Red Line to Midnight

by Caitlyn Reed

Heat 3 / 5Novella · 12 chapters29,516 words2h 8m read~3h 17m listen

When a false alarm blows the grid and an ice storm seals off the ridge road, electrician Ember Vale has one job: keep the mag locks alive at the Appalachian safehouse long enough for a federal witness to finish her statement. One problem. The backup generator is already running on fumes, the battery bank will not last the night, and Ember has just told U.S. Marshal Finnian Quill exactly the opposite.

She told herself it was a protective lie. She tells herself a lot of things in the dark.

Finnian needs certainty. He has built his career on it, lost a witness without it, and he is not about to hand his judgment over to a civilian contractor who rounds her numbers up and keeps her eyes somewhere he cannot read. But the Hollow syndicate is torching circuits and testing doors, the storm is swallowing every call for backup, and the only person standing between his witness and the cold outside is a woman who keeps proving she knows exactly which risk to take — even when she refuses to name it.

ProtectorSecond ChanceWitness Protection