Izzy didn't look at the garage.
She marched into the house, the Denver Armor tightening around her like a shield.
She didn't want to think about the kiss.
She wanted the sketchbook.
She grabbed it from the kitchen island and started flipping through the pages she'd missed. She was looking for the landing strip when she stopped near the back.
Her breath hitched.
It wasn't a landscape.
It was the cabin.
A self-portrait.
Clara was rendered in quick, urgent charcoal lines. She knelt beside the heavy oak roll-top desk, one hand disappearing into a hidden seam behind the bottom drawer.
Her face was turned toward the cabin door.
Eyes wide.
Terrified.
She wasn't painting.
She was hiding something.
A record.
A clue.
“Oh my God,” Izzy whispered.
The desk was still there.
She'd seen it herself.
Dust-covered and battered, but still sitting in that cabin.
Heavy boots sounded on the porch.
Izzy spun.
Grant stepped into the kitchen.
He looked like he'd been wrestling the mountain all day—grease on his forearms, sweat staining his black T-shirt, his jaw set in a hard, dangerous line.
“You’re a piece of work, Moreno,” he rumbled. “Using a Hollis to make a point? You don't know what you're playing with.”
Izzy snapped the sketchbook shut, her eyes burning.
“I’m not playing, Grant. I’m living. Something you apparently only do when nobody's looking.”
She stepped toward him.
Matching his intensity.
