She didn’t look up from the zipper. “Packing.”
“For what?”
Izzy shook her head, already moving again, tossing garments into the open case with clipped, frantic energy. “Save it,” she said tightly. “I’m not interested in a lecture right now, Grant.”
“You think I’m trying to give you a lecture?”
“I think you’re about to try to make this easier or more realistic than it is,” she shot back, her voice rising as she faced him across the mattress. “And I am absolutely not in the mood for that either.”
Grant watched her, his shoulders knotting. “Where the hell are you going?”
She didn’t look at him. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah,” he rumbled, his voice dropping an octave, low. “It does.”
That pulled her focus back. She turned, her eyes sharp as flint. “I am not staying somewhere I’m not wanted, Grant. I’m not an inconvenience you’re forced to manage.”
Grant held her gaze, something deep and territorial shifting inside him. He took another step closer, his shadow falling across the bed.
“So that’s it?” he said quietly, his voice rough with suppressed emotion. “You come in here, turn everything upside down… and now you’re just leaving?”
Izzy frowned, her hands freezing over the leather strap. “What are you talking about?”
Grant let out a short, heavy breath. “Burke reopened the case,” he said.
“Wait—what?”
Grant watched her, tracking the sudden confusion on her face. “You didn’t know?”
Her grip tightened on the edge of the suitcase until her knuckles turned white. “He reopened it?” she whispered. “When?”
“This morning.”
A heavy beat dropped between them. Everything she’d been about to say—every defensive wall she’d built since walking through the door—shifted.
“Of course he did,” she said quietly.
Grant’s brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shook her head once, her expression calcifying into something unreadable. “Nothing.” But it wasn’t nothing.
She turned away from him, zipping the suitcase with one hard pull. She grabbed the leather handle, lifted the weight, and walked straight past his shoulder. Grant didn’t move. He didn’t stop her. He didn’t say another word as the front door opened, then closed with a hollow thud.
Izzy stepped onto the front porch, the vast indigo line of the mountains stretching out in front of her like a wall.
Denver. Gone. Grant. Done.
And now—Clara Vale.
Her eyes closed for a brief, shuddering second. The abandoned cabin. The preserved paintings. That persistent feeling in her gut that something about a simple “walkaway” had never made logical sense. Burke reopening the case this morning—that wasn’t a coincidence. That was structural movement.
Her eyes opened, clear and focused.
Slowly, her fingers loosened around the leather handle. The suitcase rolled back an inch against the porch floorboards. She looked toward the jagged ridge, then back toward the screen door.
Not yet.
Izzy stopped at the top step, her hand hovering over the luggage. She didn’t pick it up.
