Bran catches it with one hand, leaning in. The alarm is still screaming; over it I can just make out the distant clatter of the front door being opened then shut again and Savvi’s voice talking to the panel downstairs.
“Door stays sealed until you hear me or Brodie,” Bran says. His eyes are on Cotton, but his gaze keeps flicking back to me like he can’t help it. “No one else.”
Cotton nods. “Don’t be stupid,” she says, voice shaking. “Either of you.”
“When am I ever stupid?” Brodie calls from the other end of the hall, but there’s a thread of dark humor in it. Then to Bran: “North barn. You take the inside, I take the perimeter.”
“Copy,” Bran says, and that’s the last thing I hear before the door shuts tight and the world shrinks.
The siren cuts off a heartbeat later, leaving silence ringing in my ears.
Saoirse is still crying, soft hiccupy sobs that stab right through my chest. Cotton sinks down onto the bench with her, murmuring in Irish and English, rubbing circles on her back. Savvi flicks on one of the lanterns, bathing everything in a gentle yellow glow, then checks the monitor with practiced eyes.
I stand there, feeling useless and wired and very, very awake.
On the screen, two small shapes move—Bran and Brodie cutting across the yard at a run, one angling wide, the other beeliningfor the barn. They’re just dark blurs against a darker backdrop, mouths moving, weapons low and ready.
My hands curl into fists.
“If I hadn’t been here,” I whisper, “you wouldn’t need any of this. You wouldn’t need a panic room on a horse farm. You’d just be…sleeping.”
Cotton looks up at me sharply. Her hair is mussed, cheeks flushed, eyes fierce.
“Tallulah Gentry,” she says. “Don’t you evenstartwith that.”
“It’s true,” I say. My throat is thick. “He’s here because of me. All of this—”
“He is here because he’s a broken thing who never learned how to love anything that didn’t scream,” Cotton cuts in. “You didn’t make him that. You didn’t invite him back. You just refused to let him stay hidden the first time.”
Saoirse sniffles against her chest. “Mama?”
Cotton softens instantly. “It’s okay, baby. It’s just loud noises. Daddy and Uncle Bran are checking on the horses.”
“And the man?” Saoirse whispers. “The bad man from the story?”
My whole body goes cold.
Cotton catches my eye over her daughter’s head and shakes her head a fraction, a silentlater.She kisses Saoirse’s curls.
“Daddy’s making surenobad men are allowed near our house,” she says. “You’re safe, okay? You’re with me.”
Savvi lays a hand gently on my wrist, like she can feel the panic bubbling there. “Sit, child,” she says. “You pacing a hole through the floor won’t help them any.”
I sink down onto the edge of the bench, my eyes glued to the monitor.
It feels like hours. It’s probably fifteen minutes.
Shapes moving. Lights sweeping. The barn camera flickers once, twice, then steadies. At one point, both men disappear off-camera and my stomach drops like I’m on a free-fall ride.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Come on, come on—”
Finally, two figures reappear in the main yard, silhouettes heavier now. One of them—Brodie—has shoulders that look like they’re carrying extra weight. There’s a second where he stops, bowed slightly, and Bran’s hand lands on his back, brief and hard.
They’re too far away for expression, but I know a posture like that when I see it.
Something is wrong.
The door code beeps on the other side of the wall. Cotton’s fingers tighten reflexively on Saoirse as the hidden door unlocks and swings inward.
