They walked in silence a stretch before Caleb finally spoke. “So . . . the baby.”
Micah glanced at him. “Yeah. Crazy isn’t it?”
“You worried about her being here?”
“I’m worried about what it means if the wrong people find out.” Micah kept his eyes on the tree line. “Word travels in small towns. A baby connected to Richard Harding? That’s the kind of thing people talk about. The kind of knowledge that spreads.”
“And when it does?”
“When it does, Naomi becomes a target in ways she hasn’t experienced before.” Micah paused. “Legal pressure. Public opinion. Maybe worse.”
“That’s why you wanted to walk the perimeter, isn’t it? You think someone might already be watching.”
“We both know the Hendersons never accepted losing this land. And I think Travis has been waiting for an opening.” He glanced at Caleb. “I checked on his cousin Jerry. He was in the hospital at the same time as Sissy. He said he was there to visit Jerry.”
“Good to know.”
They continued along the fence line toward the western edge—the densest stretch, where the trees pressed closest and the fence was hardest to monitor.
Caleb unlocked the back gate. It swung open with a low creak, and they stepped toward the woods. The terrain sloped as the ground descended toward a small creek that babbled through the property.
The temperature dropped the moment the fence was behind them. The canopy closed in overhead, and the ground turned soft beneath their boots.
Micah’s eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, and he scanned the ground, the trees, the underbrush.
They walked another thirty yards in silence.
That was when something caught Micah’s eye.
Something that didn’t belong.
A snare.
The device sat about fifteen feet from the fence, in a shallow depression between two roots. It had a wire loop, a stake driven into the ground, and bait set off to one side—what was left of it, anyway. Something small had already been caught and removed. The ground around it was disturbed, boot prints pressed into the mud.
Micah crouched beside it. “This yours?”
“No.” Caleb’s voice went flat. “Absolutely not.”
