Not tonight.
Maybe not ever.
For some reason, Dylan had tracked her location on the night she’d killed Calvin Gantz. He’d seen where she went. And at some point, after that night, Dylan had moved whatever needed to be moved to a place where no one would ever find it. And then he’d purchased this farm with its private lake and its two hundred acres of solitude.
Her brother, the dreamer.
The hummingbird who couldn’t sit still.
He’d found his stillness here, on this land, standing guard over something that could never be spoken aloud.
“Thank you, Dylan,” Kinsley whispered, and her voice cracked on his name.
“Family protects family.” Dylan’s voice was steady and calm, carrying the quiet certainty of a man who had made a decision and had never once reconsidered it. “That’s what we do.”
He didn’t elaborate further. He didn’t need to. Kinsley understood what he was offering. Not just the physical security of what lay at the bottom of that lake, but the promise that came with it. The weight of carrying it, the twenty-one months of terror, shifted just enough that she could breathe.
They sat in silence as the sun continued its descent. The lake’s surface shifted from copper to deep bronze, then to something darker as shadows stretched across the water like fingers reaching for the far shore. Crickets began their evening chorus, tentative at first and then building into the full-throated song that would carry through the night. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called out, its voice threading through the warm air with the patience of a creature that understood darkness better than most.
The farm breathed with life around them.
Peaceful.
Settled.
Eventually, Kinsley stood, her movements slow, reluctant to leave this place where the truth could exist without being spoken. Dylan walked her to the Jeep, hands in his pockets, that easy smile back on his face as though the evening had been nothing more than two siblings sharing a beer.
“Drive safe, Kin,” Dylan said as she climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I will.” Kinsley glanced up at him, her brother silhouetted against the porch lights, and for a moment, he looked like the boy she remembered from childhood. The one who used to build forts in the backyard and insist that she was the only one allowed inside. “Dylan…”
“I know.” He rested his hand briefly on the Jeep’s door frame. “We’re good, Kin. We’re always good.”
Kinsley managed a genuine smile.
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
She started the engine and put the Jeep in gear, catching Dylan’s figure shrinking in her rearview mirror as she drove away. He stood there until her taillights disappeared around the curve, standing watch the way he always would, over the land and the lake and the secrets that would never see daylight.
Family protects family.
The gravel gave way to asphalt as she reached the main road, and Kinsley turned toward home. She now understood why Shane’s divers had found nothing at Terrapin Lake. Why the evidence had vanished as though it had never existed. Her secret was buried at the bottom of a private lake on her brother’s land, guarded by seven acres of spring-fed water and two hundred acres of solitude.
But not entirely safe.
Someone was still sending those notes. Every nineteenth of the month, like clockwork, the reminders arrived. Anonymous.Relentless. Tormenting. A single sentence that carried the weight of everything she’d done and everything she stood to lose.
I know you killed Calvin Gantz.
The evidence might be gone, but someone out there knew the truth. And until Kinsley discovered who was sending those notes, she would never truly be free. She drove through the gathering darkness toward home, the Bell case behind her, the Gantz secret beneath her, and somewhere in the shadows between the two, a threat she couldn’t yet see and couldn’t yet name, waiting with the patience of someone who had all the time in the world.
~ The End ~
