I nod, stepping inside and closing the door softly behind me.
The room is smaller than I remember. Or maybe I’m the one who’s bigger now. The twin bed is still against the far wall, covered in the same faded quilt my grandmother made when I was a kid. My old bookshelf sits in the corner, filled with books I once loved, their spines worn from too many rereads.
And then there’s the picture.
It’s the first thing I notice when I sit on the bed—the silver-framed photo on my nightstand, exactly where I left it years ago.
My family.
Frozen in time.
My mom’s dark auburn hair falling over her shoulders as she leans into my dad, who has one arm wrapped around her, his smile easy and warm. My brother stands beside me, half an inch shorter than me at the time, his face scrunched in mock annoyance because I had teased him just before the picture was taken.
I reach for it, my fingers tracing over the glass.
They’ve been gone for so long.
But the grief never really fades. It shifts, changes, settles into something quieter, something that lives beneath the surface, waiting for moments like this to rise up and remind me of everything I lost.
I swallow hard, forcing back the lump in my throat.
For a long time after the accident, I convinced myself it was my fault.
If I hadn’t asked my parents to pick me up early that day . . . If I had stayed at school just a little longer . . . If I had been in that car instead of them . . .
The guilt never quite left. And now, it feels like the past is repeating itself. Like I’m still that girl running from something she can’t outrun. I press the picture to my chest and close my eyes.
Will I ever stop running?
Or worse—do I even know how to stay in one place?
Can I learn to be different?
Chapter Fifteen
Malerick Timberbridge leaned back in his chair, eyes locked on the map pinned to the corkboard across the second room of his apartment. Red lines crisscrossed the surface, marking connections no one else seemed to see—or refused to acknowledge.
The sheriff’s office wasn’t the place for this. Too many eyes. Too many ears. If even a whisper of suspicion got out, it could all fall apart before he had the chance to figure out the truth.
The fire at the Doherty mansion three weeks ago wasn’t an accident. And Malerick didn’t believe in coincidences.
His phone vibrated against the desk, slicing through the tense silence. He grabbed it on the second ring.
“Timberbridge.” His voice was clipped, his jaw already tight with the weight of what was coming.
“This is Gil.” The voice on the other end was all business, sharp and to the point. Finnegan Gil’s calls sometimes made him wonder if leaving the FBI had been a good idea. He had a good thing over there, but this, this promised a better salary and would let him be close to his mother. Not that it helped. By the time he was back, she was in hospice. Regret was something he tried to avoid, but there were days he couldn’t push it far into the dark corners of his heart.
“I’ve got Derek with me,” Gil continued. “We’re going through the Doherty fire report, cross-referencing it with what you sent about Nysa Calloway’s land. I think you’re right. The syndicate has been there longer than we initially thought. The bodies match their usual disposal method.”
Mal exhaled hard, pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose. The patterns, the timing—it all aligned too well. He’d spent weeks staring at the evidence, each detail leading him back to the same unsettling conclusion.
It wasn’t negligence. And it sure as hell wasn’t a faulty gas line, no matter what they wanted the town to believe. Whoever set that fire wanted Ledger and Galeanna out before the second explosion. It was planned.
Derek’s voice came through next, low and grim. “Same M.O. we’ve seen in other cases—remote locations, bodies buried where no one’s likely to stumble across them. Fires, destruction, then the land gets repurposed. Systematic.”
“Systematic,” Mal echoed, the word settling in his gut like a bad omen.
Finnegan cut in. “Here’s the thing, Sheriff. We’ve been tracking cases like this across multiple states—small towns, isolated properties, people vanishing without a trace. In most of them, there’s evidence of fires or other forms of destruction nearby. It’s a pattern, and Maple Haven is next. Probably Old Birchwood Timber too. What’s the plan with your family’s company?”
