Chapter 5 One step

Island's POV

Damn him.

I tightened my hands around the steering wheel, then deliberately loosened them again.

God… why were men like that? So fucking rude, so arrogant and so convinced that the entire world was supposed to bend because they happened to have money, a famous last name, and a stupid face that women probably wrote poems about.

If Zane Chandler weren't grieving, I might have knocked some sense into him….Might. Because…what the hell?

I exhaled slowly and glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 4:17 a.m.

I had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. And somehow, the thing keeping me awake wasn't the image of Katie Chandler's body….It was her brother.

That infuriating, arrogant, grief-stricken man.

Rookie.

The word replayed in my head.

I scoffed.

A rookie. Imagine that?

After everything I'd done to get here.

All my life, I'd worked for every inch.

When I finished high school, I didn't have some wealthy family waiting to pay my tuition or open doors for me. I worked, I studied and I worked some more.

I learned early that nothing worth having came easily.

Dad used to say it all the time….Diligence is the key, Island.

He'd say it whenever he found me complaining about studying, whenever I wanted to give up or whenever something felt too difficult.

Diligence is the key.

I had carried those words with me through college, through training, through the academy and through every brutal assignment, every sleepless night and every case that had made me question whether I was built for this job.

And now some hockey superstar who had spent his life being adored by twenty thousand screaming fans had looked me in the face and decided I wasn't qualified because I didn't look old enough.

But if I was being honest with myself, his opinion shouldn't have mattered this much.

It wasn't even the rookie comment that bothered me. Not really.

But it was the way he'd said my mother's name. The accusation behind it. The certainty in his voice when he told me she'd destroyed his family, because I'd spent ten years learning how to live with the exact same accusation pointed in the opposite direction.

And suddenly, the man whose sister had been murdered was the son of the man my mother had chosen over me.

The irony was almost cruel.

For ten years, I'd searched for the person who killed my father, and tonight, I'd found the son of the man who'd once taken my mother away from me.

And somehow, we were now standing on opposite sides of the same dead body.

And apparently, to him, I'd committed the unforgivable crime of being the woman assigned to solve his sister's murder.

A humorless laugh escaped me.

And then he'd threatened to have me removed from the case.

The fucking audacity.

Try. I would fucking love to see him try.

I smiled despite myself.

That was the only answer he'd gotten from me because I knew exactly how this worked. People like Zane Chandler were accustomed to getting what they wanted, but I wasn't and nobody was taking me off this case….Nobody.

Not after a decade…Ten fucking years.

Ten years of unanswered questions. Ten years of wondering what my father had felt in those final moments. Had he been afraid? Had he known he was going to die? Had he fought? Had he recognized or known his killer? Had he called my name?

That last thought tightened something in my chest.

I swallowed and stared at the road ahead.

I had spent a decade chasing a ghost, following every lead that went nowhere, reopening every file that gathered dust, and spending countless nights staring at photographs and evidence reports until the words blurred together.

And tonight, that ghost had finally appeared again.

The star….The exact same star.

Katie didn't deserve to die. None of this was her fault. She had been twenty-two years old, with a life ahead of her, and now she was another name attached to that terrible symbol.

God…I hated that.

I hated that solving my father's murder might come at the cost of someone else's family having to bury their sister, but grief didn't change facts.

Someone had made a mistake or become careless or simply grown confident enough to believe they could repeat what they'd done ten years ago without being caught.

And that mistake had given me something I'd never had before.

A lead and I wasn't letting it go.

So the sooner Zane Chandler stopped whining, accepted that I wasn't going anywhere, and decided to cooperate, the better.

Another small laugh escaped me and almost immediately, my smile disappeared.

The bastard had brought up my mother.

My grip tightened around the steering wheel again.

That bastard.

Did he know what I had lived through? Did he know what it felt like to be twelve years old and watch the only parent you had left become a different man overnight?

My mother hadn't died. You know, that almost would've been easier to accept. But she'd chosen to leave. She'd chosen another man, another family, another life. And she'd left behind her only child….Me.

I stared through the windshield, but for a moment I wasn't seeing the road anymore.

I was seeing Dad. Sitting at the kitchen table long after midnight. His coffee going cold between his hands, staring at nothing and pretending he wasn't hurting.

He never said much about her. Never blamed her or spoke badly about her in front of me.

But I saw it. I saw the way he'd sometimes stop in the middle of a sentence and stare into space. The way he'd sigh when he thought I wasn't listening. The way he buried himself in work until there was barely any room left for anything else…Including grief.

I became his friend before I was old enough to understand what that meant…His confidant. The person he talked to when the silence in the house became too heavy, and somehow, through all of it, he still made sure I felt loved. He still made breakfast, still asked about school, still reminded me to study and still told me I could become anything I wanted…Until someone took him from me too.

My eyes burned and I blinked hard.

No…Not tonight.

I wasn't going down that road tonight.

I had a case.

And now I had a reason to solve it that went far beyond professional duty.

I needed answers. Answers for Katie…for Dad and for myself. And maybe, just maybe, after ten years, I could finally put that ghost to rest.

I turned onto my street. The neighborhood was almost completely dark and the houses silent behind their gates.

Finally….I was home.

I pulled into my driveway and shut off the engine. For a few seconds, I simply sat there and exhaustion crashed over me all at once.

All I wanted was a shower, a hot bath, clean clothes and maybe thirty minutes of sleep before heading back to the precinct.

Because whether Zane Chandler liked it or not, I would be back. And nobody….not his lawyers, not his money, not his connections, not even the president…was going to remove me from this case.

I grabbed my bag and stepped out of the car and the cold morning air hit my face.

I walked toward my front door, already imagining the hot water against my aching shoulders….Then I stopped.

The porch light was on.

I frowned.

"Huh..."

I looked at the window beside the door. It was bright. I was almost certain I'd turned the light off before leaving.

My hand instinctively moved toward my holster. The exhaustion vanished and training took over.

I drew my weapon and moved silently toward the door.

My heartbeat slowed. I took one slow breath after another.

I listened….Nothing.

Then I stepped onto the porch and my fingers silently and slowly closed around the doorknob and unlocked it.

My stomach tightened.

I pushed the door open slowly.

"Who the hell…."

"Island Meyers..."

My blood ran cold.

I knew that voice. Hell...I could recognize it anywhere.

My gun lowered slightly.

"Tamika...?"

"Where the hell have you been, girl?"

Her voice came from the living room.

She stood with her hands on her hips, completely unconcerned with the fact that she'd just given an FBI agent a heart attack at four in the morning.

"And why the hell didn't you return Oscar's call?"

I stared into the darkness.

Of all the things I'd expected to find waiting for me at this early hours, my best friend was definitely not one of them.

And who the fuck was Oscar?