“Girls, come here,” my dad, Jasper Walker, called out to Adalynn and me as soon as we walked in the front door.
My eyes did a quick scan of my parents’ house, noting all the usual suspects were in attendance. Cousins, aunts, uncles, my siblings—everyone smiling and laughing. Well, everyone except my eldest sister, Delaney. I hadn’t seen her smile in a while, and whatever was bugging her, she wasn’t sharing.
With my twin sister Adalynn by my side, I made my way to my dad and stumbled when my eyes locked with the guy next to him.
No, not a guy, a man.
All man.
Tall, broad, a little older than me, hot as all get-out. But it was his gray eyes that held me captive. The color of storm clouds—the description was apt, there was sadness brewing behind his gaze.
“Brady, these are my youngest daughters. Hadley and Adalynn,” my dad introduced, pointing to each of us. “Girls, this is Brady Hewitt, the newest member of the team.”
“Nice to meet you.” Addy offered her hand and I watched as Brady’s much larger one engulfed my sister’s.
“Nice to meet you, Adalynn.”
Their hands released and Addy kicked my foot, pulling me from my stupor.
“Hadley, good to meet you as well.”
Brady’s deep, rough voice washed over me as he extended his hand. The very moment I placed mine in his and his fingers curled around my palm, I vowed that one day I would take the cloudiness away.
“Nice to meet you, Brady.”
One could say my family didn’t have the best luck. It had started with my FBI profiler cousin, Nick. He found himself a woman who had been almost killed by a serial killer. I was a kid at the time and was mostly shielded from the details even after Nick had moved Meadow from Virginia to Georgia.
Then my cousin, the police officer Ethan, met Honor. By then, I’d graduated high school and was very aware of Honor’s troubles, which had resulted in her being kidnapped and almost killed.
And of course, there was my DEA agent brother, Jason. Who, after years of mourning his wife’s death, had finally found a woman, Mercy, also a DEA agent. She brought him back to life only to have a case they were working on cause her and Delaney to be taken, beaten, and almost killed.
Are you seeing a theme yet?
My family wasn’t unlucky, but my male cousins, which should be noted, weren’t cousins by blood but by a bond my father had forged with Carter Lenox, Nolan Clark, and Levi McCoy—collectively known as my uncles. And they were, in every sense of the word. I’d grown up with these men, my father’s battle-brothers. Anyway, my cousins had a type and they’d all found strong women who’d overcome a great deal but still needed to be protected. This was because every single male in my family had a gene—an overprotective instinct—that was annoying most of the time when they got in your business. But in truth, it had allowed me to grow up surrounded by love. So much love, it could be suffocating. But the alternative was not having it so I didn’t bitch—too much.
That brings us to now.
My cousin, Jackson, had of course followed in the footsteps of those who’d gone before him, and fell in love with a beautiful, bona fide supermodel, Tuesday. She was Mercy’s best friend. Unfortunately, Tuesday had herself a stalker. Everyone—meaning my dad, my uncles, Ethan, Brady, and Jackson—had been keeping her safe while searching for the stalker.
Today, she almost died.
Almost died.
Hours later, my heart was still pounding and my stomach knotted up just thinking about it. Brady had gotten to her first, then Jackson and his fire company had arrived and taken over.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Brady had almost died, too.
He’d rushed into the house without thought for his own safety to rescue a woman he barely knew. That didn’t just make my heart pound—it made me queasy.
He could’ve died. Tuesday and Jackson, too.
My family was all at Jackson’s condo. This is what we did—we rallied. Tuesday had been treated for smoke inhalation and released so everyone was at Jackson’s to make sure she was okay.
I wasn’t ready to go to Jackson’s. I wasn’t ready to face my family or Tuesday. Luckily for me, I’d forgotten my cell phone in my dad’s office. I’d been at Triple Canopy when I got the call about the fire and in my panic, I stupidly tossed my phone on his desk and