Colleen Thompson

(…) he remained locked in stony silence for mile upon mile. Linda (…) was in no mood to try to pry a conversation from a rock.

“I’m not a Ranger anymore.”

“I’ve spent enough time around the military to know one thing. I can leave my job, give up being a hygienist tomorrow and never look back, but you’ll never really quit being a Ranger. You’ll carry it inside you whether you spend the rest of your life as a U.S. Marshal or a dogcatcher.”

“So, I like mystery novels, and my father was a cop,” she said. But let’s get one thing straight, Cole. That doesn’t make me a criminal any more than standing in a garage makes me a car.”

And in a child’s desperation, Jill felt something shift within her soul. Felt the dawning awareness that (…) there were some things worth risking death for. How could she have wasted so much of her life believing that anger and revenge, let alone ambition, had ever been among them?

Low in Jill’s belly, spark of rage reignited. Because anger was an old friend, far more comfortable than grief.

He spared the burns a glance and did a quick assessment. They hurt like hell, but in this case, that was a good thing, meaning that the nerves remained intact. “It’s only first degree,” he said, though he knew the blisters indicated second.

But luck was like that sometimes, lulling the man who counted on it into false sense that the breaks would always fall his way.