were first, not women, and second, had never clapped eyes on Augustus Hero or Hawk Delgado.

Auggie looked like a Greek god.

Think about that in every nuance of goodness it could entail.

The end.

Now the thing was, there was no way to describe Hawk Delgado.

The only way I could figure to do it was to share that he was kind of a sensory explosion.

He was gorgeous and built, for starters.

But he exuded charisma, machismo and confidence to such an extent, it was almost palatable. Like you could smell it and even taste it.

He was not my kind of guy, mostly because he was very taken, very in love with his wife and all about the family they made, not to mention, from the beginning after I’d seen him and knew there was a possibility he could be mine, I’d been all about Boone.

But I was a heterosexual female, so on a variety of levels I enjoyed any run-in I had with Hawk Delgado (and Augustus Hero).

Except that one, with the way Hawk’s eyes lifted to mine the minute I hit the threshold and I saw the look of displeasure on his handsome face.

Yikes.

“Babe,” Boone muttered, tightening his hold on my hand.

I turned my gaze up to him.

He tipped his head down.

With some hesitance, I also looked down.

The body was covered.

Right.

Phew.

A brief reprieve.

“Ms. Jansen, we’ll make this really quick,” a cop standing outside on my deck offered.

“Awesome, thanks,” I mumbled.

The cop squatted.

I braced.

He pulled the sheet back from the face of a Caucasian man wearing a black knit cap even though it was late spring in Denver and it had to be over seventy degrees outside.

The good news was whatever killed him was not a head wound.

The bad news was his eyes were open.

The uncertain-to-this-scenario news was I’d never seen him in my life.

“I don’t know him,” I shared.

“You sure?” the cop asked.

I nodded and turned my attention to the officer. “I’m sure. I’ve never seen him before.”

The cop looked to Boone, down to the body, and made a movement that I knew meant he was flicking the sheet back over, but I didn’t look.

“You done?” Boone asked the guy.

“Yeah,” the officer answered.

Boone pulled me out of the door.

We traipsed through flour that I was relieved to see was mostly sucked up by the years of grease and muck that had made the carpet a veritable sponge.

I didn’t go on to realize how extremely gross this was mostly because there was a dead man with his eyes open on my back deck.

“Babe,” Boone called.

The threat has been neutralized.

“Ryn.”

Okay.

All right.

Nefarious people tried to break into a house during the day.

People worked during the day. It was a good chance some random bad guy had targeted my house thinking I was in some office somewhere, slaving away for the man, so my pad was open to take what he wished.