Rotating, I sit on the window seat of the grand library that was once my father’s, bookshelves filled with decades of books lining the walls left and right, all with answers to questions that we might not even ever ask. Which is why I read incessantly and why I wish I knew which one to open for the right answers to why Nick Rogers felt so right and wrong at the same time, and why, so many other things are wrong in ways I’m not sure I can make right. But that would be too simple, and I am suddenly reminded of a poem I wrote long ago in school that started out with: The apples fall from the trees. The wind blows in the trees. I’d proudly handed it into the teacher, and quickly found myself scolded for my display of simplistic writing. I didn’t understand. What was wrong with being simplistic? The words, and the concepts fit together. That is what mattered. That was what was important to me. The way the pieces fit. The way it made sense. It seemed so simple to me, when in truth, little in life is simple at all. And that’s exactly why I keep that poem pinned on my bedroom wall. To remind me that nothing is simple.

Except death, I think, my throat thickening. One minute you’re alive, and the next you’re dead. Death is as simple as it gets. At least for the person it claims. For those of us left behind, it’s complicated, haunting. Mysterious and maybe even dangerous. And death, I have learned, is never done with you until you are gone, too. My mind returns to Nick Rogers and the way he’d known that I was in the window. The way he’d stared up at me and then given me that wave, and every instinct I own tells me that Nick Rogers is a lot like death. He’s not done with me either.

BUY PROVOCATIVE HERE

TALL, DARK

AND

DEADLY SERIES

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

LISA RENEE JONES

The Walker Brothers

The Walker Brothers…

Tall, dark, and deadly, these three brothers run Walker security. Each brother is unique in his methods and skills, but all share key similarities. They are passionate about those they love, relentless when fighting for a cause they believe in, and believe that no case is too hard, no danger too dark. Dedication is what they deliver, and results are their reward.

Chapter One

CHAPTER

ONE

“Don’t get on that elevator.”