She turns in the chair and looks at me with those eyes, and there it is again—that thing I can’t name and am not going to try. I take her hand, and she comes without another word. The night that follows leaves me lying in the dark afterward with her asleep across my chest, staring at the ceiling, certain of exactly one thing:
She is going to wreck me completely, and I am going to let her.
***
On day six, we take the truck.
The rookery on the far eastern edge of the island isn’t accessible by 4-wheeler—too much rough ground between here and there. Sabaak rides in the back, nose in the wind. Sylvie has her camera bag on her lap. She’s going through her notes, cross-referencing something between two pages, and I catch myself stealing glances the whole drive.
The sea lions are worth the trip. There’s a colony of thirty-odd animals on the rocks below the eastern bluff—big bulls, cows with pups, the whole scene—and Sylvie goes still the moment she sees them, the way she always does at first. Like she has to absorb the fact of them before she can start working. I’ve come to like that moment. The way she forgets I’m there entirely.
I sketch while she documents. Sabaak settles in the grass behind us, unbothered.
We’re two hours out when the light starts to go. Sylvie is still shooting, working through the last of the good angles, and I let her keep going. She doesn’t have many days left. When she finally lowers the camera and looks at the sky, I’m already packing up.
“We should move,” I say.
“I know.” She doesn’t argue. She caps her lens, tucks the camera away, and we head back through the grass toward thetruck. Sabaak trots ahead, circling back every so often, the way he does when he wants us to move faster.
I see it before she does.
Both tires on the driver’s side—front and rear—are flat. Not blow-out flat. Deliberately, completely flat. I crouch at the front one and run my hand along the sidewall, finding the cut: clean, deliberate, no nails or road debris. Under the truck’s running board, half-tucked into the gravel, is a hunting knife.
Not hidden. Left. So I’d find it. So I’d know this wasn’t an accident.
My jaw tightens. I stand slowly and keep my voice even. “Don’t touch the knife.”
Sylvie crouches where I was. She looks at the gash in the tire, then at the knife, and when she stands, her face is carefully blank in the way that means she’s working hard not to show the alarm underneath it. “That’s not a coincidence.”
“No.”
“Both tires. So you couldn’t use the spare.”
“No.”
She looks out at the empty road. The eastern edge of the island is the farthest point from town—four miles of rough track between us and the nearest building, and it’s getting dark. No signal out here is strong enough to radio in reliably. We’re not in danger, but we’re not getting home tonight.
“We’re sleeping in the truck,” I say.
She absorbs this. Nods once. “Okay.” Then, “Wyatt. I need to tell you something. About Brett Monteith.”
I look at her.
“He approached me. At the inn. The evening before I came to your cottage—the first time.” She holds my gaze steady. “He told me the Alaskan wilderness was dangerous. That anything could happen.” A pause. “It wasn’t a warning. It was a threat.”
The cold that moves through me has nothing to do with the temperature. “You’re only telling me this now.”
“I thought—” She stops, then starts again. “I thought I could handle it. And I didn’t want to be the woman who shows up in someone’s life and immediately makes it complicated.”
I look at the knife still lying in the gravel. Then at her. “You should have told me.”
“I know.” She doesn’t flinch from it. “I’m telling you now.”
I crouch and use a rag from the truck bed to bag the knife without touching it directly—evidence, if it comes to that—then stand and radio Acca on the truck’s CB to let her know we’re stuck out east and won’t be back until morning. The connection is poor, but it is enough. Acca’s response is three words and a knowing silence. I don’t have the patience for tonight.
By the time I’m done, Sylvie has found the emergency blankets from the kit behind the seat and spread them out across the back bench. Sabaak has already claimed half of it. She’s sitting in the middle, back against the door, knees drawn up, looking at me through the windshield with those blue eyes, calm and steady, and I feel the tension in my shoulders ease by a fraction.
I climb in.
