Swat Standoff. Lena Diaz

losing your sight line of the suspect. But you didn’t.”

      “Not at first, no. I couldn’t risk the noise alerting him. I did call later, after—”

      “After the rest of the team was ambushed? And killed?”

      Blake clamped his jaw shut. Why was he even trying to explain? As usual, Dillon refused to listen. He was a great leader and friend—to the rest of the team. But he’d disliked Blake from day one and made no secret about it. The only thing Blake could figure was that Dillon resented him because the chief had hired him without asking for his input.

      If Chief Thornton hadn’t offered him a job when he’d run into Blake at the Knoxville Police Station and gotten a taste of the drama going on there, Blake would be unemployed by now, with no prospects for another law-enforcement job. He owed a lot to the chief, including his silence about Blake’s past. Blake hadn’t wanted to share the details of what had happened, because he didn’t want to prejudice his new team against him in case they didn’t agree with his side of the story. But on days like today, he wondered if they’d both made a mistake. Their pact of silence meant that both of them had to lie to the team in answer to their questions about Blake’s past. And lies were the worst sort of foundation on which to build trust. Which was why he always felt as though he were running in quicksand around here, never gaining traction no matter how hard he tried to fit in.

      Except with Donna.

      Beautiful and smart, she was the one bright spot in his life in Destiny, the one person who treated him as if he mattered. And he’d gone and screwed up with her, too. He’d run off after a suspect when he should have stuck by her side, training exercise or not. She probably despised him just as much as Dillon now.

      He raised his hands in surrender, trying to defuse the situation. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone after the suspect on my own. I see that now.”

      “Gone off on your own? It’s not that simple. You risked your partner’s life. And don’t you dare tell me it was just a paint-ball fight. This weekend’s exercises are designed to test our instincts and improve our reactions, just as if this was the real thing. If this was the real thing, you just proved you can’t be trusted to watch over your partner or follow instructions.”

      “You’re overreacting. If this had been a true SWAT situation, I would have stayed with Donna.”

      Dillon shook his head. “You still don’t get it. You can’t act one way in training and plan on acting another way on an actual call. Training is supposed to make things second nature, so you’ll react on muscle memory, without having to think about it. You have to treat every exercise like the real thing. Didn’t they teach you that in the military?”

      Blake stiffened and glanced at Thornton. But there was no help from that quarter. Thornton wouldn’t even look him in the eye.

      “Are we done here?” Blake demanded, his patience gone. There was only so much lecturing a grown man could take with his entire team a stone’s throw away, witnessing his humiliation.

      “Yeah. We’re definitely done. Because you’re toxic—always have been. You’re a lone wolf, a rogue who has to do things his own way. People like you get people like me killed. The chief saw something in you when he hired you. I’ll admit that I never did. But I worked with you, gave you every opportunity to prove my doubts wrong, to figure out how to be a member of this team. But all you’ve managed to do is prove me right. And I’m not willing to risk the lives of everyone here for your ego.” He motioned toward Chief Thornton. “And neither is he. We both agree on this. It’s over. Go home, Blake. You can turn in your equipment Monday morning. You won’t need it anymore. You’re fired.”

       Chapter Three

      Donna entered the sleazy establishment that passed as a bar in this corner of Sevier County. Back in Destiny, this place would have been condemned and torn down, deemed unfit for even pigs to slop around in.

      There was a plus side, though. It was quiet, too early in the evening to have more than a handful of patrons. And none of them had felt inclined to feed any money into the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner of the room.

      Wrinkling her nose at the smell of urine and stale beer, she forced herself to step all the way inside, even though she was tempted to make an emergency run for a can of Lysol first.

      A familiar figure sat on a bar stool at the far end, accepting what she hoped was his first drink of the night from the bartender. If Blake Sullivan was plastered, that was going to make her little crusade that much more difficult.

      When he lifted the shot glass to his mouth, his hand shook and he sloshed some over the side.

       So much for hoping that he wasn’t plastered.

      He downed the amber liquid in one swallow and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Donna flexed her hand against the pistol holstered at her waist. If it had been loaded with paint balls instead of nine-millimeter slugs, she’d have already shot him. She was that ticked.

      “Hey, lady,” the bartender called out. “No guns allowed in here.”

      Blake slowly looked at her, his reflexes obviously dulled by the liquor. A sober cop would have jerked around to assess the danger as soon as the bartender mentioned a gun.

      She pulled her badge out of the pocket of her jeans and flashed it. “Cop.”

      The bartender’s expression turned frosty, his eyes as dark and deadly looking as the ones on the cobra tattoo snaking up his neck. “Makes no difference to me. No guns.”

      “Don’t worry. I’m not staying.” She put her badge away and strode across the room, her boots echoing on the scarred hardwood floor. Stopping beside Blake’s stool, she motioned toward the door. “Let’s go.”

      He scowled at her. “Another whiskey.” His words were slurred, his face ruddy.

      The bartender stepped toward him with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Before he could refill the shot glass, Donna slapped her hand over it. “He’s done.”

      “No. He’s not.” Blake yanked the glass away from her and held it out toward the bartender. “Fill ’er up.”

      The bartender lifted the bottle.

      “He’s drunk,” Donna warned. “You pour that, and he gets behind the wheel, I’ll arrest both of you.”

      He hesitated, shrugged and moved down the bar to a patron who promised to be less trouble.

      Blake glared at her through bleary eyes. “This isn’t Blount County. You can’t arrest anyone here.”

      “He doesn’t know that.” She jerked her thumb toward the bartender.

      Blake swiveled around and slouched back against the bar. “How did you find me?”

      “Call tree.”

      He frowned. “Call what?”

      She sighed. “One of many things you’ve failed to learn, even though I’ve told you about it before. Destiny’s a very small town, so—”

      He snorted. “No kidding.”

      She wanted to punch him. Instead, she forced a smile. “Unlike you, I consider Destiny’s cozy size to be one of its many assets. Case in point, the call tree. Someone goes missing, I can make one call, and pretty soon, half the people in the county are looking out their windows. It’s more efficient than a big city’s AMBER Alert system.”

      His mouth quirked up. “You put out an AMBER Alert on me? I had no idea you cared so much.”

      “There are a lot of things you don’t know,” she grumbled. “Maybe you should pay more attention.”

      His brow crinkled in confusion, but his inebriated