Chapter One

The slap, slap, slap of his shoes hitting the pavement echoed in the fog that crept over the sleeping city.

He was slicked with sweat and his lungs burned with each laboring breath, but still he ran faster, punishing his body, punishing himself, as he fought the urge to look over his shoulder. It never seemed to matter how fast he ran, because his past continued to haunt him.

Shane Quincy knew all about ghosts and personal demons. He knew about the terror of the innocent and their screams that still filled his head. He knew about heartbreak and sorrow because it plagued him with every breath he took. And most of all, he knew about fear—fear that clawed its way up from the pit of his belly and left a bitter taste in his mouth—and horrors so devastating they could break even the toughest FBI Hostage and Rescue Sniper.

And he had been the toughest. The best the FBI had ever had to offer.

He slowed his steps as a heavy drizzle blanketed the deserted New Orleans street and hunched over, propping his hands on his knees as he gasped for breath and tried to ease the aching in his chest. He knew from experience that the ache would never go away, but he tried just the same.

For two years his routine hadn’t changed. The nightmares would come, waking him in a cold sweat with the taste of bile rising in the back of his throat. The covers would be damp and twisted beneath his restless body and his senses would be primed. But the echoes of the screams were only in his imagination, so he’d slip on his sweatpants and a t-shirt, leave his empty apartment, careful not to disturb the dark-haired woman he shared the third floor with, and he’d run for miles through The Big Easy. Fast and hard, as if he were running for his life. And in some ways he was.

The drizzle turned into a downpour and Shane laughed bitterly as he raised his face to the sky. He began running again, this time at a slower tempo, and turned left off of First Street onto Prytania, where the historic mansion that housed six different apartment units was located. He never would have been able to afford the place when he was working for the FBI, but he’d found out very quickly after he’d turned in his resignation that private security paid a hell of a lot more than working for the government.

His skin was chilled and his dark hair, which was in desperate need of a trim, dripped into his eyes as he typed in the security code for the wrought iron gate that protected him and the other residents. Only four of the six units were currently occupied, the effects of Katrina and Rita still making people wary of putting down roots. There was a young couple on the first floor, both of them attorneys at a large firm, a tenured professor at Loyola on the second floor, and the woman who’d moved in a couple of months ago across the hall from him.

Shane wasn’t afraid to admit that the new neighbor had given him a restless night or two after she’d first moved in. Apparently a peaches and cream complexion, raven hair and pale blue eyes were enough to jump-start his libido after a long hiatus. He hadn’t wanted a woman in two years.

Not since Maggie had died.

But he wanted his new neighbor, and because of the fierce need that had caught him unawares, he did his damnedest to stay out of her way. He didn’t know anything about her and it didn’t look like things would ever be any different since she’d never gone out of her way to say more than a lukewarm hello. The same could be said about all the neighbors, which in his opinion made it the perfect place to live.

Along the outside of the building, freshly painted, white wooden stair cases led to each level of the house and split in different directions to each apartment door. Shane was almost to the third floor before he smelled the smoke. The rain and the wind had dampened the scent so it was barely recognizable, but it was there. He was sure of it.

He raced the rest of the way to the third floor and saw the licks of flame taunting him from the windows. The sight was hypnotic, the reds and oranges of the fire as it danced a path of destruction. The front door and one of the windows was open, feeding the inferno with much needed oxygen so it spread quickly through the rooms, up the thick drapes and onto the ceiling. Black smoke billowed out the open window and door, and he cursed himself for leaving his cell phone on his nightstand. He heard the fire alarms shrieking and hoped the other tenants made it out safely.

He didn’t pay attention to the splintered wood on the open door as he charged into the smoke and biting flames to see if his neighbor was still inside. His adrenaline was pumping and he didn’t miss the irony of the situation, that a failure such as himself would be put in the role of hero once again. He hadn’t been able to save anyone in a long time. He could barely save himself.

The apartment was a mirror image of his own, and he ran with familiarity down the long hallway to the bedrooms at the back. Paint blistered on the walls. Black smoke blurred his vision and clogged his lungs, so he ducked down on his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to the bedroom. The fire wasn’t contained to one area but seemed to be everywhere at once, racing toward some unseen finish line where the prize was utter destruction.