Embers of Evidence

By Miles Ashbourne

When the evidence doesn't lie, but the heart refuses to listen, two men must choose between professional distance and the truth burning between them.

Dr. Cassian Holt doesn't do emotion — he does evidence. As lead forensic investigator for Critical Trace, he's built a career on clinical precision and comfortable solitude, letting chemical signatures and burn patterns speak where human connection fails him. When a devastating fire consumes an elderly couple in their Appalachian farmhouse, Cassian arrives expecting routine analysis. What he finds instead shatters every assumption: military-grade incendiaries, counterfeit government documents, and a pattern that whispers of something far darker than accident.

ATF Agent Jonah Briggs works on instinct, trusting his K9 partner Sig's nose over any laboratory report. When their jurisdictions collide at the smoldering foundation, the friction is immediate — two investigators whose methodologies are fundamentally incompatible, and whose mutual respect builds despite every professional reason to keep their distance. As bodies multiply and a charismatic community elder's righteous sermons begin sounding like justification, their uneasy alliance becomes the only thing standing between a mountain community and systematic destruction.

The case metastasizes from arson to witness intimidation, from homicide to aerial fire-bombing, from one killer's ideology to a coordinated campaign of domestic terrorism engineered to exterminate the vulnerable. When a burning sawmill becomes a death trap rigged with enough explosive force to level two city blocks, Cassian and Jonah find themselves separated inside an inferno, each racing against collapse to defuse the bomb — and confronting exactly how much the other has become indispensable.

Danger strips professional distance bare. Shared crisis dismantles every wall Cassian has spent decades constructing. Jonah has always trusted his instincts — but wanting someone whose emotional armor rivals reinforced steel is the most dangerous gamble he's ever taken.

A forced-proximity forensic thriller MM romance featuring enemies-to-lovers tension, slow-burn emotional stakes, and Appalachian gothic atmosphere.