They left me alone again.
The door shut with a final, hollow clang.
My hands trembled now—but I let them.
I breathed through it. Counted heartbeats. Let the fear crest and pass instead of drowning me.
Trigger will come.
And until he did, I would remember everything.
The sound of footsteps.
The rhythm of guards.
The smallest mistake they made.
They thought taking me would control him.
They were wrong.
Because they’d forgotten something important.
I wasn’t the woman Thomas tried to break anymore.
I was the woman who survived him.
And I would survive this too.
Didn’t they realize they kidnapped a District Attorney?
30
Trigger
The world narrowed the moment I realized Rylie was gone.
Not missing.
Not late.
Gone. It was dark, like the electricity had been cut off.
The upstairs was silent in a way it shouldn’t have been. Too still. No kettle on the stove. No creak of floorboards. No soft hum of her moving through the space like she’d been doing the past few weeks—leaving pieces of herself everywhere without realizing it.
My hand went to the Glock on instinct.
I didn’t call her name.
Rangers didn’t do that when something was wrong.
We listened.
The back door stood open—just an inch. Enough to let in the cold. Enough to tell me she hadn’t left willingly. Rylie always locked the doors. Always double-checked, especially after Thomas.
I stepped outside.
Boot prints in the dirt. Three sets. Heavy. Careless. They hadn’t expected pursuit.
