“I have to stage the vehicles,” Nick said. He looked at me then. The radio crackled once in his hand, but he didn’t answer it. “Stay in the main lodge again tonight,” he said. “Please.”
Then he turned and walked out, his boots heavy on the stone floor.
The library held its silence around me, the smell of him already fading.
On the desk, the manifest waited with my name written in my own hand at the top of the departure list.
I had not agreed to leave.
Apparently, my name had.
The pen remained between my fingers.
Click.
The sound cracked through the quiet room.
Incriminating.
My hand closed hard around the barrel, trapping the next one before it could give me away.
My phone buzzed on the table. A text from an unknown number, redirected through the lodge’s secure server.
Ask Mercer what he left unguarded.
I opened the attachment.
The photo was grainy, taken through a long lens in low light. It showed the library window from the outside. In the frame, two figures were silhouetted against the amber glow of the lamp.
Nick and me.
Sitting too close.
My pulse slowed.
Whoever had taken it had been close enough to see the library.
Close enough to see Nick.
Close enough to see exactly where his guard went thin.
Chapter 27
Through the Glass
JULIETTE
ThefirstthingIdid was not panic. Panic belonged to people with less to lose and more time to waste. I had neither.
I stood in the library, the smell of well-loved books and citrus oil suddenly too clean for what was sitting in my hand. My pulse kicked once. My lungs tightened. Then everything in me went still enough to work. My thumb stopped just above the glass of my phone.
I didn't enlarge the image. Not yet. I didn’t swipe. I didn’t blink.
Evidence required isolation, and fear could wait.
Do not reply.Do not delete.Do not forward.Messaging platforms were notorious for stripping metadata, but forwardingcould compress the file further, altering the digital fingerprint. I checked the timestamp: three minutes ago. The sender was an unsaved number routed through the lodge’s secure server, which made the violation less random and far more intimate.
I took a screenshot, capturing the contact info, the time, and the image before anything could disappear. Then I locked the screen. I didn’t want to see it, but I needed to know exactly what I had seen.
