Jack’s gaze lifted immediately, sweeping the sidewalk, the parked cars, the reflective glass of the storefront across the street. Anyone. Anywhere.
They were still here. Watching.
Annie’s hand trembled around the phone. Her breathing had gone shallow, her shoulders tight as if she were bracing for a blow. Fear wasn’t loud in her—it hollowed her, stripping the warmth from her eyes and leaving something dark and exposed behind.
Jack stepped closer, angling his body so he blocked her from the open street without making it obvious. Protective. Tactical. Instinctive.
She looked up at him, eyes dark and stripped of everything familiar.
“Where can I possibly go?”
“My family’s ranch. Forty miles north. Remote. Controlled access. We can think there. And I can keep you out of sight.”
She hesitated only a moment before nodding. He held out his hand for only a moment before she placed hers into it.
And as her cold fingers curled around his, Jack knew they had crossed something tonight that could not be uncrossed. And whatever secrets Eleanor Blackwood had buried, someone had just proven they were still willing to kill to keep them hidden.
Chapter 6
The mountain road twisted through dense pine forest as Jack’s truck climbed higher into the Tennessee wilderness, its headlights carving narrow tunnels through the dark. Annie sat wrapped in a borrowed EMT blanket that still carried the faint scent of smoke and antiseptic, her bandaged hands folded tightly in her lap. Exhaustion pressed on her bones, but sleep refused to come. Every curve in the road made her check the side mirror. Every pair of distant headlights sent unease fluttering through her chest.
Jack had taken a winding route, doubling back twice, cutting across old logging roads before committing to the long climb into the mountains. He hadn’t said it outright, but she knew he was checking for a tail.
No one followed them.
That knowledge should have comforted her. It didn’t.
“How much farther?” she asked, her voice still rough from smoke and coughing.
“Ten minutes,” Jack replied, his eyes never leaving the road. “The ranch sits past the last cell tower. Once we’re there, we’ll be hard to find.”
Hard to find. Not impossible.
Annie nodded, drawing the blanket tighter around her shoulders as the road narrowed and the trees thickened. Darkness crowded closer, broken only by the sweep of their headlights and the occasional reflective marker nailed into a trunk. The world beyond the windshield felt untouched, ancient, and watching.
“Tell me about it,” she said, needing the sound of something ordinary. “The ranch.”
Jack hesitated, then exhaled slowly. “My grandfather bought the land in the early fifties. Two hundred acres, mostly forest and pasture. My parents kept it after he passed. Cattle. Horses. A few rental cabins for tourists who want to disappear for a while.”
“Disappear,” Annie murmured.
Jack shot her a glance before returning his focus to the road. “It’s quiet. That’s the main thing.”
Quiet sounded like a luxury she no longer trusted.
They rounded a final bend, and the trees opened into a wide clearing washed in moonlight. The ranch house stood at its center, a broad log structure with a stone chimney and a wraparound porch, its windows glowing warm and gold against the darkness. Beyond it, fencing stretched across rolling pasture that vanished into shadowed forest, and farther still, the dark silhouettes of mountains rose against a starlit sky.
“It’s beautiful,” Annie said, the words leaving her before she could stop them.
Jack pulled to a stop near the porch. For a moment, he didn’t get out. He just sat there, hands resting on the steering wheel, gaze fixed on the house as if bracing himself.
“My parents don’t know everything,” he said quietly. “They know about the fire. About the threats. They don’t know the rest. Not about… us. Not about how complicated this is.”
“I won’t say anything,” Annie replied, though the words carried more weight than she let show.
The screen door opened before either of them moved. A woman stepped onto the porch, tall and composed, gray-brown hair pulled back into a loose tie, worry etched into her features.
“Jack.”
