“How? He has resources, connections. He’s working with a tech company that can literally control people’s minds.” I felt the familiar panic rising, that helpless feeling that had dogged me ever since I’d first tried to leave Langston. “We can’t fight that.”
His hand found mine in the darkness, warm and solid. “We can. My team has been tracking Innovixus for years. They know what they’re doing.”
I wanted to believe him, but I’d learned the hard way that good intentions weren’t always enough. “And in the meantime, what happens to everyone in town? To Beth? To Wade and Carol?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But we’re working on it.”
Sophia shifted in her sleep, her small face scrunching briefly before smoothing out again. I watched her breathe, this miracle of a child who’d survived so much already. She’d been born into Langston’s world of control and manipulation. I’d sworn she wouldn’t grow up in it.
“Why can’t he just let us go?”
“Because men like Langston don’t see people,” Trent said. “They see possessions, and they’d rather destroy what they can’t have than let it go.”
I knew he was right. I’d seen that side of Langston—the cold fury when he couldn’t control a situation, the calculated cruelty when someone defied him. I’d experienced it firsthand, carried the scars both visible and invisible.
He held out a hand to me. “Come on. Let Sophia sleep.”
I stared down at my daughter. She looked so peaceful now, her face relaxed in sleep, no trace of the terror that had consumed her hours before. I couldn’t bring myself to leave her, not yet.
“I’ll just stay a little longer.”
Trent lingered in the doorway for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.”
After he left, I stretched out beside Sophia on the narrow bed, careful not to disturb her. I didn’t intend to sleep—just to watch over her, to guard against the nightmares that might come. Her small body radiated warmth beneath the blankets. I curled around her protectively, one arm draped over her side, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.
Just for a moment, I told myself. Just until I was sure she was deeply asleep.
I woke with a start,disoriented in the unfamiliar darkness. Sophia was still nestled against me, undisturbed. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but exhaustion had claimed me despite my determination to stay vigilant.
Footsteps creaked outside the bedroom door, crossing the wooden floor, pausing, then returning. Trent. I recognized the cadence of his movements, the controlled energy in each step. He was keeping watch while we slept.
I eased myself away from Sophia, careful not to disturb her. She stirred slightly, murmuring something unintelligible before settling back into deeper sleep. I tucked the blankets around her and brushed a strand of hair from her face, marveling at how peaceful she looked despite everything that had happened.
The floorboards creaked as I padded to the doorway. In the main room, Trent moved like a caged predator, his path taking him from window to window. The wood stove cast enough light to see his profile—jaw tight, shoulders tense, eyes constantly scanning the darkness beyond the glass. His left arm was held closer to his body than his right, a reminder of the injury he’d sustained getting us to safety.
“You should be sleeping,” he said without turning around, somehow sensing my presence.
“So should you,” I replied, stepping fully into the room. The cabin was cooler out here, away from Sophia’s warmth and the extra blankets. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling suddenly exposed in the thin t-shirt he’d given me earlier. “What happens when your team gets here? Do we... leave?”
The question felt bigger than it should have. Leaving meant abandoning the life we’d built here, the small routines that had given Sophia stability. Her school, her few friends, the safety we’d found in this quiet town. All of it gone, just like before.
Trent stopped pacing and turned to face me, his expression grave in the dim light. “I don’t know. But I promise you this—I’m not leaving you again.”
Six months of anger and hurt churned inside me. I wanted to believe him, but trust had never come easily to me, even before Langston. “You promised that before.”
“I know.” He stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him, see the regret etched in the lines around his eyes. “I thought I was protecting you by staying away. I was wrong.”
I thought of the empty months, the nights I’d lain awake wondering where he was, if he was alive, if he ever thought of us. The way Sophia had asked for him, her small voice growing quieter each time until she’d stopped asking altogether. The hurt was still there, raw and pulsing.
“Why did you really leave?” I asked. The question had burned inside me for six months. “The truth this time.”
He was silent for a long moment, his eyes focused on something beyond the cabin walls. When he finally spoke, his voice was lower, rougher. “Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of caring too much.” His gaze returned to me, stripped of pretense. “Of what it meant that I couldn’t stop thinking about you and Sophia. That for the first time in my life, the mission wasn’t the only thing that mattered.”
The admission hung between us, honest and vulnerable in a way Trent Dalton rarely allowed himself to be. I’d seen glimpses of this man before—in quiet moments at the compound, in the way he’d held Sophia while she slept, in the desperate way he’d reached for me in the motel. And I’d seen what it cost him each time.
