Dean doesn’t argue. “It’s improbable,” he corrects. “Not impossible.”
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
“You’re saying this because—what?” I bite out. “Because you found a rumor? Because you want to bait me into your company?”
Dean’s tone stays calm. “I’m saying it because we have data. A pattern. A name. And a location tied to the night he vanished—tied to a series of ‘disappearances’ that aren’t accidents.”
My stomach turns cold.
Delaney whispers my name like she’s trying to keep me in my body. “Nash…”
I squeeze her hand back, hard.
Dean continues, “If Billy Hawthorne is alive, he’s not free. And if he’s not free, he’s in trouble. The kind of trouble that doesn’t wait.”
My throat closes.
“What’s the first mission?” I ask, voice barely steady.
Dean answers like he’s been holding it back for exactly this moment.
“Finding Billy Hawthorne,” he says. “Bringing him home. If we can.”
The words crack something open in me—something I sealed shut the night the deputies told me to go home, the night the creek swallowed my father and gave nothing back.
My whole life has been built around that hole. Around proving myself because he wasn’t there to see it. Around carrying my brothers and my mother and my grief like a rucksack I never take off.
If he’s alive…
If there’s even a chance…
My eyes sting. I blink hard, furious at my own weakness.
Dean’s voice softens—not kind, exactly, but human. “You don’t have to answer tonight,” he says. “But I’ll tell you this: opportunities like this don’t come twice. Not if you want the truth.”
He gives me an address, a time, a contact. A clean path forward, like men like him always do. “Think about it,” he says. “And Hawthorne?”
“Yeah,” I rasp.
“If your father is out there, he’s been surviving without you for a long time.” A beat. “Don’t make him survive without you a second longer than he has to.”
The call ends.
I stare at my phone like it’s a live wire.
Delaney doesn’t speak right away. She just shifts closer and slides her arms around me, forehead pressing against my shoulder like she’s holding me together by force. Finally, she whispers, “Is it real?”
I swallow. “I don’t know.”
Her voice trembles. “But you want it to be.”
I close my eyes.
Yes.
I want it so badly it hurts.
“I have to find out,” I say. It isn’t a choice. It’s a reflex. It’s the deepest part of me standing up.
