The mid-morning sun filters through the trees in long, warm ribbons as I drive the familiar stretch toward town. The woods around my place are alive now — birds cutting across the sky, the underbrush glinting where dew hasn’t burned off yet, everything smelling like pine warmed by daylight. My truck rumbles along the narrow road, tires humming on damp asphalt.
For a few minutes, I let the quiet sink in.
Lucky’s kiss is still ghosting my mouth. Hell, my heartbeat hasn’t even calmed down. Shemeantwhat she said the other day — about staying… about me.
Staying. Indefinitely.
The word feels big in my chest, too big for the confines of the truck. I tighten my grip on the wheel, and before I can stop it, a smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. I want her here. I’ve wanted that from the moment she stepped into Cedar Lake Falls and turned my entire routine inside out.
And Lily… God, Lily is going to lose her mind. That kid practically formed a fan club all on her own, and now that I think about it, she probably clocked Lucky’s real identity ages ago and kept it to herself like some top-secret treasure. She’s going to take this better than I am.
The trees open up as I crest the small hill overlooking the lake. The water mirrors the sky — bright, clear blue with soft ripples from a morning breeze. Town always looks different in this light: sharper, friendlier, like someone scrubbed it clean overnight. The sheriff’s office sits ahead, brick and glass warmed by sun instead of the gloomy gray this place gets during the long winters.
My phone buzzes in the cup holder. Sam’s name lights up the screen.
Right. Back to work.
I tap the speaker. “Yeah?”
Wind rushes over the line—Sam’s somewhere remote, which tracks. “Got something,” he says, voice low, clipped. The voice he uses when he’s hunting. “Picked up chatter on the freight channels. A couple of truckers spotted a man matching Sheifer’s description yesterday. One swore he hitched a ride east.”
My jaw tightens. East meansus.
Means Lucky.
“You sure it’s legit?” I ask.
“Enough that I’m following it,” Sam replies. “I’m thirty miles into the dark and still pushing. No visual yet, but if he’s on a rig, he’s moving faster than we thought.”
I breathe slow, controlled. “Keep on him. And stay off-grid. If Sheifer twigs that someone’s tracking him, he ghosts.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Sam mutters. “You be careful too.”
“I am,” I say—truth, but also not the whole truth. He doesn’t need to know what errand I’m running. Or that I left Lucky for even an hour. “Check in when you have something concrete.”
He clicks off.
The familiar storefronts pass by as I roll into town—Mrs. Kline’s bakery with its doors propped open, the hardware store unloading lumber, the florist adjusting her display of mid-morning blooms. Normal life. Quiet life.
A life Lucky deserves to feel safe in.
The bank appears up ahead—big glass front, brick siding, sun reflecting off the windows in clean flashes. Probably another intern messing with the morning access sequence again. Happens often enough that I could reset their system half-asleep.
I pull into the lot and sit there for one still second.
Lucky wants to stay.
Sam’s hunting the bastard threatening her.
And me—I’m holding together the thin line between danger and something that finally feels like a future.
I take a breath, steady and sure, and step out of the truck.
It’s time to deal with the bank. Then it’s time to get back to her
The sheriff’s office smells like old coffee and cedar cleaner. Dawson leans over my shoulder while I scroll through the footage frame by frame, laptop humming on his desk. The timestamp hits the moment the alarm tripped.
Nothing.
