She’d checked her news feed a lot—too much, really. She kept waiting to see headlines declaring her a person of interest in Thayer Holt’s death.
So far, there had been nothing. But that didn’t mean those headlines weren’t coming.
That part unsettled her almost as much as the memory itself. However, Thayer had died on Friday evening. There was a chance no one had been in the studio all weekend. It was a possibility that today—this morning—would be when his body was discovered.
Her stomach churned.
Would people really think she was responsible? That she could be a killer?
She wanted to say no. But other times, she simply felt like her life was full of bad decisions. Maybe peoplewouldthink that.
The landscape around her had shifted again.
Rolling hills rose into mountains—layered and solid, their dark shapes cutting into the sky.
Her chest tightened.
She knew this landscape.
These exact mountains weren’t home. She’d grown up an hour from here. But they were close enough that the pull of seeing them settled deep in her bones.
Refuge Cove sat somewhere beyond those ridges. The place Sarah, her oldest sister, had built. The place that had once been her sister’s dream.
And the place where everything had fallen apart.
Rowan swallowed and shifted in her seat.
Her eyes burned, and her shoulders ached from too many hours hunched forward. But she didn’t slow. Not now. Not when she was this close to the one place she might feel safe.
Stopping felt more dangerous than pushing through.
She swallowed, her throat dry.
Another sound echoed again in her mind—the crack of Thayer’s head against the coffee table.
Rowan sucked in a breath and forced the memory back. She couldn’t think about that. Not now.
Every time her mind drifted back to the studio, she nearly got into an accident.
She couldn’t afford that detour.
Her phone buzzed in the cup holder, and she flinched.
The dashboard screen lit with an incoming message, and the name at the top was enough to make her stomach tighten.
She didn’t need to read it.
She already knew it was from Vince.
Her grip tightened even more on the steering wheel.
“I’m not answering,” she muttered, her voice rough and gravelly. “I’m not.”
The buzzing stopped, and silence rushed back, heavier than before.
A mile passed. Then another.
The phone buzzed with a text message. Her car read it aloud. “We need to talk.”
