The moment I step inside, I know it isn’t.
The air is too still. I take three steps before a guard intercepts me, his face pale beneath the grime.
“Shef.”
I don’t waste breath. “Where is she?”
He hesitates just long enough to tell me everything. “She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Taken,” he corrects. “Sometime during the night. Two of ours are dead. The utility vehicle is missing.”
I don’t remember turning. I don’t remember moving. I only know that suddenly I’m walking again, faster now, my mind stripping away everything but direction.
Eric.
There is no doubt. No question. There is no alternative explanation worth entertaining. The man has been unraveling for weeks, spiraling deeper into desperation and debt, clinging to the idea that Roxanne might save him. Even though I cut off the head of the snake, the rotten heart is still trying to beat.
I will make him understand how wrong he was.
The deputy lives on the other side of Bar Harbor in a condominium a little too above his paygrade. It helps, my connections in town; I’ve known where he lived before I ever knew he was a threat. Or rather, beforehethought he was a threat.
What he is now, is a dead man.
We tear through the outer grounds, vehicles scattering gravel as we move, toward the main road. The morning sun climbs higher, lighting the land in a way that feels obscene—golden and peaceful and utterly unaware.She’s gone.
We don’t make it more than a mile before someone radios in.
“Boss, we’ve got something.”
I step out onto a dirt road where the stolen utility vehicle sits abandoned, its front end crushed inward like a broken jaw. Blood streaks the ground in dark arcs. Fur clings to twisted metal.
A black bear lies several yards away, massive and still. There’s a long, raw rut in its body that sends a shudder through me. It’s too similar to the scene I left back in the woods, but this time, the life taken was innocent.
I stare at it longer than necessary.
They hit it at speed. Killed it. Didn’t even stop.
The rage that floods me is layered and ferocious. Rage that Eric dared to take her. Rage that my home was breached. Rage that this land—myland—was violated again. Rage for the bear, a creature that had nothing to do with any of this, crushed beneath the cowardice of men who don’t understand consequence.
“Into the woods,” Jesse says quietly. “He dragged her.” He’s done his job, found tracks in the earth.
I’m already moving.
The forest takes us back without resistance, but it does not forgive. Eric’s trail is sloppy, frantic. He doesn’t know how to move through the wilderness. He stumbles, crashes through brush, leaves evidence everywhere. Broken branches. Scuffed soil. The uneven drag marks of someone being pulled against her will.
Roxanne’s footprints are there too, stumbling and smudged.
The thought sharpens everything in me. The image of her fighting to keep her footing, refusing to be broken even while terrified, fuels something cold and precise.
We hear them before we see them.
Eric’s voice carries through the trees, cracked and hysterical. Roxanne’s breathing cuts through it, uneven but present. Alive.
We spread out instinctively, weapons raised, bodies low and silent. The clearing opens suddenly. Eric stands near the center, sweat-soaked, eyes blown wide, a gun pressed against Roxanne’s head. She’s filthy, shaking, dirt streaking her clothes and her face, but she’s standing. Her spine is straight. Her eyes are fierce.
“Don’t come any closer!” he shouts. “I’ll do it!”
