When a wealthy donor drops dead at her charity gala, Fox Theater fundraiser Bunny Beaudoin finds herself thrust into a murder investigation that threatens everything she's built. Teaming up with enigmatic private investigator Dash O'Neill, Bunny discovers the victim was poisoned—and he's not the killer's first target. As bodies pile up and the theater's reputation hangs in the balance, Bunny and Dash navigate a web of secrets, lies, and dangerous attraction. Between dodging a suspicious police chief and uncovering a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of Magnolia Heights society, Bunny must decide how far she's willing to go for justice—and whether she can trust the mysterious man who's stolen her heart. In a world where everyone has something to hide, the deadliest secret might be falling in love with your partner in crime.
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Dash stared at his reflection in the men’s room mirror, gripping the edges of the porcelain sink. The fluorescent lighting made his exhaustion even more apparent. Every line. Every shadow. Every indication that he was running on fumes. He’d come in here to splash cold water on his face and compose himself before facing the truth. Instead, he found himself thinking about his father.
His father had been in the Security Forces for thirty years. He was the kind of military cop who genuinely believed in justice, who’d never taken a bribe or planted evidence or looked the other way when any one else on the base crossed lines. An honest man in a profession that didn’t always reward honesty. He’d died with his integrity intact, an honorable discharge, and a pension that barely covered his medical bills.
“Private investigators are just cops who couldn’t hack it,” He’d said when Dash left the force, “Or cops who liked money more than duty.”
Dash had proven him wrong, eventually. Built a reputation for thorough investigations and ethical practices. His father had even admitted, near the end, that he was proud of the work Dash was doing. Private investigators had a reputation for being sleazy, for bending rules and exploiting people’s secrets for money. Real scumbags, some of them were. But he’d spent his career trying to operate with integrity, to be the kind of PI who helped people rather than preying on them. Clean cases, honest billing. Professional boundaries.
The bathroom door opened and another customer entered. Dash turned on the faucet and splashed water on his face, buying time. The water was shockingly cold against his skin, sharp enough to cut through the fog of exhaustion for a moment. When the customer left, he was alone again with his reflection and guilt. He sniffed, scratched the shadow darkening his chin despite his best efforts to keep it at bay, and ripped the paper towel from the automatic dispenser with more force than necessary.
No matter what he told himself about ethics, integrity, justice, he felt exactly like the stereotype. He was a man who’d pursued his own agenda while letting someone believe they were partners. The realization that he’d been compartmentalizing the woman seated at a table a few steps away made him slightly queasy. He’d learned to divide his life into neat, separate boxes, but this case had scrambled all his organizational systems. Dash dried his hands on the paper towel and straightened his shirt. He’d been putting this conversation off for days, telling himself he was waiting for the right moment, the right setting.
But the truth was, really, much simpler.
No matter what he told himself, he didn’t want to see the look in Bunny’s eyes when she realized he’d been lying to her.
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The man who slid into the chair opposite Bunny looked like he’d been through a war. His short-sleeved polo was wrinkled, no tie affixed to his neck, the gold chain glinting but skewed against his deep skin. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw, and his eyes— those eyes that always seemed to see more than they should — were bloodshot and underscored by bruise-like circles. Despite his dishevelment, there was still something undeniably handsome about him, like a classic movie star at the end of a particularly grueling shoot.
“Jesus,” Bunny blurted, “You look terrible.”
“Such flattery.” He murmured, managing a tired smile as he reached for the water pitcher.
“Seriously, are you okay? You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“I haven't, really,” He poured himself water, his hand less steady than usual, “Coffee’s been standing in for sleep, not very successfully.”
The server appeared to take his order. Dash requested an espresso, “double shot, no sugar,” in the tone of a man requesting lifesaving medicine.
“Tell me about this paint can.” He said after the server departed, cutting through all formalities or niceties, but noticeably avoiding eye contact.
Bunny crossed her arms.
“No way,” She replied bluntly, “You don’t get to disappear for days on end and then start asking the questions. First you tell me what’s going on with you. Why Lancaster suddenly didn’t want me talking to you, why you vanished after Mickey’s house, why you look like you’ve been on a three-day bender.”
He was silent for a while, his face the ashen wash of a boy being scolded by a school teacher.
“It’s complicated.” He finally offered, not so much as an answer but as a placation.
“Well, then… uncomplicate it,” She prodded, nervously flicking a crumpled up straw wrapper back and forth across the table.
Dash sighed, the sound heavy. He leaned back in his chair, briefly closing his eyes.
“I wasn’t completely honest with you about how I got involved in this case,” He began, his eyes now fixed on the water glass he rotated slowly between his fingers, “I told you I was hired to look into Katz’s death six months ago.”
“Right, which led you to the pattern with Catherine Winters and then Harold Finch.” Bunny prompted, unraveling the wrapper only to crumple it again in her palm. The hum of the restaurant seemed to lower, cocooning the two of them into the quiet corner.
“What I didn’t tell you was who hired me.”
A cold emptiness settled in her chest.
“Who?” Bunny’s voice came out as a near whisper.
Dash looked up, meeting her eyes directly for the first time since entering the restaurant.
“Glen Valentino.”
She went very still, a blankness crossing her face. For a moment, he thought she might not have heard him correctly, might ask him to repeat it. Then her expression shifted, and he watched her mentally reorganize everything they’d discussed.
“Glen hired you.” She repeated, and her voice had gone flat, carefully neutral.
She was drumming her fingers against the table again, that nervous habit that seemed to help her think. Dash found himself cataloging details: the way she straightened in her chair, putting physical distance between them. The way her eyes sharpened.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think this was something I should know?” Her voice rose slightly, anger rising to the surface of a falsely placid lake.
“You let me theorize that Glen might be behind everything, or that Carissa was protecting him, and you just… went along with it?”
He stayed silent, which only served to make Bunny angrier.
“Not to mention that you lied to me outside the coroner’s office. You said you were between clients!” She hissed, crossing her arms as if to protect herself.
“I signed a non-disclosure agreement,” Dash said, his own voice remaining frustratingly level even as he leaned closer, “Client confidentiality is—”
“Oh, spare me the fucking lecture.” Bunny snapped, pulling further away and glancing around again, conscious of her volume in the near-empty restaurant.
“Your client is dead. He was my donor. And now I find out you’ve been what— playing me? Using me to gather information while having this massive conflict of interest?”
“I wasn’t using you, and technically, I didn’t lie,” Dash insisted, mirroring her posture, “Valentino wanted me to find out what happened to his first two associates. But when I hadn’t figured out who was behind Katz or Winter’s deaths, he wanted me off the case.”
He leaned back into the seat.
“The man wasn’t exactly a picture of patience, Bunny. So he fired me. When I first approached you outside the coroner’s office, I really was in between clients. But after we spoke to Mickey, I–I had a hunch about something. And I wanted to get back in contact with Glen about it, but he…”
“Ended up dead too.” Bunny finished.
“Exactly.”
Bunny pushed her water glass away, suddenly needing something stronger.
“I have to get out of here.” She rose abruptly, throwing down a twenty dollar bill and pulling her purse over her shoulder.
Dash caught up with her halfway across the restaurant’s dining room, his chair scraping against the floor as he bolted after her. The server looked up from wiping down tables, eyebrows raised at the sudden drama unfolding in his quiet afternoon shift.
“Bunny, wait–”
But she was already pushing through the heavy glass door, the afternoon heat hitting her like a slap after the restaurant’s air conditioning. The parking lot stretched before her, a field of sun-baked asphalt that shimmered in the heat. Her car sat under the sparse shade of a scraggly oak tree, its blue paint looking dull and tired in the harsh light. She fumbled for her keys, hands shaking slightly from adrenaline and anger. Behind her, she heard Dash’s footsteps on the gravel.
“Bunny, please. Just let me explain.”
She whirled around, keys jangling.
“Explain what, exactly? How you’ve been playing me for weeks? How you sat there and listened to me spin theories about your dead client and said nothing?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?” She took a step toward him, close enough to see the exhaustion etched in the lines around his eyes.
“Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you used me to get information you couldn’t access on your own. Lancaster shut you out, so you found yourself a convenient insider.”
Dash ran a hand through his hair, a ripple of muscle catching Bunny’s eyes. She felt shame creep up her neck as her stomach clenched involuntarily, a gentle zephyr of guilt and want roiling against the blunt wall of anger.
“You think I planned this? You think I engineered our meeting outside the coroner’s office?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” The words came out sharper than she’d intended, “Maybe you’ve been working this case longer than you told me. Maybe you knew exactly who I was before we ever spoke.”
“That’s not–” He stopped, mouth opening and closing like he was trying to find words that wouldn't make things worse, “I didn’t know you existed until Lancaster mentioned you had discovered Finch’s body.”
“So you researched me.”
“Of course I researched you. That’s what investigators do,” His voice rose, matching her intensity, “But I didn’t approach you because I had some master plan. I approached you because you were there, and you’d seen something, and I thought you might want answers.”
Bunny laughed, a bitter sound that echoed off the restaurant’s brick facade.
“Right. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I had access to crime scenes you couldn’t get near.”
“Maybe initially,” The admission seemed to cost him something, “But after Mickey’s house–”
“After Mickey’s house, what? You decided I was useful enough to keep around?” She turned back toward her car, key extended to the lock.
“Well, congratulations. Mission accomplished. I found you a fucking paint can.”
“Bunny,” His voice was softer now, almost pleading, “You have every right to be angry. But if you leave now, if we don’t work together on this–”
“Work together?” She spun around again, and he had to take a step back.
“We were never working together, Dash. You were working your case, and I was apparently working for you without knowing it.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” The word came out as a shout. An elderly couple walking to their car twenty feet away turned to stare. Bunny lowered her voice but not her intensity.
“You want to talk about fair? Fair would have been telling me from the beginning that Glen was your client. Fair would have been letting me decide whether I wanted to help investigate the murder of someone I knew.”
“I couldn’t tell you about Glen. The NDA–”
“The NDA is bullshit and you know it,” She was standing close enough now to see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, the black rim around them seemingly lighting them from within, close enough to smell coffee on his breath, “You could have told me you had a conflict of interest. You could have told me you were personally invested in this case for reasons you couldn’t discuss. Instead, you let me trust you.”
Something flickered across his face at the word ‘trust.’ Regret, maybe, or recognition of how badly he’d miscalculated.
“I never meant for it to go this far.” He said quietly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean I never thought…” He trailed off, looking past her toward the street where traffic hummed in the distance, “I told myself I was protecting you from information that might compromise your position with Lancaster. But that wasn’t the whole truth.”
“Then what was?”
He met her eyes again, and for a moment his professional facade cracked completely.
“I didn’t want you to look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.”
The honesty in his voice caught her off guard, deflating some of her anger. But not enough.
“So you lied to protect your own feelings?”
“I omitted information to maintain security,” The words sounded rehearsed, like something he’d told himself repeatedly, “At least, that’s what I told myself.”
“And now?”
“Now I think I was just being a coward.”
They stood facing each other in the parking lot, heat radiating up from the asphalt around them. Bunny could feel sweat gathering at the base of her neck, could see a similar sheen on Dash’s forehead. The silence stretched between them, filled with the distant sound of traffic and the mechanical noise of the restaurant’s air conditioning unit.
“I trusted you,” She said finally, her voice quieter now, “I broke Lancaster’s rules for you. I lied to my boss for you.”
“We can still–”
“No,” She held up a hand, “Whatever this was, whatever partnership you think we had, it’s over. I can’t work with someone who treats me like a useful idiot.”
“Bunny, please. Four people are dead. Whoever killed them is still out there.”
“Then maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to play games with the one person who was actually willing to help you.”
She turned back to her car, finally managing to get the key into the lock. The metal was hot enough to burn her fingers, but she barely noticed.
“What about the paint? What you found at Glen’s house?” Dash called after her.
Bunny paused with her hand on the car door, back still turned to him. For a moment, she considered telling him about the basement workshop, about the way that half-empty can had seemed so deliberately placed.
Instead she got into her car and slammed the door.
Through the windshield, she could see Dash standing in the parking lot, hands hanging at his sides, watching her with an expression that might have been remorse or calculation. She couldn’t tell anymore, and that was the problem. She started the engine and pulled out of the parking space without looking back, leaving him standing alone in the shimmering heat.