Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Dear Reader
Excerpt from Cold Case Secrets by Kimberly Van Meter
Chapter 1
Special task force.
Those words swirled through Gavin Hayes’s mind as he prepared himself for a morning in the waters around New York City.
He stared up at the beautiful stretch of the majestic Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge as his police boat moved through the tidal strait that separated Brooklyn and Staten Island on their way toward the Statue of Liberty. The bridge’s arches speared toward the bright blue early spring sky, a testament to man’s ingenuity and sheer prowess at building over, around and through nature.
He was on a patrol shift, and while they had no overt mission at the moment, he had no doubt something would come in before the day was out. He’d worked two recovery jobs yesterday and had done structural checks the day before that. So it was a nice change of pace to just be out on the water, focused on the city that rose up as majestically as the bridge.
The quiet moments were also just low-key enough that he had plenty of time to think through Captain Reed’s invitation to join a special task force in collaboration with the Feds, the Coast Guard and the DA’s office.
It was a welcome change from the endlessly roiling thoughts that hadn’t left him since welcoming in the new year with a gorgeous redhead who’d fled on New Year’s Day never to be seen or heard from again.
Put it in the past, Hayes. Firmly in the past.
There were bigger challenges ahead. Ones that he had some control over. Unlike the reality of being left all alone around three in the afternoon after the most incredible sex of his life.
Which was only a small portion of the problem. The bigger issue was that the sex—amazing as it was—had only been the physical outcome of the most extraordinary eighteen hours he’d ever spent with another person.
Sera.
He could still feel her name on his lips and could still picture the way a lock of her deep auburn hair lay over her cheek as she slept.
Damn, he needed to let this go.
Because all he had were the memories of those eighteen hours and her first name.
He caught the light spray of water as it foamed up from the boat’s wake and imagined it as a cool slap in the face.
Let.
It.
Go.
It was time. He had an exciting new opportunity in front of him and recognized it would be a challenge. A task force full of large governmental entities was a big deal. But the moment you mixed local and federal jurisdictions, things could get sticky quickly.
As much as that was true, he also recognized that New York was different. And while everyone liked returning to their own corners at the end of the day, everyone also understood that governance and security in the largest city in America was unique.
Which only added to his excitement. He’d worked his tail off to make the Harbor team, and he loved what he did in the water, but he also saw it as a path toward his future. The men and women who worked the Harbor team might have expertise in diving, but they were NYPD cops, and as such, he wanted to make detective and continue his progression up the ranks.
The task force would go a long way toward supporting those ambitions.
