LITMIR.BIZ

      To the wonderful Intrigue family, and especially Patience Smith, who more than lives up to her name. I thank you all for making my dreams come true. Also, to Pat Teal, who started it all by asking, “Would you like to write a romance?” Thank God I said, “Yes.” And last, but by no means least, to you, beloved readers, thank you! I wouldn’t be here without you.

Chapter 1

      He smelled it before he saw it.

      His mind elsewhere, Detective Ethan O’Brien’s attention was immediately captured by the distinct, soul-disturbing smell that swept in, riding the evening breeze. Without warning, it maliciously announced that someone’s dreams were being dashed even as they were being burnt to cinders.

      Or, at the very least, they were damaged enough to generate a feeling of overwhelming sorrow and hopelessness.

      Summers in California meant fires, they always had. Natives and transplants would joke that fires, earthquakes and mudslides were the dues they paid for having the best, most temperate overall weather in the country. But they only joked when nothing was burning, shaking or sliding away. Because during these catastrophic events, life proved to be all too tenuous, and there was no time for humor, only action. Humor was a salve at best, before and after the fact. Action was a way to hopefully curtail the amount of damage, if at all humanly possible.

      But it wasn’t summer. It was spring, and ordinarily, devastating fires should have still been many headlines away from becoming a very real threat.

      Except that they were a real threat.

      There were fires blazing all over the southern section of Aurora. Not the spontaneous fires that arose from spurts of bone-melting heat, or because a capricious wind had seized a not-quite-dead ember and turned it into something lethal by carrying it off and depositing it into the brush. These fires, ten so far and counting in the last two months, were man-made, the work of some bedeviled soul for reasons that Ethan had yet to understand.

      But he swore to himself that he would.

      He’d been assigned to his very first task force by Brian Cavanaugh, the Aurora Police Department’s chief of detectives, and, as he’d come to learn in the last nine months, also his paternal uncle.

      Knowledge of the latter tie had jolted him, Kyle and Greer the way nothing ever had before. He could state that for a fact, seeing as how, since they were triplets, there were times when he could swear that they functioned as one, single-minded unit.

      The three of them received the news at the same time. It had come from their mother in the form of a deathbed confession so that she could meet her maker with a clear conscience. She’d died within hours of telling them, having absolutely no idea what kind of turmoil her revelation had caused for him and his siblings.

      Initially, finding out that he, Kyle and Greer were actually part of the sprawling Cavanaugh family had shaken the very foundations of their world. But in the end, once they’d gotten used to it and accepted the truth, the information had proven not to be life-shattering after all.

      He had to admit, at least for him, that it was nice to be part of something larger than a breadbox. Back when his mother’s death was still imminent, he’d anticipated life being pared down to it being just the three of them once she was gone. Three united against the world, so to speak.

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