The detectives' faces swim through my mind. Reeves with his kind grandfather act. Nowak with his sharp, calculating eyes that seemed to see right through every word I said. They don't have anything, not yet. But they're going to keep looking. They will dig and probe and poke until something breaks.
I won't let that something be Jade.
I ease out of bed carefully, making sure not to disturb her. The hardwood floor is cold beneath my bare feet as I pad across the room to the windows. The Pacific stretches out before me, black and endless under the night sky. Somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, the world keeps spinning like nothing has changed.
But everything is different. I can feel it in my bones.
My reflection stares back at me from the glass, a ghost superimposed over the ocean. Dark eyes, dark hair, the shadow of stubble along my jaw. I’m starting to look more and more like my father. The thought usually bothers me, but tonight I find a strange comfort in it. Nicholas Crawford has spent his entire life protecting what's his, no matter the cost. Maybe I'm more his son than I ever wanted to admit.
The car. The thought surfaces unbidden, cold and sharp. They found Marcus's car near the cabin.
I run through everything again, retracing my steps in my mind like I've done a hundred times since the detectives left. I drove back to the cabin that same night, following behind the tow truck I'd called to haul Marcus's car. Jade was asleep at the house by the time I left, wrapped in blankets and exhaustion. Itold the driver some story about a friend whose car had broken down, paid him in cash, and watched him deposit the vehicle on a remote pullout ten miles from the cabin. Then I drove my own car the rest of the way up.
The ground was frozen. That was the hardest part. I had to dig for hours, my fingers going numb despite the gloves, every shovelful of earth a battle against the cold. The sun was setting by the time I finished, painting the forest floor in shades of orange and red that looked too much like blood.
I buried him as deep as I could. Covered the grave with rocks and branches and leaves. There's nothing there that looks like anything but forest floor.
But his car. The police have it now. They're processing it for forensics, the detective said. I wiped it down before the tow truck arrived, wore gloves the whole time. I didn't leave fingerprints.
Did I?
What about hair? Skin cells? A single fiber from my jacket that fell onto the seat when I moved his body into the trunk? The interior would have been covered in my DNA from all the times I'd ridden in that car for business meetings. That's explainable. But what about blood? Marcus bled everywhere in that cabin. What if some of it transferred to the car when I moved him?
The uncertainty gnaws at me.
I think about the fire poker, still lying on the cabin floor when we left. I went back for it, of course. Cleaned the blood, scrubbed the floors, burned everything that might connect us to what happened there. But forensics can find things invisible to the naked eye. Luminol lights up blood even after it's been cleaned. DNA clings to surfaces like a ghost.
Did I miss something? Is there a single hair or fiber or drop of sweat that I overlooked in my haste to bury the body and get back to Jade?
The thoughts spiral, each one darker than the last.
I press my forehead against the cool glass and close my eyes. Behind my eyelids, I see Marcus's face. Not the charming mask he wore at business dinners or the cruel sneer he showed Jade in the cabin. I see him at the end, eyes wide with disbelief, mouth open in a soundless scream as I brought the fire poker down again and again.
I killed a man.
I beat him until his skull caved in and his blood painted the walls and there was nothing left of the monster who tried to rape the woman I love.
And I would do it again.
The certainty of that settles into my chest like a stone. There's no regret, no guilt, no moral crisis brewing in my conscience. Marcus Webb was a predator who hurt people for fun. He would have destroyed Jade if I hadn't stopped him. He would have used her and broken her and discarded what was left like trash.
I saved her. That's all that matters.
But saving her doesn't mean anything if I lose her now. If the police find enough evidence to build a case. If they put me in handcuffs and drag me away while she watches.
I won't let that happen. Whatever it takes, however many lines I have to cross, I will keep her safe.
Because she's mine. She's been mine since the moment I first saw her, even if she didn't know I existed. I've been waiting for her, building toward her, preparing for her. And now that I finally have her, I'm not letting go.
No one touches what's mine.
No one takes what's mine.
Not the police. Not my father. Not anyone.
A soft sound from the bed makes me turn. Jade is shifting in her sleep, her face twisting with some dream I can't see. A small whimper escapes her lips, and her hands clench in the sheets like she's fighting something off.
I cross the room in three strides and ease back onto the bed beside her. My hand finds her hair, fingers threading through the dark strands. Her brow smooths. The tension leaves her body. She turns toward me instinctively, seeking warmth, and I gather her against my chest.
