“Looking for Dima,” she says simply, pointing at him. “He said he’d teach me how to whistle with grass.”
Dima looks both pleased and mortified.
“Later,” I tell her, voice calmer than I feel. “Right now you stay with us. Understood?”
She nods solemnly. Then immediately tucks herself against my chest like she belongs there.
I force myself to breathe.
Jesse clears his throat. “What do you want us to do?”
“Same as planned,” I say, shifting Andrea to my hip. “Set the traps. Sweep south. Cover the ridge before dusk.”
A chorus of acknowledgments ripples through the men. They move out, purposeful and quick, leaving us with the soft hush of the forest closing in again.
I turn back to Roxy.
She’s watching me with a look that says she’s bracing for the storm.
“Come,” I say quietly. “We’re going to the cabin.”
The walk isn’t long. The cabin sits half-hidden behind a stand of white pines, its cedar siding gleaming faintly in the filtered light. It’s one of the private lodges—the kind used for foreign partners or high-tier guests. Luxury tucked into wilderness.
I push the door open and set Andrea down once we’re inside. She wanders toward the enormous window, tracing a small hand across the glass while she examines the view of the river below.
Roxy shuts the door behind her, then leans back against it, looking as wrung out as I feel.
“She should rest,” I say.
Roxy nods. They move down the hall together, and when they reappear minutes later, Andi is wrapped in a soft blanket, already drifting. Roxy lays her on the couch and tucks the edges close.
Only when the child settles into sleep does Roxy step away.
We face each other across the room.
“Tell me,” I say.
And she does.
She tells me everything Eric said in that lot—the Chicago group, the debt he owes, the desperation twisting him into something dangerous, the way he asked for information about land surveys and safehouses. She tells me how he stepped close enough to corner her, how his voice sharpened when she refused him, how he invoked Andrea’s name.
How he threatened the little girl asleep ten feet away from us.Mylittle girl.
I don’t interrupt. I don’t breathe for a long stretch of it. When I do, something inside me feels different—heavier, colder, older.Not the kind of cold I used to live in, but something far less stable.
“You should have told me immediately,” I say.
“I wanted to. But I was afraid if I did it in front of your men, Eric?—”
“You should have told me,” I repeat, not raising my voice but feeling it cut clean through the space between us.
Her jaw tightens. “I am telling you now.”
The silence that follows is long.
Then, with no warning, the dread hits. It settles in my chest, low and slow, like sinking into water too deep to see through.
Roxy stands there wringing her hands once before forcing them still. “I didn’t know what to do,” she admits quietly. “And now I’m scared.”
