I spotted Todd's truck three miles outside town, turning off the main road onto the old logging access. Blue F-150. Those plates I'd memorized. Disappearing into the trees.
This ends in the woods.
My gut screamed trap. This was exactly what he wanted. Lure me somewhere alone, away from backup, away from witnesses. Finish what he'd been threatening to finish for years.
But Mia was in that truck. Mia, who'd followed him because she thought I was dying. Mia, who loved me enough to walk into danger without thinking.
So I followed.
The road deteriorated as I drove. Pavement giving way to gravel, gravel giving way to dirt, trees pressing close on either side until the canopy blocked out most of the afternoon light.
Todd's truck was stopped in a clearing up ahead. Empty. Driver's door hanging open.
I pulled in behind it and killed the engine. My hands were shaking. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles went white, trying to steady myself.
Logic said wait for backup. Sheriff Daniels was on his way. Liam was on his way. If I waited—if I stayed in the car, if I let the professionals handle this?—
A scream cut through the trees.
Mia.
I was out of the truck before I made a conscious decision to move. Running toward the sound, branches catching at my clothes, my hair, tearing at my skin. The clearing opened up ahead of me, afternoon light slanting through the trees in golden shafts, and I burst through the tree line and stopped.
Todd stood in the center of the clearing.
He had a gun. Leveled at my chest.
And behind him, bound to a tree with a rope that bit into her wrists, was Mia. Tear-streaked. Terrified. A strip of duct tape over her mouth that couldn't quite muffle her sobs.
“Took you long enough.”
His mouth curved upward before the last word even settled.
He was smiling. That smile I remembered from my nightmares, from all the nights I'd lain awake in my childhood bedroom listening to him hurt my mother, from the day I'd finally escaped and sworn I'd never let him touch me again.
“Now we can finish this.”
I'd known it would come to this.
Not the details. Not the clearing, the gun, the way the afternoon light slanted through the trees like something from a painting. Not the specific choreography of horror that had brought us here.
But the inevitability of it. The gravity that had been pulling us together since the day I climbed out that window at eighteen and left everything behind.
Todd and me. The final reckoning.
And Mia was caught in the middle, like always.
I looked at my sister. At the terror in her eyes, the tears streaming down her cheeks, the way she strained against the ropes like she could somehow break free if she just tried hard enough. Twelve years old. She'd already survived more than most people faced in a lifetime. She'd already lost so much.
She wasn't going to lose anything else. Not today.
I looked back at Todd. At the gun that hadn't wavered, at the smile that made my skin crawl, at the man who had haunted my nightmares for a decade.
And I made a decision.
Mia was walking out of these woods.
Whatever happened to me after that didn’t matter.
