Morgan settled into the passenger seat, the box of letters clutched in her lap, her fingers curled around the cardboard edges like she’d never let go. Lincoln started the engine.
“Can we drive past the library?”
He looked at her. She wasn’t looking back—her eyes were fixed straight ahead, on something he couldn’t see.
“Just to see it,” she continued. “I won’t ask to stop. I’m sure I’ve been fired by now anyway. I just want to look at it one more time.”
Lincoln’s hand hovered over the gear shift. Driving by the library meant more exposure. More risk. More timespent in territory where Randall’s people might be watching. Every minute they stayed in Whitefish was another minute someone could spot them, recognize them, make a call that would bring everything crashing down.
They had what they came for. The smart move was to go. Now. Before their luck ran out.
But he looked at her face. At the grief still etched into every line. At the way she held that box like it was the only solid thing in a world that kept shifting under her feet.
He thought about all those foster homes. All those times she’d been transferred because she was too much, too strange, too overwhelming. All those years of learning that wanting things led to disappointment.
She was asking for five more minutes. Five minutes to say goodbye to a life she’d never get back. He knew that was true. Even if they were able to clear her name and put Randall and his associates behind bars, her life would never go back to what it had been before.
He couldn’t say no.
“Okay, but we don’t stop. We don’t slow down more than necessary.”
“I understand.”
He pulled out of the gravel pull-off and turned toward downtown.
It was a mistake. He knew it was a mistake even as he made it. But some mistakes you made, regardless, because the person beside you needed something more than you needed to be right.
The library appeared on their left after a few minutes. Small brick building, two stories, the kind of architecture that had been built to last in a time when people still believed institutions were permanent. Windows lined the front, letting in light that would fall across reading tables and quiet corners. A bike rack stood near the entrance.
Morgan stared at the building as they passed. Lincoln watched her reflection in the window—the longing in her expression, the particular kind of grief that came from seeing something you could never have again.
He should have been watching the mirrors.
By the time he looked, the sedan was already there. Dark color, nondescript, two occupants visible through the windshield. It had pulled out from somewhere behind them—a side street, a parking lot, one of a dozen places where someone could have been waiting.
Lincoln’s pulse spiked. He kept his speed steady, fighting the urge to accelerate. Took a turn. Left onto a residential street, no signal, the kind of move that looked random if you weren’t paying attention.
The sedan followed.
His hands found a better grip on the wheel. He took another turn. Right this time, onto a street that led away from downtown.
Still there. Two cars back. Maintaining distance but not losing them.
The library. The extra five minutes. He’d known it was a mistake, and he’d made it anyway, and now they were being followed because he’d chosen sentiment over strategy.
“We have company.”
Morgan’s breath caught. “Randall’s people?”
“Unknown. Could also be law enforcement. But we’re not staying to find out.”
Lincoln pressed the accelerator. The engine responded, pushing them both back against their seats. Not panicking—panicking got people killed. Calculating. He’d mapped escape routes before they’d left Wyoming, satellite imagery and street-level data merged into contingency plans for exactly this scenario.
“Left on Elm,” Morgan said. Her voice was steady. “There’s an alley behind the hardware store that cuts through to Second.”
He took the turn. He’d studied the streets, but sheknewthem—not from satellite imagery but from years of living here, driving to work, running errands on her lunch break. Local knowledge he couldn’t have downloaded.
The alley appeared exactly where she’d said. Narrow, unpaved, barely wide enough for the SUV. He took it anyway, gravel spraying beneath their wheels.
