Free By a Thread by Jennifer Estep

anger again.
    Anger at me and the fact that I hadn’t come straight out and told Bria who I really was when she’d come back to Ashland. Anger that I’d let Mab capture her. Anger that the Fire elemental had tortured her, despite my promises to keep that from ever happening. I didn’t think Bria was wrong to blame me. I’d failed to protect her when it mattered most, something that would always haunt me.
    Mab Monroe might be dead,but I wondered if things would ever really be right between me and my sister. If the Fire elemental and the two divergent paths that she had put me and Bria on, the things that she’d done to us, would ever really be forgotten—or forgiven.
    But that was a worry for another day. Right now, the question was what to do about Randall Dekes. Was taking down Dekes the smart thing to do? I had few doubts it was the right thing, given everything that Callie had said and what I’d witnessed here in the restaurant tonight.
    But I’d come to Blue Marsh to get away from my troubles as the Spider, not throw myself knives-first into someone else’s problem, especially someone that I didn’t have any real connection to. Callie was Bria’s friend, not mine. But that was the catch—Bria loved Callie like a sister, and I loved Bria. I’d do anything for my sister, including protect her friend the best way that I knew how.
    I hadn’t known Stu Alexander, but I could keep Callie from ending up like him. I could keep Bria from crying over her best friend’s grave like she had her parents’ earlier today. I could do at least that much for my sister. I didn’t know if it would make up for everything she’d suffered because of me, but all I could do was keep trying—and hope that it counted for something with Bria in the end.
    â€œWhat if I told you that I could help you with Dekes?” I asked Callie. “That I could get him to leave you alone—for good?”
    Bria sighed, knowing what was coming next. “Gin . . .”
    She didn’t get to finish her thought. The screen door creaked open, and quick footsteps sounded, hurrying across the wooden floor.
    â€œCallie!” a worried voice called out. “Are you okay?”
    This time, I was the onewho froze—shocked into absolute stillness just like everyone else had been earlier. I couldn’t have been more surprised, more stunned, than if the ground had opened up at my feet and Mab had crawled out of her grave right in front of me.
    I’d never thought I’d hear the light, quick tread of his footsteps again. I’d never thought I’d hear that low, sexy, slightly raspy voice again. I’d never thought I’d see him again, not after everything that had happened, not after the bitter way that things had ended between us.
    Not after he’d walked away from me without so much as a backward glance.
    For a moment, I sat there, still frozen, wondering if I was just imagining things, if my mind was playing tricks on me—cruel, cruel tricks.
    â€œCallie?” he asked again, drawing closer. “Why aren’t there any customers? Where’s the rest of the staff? And who are these women?”
    I breathed in, and his familiar scent filled my nose—that sharp, clean scent that always made me think of soap. And I knew that I wasn’t wrong or mistaken or just imagining things.
    I drew in a breath and slowly swiveled around on my stool.
    Detective Donovan Caine stood behind me.

5
    The last time I’d seen Donovan Caine had been whenhe’d dumped me at the Pork Pit, ending our brief but intense affair. That had been several months ago, but he still looked the same as I remembered—the same as I’d pictured him in my mind more than once on a late, lonely night, wondering where he was and what he was doing. Whom he might be with.
    His black hair was cropped close, looking as dark as midnight above his smoky, topaz-colored