Jolly was on his bed in the living room. He lifted his head when I came through the door, gave me a single tail thump that saidnoted, don’t care, sleeping, and dropped back down.
I locked up. Moved through the dark house on muscle memory. Set my keys on the counter. Stood at the kitchen window for no reason I could justify except that Kayla’s house was visible from there, and looking at it had become a habit I wasn’t interested in breaking.
Her windows were dark. The house was closed and quiet, and somewhere inside it, a six-year-old was asleep with a scuffed red ball on the nightstand beside him.
Hell, I didn’t even know if the kid had a nightstand, but I’d still bet a month’s salary he was keeping that ball secure to play with Jolly in the morning.
I pressed my hands flat against the counter. The stitches in my arm pulled, and I let them. The ache was grounding—a reminder that the work was real, that the stakes were real, that the people sleeping in the houses around me deserved better than a department they couldn’t fully trust.
But when I closed my eyes, it wasn’t the investigation I saw. It was Kayla’s hand closing around mine in the doorway. The way her fingers had tightened, unhesitating, like she’d already decided she wasn’t afraid of what it meant.
Be safe.
Two words. They’d ridden with me all night.
In a few hours, the sun would come up. William would be at the fence with Jolly’s ball, and Jolly would already be there waiting, his whole body aimed at the gap in the cedar. The pinecones would fly. William’s laughter would carry overthe fence, bright and wild and loud enough to hear from inside the house.
I turned off the kitchen light and went to bed.
Chapter 15
Kayla
I was on the couch with my feet tucked under me, half watching William build a Lego fortress on the living room floor while I answered emails on my laptop. Nothing urgent on the screen: a note from my editor about color palettes for the Barley finals, a shipping confirmation for the new pencils I’d ordered, the small administrative debris of a freelance life.
The house was quiet in the good way. Dinner cleaned up, the dishwasher humming its cycle in the kitchen, the last of the daylight turning the room warm and soft through the front windows. William was narrating the construction under his breath, assigning roles to invisible soldiers, occasionally holding a piece up to the light to examine it before snapping it into place.
My phone rang.
I reached for it without looking, set the laptop aside, andtapped the speaker icon out of habit because my hands were full.
“Hello?”
“Kayla.”
I grabbed the phone and killed the speaker so fast I nearly dropped it. Pressed it to my ear and turned away from William in one motion, my heart already slamming.
“I think you’ve had enough time to get this out of your system.” Craig’s voice was in my head now, close and inescapable. “I’ve been more than patient. Most men wouldn’t have waited this long, but I’m willing to be gracious about it.”
I was on my feet and moving toward the kitchen before he finished the sentence, putting a room between his voice and my son.
“How did you get this number?”
“Come on. Don’t be dramatic. I’m calling because I care about you. I’ve given you space, I’ve let you play house in your little mountain town, but it’s time to stop with the games. You know you’re not built to do this alone. Come home, act like an adult, and we can put all of this behind us.”
“Mom!”
William was in the kitchen doorway. He’d abandoned his Legos and was bouncing on his toes, his face lit up, one hand pointing back toward the living room. “I just saw Jolly through the window! He’s going toward the trees. Can I go after him?”
Craig was still talking in my ear, something about how he’d been more than reasonable, and what registered from William was: Jolly. Can I go. The routine. The fence. Pinecones.
I covered the mouthpiece with my palm. “Sure, buddy. Go play with Jolly.”
He was gone. The front door opened and closed, and I heard his sneakers on the porch steps, and then I was alone with Craig Dutton’s voice pressed against my ear. At least William didn’t have to be nearby.
“—listening to me? Kayla. I asked you a question.”
“I heard you.” I stood up and crossed to the kitchen, bracing my free hand on the counter. “And the answer is no. The answer has been no for six months. It’s going to be no forever.”
