Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I’m a widowed single mom running from secrets the Navy buried with my husband.
Moon Ridge was supposed to be a fresh start.
A quiet place where I could finally stop looking over my shoulder.
Then the fires start.
The men watching me aren’t strangers.
They’re the last ones who saw my husband alive.
I don’t know what they want from me.
But they’re the ones running toward the flames.
Three firefighters.
Former Navy SEALs.
Mountain men built for war and carrying ghosts as heavy as mine.
Buck is commanding and relentless.
He’s built to dominate danger—and me.
Weston has hungry eyes and a tempting touch.
He’s all warmth until someone threatens what’s his.
Calder is scarred, silent, and smoldering.
Beneath the surface, there’s a wildfire he barely keeps contained.
They close ranks and put us under their protection.
They swear nothing will touch us again.
I shouldn’t want them.
Not after losing my husband to that life.
And not times three.
Because every fire is a warning.
And the enemy hunting us knows exactly how to turn everything we love to ashes
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
BUCK
The early morning air smells of wet ash and burned insulation when I step out of my truck. I wasn’t due in for another hour, but I couldn’t get back to sleep after the call came in.
Forced entry, the captain had said.
The old building was Moon Ridge’s original and only school many years ago, but has long been used for records and maintenance storage for the newer primary school facility across the street. Being opposite diagonally from the firehouse, I see the structure all the time, and it’s been quiet enough to blend into the scenery until now.
Today, it’s blackened on one side, the roofline partially collapsed. A faint haze lingers near the wreckage, the last residual heat rising off soaked debris after knockdown. Bright caution tape is strung around the perimeter.
The captain appears as I’m gathering my gear. “Pry marks on the rear door,” he says, in lieu of a greeting. “Nothing valuable inside. We thought kids at first, but something’s not right.”
I sling my bag over my shoulder. “Anyone inside?”
“It’s clear. Utilities cut. When we saw the cabinets, we held back overhaul in the file room.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll send an assist over.”
As the captain heads back to the station on foot, I start a slow 360. At the building’s rear entrance, fresh marks confirm the break-in, as reported. The metal of the door jamb is peeled outward in a clean arc. Someone brought a tool with them specifically for the purpose.
There are no obvious footprints near the threshold, where the snow was disturbed from suppression traffic, partially melted, then refrozen.
When Robbins arrives, the two of us head inside, where the damage is uneven. Some rooms are smoke-stained but otherwise unharmed. In the hallway leading to the records storage, the baseboards are marked with distinct low burn patterns. Charring crosses the floor in irregular paths, indicating a poured accelerant rather than an accidental electrical origin.
I crouch near one of the darkest areas, where the floor’s been cracked by the heat, and smell petroleum. As Robbins aims the flashlight, I mark the spot, photograph it, then pull a sample kit.
In the records room, several of the tall metal filing cabinets are still upright, though their paint is blistered and blackened. Most appear to be undisturbed by anything other than the fire, but a couple of them have drawers extended, as if they were opened before things burned.
Inside one of those open drawers, the hanging file rails have dropped, and clusters of folders are fused into charred masses.
“Personnel—active,” Robbins says, reading the taped label that remains at the top of the four-drawer cabinet. The partially melted label on the open drawer reads “M-R.” Near the back, there’s a sizable gap between the clusters of burned folders.
I take pictures, note my findings, and continue around the space until I come to a wheeled metal cart that’s empty except for a coating of soot and a single file folder, damp at the corners and crumpled, as if by someone’s fist. After documenting its appearance, I pick it up with a gloved hand.
The folder is empty, but its label sends ice down my spine.
Robbins shines the light directly on it. “Ramirez, Elena,” he reads. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
After a beat, I exhale. “New elementary school principal.”
The firefighter nods with recognition. “Maybe somebody’s trying to scare her.”
I collect the folder in an evidence bag without responding. From what I know of her, admittedly most of it secondhand, she doesn’t seem like the type to have made an enemy during the five short months she’s been in town.
Nothing about the fire patterns indicates this was done by a minor, especially one no older than middle school.
The captain calls to tell me a sheriff’s deputy is on the way, so Robbins and I make our way out front to meet him.
“Kids didn’t do this,” I tell him when I deliver a summary of our preliminary findings.
“You calling it arson?”
“Forced entry and pour-pattern indicators. I’m treating it as suspicious until lab confirms,” I say. “I’m still collecting samples. You’ll want to keep this secured as a crime scene.”
“I’ll notify the county investigator.”
Across the street, the school’s parking lot is beginning to fill with staff vehicles. As the deputy gets back in his car, I watch a compact SUV pull into the school’s lot, and it triggers a recent memory.
Three weeks ago, I had been leaving the station at the end of my shift when a black sedan with dark-tinted windows drove slowly past the school’s entrance. At the same time, Elena Ramirez and her son were walking out to the lot.
Even from a distance, I could see the moment she spotted the car. She stopped mid-step and went stiff. She pulled her son closer, then continued on at a faster pace.
I jogged over as the car rolled by, even though I’d been intentionally keeping my distance since finding out she was in Moon Ridge.