My chest tightened, a cold weight settling behind my ribs. “Dani.”
“Don’t freak out.”
“I’m not prone to freaking out, Dani. Give me the envelope.”
“No yeah you’re totally mellow. Somehow I think that you might freak out now.”
“Dani,” I huffed, reaching out. She pressed the envelope into my hand.
I opened it carefully, my fingers clumsy. I pulled out the contents, and for a second, the breath left my lungs.
It wasn't one photo. It was a dozen. All glossy, high-resolution, and taken from a distance.
The first one hit me like a physical blow. Tessa was walking from the barn in the blue hour of early morning, her hair messy, a bucket in her hand. The next: Tessa unloading groceries with Dani, laughing at something. Then Tessa crouched by the broken fence line on the north ridge. Tessa was asleep in the porch chair, her head tipped back, vulnerable and completely unaware.
Every shot was telephoto. Every shot had been taken from the tree line or the roadside.
But the last one, the last one, made the blood in my veins turn to ice. It was Tessa with her hands on my chest, lookingup at me in the yard two days ago. Looking at me like I was the only person in the world she could trust.
“He’s been here,” I said, my voice coming out low and dangerous. “He’s been watching her on my land.”
Holt stepped closer, looking over my shoulder. He swore, a vicious string of words. “Holy shit, Wyatt.”
Dani’s voice shook as she stepped into my line of sight. “Wyatt, these were all taken this week. Some of them are from yesterday.”
I gripped the envelope so hard the paper crumpled. Every instinct in me—the man who’d promised Ray he’d watch over her, and the man who still hadn't figured out why his heart skipped when she walked into a room, went razor-sharp.
“Where did she find them?” I asked.
“On her truck,” Dani whispered. “Tucked under the wiper. Yesterday, while she was at the co-op.”
A hot, slow, deadly anger simmered through me. I hadn’t felt this particular brand of rage in years, not since someone tried to cut my water rights. It was a cold, focused fire.
I forced myself to breathe, to keep my hands from shaking. “She didn’t call me.”
Dani laughed, a bitter, jagged sound. She wiped at her eyes, her sunglasses sliding down her nose. “Wyatt, she won’t even tell me she’s scared. She came home white as a ghost and made dinner like she was a Stepford wife. That’s how I knew something was really, really wrong. She’s acting like if she ignores it, it’ll go away.”
My jaw locked so tight it ached. “Why?”
“Because that’s Tessa,” Dani said, her eyes wet and furious. “She thinks being strong means being silent. She thinks if she asks for help, she’s proving you right, that she can’t handle this place.”
Holt looked at me, his face grim. “We need to do something, Boss.”
“We are,” I said.
Dani pushed her pink hair back, her hands still trembling. “She didn’t want me to tell you. She’d kill me if she knew I was here.”
“She won’t know.”
“She’ll know,” Holt muttered, though he didn't disagree.
“She won’t,” I repeated, my gaze fixed on the photo of her sleeping. The sight of it made my stomach turn.
Dani’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Wyatt, he’s escalating. He followed her all the way from Calgary. She doesn’t know what he wants.”
I did. I’d seen men like this fucker before. It wasn't about love. It was about control. Possession. Fear. He didn't want her back; he wanted to own the fact that she was afraid of him.
I set the photos down on a hay bale with slow, lethal precision, as if I couldn't risk damaging the evidence. I went cold. Still. Focused.
