Her jaw ached. She unclenched it and forced her shoulders down.
Izzy:He asked me today if I’d ever considered letting someone else handle acquisitions.
Izzy:“Freeing up your time,” he said.
Freeing up your time. Making you obsolete.
The dots blinked for a long moment before Caitlin replied.
Caitlin:Are you okay?
No. Not really.
Izzy lifted her gaze to the front windows. The gallery lights reflected like some glossy catalog version of her life. Beyond the glass, downtown Denver shimmered against the dark—steel and glass and relentless motion.
She should feel proud.
She’d fought like hell to build this place. Openings, fundraisers, donors, late nights, chasing artists who should’ve been seen.
Instead, it felt like watching someone gut a building from the inside, leaving the façade intact.
Caitlin:Come to Sylva for a bit.
The word Sylva blurred. She blinked hard.
Sylva. Mountains.
The courthouse museum where Caitlin worked.
She’d only been there once.
Long enough to help Caitlin disappear. Long enough to be pushed off a mountain by a man who’d decided she was in the way. Long enough to learn exactly how dangerous someone else’s world could be.
There’d been a trial. Cameras. Headlines. Testimony that sliced her open in slow, careful bites.
Evan Cole was behind bars now. She knew that. Logic said he was locked up; feeling safe was a matter of ghosts, and the ghosts in Denver were getting loud.
She and Caitlin texted every day, trading pictures, gossip, and small-town weather; best friends who now lived in different worlds but still narrated them to each other in real time. But they hadn’t stood in the same room since the day Evan had been led out of a courtroom in handcuffs while cameras flashed outside.
She didn’t regret a second of it. Helping Caitlin had blown her life apart and, in its own brutal way, probably saved it. Every quiet morning, Caitlin woke up safe in Sylva existed because Izzy had walked into someone else’s nightmare for her.
Her phone buzzed again, jarring her. Another notification slid over Caitlin’s message.
Unknown number.
She almost dismissed it.
Then the name resolved on her screen.
Sheriff Burke Scott.
Her shoulders tightened, then eased.
She answered on the second ring. “Moreno.”
His voice came through steady and grounded in a way nothing in this room felt.
“You in a place you can talk?”
