“He did. It sounds like things have the potential to get pretty ugly.”
“Yes, they do.”
Wes nodded. “I agree with what the fire investigator told Sheriff Sutherland. The burn pattern back there wasn’t an accident. And those toothpicks didn’t end up in the tree line by themselves. Travis’s property is close. He knows this land. And he has reasons to want to hurt this place.”
Rowan understood what he wasn’t saying—that she may have handed Travis a new reason to continue his strikes simply by showing up.
“You think my being here makes things worse?” she murmured. “I seem to have caught his interest, which may have turned his attention back to Refuge Cove.”
“I think Travis is looking for any excuse to make your life and the lives of your siblings miserable. If he makes you all miserable enough, maybe you’ll leave.”
She scowled. “He still couldn’t afford the property.”
“He probably hasn’t thought that far ahead.”
Rowan wrapped her arms against the chill in the air. She didn’t like the sound of that.
Wes’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and his pace slowed. “I need to take this. It’s the client I’m bidding on over in Staunton—I’ve been trying to reach them since yesterday.” He looked at her. “You good to head back from here?”
The house was visible from where they stood, no more than two hundred yards across open ground.
She nodded. “Go.”
He held her gaze a beat longer than necessary, the same way he’d held it when he said, “Don’t look back.”
Then he answered the call and angled away across the property, Remington at his side.
Rowan stopped at the edge of the yard.
She remembered Wes’s question earlier.Are you in trouble?
She’d laughed it off. She’d done her usual routine—deflect, redirect, keep moving. She practically had it down to a science.
She frowned.
The truth was that she was very much in trouble.
Her phone felt heavy in her pocket. She’d been ignoring the alerts since she and Wes had left for the fire site, and she couldn’t put it off any longer.
She pulled her cell out.
Another headline loaded before she was ready for it.
Cinematographer Thayer Holt Found Dead?—
Death Ruled Accidental
Her breath left her in a slow, quiet exhale.
She read the headline again. Then once more.
Accidental.
The word sat wrong in her chest, like something placed deliberately off-center.
She tapped the article and quickly absorbed the details. Thayer’s body had been found in a production office. A piece of lighting equipment had fallen. There were no signs of foul play.
Rowan pressed her lips together.
