The snow had started again while he was outside. Thick, silent flakes that swallowed sound. The twenty-minute drive into town felt like two hours. He kept the radio off, one hand on the wheel, the other throbbing under fresh gauze, every mile adding weight to the dread sitting on his chest.
Her apartment building looked smaller than it had a few days ago. He hadn’t liked it before, but now it looked cheap and tired under the one flickering streetlight that buzzed like it was on itslast breath. The hallway reeked of old carpet, fryer grease, and the sour sweat of too many people living too close. Their bootsteps boomed in the narrow space, bouncing off the peeling paint.
Trace’s jaw flexed. First quiet week we get, he told himself. I’m loading every damn thing she owns into my truck and burning the lease. She’s never spending another night in this dump.
The package leaned against 2B, waiting for them.
There was nothing remarkable about it. Small, wrapped in plain brown shipping paper, the box had no postage mark. Just KIP scrawled in thick black marker. It couldn’t have been there long because the ink was still wet enough to smear under his thumb.
Kip stopped breathing.
Without thinking, Trace moved to position himself between her and the door. His shoulder completely blocked her from getting closer. When she tried to reach around him, he said, “Don’t touch it.”
“Trace—”
“I said don’t.”
He lifted the box carefully. It was light. Too light. Sliding his finger underneath the tape, he preserved the paper as best he could. He had a bad feeling it was going to need to be dusted for fingerprints.
Tilting the box so Kip couldn’t see inside until he knew what was in there, he pulled open the top flap of the box. Red yarn hair practically exploded from the top as soon as he opened it. Grabbing a stray piece of yarn, he inched whatever this thing was out of the box.
When he took it out, he realized it was a cloth doll, like a tiny Raggedy Ann. It wore a pink dress and a small black apron, but that wasn’t what caught his eye. Someone had used a red marker to make the dolls throat appear to be slashed.
A note was pinned straight through the doll’s chest, right whereits heart would be. A long, straight pin—like the ones he’d seen stuck in women’s hats at church when he was younger—that glinted under the hall’s sickly light.
The pin held a note in place that read, “Rios pays double for red.”
Kip’s sharp inhale sounded a thousand miles away. The words struck him like a branding iron behind the eyes. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered.
He wanted to crush the note in his fist, but he couldn’t. Sam Nelson, Wilder’s sheriff and a close friend, would need it for evidence.
Kip’s voice came out small and cracked. “Is… is that…that’s supposed to be me?”
“Yeah, baby.” He didn’t like the sound of his own voice either. His words came out flat, and his tone was cold and promised murder, which was exactly how he felt, but she didn’t need that from him right now. Trying again, he forced out, “It is.”
Stuffing the doll and note back into the box, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders to comfort her, pulling her in tight against his chest. That also meant she couldn’t see his face.
“Get back to the car,” he ordered, already turning her. “We’re not standing in this fucking hallway one more second.”
“But my clothes?—”
“Forget the clothes. You’re not going into that apartment any more than you’re coming back here again. Ever.”
Hard tremors shook her as he held her close. And though she didn’t make a sound, he felt those tremors in his bones.
He bowed his head until his lips brushed her ear. “Listen to me. Whoever did this just signed their own death warrant. I’m gonna find them, Kip. And when I do, there won’t be enough left to send in a fucking matchbox.”
Nodding against his coat, her fingers clutched the front of his shirt as if it were the only solid thing left in her world. He kept hermoving, kept her shielded, and got them out of that hallway before the rage boiling in his gut exploded all over the walls.
After they reached his truck, he tucked the doll box into his upper coat pocket, the one next to his heart, where the weight of it burned worse than the barbed wire ever had. “You’re not staying here anymore,” he said, voice flat and deadly calm. “And if you need clothes, I’ll buy you new ones.”
She didn’t argue as Trace got her back in the truck, the doors locked, and the engine started. Taking a moment to calm down, he stared at the snow piling up on the windshield. Two attacks in one day, one on his herd and one on the woman he loved. That was a huge coincidence. Something gnawed at his brain, but he couldn’t figure out what.
Once the heat began melting the snow, he pulled the crushed box with the doll and note from his pocket and laid them on the console like evidence in a murder trial. Before the blizzard could cut off the last of the cell signal, he grabbed his phone and dialed the sheriff.
“Sam, it’s Trace Daniels.” His voice came out rough, scraped raw. “Somebody left a package at Kip’s door. A rag doll with its throat slashed and a note pinned to it that says ‘Rios pays double for red.’”
“Ho-ly fuck,” Sam growled. “Can you tell where it came from?”
