There was only the road. The distance. Riley’s voice lodged in my chest like something sharp.
He has Mia.
The logging road was fifteen minutes from the ranch if you followed the speed limit.
I made it in eight.
Every second stretched like taffy. The road unwound in front of me, each curve taking too long, each straightaway never quite straight enough. My truck devoured the miles, and it still wasn’t fast enough. Nothing would be.
I should have told her.
The thought hit hard and sudden, like a blow I hadn’t seen coming. This morning, when she kissed me goodbye before her shift. Yesterday, on the porch, the sun sinking low and everything feeling quiet and safe. Every time I’d swallowed the words because the moment wasn’t perfect. Because there would be time.
There was never time.
I should have told her what she meant to me. Said it out loud. Let it exist outside my head. Given her something solid to carry with her.
If something happened to her?—
The thought splintered before it could finish. I tightened my grip on the wheel until my knuckles burned, until the ache in my hands gave me something real to hold onto instead of the panic clawing up my chest.
Trees blurred past the windshield. Green and brown and gold. Colors I’d loved my whole life, reduced now to distance. To delay. To everything standing between me and the people I couldn’t lose.
I prayed.
I hadn’t done that in years. Not since Gran’s funeral. Not since I’d stood over fresh dirt and asked God why He kept taking the people I loved most.
I prayed anyway. To a God I wasn’t sure was listening.
Please.
Please let them be okay.
Please let me get there in time.
Please don’t take them from me.
I saw Riley’s car first.
Parked at an angle on the logging road, driver’s door hanging open, engine still running. Beyond it, Todd’s blue F-150—empty, abandoned in a clearing where the road dead-ended into trees.
I killed my engine. The silence rushed in, thick and heavy, broken only by the distant wail of sirens. Sheriff Daniels.
I got out of the truck. The door slammed behind me.
Somewhere beyond the tree line, muffled by distance and foliage, I heard their voices. I couldn’t make out words, but I recognized the cadence. Todd’s voice—high and manic. And underneath it, softer, steadier: Riley.
She was still talking. Still alive.
I moved through the brush, each step careful, deliberate. Branches caught at my clothes, scratched at my arms. I barely felt them. Every sense narrowed to a single point: the voices ahead, the scene I was walking into, whatever was waiting for me in that clearing.
I stopped at the edge of the clearing.
Todd stood in the center, maybe thirty feet away. He had his back partly to me, his attention fixed on Riley. The gun in his hand was a dark shape against the golden light, held steady, pointed at her chest.
Riley faced him. Her hands were raised, palms out—the universal gesture of surrender. But her voice was calm. Controlled. The Riley I knew from fire scenes, the one whotalked panicked victims down from ledges, who kept her head when everything around her was burning.
“Todd. This doesn’t end the way you want it to. There are cops coming. You can hear the sirens. If you put the gun down now?—”
