Fever's Fortitude

A private army decided her classified kills made her their asset. A man who burns hot decided she was worth the fire.

Zara Hassan came home from the Marines with seventeen confirmed kills and a head full of faces she can't forget. A scout sniper's skills don't translate to civilian life, so she guides hunters through the Pine Barrens and lives alone in a cabin, where solitude is the only peace she's found and disappearing is how she survives herself. Then she finds a folder on her kitchen table—photos from operations that don't officially exist—and realizes a security contractor named Tessaro has decided her "no" doesn't count.

She should have taken the offer. She's never bent for anyone.

She didn't expect the man who runs hot enough to match her ice.

He went underground when the heat came from every direction. She made the fire feel like coming alive.

Samuel "Fever" Reid spent four years drawing law enforcement, rival clubs, and three separate bounties away from his brothers—surviving underground until the pressure cooked everyone hunting him. Now he's back, the heat pointed at enemies instead of running through his own veins. When a mercenary outfit tries to acquire a ghost in the Barrens, he decides to find her first—and discovers that the woman who freezes where he burns is the only thing that's ever cooled him down.

But Zara Hassan doesn't want a rescuer. She wants someone who won't ask her to explain the silence—and Fever learns that matching her precision with his fire is the first thing since he went underground that feels like more than survival.

As Tessaro's company burns under Creeping Death's assault, Fever realizes protecting Zara isn't enough. He wants to claim her—in front of the brothers who welcomed him home, in front of a man who thought skills like hers could be owned. And Zara's learning that trusting someone with her position isn't the weakness she feared, and the man who never cools down is the reason she's finally not a ghost anymore.

In Newark's industrial heart, where refinery flames light the sky and men trade skills the civilian world won't touch, one woman will discover that disappearing was never the same as living—and one burning, dangerous man will find the one fire he never wants to put out.