Finishing up Bill’s story!
Book 2 – House on Fire – Bill’s job is on the line, he’s lost his best friend (and erstwhile dom) to another man, his trailer burns to the ground with everything he owns in it, and his father is murdered.
Through it all, Finn’s trying to palm him off on a new guy, Quade Taylor, but Q’s a criminal defense attorney and exactly the kind of rich asshole Bill hates.
Of all those things, the only thing Bill can deal with is the murder. And he’s determined to bring whoever killed his old man to justice. Carl Fraser made his life a living hell, but Bill’s not a fan of crime.
As long as he’s still nominally a cop, Palladian is his patch to protect. Bill isn’t part of the investigation, but he has to figure out what happened to his old man–and why. The clock is ticking. Everyone Bill talks to finds themselves in the murderer’s sights. How long before the police look closely at Bill and that hot, rich criminal defense attorney is the only thing standing between Bill and his fellow cops–many of whom are old acquaintances with doubts about him, now…
Book 1 – Home the Hard Way — Dare Buckley has come home, or at least, he’s come back to Palladian, the small town he left as a teenager. After a major lapse in judgment forced him to resign from the Seattle PD, Palladian is the only place that’ll hire him. There’s one benefit to hitting rock bottom, though: the chance to investigate the mystery of his father’s suicide.
Dare also gets to reacquaint himself with Finn Fowler, whose childhood hero worship ended in uncomfortable silence when Dare moved away. But Finn isn’t the same little kid Dare once protected. He’s grown into an attractive, enigmatic stranger who neither wants nor needs what Dare has to offer.
In fact, Dare soon realizes that Finn’s keeping secrets — his own and the town’s. And he doesn’t seem to care that Dare needs answers. The atmosphere in Palladian, like its namesake river, appears placid, but dark currents churn underneath. When danger closes in, Dare must pit his ingenuity against his heart, and find his way home the hard way.
Word count: 94,100; page count: 374
