It wasn’t a peaceful quiet. It was the kind that prickled at the back of your neck and fed the anxiety inside your belly. The kind that made everything feel hollow.
I couldn’t remember a time when this house was ever so still. Growing up, it had been chaos from morning to night. There were five of us boys and our younger sister tearing through thehalls, slamming doors, and shouting over one another. There was laughter and arguments. Life.
Even after we grew up, the noise never left. We never stopped coming by, because in many ways this place was more home to us than anywhere else. Even when we lost our baby sister, it only brought us closer. We gathered every Sunday around my mother’s table for family dinners. Then, when my mom turned the place into a bed-and-breakfast, even more joined the pulse that thundered through the halls of this home. The house had always been full of people and warmth.
Now, it was cold and silent.
I wrapped my arms tighter around the small body cuddled against my side. Hailey’s brown curls were a tangled mess, brushing soft against my cheek. I breathed her in, needing the reminder that she was really there. Safe and sound.
She was almost eight years old and didn’t normally crawl into my bed. But things had been so different lately.
The past months were hard. The last few weeks were even worse. Ever since Amos Anderson—the Shadow Stalker—escaped from the county jail, everything had unraveled. The lives of my family, and this whole town, had been uprooted and shaken. Fear had seeped into places it didn’t belong.
Two of my younger brothers were married to women the serial killer had victimized. The other two had somehow been pulled into his twisted world as well. My entire family was forced into hiding—packed off to a safe house August, my brother, had procured through his security company. He wanted to make sure everyone was safe from the psychopath stalking them.
Everyone except me.
Even after the threatening notes the killer had started to leave—the ones that finally convinced my parents to leave the home they loved—I’d stayed.
I wasn’t sure why Amos had fixated so intensely on my family over the last couple of years. I could only assume it had something to do with my brothers’ involvement with the women he believed had belonged to him. Lark and Emersyn, my sisters-in-law, were part of his obsessions. His delusions.
But I didn’t have a personal connection to him.
What I did have was a responsibility.
As fire chief, I couldn’t disappear for an unknown amount of time. Ember Hollow didn’t get to pause life because fear was circling like a vulture. People still needed protecting. Fires needed fighting. I’d made a promise to this town long before Amos Anderson ever entered our lives.
Still, staying had consequences.
Hailey shifted in my arms, stirring but not quite waking. I brushed a hand up and down her back. She’d grown up in this house too. After Jessica died—after my world collapsed—my family had carried us. My mom had watched Hailey when I worked long shifts. My brothers had been there too, whenever I’d needed them. We were a family forged through grief and tragedy. It made us strong and resilient.
But now they were gone, and we were alone.
Hailey missed her grandparents and uncles. She missed the security of knowing the house would always be full, and I didn’t know how to comfort her. I couldn’t simply kiss the hurt and make it better.
I stared up at the ceiling, listening to the quiet I’d chosen, and wondered how much longer I could hold everything together on my own. It had been a struggle to decide whether to keep Hailey in Ember Hollow, or send her with my parents. I’d chosen to keep her with me, because she’d asked, and I truly believed we were safe. The Shadow Stalker had no reason to be here anymore, especially with my family gone.
Still, we were cautious. She went to school and came home. We didn’t go out of the house if we didn’t need to.
But I was floundering. After my parents chose to leave for the safe house, I’d taken two weeks off of work for the holidays. That vacation time was coming to an end, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with Hailey when I had to go back.
I didn’t have a typical nine-to-five. Fires were not emergencies that only happened during working hours, and although my schedule had stabilized a lot since being promoted to chief, I had a duty to be available whenever I was needed.
Some of the scheduling and admin work could be done from home, but I would be needed at the station soon. My second-in-command had really stepped up during this time, but I had never been away from work for this long. I was failing at every front. Failing my duty to this town, and failing my own daughter.
I smoothed down some of Hailey’s curls, clenching my jaw.
“It’s time to wake up, baby girl,” I said, my voice a gruff whisper. I coughed to clear it, and Hailey flinched.
“Daddy,” she groaned, pressing closer to me. “I’m not a baby anymore.”
I chuckled and rubbed her back a bit more vigorously. “You’ll always be my baby.”
She grumbled with disapproval, but didn’t argue. “Lemme sleep. Five more minutes.”
Sometimes, I wondered where her personality came from. She was nothing like me. She had so much of her mother in her, but even Jessica wasn’t quite like her. Hailey was truly one-of-a-kind.
I smiled at her messy hair and sleepy green eyes that were definitely inherited from her mom.
