It looks like something out of a high-security lab—sleek black panels stacked with precision, LED indicators, hidden wiring routed behind the walls. Even the keypad is sophisticated, the kind I’ve only ever seen in hospital research wings or federal emergency buildings. Nothing about it belongs in a cabin built in the early eighties by a retired ski patroller who couldn’t spell “technology.”
I stare for a long moment. My pulse thuds loud in my ears.
Why would a handyman need this? Why would anyone up here need this?
My brain does what it always does—threads facts, instincts, warnings into a web.
The way he dodged that tourist’s camera like it was a weapon. The nightmares. The way people vanish from the world when they want to disappear.
A prickle of unease crawls down my spine.
I glance over my shoulder, listening. The soft scratch of pencil on Violet’s page. The click of Jax’s boots on the porch as he steps outside for wood. No one near me.
I slip my phone from my pocket and type his name.
Jax Taylor. Silver Ridge. Handyman. Lodge crew.
Nothing.
No social media. No records. No news hits. Not even a stray mention on a town forum. In a world where even my third-grade gym teacher has a Facebook profile he updates twice a year, the absence feels like a void.
I try different spellings. I try just Jax.
Still nothing.
A single missing footprint is an oversight. An entire missing trail is a choice.
My stomach tightens.
I close the closet gently, trying not to read too much into the sharp tremble in my fingers.
Footsteps land behind me—quiet but unmistakable.
I turn.
Jax stands in the doorway, snow melting in his hair, an armful of split wood cradled against his chest. His eyes flick from my faceto the closet, narrowing slightly. Not enough to betray panic. Just enough for a man who watches everything.
“What were you doing?” he asks. His voice is smooth, steady—too steady, like someone trying very hard not to clench his teeth.
I swallow. “Laundry. I opened the wrong door.”
He sets the wood down slowly, as though any sudden motion might tip the entire moment into something dangerous.
“That door stays closed,” he says. No explanation. No softness.
Just a border drawn firmly in the floorboards.
Heat rises in my chest—equal parts frustration and curiosity. “It’s a fuse panel, right? I’ve just never seen one that looks like NASA built it.”
He wipes melted snow from his sleeve, gaze hardening by degrees. “It works. That’s all that matters.”
“That’s not all that matters,” I say. “Most people don’t have that level of tech wired into their cabins. Especially not…handymen.”
Something in his posture shifts—as subtle as a breath, as sharp as a blade.
“Ava,” he warns.
“What?” I push, heart thumping. “You keep insisting you’re just a quiet guy who wants to be left alone. But everything about you screams the opposite.”
