The fire tells him how. The money tells her who. This time the fire was built for them — and the truth that gets them out is the one that ends them.
Roan Holbrook reads burns for a living, which is the only reason he lives through this one. The snare is laid before dawn, the muscle in place, the order handed down from above — a fire built to close the case by closing the two people working it. Roan reads it a half-second too late to run, and only Koda gets them clear.
Mara Ellison reads money, and she carries a truth into that fire she should have said months ago: she knew whose case this was before she ever said Roan's name. The fire that scarred him, the one he's chased his whole career — she'd connected it to her old file long before they met, and she was ordered, in writing, not to say so.
Not one betrayal. Two — the man whose orders she trusted enough to obey, and the woman who obeyed them and stayed quiet.
They survive the trap and get the answer they came for: the man who buried the first fire is the one who signed the order telling Mara to stop looking — the authority she obeyed to keep fighting fires like this one. But the answer costs Roan the one thing the whole season had been rebuilding. He got them both out alive. He just won't look at her — because I was ordered not to connect them sounds exactly like what a liar would say, and the only question left between them is whether a truth that ugly can be believed.
Backfire is Episode 6 of Point of Origin — the midpoint detonation of the season, and the end of its first half. A high-velocity K-9 romantic-suspense serial: each episode a complete case you can finish in a sitting, each one turning the bigger fire a notch hotter. Two pros, maximum tension, closed door. For readers of Lori Ryan and Cristin Harber.
A new episode every week. Start the burn.
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Roan Holbrook reads burns for a living, which is the only reason he lives through this one. The snare is laid before dawn, the muscle in place, the order handed down from above — a fire built to close the case by closing the two people working it. Roan reads it a half-second too late to run, and only Koda gets them clear.
Mara Ellison reads money, and she carries a truth into that fire she should have said months ago: she knew whose case this was before she ever said Roan's name. The fire that scarred him, the one he's chased his whole career — she'd connected it to her old file long before they met, and she was ordered, in writing, not to say so.
Not one betrayal. Two — the man whose orders she trusted enough to obey, and the woman who obeyed them and stayed quiet.
They survive the trap and get the answer they came for: the man who buried the first fire is the one who signed the order telling Mara to stop looking — the authority she obeyed to keep fighting fires like this one. But the answer costs Roan the one thing the whole season had been rebuilding. He got them both out alive. He just won't look at her — because I was ordered not to connect them sounds exactly like what a liar would say, and the only question left between them is whether a truth that ugly can be believed.
Backfire is Episode 6 of Point of Origin — the midpoint detonation of the season, and the end of its first half. A high-velocity K-9 romantic-suspense serial: each episode a complete case you can finish in a sitting, each one turning the bigger fire a notch hotter. Two pros, maximum tension, closed door. For readers of Lori Ryan and Cristin Harber.
A new episode every week. Start the burn.
Genre: Romantic Suspense