Saxon cuts her off with a calm look. “You’re in our town. You’re in our station. That’s close enough.”
Ellie’s throat moves, emotion flashing across her face so fast she almost hides it.
Then her phone lights up.
The screen glows in her hand like a flare in the dark.
Her face drains of color as she reads.
I don’t have to ask. I already know.
But I do anyway, voice low and lethal. “Ellie.”
She lifts the screen toward me with shaking fingers.
Four words stare back at me, clean and casual, like a man smiling while he twists a knife.
I know where you’re hiding.
Chapter 5
Ellie
Wyatt doesn’t raise his voice when he reads the text, but everything in the room shifts like he did.
Saxon is behind his desk, calm and granite-hard, Levi and Sadie hovering in the doorway like they were born for chaos, and I’m standing there with my phone in my hand and Graham’s message glowing like a brand on the screen.
I know where you’re hiding.
Wyatt takes the phone from me without asking.
It’s not rude. It’s automatic. Like breathing. Like he’s already decided my fear is his problem.
His eyes flick across the message once, and then he looks at Saxon.
“He’s escalating,” Saxon says, like it’s a weather report.
Wyatt’s jaw flexes. “He’s testing.”
Sadie’s gaze pins me. “Who is he?”
I open my mouth and nothing comes out clean. The truth is thick. Embarrassing. Dangerous.
Levi makes a low sound. “Oh, it’s the ex. It’s always the ex.”
Sadie elbows him hard enough he shuts up.
Saxon steeples his fingers, eyes on Wyatt. “We can run it through the sheriff.”
Wyatt’s expression doesn’t change. “He’s a banker.”
That lands like a slap. Because it’s true. Graham doesn’t need to break into cabins when he can break you with paperwork and polite smiles. He does it in daylight, wearing a tie, calling it “procedure.”
Saxon studies Wyatt. “What do you want to do?”
Wyatt’s gaze cuts to me. It holds. Dark, steady, too intense for an office with witnesses.
“I want her shielded,” he says.
