Ryan grabbed my arm. “I saw her eyes. The day she saved my life, I saw her. No one has eyes like her, and no woman that size could have carried me out of there. Tell me where Claire is, Nina.”

My door flew open, and Jared pulled me to my feet. Ryan scrambled out of his cruiser, desperate. “I just want to talk to her,” he yelled over the rain. “I don’t need to know how she did it. I just…need to see her again.”

Jared glanced at me, and then back to Ryan. “Unless you’re charging us with something, we’re leaving. Good to see you again, Ryan.”

“I’m not crazy!” Ryan said, desperate. The rain was more of a downpour, but he was unfazed.

My steps were small and quick, trying to keep up with Jared as he led me by the arm to the Escalade. Once inside, I turned around, holding the seat with both hands as I watched the stand off between the two men I loved in such opposite ways. Ryan, in his puffy, standard-issue policeman’s coat simply watched Jared glower at him. It was a new side of him, as I half-expected a nasty exchange of words.

Jared slammed the car door behind him before shoving the shifter into gear. The speedometer passed the point of speeding before we were out of Ryan’s radar range, as if Jared dared him to stop us again.

“Okay. Jared? Jared!” I said, fumbling with my seat belt.

“He knows.”

“It certainly seems that way,” I said, bracing myself as Jared weaved through the traffic. “Claire will lay low for a while like you said to. It will be fine.”

“You heard him, Nina. He’s been holding onto this for months. He’s not going to let it go.”

“Okay…so we figure it out. It’s not the worst thing that could happen right now. You told me, and the world didn’t come to an end.”

“Yours did.”

I winced. Jared feeling that way had never occurred to me. “That’s not true,” I said, shaking my head. I rested my hand on his. “Everything before that night was make-believe. This is what’s real.”

Jared pulled into the drive of my parent’s home, and then waited for the garage door to open. “You don’t work for the police department, Nina. The same one that Claire meticulously picked off a year ago.”

“He just wants to know why he saw her in the desert, Jared. It has nothing to do with Graham.”