Not for Jax—the nobody who chops wood and installs security cameras he pretends aren’t advanced enough to raise suspicion.
He came for Jackson Hale.
The golden boy. The billionaire. The tragedy. The dead man.
How did he track me here? Who talked? What did I miss?
I drag in a breath that tastes like fear and memory—both equally poisonous.
Headlights vanish again, swallowed whole by storm.
I step back before nausea makes my knees buckle. I glance around the cabin, suddenly aware of how small it is—how close everything is—how this place is more than wood and insulation now.
This cabin holds laughter. Violet’s drawings. Ava’s humming at the stove. It feels like home.
A home I don’t deserve. A home I have no idea how to keep.
If that man drags Jackson Hale back into daylight… there will be no home.
Not here. Not anywhere.
Ava. Violet.
What if they’re out there?
Walking. Driving. Hurrying against the storm.
I grab my phone, hands clumsy with adrenaline. My pulse makes it hard to hit the right letters.
Before I can type a single word… the phone rings.
Sharp. Sudden. Cutting through wind and panic.
Ava’s name lights up the screen.
My breath stops. Completely.
For a beat—one long, terrible beat—I just stare. Every nightmare I’ve spent years outrunning claws up my throat.
I swipe to answer, voice rough, already fraying.
“Ava?”
Static hisses. Her breathing—ragged, panicked.
A tremor shakes the air between us.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ava
The wind is a living thing by the time I leave the clinic—angry, impatient, battering against my hood like it’s trying to shake me loose from the mountain. Snow lashes sideways, turning everything into a blur of white rage.
This storm arrived early. And wrong.
Ellie locked the clinic doors the second the last patient shuffled out.
My boots crunch through deepening drifts. I tuck my chin deeper into my collar and keep my eyes narrowed, counting down the minutes to warmth and light.
