“I will find out,” I tell her. “I’ll put my ear to every door he’s opened in his life until one of them gives. And when I find the mouth that fed him, I’m taking the teeth too.”
Her throat moves. The first tear falls again, not a sob—just surrender. “He said… he said he got the call. He said Thompson was family. He said he thought—” She swallows. The next words scrape. “He said he thought you would have already told me. He said… he couldn’t believe you left me.”
“Did he name where Thompson works?” I ask.
“No.” She drags another breath. “He said deputy. He said cousin. He said you left. I promise you Jacob. I—I’m not keeping anything from you. This is the truth. Yes, I was upset… yes, I was angry… but I heard what I heard. And after he said you’d left me?—”
I do the worst thing I can do when she’s shaking in hot water and tears. I laugh. It’s short and humorless, and I hate that it comes out sounding like relief because it’s not. It’s clarity.
“He wanted that part to land,” I say. “And it did. He made sure of it.”
Her head jerks, eyes flaring. “Because it’s true.”
“I know.” The words grate. “I know it’s true.”
“Then don’t act like I’m stupid for believing the rest.”
I step back because the temptation to touch her forearms—to slide my hands over the points of her elbows and hold her until she stops shaking—is a danger to both of us. I put my shoulder to the door instead, the bite mark erupts pain, a brand mark still hot from the fire.
“You’re not stupid,” I say. “You’re grieving, you’re in shock. And he knows how to dress a lie in a grief coat.”
Her chin lifts in a defiant angle I recognize from the day she first walked into my station and spit in my coffee.
“You almost killed him, Jacob. Hell, you might have succeeded… and all out of jealousy.”
I shake my head, a slow smile tugging at my lips. I won’t even give her the satisfaction of an answer.
This isn’t jealousy—it’s possession.
She watches me, unblinking, steam curling around her face like smoke rising from a fire I lit.
“I’m going to ask Carter to pull tower pings,” I say, already building it in my head, the tree of time and signal. “Harrow’s phone. The men who were on scene. Every badge on duty within two towns. I’m going to rip the timestamps off the calls and I’m going to lay them on the table in a line that makes sense. If a deputy I don’t own touched a phone to tell him about your parents, I’ll know what tower carried it.” I bring my eyes back to hers, and my voice drops to a growl. “When I find the son of a bitch who told him—” I stop myself. She doesn’t need to hear any more.
I lean in until my breath grazes her temple. “You don’t have to see what’s coming next, Summer. You just need to understand that there’s no safe place left but me. I will burn every bridge, salt every field, erase every name until you’re the last thing standing next to me. And when I’m finished….” My eyes drag across her face, that mix of terror and disbelief that only makes me want her more. “…You’ll never have to be afraid again. Because there won’t be anything left to be afraid of.”
She closes her eyes. The water breaks against her knees in small, uneven sounds. Silence crawls up the tiled walls with the steam and hangs beneath the ceiling, listening.
“Please,” she whispers. “Just— give me some space.”
I hold her gaze one beat too long, feeling her imploding against it, then nod and step back through the steam. The ruined door groans as I pull it almost shut—but not all the way. Not tonight. Not while a man with a steady hand and a love of fire is still breathing my air.
I leave her wrapped in steam and grief and lies that don’t belong to her. I don’t trust myself to sit in that room any longer, not when I’m this close to tearing the walls down just to prove there are no shadows hiding a man named Thompson.
The hallway feels colder. My shirt clings to me with damp, her bite a steady throb under the fabric. I head down the hall, the clock in the kitchen ticks too loud, each second a hammer striking steel. I don’t go to the sink, don’t wash the blood off my knuckles. I want it there. I want the reminder that I caved his fucking face in.
But I need to find out about this Thompson fella. I’m certain I’m right, that this guy is a fabrication in a story Benny fed her. I need to know how he knew. How he got here so fast.
My gut tells me that he was the one to start the fire. But that seems too… drastic. But it’s too coincidental that the son of a bitch would know and get here so fast.
I pull out my phone and hit speed dial.
“Sheriff.” Carter sounds alert now, more honed than before. Probably still out in his truck, circling the crime scene, waiting for me to tell him where to bury the rest.
“You pick him up?” I don’t waste time.
There’s a pause, a careful exhale. “Yeah. Found him about two miles up, crawling like a dog. Left eye’s ballooned shut, ribs cracked, couple teeth gone. I took him to St. Luke’s. They’re patching him. Said something about pneumo-something. He won’t be dancing any time soon.”
“Pneumothorax.” I let out a low laugh. “Means I smashed his ribs into his lung.”
