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“Talk to me,” he said.

Tate turned from the window. “McGraw’s on administrative suspension. Has been for six weeks. Two write-ups prior to that.” A pause. “He’s not on approved travel. His lieutenant didn’t know he’d left Austin.”

Keith had already been most of the way there. Still, hearing it said plainly was its own kind of blow.

“No charges yet,” Tate said. “But there’s a hearing next month—whether the DA files or not depends on witness testimony. His lieutenant was very clear that he shouldn’t have left Texas, let alone walked into a law enforcement setting.”

Les exhaled through his nose.

“Rachel Grant,” Keith said.

“Yep.” Tate met his eyes. “Only witness for the prosecution.”

The room was quiet for a moment. Outside, through the window, the maples were burning the same deep red they’d been burning all week, and the street was ordinary and bright in the morning light, and somewhere in this town Rachel Grant was walking around not knowing that the man she was about to testify against had driven six hundred miles to find her.

“We tried the hotel,” Tate said. “She’s not in. Not answering her phone either.”

Keith pulled out his phone and called her anyway.

It went straight to voicemail. Not the kind that rings out—the kind that doesn’t ring at all.

She’d blocked him.

Chapter 9

Silence settles

He’d been driving for hours. Not continuously—he’d stopped, doubled back, covered the same six blocks more times than he’d care to admit. He’d checked the café, checked the park off Elm where the bachelorette group had been the first night, checked the overlook at the north end of Maple Lane where the trees went dense and tourists liked to stop and take photos of the valley. He’d driven past the sheriff’s office twice in case she’d gone there, which made no sense, but he’d done it anyway.

Les and Tate had arrested McGraw and were processing him right now. The Rangers were already en route from Austin. Everything that needed doing was being done, and Keith was driving in circles looking for a woman who had every reason not to want to be found.

His calls went straight to voicemail. No ring, just the click and her voice, brisk and professional: You’ve reached Rachel Grant. Leave a message. He’d left two. He wasn’t going to leave a third.

He turned onto Aspen Street because it was the next street over and he was running out of options, not because he had any reason to think she’d be there. He was almost past the Morrison place before he slowed.

The house was dark, the iron fence just a shape against the deeper dark of the overgrown yard. He’d driven past it a few times without looking twice.

He looked now.

She was on the front steps. Just a shape, at first—someone sitting with their knees pulled up and their shoulders slightly forward, the particular posture of someone who’d been still for a long time. He pulled over and killed the engine and sat there for a moment before he got out.

She didn’t look up when the car door opened. She heard him coming—he could tell by the way her shoulders changed, a fractional shift—but she didn’t move. When he got close enough to see her face, she was looking at the middle distance, toward the street, and her expression was the one he’d catalogued last night: everything locked down, nothing available.

Her hair was loose and tangled at the ends from the wind. She had on a dark green sweater that was not enough for the temperature, and her arms were wrapped around her shins, and even in the low light he could see that she was cold.

He sat down next to her on the step.

Not close enough to crowd her. Just—next to her, on the same step, with the cracked wood of the Morrison porch under them both and the dark street in front of them and a sliver of moon somewhere behind the clouds.

He didn’t say anything.

The silence settled. Somewhere down the block a dog was barking, and the wind moved through the maples, and the town went on being itself the way small towns did—unhurried, unaware, indifferent to the particular weight of this porch step. He’d been moving all day, from one thing to the next, and the stillness felt strange for a moment, and then it didn’t.

Rachel was good to sit with. He’d known it before—that first evening at the fence, the unhurried way she’d stood there looking at the house, the easy quiet of someone comfortable in their own presence. Even now, even like this, sitting next to her felt like the first moment today he could just be. Like the tension he’d been carrying since morning had finally, for the first time in hours, gone still.

He let it sit another minute.

He waited until she looked up. “Sloane’s okay.”