Page 100

My chest tightens.

The cabin never smokes like that.

I ease off the gas. My eyes lock on the smoke, dense and dark, reluctant to rise.

Wrong. It’s all wrong.

The phone vibrates in the console, rattling against the plastic.

Janice, my father’s hospice aide. I grab it, pressing it to my ear, forcing steadiness into my voice. “Hi, Janice.”

“Evening, Lydia,” she chirps, oblivious. “Just checking in. Will you be back on time tonight?”

The smoke thickens, a smear against the horizon.

“I got held up,” I say, voice carefully neutral. “I’ll be later than expected.”

“No worries,” she says. “Your father’s been quiet. Resting now.”

“Good,” I murmur, even as dread knots tighter in my gut.

“Drive safe,” she adds. “Roads are slick.”

“I will,” I promise, then hang up, tossing the phone back into the console.

The final stretch of road winds like a ribbon through the trees. When the cabin finally appears, tucked low between pines, its porch lights a dim beacon, it looks… still.

Too still.

I slow as I pull into the clearing. Gravel crunches under my tires. The pigs in the pen beside the shed are awake, snorting, stamping, agitated. Their metal fencing rattles sharply in the frozen air.

I kill the engine.

The silence swallows everything but the pigs’ shrill cries. The smell hits instantly: not woodsmoke, but something harsher. Chemical. Bleach. Burned metal. Bitter and wrong. I step out, the cold slicing through my coat.

Something’s not right.

Knife in hand, I move carefully past the cabin, boots crunching against crusted snow.

The windows are dark. Curtains still. Untouched.

I round the side. And freeze.

The back door to the cabin hangs half-open. Light spills from inside. A silhouette in the doorway, stoking the hearth fire with the casual ease of a man tending his own home, is Detective Davis. The fire crackles behind him, casting long, jittery shadows across the floorboards.

He turns, as if sensing me before he hears me. “Evenin’, Miss Anderson,” he says, voice lazy and polite.

Every instinct scream at me to run. But I shove the fear down and step forward.

“Can I help you, Detective? There has to be a pretty damn good reason why you’re in my home without a welcome or a warrant, I might add.”

My voice stays steady, even.

He dusts his hands off and offers a small smile, tight, humorless. “Is there a reason why I would need a warrant, Miss Anderson?”

“Detective, I’m not sure if using my formal name instead of Lydia, like you’ve called me since I was old enough to know it, is some kind of control tactic, or if you’re playing into some kind of kink, but whatever it is, I’m not interested. If you’d kindly leave, I have some cleaning to get done because I must go back into town to take care of my father.”

He stands and watches me. I slow my breaths, so he doesn’t see that I’m slightly worked up. This is three times in so many weeks that I have unannounced visitors, and I’m still not used to it.