Stone (Stone Cold Fox Trilogy #1)

  Stone

  Book One in the Stone Cold Fox Trilogy

  Published by Max Monroe LLC © 2018, Max Monroe

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-9989430-8-4

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editing by Silently Correcting Your Grammar

  Formatting by Champagne Book Design

  Cover Design by Peter Alderweireld

  Photo Credit: iStock Photo

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATIONS

  STONE: BOOK ONE

  INTRO

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To TUMS and Pepto-Bismol.

  Thank you for aiding our digestive systems while Levi and Ivy took us on the emotional ride of our lives.

  We needed you. A lot.

  To Passion.

  Yes, you are not an actual person or thing or anything corporeal, really, but you are the reason Levi and Ivy’s story is being told.

  Thank you, Passion, you greedy, nagging, beautiful, wonderful, all-consuming,

  little asshole.

  You sure know how to inspire and drive and motivate us.

  And last, but certainly not least.

  To Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone.

  You two are unbelievably talented in your craft.

  And, in a lot of ways, you were our muses for Ivy.

  Now, with that being said, when do we get to have lunch and be best friends?

  STONE: BOOK ONE

  First, hate. Then, want. But in the end? Heartbreak.

  My celebrity life was supposed to be easy, and this movie was the biggest break of my career. But from the moment Officer Levi Fox gave me a speeding ticket on my way into town, he’s been nothing but a thorn in my side.

  Dominant. Cocky. Callous.

  Midnight blue eyes, a bad attitude, and muscles for days, he’s exactly the kind of man I should avoid.

  But as the Cold, Montana Police Department’s official movie liaison, he’s taken up a permanent place in my life that I can’t shake.

  We fight. A lot.

  Then, we kiss—and my carefully crafted hate toward him no longer feels so much like hate.

  I’m falling

  falling

  falling.

  But how often do alpha-jerks cushion the landing?

  THE NEW YORK CHRONICLE

  The Cold-Hearted Killer

  Five days ago, a fourth woman went missing in the same small town in Montana where three women have already been found dead in the last seven months. All three bodies were discovered within a six-mile radius.

  Although law enforcement officials have been tight-lipped on most of the details, one thing is clear: there’s a serial killer in their midst.

  September 15th, 2010

  COLD—Authorities say just two weeks after a body found in a wooded area inside the small town of Cold, Montana had been identified as the missing twenty-five-year-old woman named Emily Morrow, another woman, twenty-four-year-old Bethany Johnson, has been reported as missing.

  This marks the fourth woman who has gone missing in the small, and otherwise sleepy, town of Cold, Montana in the span of seven months.

  On the morning of September 10th, twenty-four-year-old Bethany Johnson told her boyfriend she’d be back home in a few hours and was last seen getting into a silver Honda Civic parked outside of her home. Bethany intended to drop by a friend’s house located approximately ten minutes away, but she never arrived.

  On July 17th, twenty-five-year-old Carly Best’s remains were found inside a vacant home. That same day, twenty-seven-year-old Victoria Carson’s remains were found in a nearby abandoned barn.

  This string of murders seems obtrusive in a town that rarely sees one case, if any, of homicide or manslaughter in a year.

  “This is very out of character for our small community,” Chief Pulse said during a press conference. “The patterns of these murders, the manner in which they are being committed, along with the similarities between the victims, proves they are not a coincidence. We are dealing with a serial killer here.”

  “A $5,000 reward is being offered for information about Bethany Johnson,” Officer Grace Murphy of the Cold Police Department instructed at a press conference as she held up a picture of the twenty-four-year-old woman. “She is five feet, four inches tall and weighs 130 pounds. She has brown hair, amber eyes, and light skin, with a birthmark on her front right thigh. She also has a butterfly tattoo on her left ankle.”

  “Please,” she added, clearly moved by the uncharacteristic trouble in her town, “anyone with more information regarding Bethany’s whereabouts, please come forward so we can find her.”

  The city’s coroner, Dr. Walter Gaskins, has issued autopsy reports on all three victims and confirmed all deaths occurred by strangulation. There are other details within the reports that have not been released to the public yet, but an anonymous inside source has come forward to give us one more, important fact. Carved into the victims’ skin with a knife, the killer left one thing behind: a tiny, broken heart.

  In Cold, Montana, love has started to hurt.

  January 3rd, 2016

  My fisted hand hovered over the worn wood of Chief Red Pulse’s door for one beat, then two—long enough to fill my lungs with much-needed air—and then connected sharply three times.

  The chief’s call to enter wasn’t any less severe than the raps of my knuckles.

  “Come in!”

  I swallowed and shoved.

  The door opened with surprising ease given the dread I felt.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like Chief Pulse—I did. I’d known the man my entire life and respected him greatly. He was a good man, with good values, and had more time on the force than anyone else.

  Seeing as he was pushing seventy-five, that wasn’t all that surprising.

  But being summoned to his office always felt a little like being called to the principal, even when I hadn’t done anything wrong. And today, the timing was horrendously suspicious.

  My worst nightmare was scheduled to roll into town soon.

  As he was never a man to dance around an issue, his rusty brown eyes didn’t waste any time meeting my own.
His eyebrows were wild and his clothing slightly sloppy, an appearance I suspected was common for most old men, but his mind was sharp. You could see it in his stare, without question.

  Beyond that, I could see his intention, written in the determined gleam and softening wrinkles around the edges—this meeting wasn’t going to go my way. I had no way of knowing what he was going to tell me, but I knew, with absolute certainty, I wasn’t going to like it.

  “Take a seat, Levi,” he offered, gesturing to the worn, brown leather chairs in front of his desk.

  I glanced their way, and a memory snapped into focus as though it’d happened yesterday. Several memories, actually.

  His wife, Margo, had picked those chairs out a good twenty years ago, back when I’d been nothing more than a rebellious kid. My ass had been one with those chairs on more than my fair share of occasions as good-hearted, stern-talking Chief Pulse had read me the riot act.

  You better turn your life around, son, he’d told me at the end of nearly every speech. Of course, the beginning and the middle had been filled with a lot more cursing and a little more yelling. But the end, that was where he made it count. And thanks to his unending faith and patience, I had.

  Now I stood before him as a man. A coworker.

  A cop.

  “I’d really rather stand, sir,” I deferred. I felt a whole lot less vulnerable if I didn’t have furniture inhibiting a quick getaway.

  The Chief acquiesced with a nod. “Suit yourself.”

  I stepped farther into the room then, taking up residence right behind one of those ever-familiar chairs and settling my hands lightly onto the back. The cracked leather scratched at my palms.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked outright. I didn’t want to wait through pleasantries or speeches, and I didn’t want to be in here any longer than I had to be. I felt cagey.

  But it wasn’t his office, I realized, making me feel edgy. The picture was a whole lot bigger than that. I wanted to be out in the field, on the street—free to move.

  I needed the outlet, the unpredictable. I needed to be somewhere where I didn’t see her everywhere I looked.

  He nodded with respect. It took balls to lead a conversation where you wanted it to go rather than let it take you somewhere. Old Red understood that better than nearly anyone I knew, and there was a reason—he’d been the one to teach me that lesson himself.

  “The film outfit that’s pulling into town…”

  I jerked up my chin, my fingers clenching into the leather beneath them, scratchy cracks all but forgotten.

  I knew all about the movie they were making in my town—Cold, Montana. I knew the actors they’d hired and the story they meant to tell, and I hated every fucking thing about it. The nightmare I’d suspected brought me in here was starting to feel a little too real.

  He couldn’t be thinking—

  “You’re in,” he murmured, and everything inside me seized. My heart, my lungs, all of the thoughts in my head—frozen.

  “Chief,” I whispered, my voice sounding hoarse to even my own ears. This was fucking unbelievable. Ridiculous. Lunacy. He couldn’t fucking think for one fucking second I’d be okay with this.

  He shook his head and held up a hand, and I did my best to lock it down. My jaw flexed under my frustration’s sudden and unyielding pressure.

  “You’re gonna be the liaison between us and them.” My throat burned with disbelief and a million unspoken curses. “I know you’ve got a sore spot when it comes to this, but the town commission is excited about the profits from this project. They pushed it through with a unanimous vote, and you and I can’t do anything about it. It’s happening. It deserves some truth, and dammit, Levi, there ain’t nobody else.”

  I shook my head and told him to go fuck himself a thousand times in my head, but he just nodded.

  “You know the case, you know Grace, and her family doesn’t want anyone to do it but you.”

  “What if I refuse?” I asked. It was a real option and one I was considering more and more by the minute. I could walk out of here, go about my business, continue my day-to-day, and that stupid movie and its stupid story could go fuck itself.

  “Then you’ll be fired.”

  Fine, my inner asshole screamed. Fire me, then.

  But if there were two things I knew about myself, down to the root, it was this:

  I was born to be a cop, and I’d give my life for Cold, Montana.

  And someone else already had.

  I had no fucking choice.

  “When do I start?”

  “Day after tomorrow.” Red forced a smile. “Silver lining, son. You’ll be compensated heavily.”

  I laughed harshly, and he nodded.

  He knew a third thing about me, and so did I.

  I didn’t give a fuck about the money. I never fucking had.

  January 10th, 2016

  My phone rang through the speakers of my rental car for the fifth time in the last hour, and I sighed. I clutched my hands around the steering wheel in both annoyance and frustration before I tapped the accept button with my right thumb.

  “Hey, Mariah,” I greeted without even looking at the screen on my dash to see who it was. I knew it would be my manager. Surely, she had something to bitch about. It was her MO.

  “You missed a fitting,” she said, diving right into what I’d already known.

  “I’m aware.” I sighed and rolled my eyes toward the sky. “And why aren’t you calling Camilla about this? Pretty sure she’s the one who handles schedules.”

  “Because you don’t just miss a fitting when a world-renowned designer is making your dress for the fucking Oscars. Do you have any idea how many phone calls I’ve fielded today regarding this fucking mess?”

  “I’m pretty sure my reason for missing the fitting was valid.”

  “Oh, honey,” she said, and a sarcastic laugh escaped her lips. “There is no valid reason for missing a fitting with Christiano LaMoore. Death wouldn’t be a valid excuse.”

  “Stop being so dramatic,” I said, and I could only imagine the wrinkles forming between my manager’s brows. Beverly Hills probably wouldn’t have enough Botox on hand to solve it. “I called Christiano and explained the situation to him,” I added by way of calming her down. “He didn’t sound upset about it. He completely understood.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she questioned, her voice rising with each word. “Because I’m sitting here staring at an exclusive interview with Christiano on Gossip World’s website, and it appears that he wasn’t all that understanding.”

  I scrunched my nose. “What do you mean? What did he say?”

  “Something along the lines of your being part of the new epidemic of young and entitled Hollywood actresses.”

  “That bastard!” I said on a surprised shout. “I told him production was moved up on Cold and I had to leave earlier than expected for Montana. It was either I made the fitting and pissed off my director and quite possibly got kicked off the job, or I canceled the fitting.”

  “Well, it looks like he thinks you’re full of shit.”

  “The fact that I’ve been driving for two hours in the middle-of-nowhere Montana says I’m not,” I retorted. “Not to mention, it’s literally zero degrees here.” I glanced at the temperature on the dashboard just to clarify what I already knew. “I didn’t know it was possible to be zero degrees. But it’s zero fucking degrees. Trust me, I’d much rather be in LA right now. Although, the traffic isn’t so bad here.”

  I loved living in Los Angeles, but the traffic sucked. And it didn’t just suck a little, it sucked a lot. One minute you could be zipping along at a yippee-no-problem-life-is-good kind of pace, and then twenty seconds later, you find yourself squealing to a dead fucking stop. Not to mention, once you actually arrived at your destination, you had to pry your fingers off the steering wheel and look for the nearest stiff drink.

  Montana was the exact opposite. I’d driven at least fifteen miles without seeing more th
an a few semitrucks and maybe one other car on the road. It was damn near eerie how empty the roads were. If I wasn’t positive my GPS was leading me exactly where I needed to be, I might’ve thought I was headed toward something that looked more like Texas Chainsaw Massacre than the small town where my next movie would be filmed.

  “Well, unless you start kissing Christiano’s ass and begging for his forgiveness, I guess you can start looking for a new Oscar-worthy dress.”

  I sighed. White, luxurious, soft as silk but felt like cotton, the Christiano LaMoore dress was a dream. He was the exact designer most actresses would contemplate giving up their firstborn for. But although I loved designer duds, I wasn’t a slave to fashion. Nor would I be apologizing to a man whose ego was apparently bigger than his fashion line’s price tags.

  “Yeah,” I snorted. “Considering I did absolutely nothing wrong, I’d rather remove a limb than ask for forgiveness.”

  Mariah laughed, finally dropping her tough as nails persona and succumbing to my stubbornness. She knew I wouldn’t go back on this—not for a dress to the Oscars, not for a fucking Oscar itself. “I guess I’ll start making some phone calls then, huh?”

  “Good plan.” I smiled. She was a total pain in my ass most days, but when she wasn’t acting like such a hard-ass, she was actually a good friend. “And, if you don’t mind, find me someone who is up-and-coming and doesn’t have a giant, gold-plated, I’m holier than thou stick up their ass.”

  Lucky for me, I still had a few more months before I needed to worry about being red-carpet ready and had time to shop around.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she lilted. “Speaking of the Oscars, have you decided who you’re bringing with you?”

  I was currently single, had zero dating prospects, and my last relationship ended after I found my musician boyfriend with his hands up some groupie’s skirt. Obviously, it was an easy answer.