Page 1 of Ranger's Honor
PROLOGUE
KARI
'You should let him wreck you.'
I type the line, then backspace it, then type it again—this time with feeling.
'You should let him wreck you,' she whispers, voice unsteady as the hurricane wind howling just beyond the porch screen. 'Just once. Just to see if you survive it.'
I stare at the words, chew on the edge of my pen, and sigh.
“Too dramatic?” I ask the empty kitchen.
From the living room, Maggie calls out, “It’s a romance novel, Kari. Not a court transcript. Give the people what they want—stormy sex and emotional trauma.”
I laugh and toss the pen aside. “You’re not wrong.”
She peeks around the doorframe with a mug in one hand and a chocolate chip cookie in the other. “You’ve got your ‘don’t interrupt me unless you’re on fire’ face on.”
“It’s the last chapter,” I admit. “If I don’t nail it, everything before it falls apart.”
“You said that about the last chapter.”
“That was the last chapter,” I say, rubbing my temples. “Until they had breakup sex on the roof during a thunderstorm. Now there’s a new last chapter.”
“You are chaos in leggings,” she mutters, but her voice is fond. “Want me to heat up the lavender neck wrap? You’re starting to make that forehead wrinkle thing again.”
“Sure,” I say absently, already turning back to my screen.
Maggie’s footsteps retreat and I hear the microwave door open. I take a deep breath and drop back into the fictional storm I’ve conjured—a heroine who’s been running from her past, a hero who’s been running from himself, and one night that will change everything.
I type another paragraph.
And another.
Then pause to check the time.
Midnight.
My laptop battery’s at 38%, and the last sticky note on my wall says:DON’T FORGET TO HYDRATE OR YOU’LL DIE.
“Okay, okay,” I mutter, pushing back from the table and heading toward the sink. I fill a glass with water and take a sip, eyes drifting to the framed photo on my fridge.
Me and Maggie.
God, that smile. That summer.
Maggie had found me crying in a bookstore over a one-star review and dragged me out for tacos and tequila until I could laugh about it. Then I introduced her to my big, badass brother, Gideon. Maggie moved away for work, got successful, and eventually came back—like most stories worth telling, hers wasn’t a straight line.
That’s when things got complicated. Not long after Gideon finally got his head out of his ass and Claimed Maggie, we met Sutton Blake—whose best friend, Sookie, was an investigativereporter digging into a cartel assassin known only as The Reaper.
I press my fingers to the glass surface of the photo of Sutton, Maggie and I, the weight of obligation pressing down instead of grief. I didn’t know Sookie at all, but the notes from her investigation landed in my lap anyway. After all, I was the only one who was a writer—the fact that I was a romance writer and not a journalist never seemed to occur to anyone, including me.
Sookie’s notes were handed to me like a torch—and I took them, knowing full well what that meant. I told myself I’d dig in once I finished my WIP. That it could wait. Only, no one seemed to care what a romance author might find—not the cops, not the press, and definitely not the people who’d killed her.
I didn't know her, but Sutton described her as incredibly observant and very talented. She wrote everything down, and I hate that her death was labeled a “botched break-in” when we all knew better.
The truth she died for is still out there. Lurking. Watching. Waiting.
